Radio Script #24
Little Talks On Common Things
April 24, 1949
Perhaps none of our bits of nostalgia has brought more pleasing response than mention we made a few weeks ago of the common crackers. Mrs. Gertrude Taylor of North Vassalboro wants to know if I remember the broken crackers, which could be bought at a reduced price. Indeed I do. They used to be in great demand at Thanksgiving time when housewives were all making stuffing for chickens. I say chickens, not turkeys, for almost no one had turkey for Thanksgiving in our part of Maine.
Henry Bonsall was for many years a Waterville grocer, into whose store in the block where the post office now stands I used to rush madly on emergency errands for Ma Jones’s Hanford House, where I waited on table in my student days. Mr. Bonsall insists that the usual name for the old common crackers was chowder crackers. But Mr. Bonsall misses my point about the two kinds. He says the second kind was of smaller size and called butter crackers. I remember those’ also, but into my experience the butter cracker came much later than the two kinds to which I referred. My two kinds were the hard baked and the soft baked — both the same size, but of very different consistency.
Mr. Bonsall used to buy crackers in 25 barrel lots, assorted. The kinds were common, butter, square oyster, round oyster, and the big square soda crackers. He reminds me of something that I do well remember and ought to have mentioned before — namely, that the barrels in which the crackers came packed were used flour barrels. There were always vestiges of flour sticking to the sides.
When Mr. Bonsall says the old price was three pounds for a quarter, he must be admitting that the cost of living was higher in Waterville than it was in Bridgton. Our standard price, year in and year out, was eight cents a pound. Mr. Bonsall gives us a clue to the time when flour in barrels began to pass out. For many years he bought flour by the car load and sold it right out of the car in three days time. The farmers would come in, and each buy two or three barrels, paying largely in farm produce. Let’s have the finish in Mr. Bonsall’s own words. He writes: “The last carload I sold was at the beginning of the First World War”. That just about makes flour in barrels one of the lesser war casualties.
In many columns that have been written about Mr. Churchill’s recent address in the Boston Garden, it seems to me that one passage has not been given deserved attention. He said so much about the Communist menace, about the thirteen scheming men in the Kremlin, that a much more important statement has been overlooked. Mr. Churchill is one of those men who believes that man’s basic problems are not solved by arms and war. To fight against aggression may be a necessary duty, but the outcome never solves humanity’s problems. Those of us who sincerely believe and constantly proclaim that the real problems of individual or nation are not economic, but spiritual, are heartened by Mr. Churchill’s words. This is what he said:
“Human beings and human societies are not structures that are built, or machines that are forged. However much the conditions change, the supreme question is how we live and grow and bloom and die, and how far each life conforms to standards which are not wholly related to space or time. The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide. The fulfillment of spiritual duty in our daily life is vital to our survival. Only by bringing it into perfect application can we hope to solve for ourselves the problems of this world, and not of this world alone.”
Mr. Churchill is profoundly right. Let us never forget that the ultimate basis of life is not material, but spiritual.
Most of us manage to keep out of court, yet trials are common things. Some kind of court, in this land of ours, is in session all the time. Foreigners are critical of what they call the slowness and technicalities of American justice. They tell us that justice is swifter and surer across the seas.
It is with interest, therefore, that we heard last week about the longest case in the history of the courts of Ireland. It required 48 days of .continuous court sessions, filled a book of 300 pages with the pleadings alone, and saw the President of the High Court take four hours to read a 35,000 word decision dismissing the action. In other words, when it was allover, matters stood just where they were before the case began. To get nowhere by that method the contestants had spent 100,000 pounds, the equivalent of nearly half a million dollars.
Cases in the English, Scottish and Irish courts are based largely on the British Common Law; that is, the accumulated precedents on similar cases since the time of the Norman Conquest. This particular case was a suit brought by Foyle and Bann Fisheries against more than eighty fishermen of County Donegal, who claimed a right to fish in the River Foyle. The company claimed the sole right to fish in the river through letters patent granted before the year 1189. The Attorney General, on behalf of the eighty fishermen, argued that the company’s claim was contrary to Magna Carta. Before the case reached court at all, the lawyers on both sides spent two years of research into hundreds of documents from Magna Carta to modern times. More than 300 documents were actually put into evidence, among them the original texts of rare and priceless documents in Latin, German, French, English and Irish.
Such is one example of so-called sure and speedy justice across the seas. We suspect there are others. American courts may not be so bad, after all.
What a common thing is time, so common indeed that we take it for granted.
This is not the occasion to go into a discussion of the difficult but fascinating theory of the relativity of time — the Einstein view that time is not fixed and absolute, but depends on relative degrees of stability and motion. Suffice it to say that we have plenty of practical evidence that time means nothing to any of us unless we can relate it to some fixed point. Everyone has had the experience of waking up from sleep and wondering what time it is. Often, when we check by watch or clock, we find our guess has been wrong by several hours. In sleep, therefore, we have no recognition of the passage of time.
