V
7"
Boomer, North Carolina, September, 1928.
Vol. XIV.
No. 7.
LOT'S WIFE
The Old Man Lot had a house and lot
On Sodom's Great White Way;
He paid no rent; he was content;
But he wasn't allowed to stay.
Old Sodom Town must btJ burned
down,
For that was God's decree;
And God told Lot that he must trot,
And he mustn't look back to see. .
"Take child and wife and run for life
To save your family's blood;
For I'll rain down upon that town
A fire-and-brimstone flood."
Then Old Man Lot, he tarried not,
But made great haste to flee;
And as h2 fled, looked straight ahead,
And he didn't look back to see.
"And The Cat Came Back"
ess Lot, it seems,
As good as her old man;
So as she fled she turned her head,
And looked back as she ran.
Her lface was o'er she moved no
more;
She was no longer free;
With sudden halt she turned to salt
When she looked back to see.
But all the rest right onward pressed,
Obeying God's command;
With firm intent their thoughts were
bent
On reaching a safer land.
No backward glance, by any chance,
To tell them what might be;
'Twas all her fault she turned to salt,
And they didn't look back to see.
The Old Man Lot and his daughters
got
To a cave in the mountain wall;
But the lady fair, she was not there,
And she never did come at all.
It was her fault she turned to salt,
But here's what puzzles me:
How did they know that it was so
If they didn't look back to see ?
James Larkin Pearson.
Making a ticket out of a
Northern Catholic wet and a
Southern Protestant dry, is sor
ter like hitching up an angel and
a devil to a fiery chariot to haul
water to put out hell.
The few die-hard Democrats
i who are supporting Alcohol
. Smith are doing it in a sort of
shame-faced, apologetic manner,
sorter like the feller who has a
mess of crow to eat and must
eat it, but who wishes the whole
thing was at the devil.
Dear Subscribers and Club
Raisers: I know you have been wonder
ing what has become of The
Fool-Killer. I have been want
ing to let you know, but couldn't
until now. Many of you have
written letters of inquiry. Some
of these were answered, and
some, I fear, were not.
Well, anyhow, here's the an
swer to all your questions. The
Fool-Killer has just been "out of
business" for the past two years.
It became necessary for it to
take a vacation, and since Au
gust, 1926, no Fool-Killer has
been sent out until now.
For several years prior to Au
gust, 1926, I had been trying
to publish the paper under the
most adverse conditions that
you could imagine. Several times
I gave it up and thought I
couldn't possibly go any further.
Then I would pick up new cour
age and try i$ again.
I hammered along that way
for several years, until finally it
came to the place where I just
had to give it up. Sickness and
other family troubles were
pressing me so hard that I
couldn't give attention to busi
ness, and the paper was forced
to suspend for awhile. That was
in August, 1926. But all the!
while since I have been planning
to start up again soon as pos
sible. Was just waiting to get
in better shape, so that I could
certainly go ahead without any
more interruptions. Well, I feel
pretty sure that time has now
come. I've got everything lind
up pretty well, and in some re
spects am in better shape for
running the paper than ever be
fore.
In the matter of literary con-
IMPROVE YOURSELF,
MISTER MAN
just can't be beat anywhere in
the world.
Many years ago The Fool-
Killer got the reputation of
being a "funny paper," and that
reputation has clung to it ever
since, regardless of all efforts to
be serious. When I started the
fool thing more than 18 years
ago it was not my intention to
stress the funny side of things.
My main purpose in the begin
ning was to hammer the truth
into the wooden-headed natives
with just any sort of a club I
could get hold of. Well, by some
means and it may have been
pure accident I got to using a
sort of droll, , home-made manner
of speech that nobody ever had
seen in prjnt before. It was the
common backwoods vocabulary
of my boyhood days, and it
seemed just as natural to me as
corn bread, and I didn't realize
how funny it would look in print.
I just started using that vocabu
lary because it was lying there
handy and easy to get hold of,
while the big store-bought words
had to be dug out of the dic
tionary and fitted together like
making apple-pie.
Well sam-taked if that fool
backwoodsy talk didn't simply
"fetch the house down," as the
saying is, and I soon found out
that I had tapped a gold mine.
I had hit upon something that
tickled the folks and they wanted
more of it. And so I kept on
feeding it to them in monthly
doses for 16 years, while they
flocked around me like a million
young chickens around a pile of
cracked wheat.
And now here I am again, with
a brand-new supply of the same
old reliable chin-music, and I
want everybody who ever did
tents I shall try to make The j read The Fool-Killer to come
Fool-Killer pretty much like it ' back and bring all their neigh-
used to be at its best only bet-
j ter. My same old gab-trap is in
pretty good working order most
of the time, and I can promise
you a line of "chin-music" that
bors and friends with them.
Whoop! Here we go!
How many politics does it take
to make a dozen ?
In Southern California they
are growing strawberries two
inches long and about the same
distance through. As big as
apples, if you please. And these
berries have been bred up from
the little old wild strawberries
about the size of a shoe-button. If
they can be improved that much
they can be improved still more
Some of these days we will have
strawberries as big as pumpkins,
and pumpkins as big as a hay
stack. Same way with peaches.
We now have big juicy peaches
that will hardly go in a quart
cup, and the daddy of these
peaches was the little old scrub
,peach of fifty years ago. It
never got much bigger than
your thumb. If the peach can
improve that much it can keep
right on improving, and there is
no earthly reason why we can't
hope to have, in the near future,
peaches as big as a man's head.
In many other lines it is the
same. Wise and careful breed
ing has opened up a new world
of possibilities in the productioA
of fruits, vegetables, grains and
live stock. Another fifty years
will make possible such an abun
dance of food products as Egypt
never dreamed of. And all
; this has been accomplished by
evolution, if you Want to call it
that, governed by man's direct
ing brain.
The only ugly fly in the oint
ment is this: man seems able to
improve everything but himself.
! He allows his own race to drag
on in the old rut, producing pin
headed scrubs by the million,
and if an improved and civilized
specimen does now and then ap
pear, he puts it in jail, starves it
to death, or otherwise gets rid
of it. The few examples of real
men .and women who do survive
must do it in the face of con
stant persecution. Not until
man learns how to improve him
self will he be able to really bene-
j fit by the other improved things.