Forest City Courier, Sept. 26, 1940
Funny how we never tire of the day’s routine, if it is to our liking and if we are interested in our work. I think the old saying that, “Man works from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done,” is exaggerated. There are plenty of men who do not work from sun to sun, and there are just as many women who finish their work within the allotted eight hours. But there is a lot of truth in, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” In our middle age, we begin to think of going to bed long before the younger generation gets started on their evening’s program. Then we wake up early, and get the day’s work started before the young generation begins to get in their forty winks.
These chilly mornings are fine for getting out early. I like to read the morning paper on our front porch before the rest of the family are up. I am always assured of at least a half hour’s undisturbed reading if no one else is waiting to get the section that I am especially interested in at the moment. Aside from the paper, there are always other things that make early rising interesting. Take the birds for instance. Now, I am no authority on birds. I know a bluebird and I know a redbird, (by the color of course), but by, names, I do not know a sparrow from any other kind. But there are some delightful singers in the hedge row near our house. They chatter early in the morning like the proverbial magpie; and they may be magpies for all I know. Then there is a big black cat that comes walking very sedately down the road every morning at almost exactly the same time, six-thirty o’clock. Sometimes it looks up at me on the porch with my newspaper and mews a greeting. Newsboys on bicycles are on their way back home after their morning delivery. Cars speed by with people on their way to work.
At seven o’clock I have finished with the newspaper, and as I eat breakfast I tune in and listen to the foreign news broadcast. There is certainly nothing conducive to good digestion in the account of the horrible things happening during the air raids, etc. But having a healthy appetite, I go on with my second cup of coffee, as I make mental comparisons between the inexpressibly miserable conditions that hang like a dark pall over warring Europe, and our own peaceful America, where we have enough to eat, comfortable beds to sleep on, and fuel to keep us warm. But we must be optimistic to find anything hopeful in the present outlook, so I am glad when 7:15 brings in the “Happy Dan” program. By that time the rest of the family is up and getting ready for breakfast. By much rushing and hurrying I get our young son off to school and the day’s work has begun.
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The newspaper’s circulation is wider than we think. Anyway, our county newspapers must have gone traveling to New York, because I was notified by a publishing company in that metropolis that one of my “Unimportant Scribblings” of a few months ago had been chosen by the editorial staff of “We, the People: the Yearbook of Public Opinion,” to appear in the 1940 edition which will be ready for delivery in December. Now, there are some people who generally take things with equanimity, but I am afraid I am not one of them, so it is rather hard to keep an air of quiet unaffected assurance while I am waiting to see my contribution in this publication. I fully realize that my efforts at writing are decidedly amateurish, but sometimes I flatter myself by believing that people actually read it. Anyway, I hope I won’t wake up and find this is all a dream!
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.