How much faster time flies as we get older! How time drags for a little child! How aged and infirm seemed our parents when we were eight or nine years old! How fast go the hours of a short vacation! How time drags when one sits on a jury in a tedious case! Yes, time is a relative thing.
There are some curious facts about round-the-world time. One of these was brought home to me in striking manner in 1941. Just eight days before Pearl Harbor I was called to the telephone at eight o’clock in the morning. The operator said, “Manila is calling. Please hold the line.” In a few seconds the San Francisco operator was instructing me to stand by, then the operator at Honolulu, and finally the operator at Manila, saying, “Your party is ready”. With complete distinctness I then carried on a brief business conversation with my Manila caller.
When it was allover I asked myself the simple question, what time is it in Manila? As a matter of fact, I hadn’t the slightest idea. When I worked it out on an international time chart, what do you suppose I learned? Well, I learned this startling fact: at eight o’clock on Saturday morning, November 30, 1941 I heard what my Manila caller said to me at nine o’clock the same Saturday night.
I heard what he said thirteen hours before he said it. Or didn’t I?
The time difference from Waterville to Manila is eleven hours. Most of us are aware of the time zones as we cross the United States. When it is noon in New York, it is one hour earlier — eleven o’clock — in Chicago; ten o’clock in Denveri nine o’clock in San Francisco. Thus, as one continues west across the Pacific the time changes, so that noon in New York is 6: 30 AM in Honolulu and one A. M. in Manila. So 8 A.M. in New York or Waterville is 9 P.M. in Manila. But if each time zone west of New York is one hour earlier than the zone east of it, why isn’t the Manila time 9 P.M. the previous evening, and why didn’t I hear what my caller said eleven hours after he said it, instead of thirteen hours before he said it?
The answer is that between Honolulu and Manila the traveler journeying westward crosses the International Date Line, and loses one day. If it is November 30 when he crosses the line, his next day is December 2. Journeying eastward he adds a day. If it is November 30 when he crosses the line eastward, the next day is November 30 over again. Therefore, eleven time zones west of Waterville makes our 8 A.M. their 9 P.M., but it is 9 P.M. not of the evening before, but of our same day.
So, as absurd and impossible as it sounds, I like to speak of that telephone experience of mine in terms of paradox, and I repeat: I heard what my Manila caller said thirteen hours before he said it.
One of life’ s common .things is the strange way far-off events and distant places are linked together. So it is with the revolt of the Karens in far-away Burma and the little city of Waterville, Maine.
Against the despotically inclined government of Burma, the government that came into power after expulsion of the Japanese conquerors, the Karens of the northern Burmese hills have risen in revolt. The existing Burmese government got its power by assassination and force, and both its leaders and its methods are abhorrent to the democratic, Christian Karens.
How do the Karens happen to be democratic and Christian? Because a hundred and twenty-five years ago a young man named George Dana Boardman, the .first graduate of what is now Colby College, left Waterville to join Adoniram·Judson in the wilds of Burma. With Judson he carried Christianity to those wildest of wild Burmese natives, the Karens of the hill country. There in the jungle Boardman met his death. Later his young widow married Judson and led the work that eventually made a whole people Christian. And Ann Boardman Judson was as democratic as she was Christian. Democratic ways went together with Christian ways in all her teaching.
Today, a century afterwards, the Christian Karens fight the cause of democracy in Burma.
Examples of the old-time experiences keep coming in. Two new ones of the past week are the word “gunk” and the proverbial saying, “Far off cows have long horns.” Grover Weymouth of East Vassalboro, to whom I referred a few weeks ago in connection with the narrow gauge railroads, tells me that he has used the word gunk as long as he can remember. It means something unpleasant or messy, or perhaps simply worthless. Mr. Weymouth says that a few years ago he was fishing in China Lake, when his hook got tangled up in marsh grass. Hauling in his line, he let loose with a verbal explosion about the gunk on his hook. A lady in the fishing party had never heard the word used before. She tried to find it in the dictionaries, but of course without success. Such words defy the makers of dictionaries. At any rate, I agree with Mr. Weymouth that it is a useful, expressive word.
The new proverb of the week is contributed by Miss Frances Moore of Waterville. It is “Far-off cows have long horns”. Miss Moore knew several elderly people who made common use of this proverb. When someone would tell a tall story, a Paul Bunyan yarn about distant parts, or sometimes when one would tell just a naturally unbelievable tale, one of these old people would show his skepticism by saying, “Far-off cows have long horns.”
Here is a question for men of the radio audience. Each time a man shaves, how many strokes does he take with the razor? Now of course the exact number differs among individual men, but what is it approximately? As a matter of fact, I am assured the range between smallest and largest number of razor strokes among individuals isn’t very great, and it makes no difference what kind of a razor one uses.
Year: 1949