Forest City Courier, Sept. 19, 1940

On the front cover of a recent issue of The Saturday Evening Post is an attractive picture of a small boy, I judge about three years old, sitting in a rolling market basket eating a banana. One hand is thrust down in a large box of cookies. His mother is nowhere in sight. She is probably somewhere in the store rounding up the day’s groceries unaware that her young son is helping himself to everything in sight. Now, I never sat in a market basket and ate bananas, but they are my favorite fruit, and will say that this young fellow is wise to choose a banana out of a variety of fruits and other food stuff around him. When our children were babies we kept bananas out of their reach, but they tell me nowadays that they are considered good food for young children. I have seen a small variety of bananas growing in Florida. Oddly enough, the bunches grow with the fruit turned upward, but as displayed in the stores, they are hung bottom side-up. If you want to see a realistic picture of a little girl eating a hard sour apple, look on the front cover of this week’s Post.

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The prettiest sight I have seen in a long time is a heavenly blue morning glory vine in full bloom against the red brick wall on the north side of the Cliffside Inn. It is growing on a frame close up to the wall. It was planted and is tended by a good friend of mine. She gathers the seeds and plants them from year to year. How I have missed seeing it before I do not know, but she tells me that it is there each summer. If you want to see it, you will have to go early in the morning, because the blossoms close soon after sunrise. It is a sight you won’t soon forget.

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About that swastika again! After this I promise to hush up about it. In a newspaper the other day I read a short item written from Tampa, FIa. saying that the Mesquakie Indians have painted out the swastika emblems. It went on to say that the Indian swastika, identical to the Nazi emblem but developed much earlier, had been painted on pottery, woven in beadwork, and carved on hatchets for centuries in North, South and Central America. Now, the blotting out of the swastika on my piece of Indian pottery was my own idea, because I mentioned it two weeks ago, before I even knew there was a tribe of Mesquakie Indians. They are displaying a spirit of righteous indignation by blotting out the emblem and that, in my opinion, is good judgment.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.