The Mornin' Mail is published every weekday except major holidays
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 Volume XVI, Number 21

did ya know?

Did Ya Know?... The Crossroads Chapter #41 and the Auxiliary Unit #41 of the Disabled American Veterans will meet Tuesday, July 19th at 7:00 p.m. in the Legion Rooms of the Memorial Hall. All members are invited to attend the meeting.

Did Ya Know?... Storyteller Sue Godsey will be in the storytime area downstairs in the new addition of the Carthage Public Library on Thursday, July 19 at 10:00 a.m. Call 237-7040 for more information.

Did Ya Know?... Spare Cat Rescue will help pay for the spay or neuter of your cat. Call for details. 417-358-6808.

Did Ya Know?... A Sunday Open House will be held at Powers Museum on July 22 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. A special program will be held at 2:00 with information about the museum’s quilts and quilt reference resources in the reference library.

today's laugh

It is the duty of every one to make at least one person happy during the week. Have you done so, Freddy?

Yes.

That’s right. What did you do?

I went to see my aunt, and she was happy when I went home.

How old are you?

Thirty-seven.

Well, what do you expect to be in three years?

Thirty.

1907
INTERESTING MELANGE.
A Chronological Record of Events as they have Transpired in the City and County since our last Issue.

Only The Cribbing Broke.

Vague rumors of a fearful mine catastrophe reached Carthage last night and were current on the streets. The report was that one of the big Prosperity plants had been swallowed in a cave-in and several men lost. A telephone investigation however, revealed the truth of the matter, which is that only some cribbing in a prospector’s shaft near the reported cave-in had fallen in and the miners were afraid they would lose their whole shaft. The rumor apparently grew out of the haste with which the owners of the mine procured new timbers.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Garner arrived yesterday to spend a week with the former’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. I.F. Garner, on South Garrison.

The little daughter of Mrs. Carrie Davis on McGregor street is ill with measles.

 

Today's Feature

News Release from Jasper County Sheriff.

On the evening of July 12, 2007, Matthew W. Sisco was visiting with Melvin Rodney Long and his Wife Vicki Lynn Long at the Long residence located at 20453 Millwood Ln. in Jasper County. They were reportedly drinking heavily during the evening. Melvin Long went to a convenience store to purchase some more liquor. After he returned, Melvin and Matthew began discharging a firearm in the trailer. Melvin became upset at Matthew over something and reportedly fired the weapon at Matthew at least one time resulting in the death of Matthew Sisco.

The initial 911 call reference a shooting was received at 9:14 p.m.

As a result of the ongoing investigation by officers and evidence obtained, the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney has filed two felony charges against Long. Charge 1; First Degree Murder and 2; Armed Criminal Action.

Melvin Long is currently being held in the Jasper County Jail.


Public Works Meeting.

The City Council Public Works Committee will meet this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall.

Just Jake Talkin'
Mornin',

Rolly-polly bugs were also always a fascination for me. Harmless little critters that’d turn into a ball if they felt threatened. I’ve seen kids try to get ‘em to unroll by tappin’ ‘em with their finger, but ya just gotta wait on a rolly-polly to unwind.

Durin’ early summer, we’d sometimes catch June bugs and tie a thread to their leg and let ‘em go. They’d hover there at the end of the thread like a tiny helicopter. I’ve heard they call ‘em June bugs ‘cause they only live ‘bout a month. I don’t recall seein’ any June bugs in August.

Course, I’ve spent more time than I’d prob’ly care to admit watchin’ ants. I used to go cross the street from where I grew up to the ball diamond and watch the ants workin’ away. I never did figure out where they were goin’ in such a hurry.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Sponsored
by:
Mornin' Mail

To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.

Identifying Alzheimer’s Disease

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: On TV, a commentator said Alzheimer’s disease is known as the disease of the four A’s. What are those four A’s? -- M.C.

ANSWER: I don’t know. I’m pretty sure they were devised either by that commentator or by someone whom he heard speak. I can list the more common Alzheimer’s symptoms, and, by stretching things, I can come up with three A’s.

Loss of memory is a prominent symptom, and most Alzheimer’s patients don’t realize how bad their memory is. The "A" word here would be "amnesia." In addition, people with this condition have trouble with abstract thinking -- a second "A" word. An example of abstract thinking is maneuvering numbers, as you’d do in balancing your checkbook.

Difficulty with language is another sign. Such difficulties include constantly using the wrong words or forgetting the meaning of simple words. By really stretching things, this could be called "aphasia," a third "A."

Another sign of Alzheimer’s is the inability to do routine tasks, things that people do without giving them a second thought. Poor judgment is yet another sign. On a cold day, an Alzheimer’s patient might go out with only a T-shirt. Alzheimer’s makes it hard for people to get their bearings; they become lost even in surroundings that should be familiar.

On misplacing something like their keys, Alzheimer’s patients often look for them in outlandish places, like the refrigerator. They have rapid swings in their mood. Frequently, they suffer an about-face in their personality. A pleasant, friendly person becomes suspicious of everyone and acts in a gruff, abrasive manner. If any reader knows M.C.’s four A’s, please write.


LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.

by George Horace Lorimer
First published October, 1902

Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on ‘Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."

No.10
FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Commercial House, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted to the position of traveling salesman for the house, and has started out on the road.

X
CHICAGO, March 1, 189-

Dear Pierrepont: When I saw you start off yesterday I was just a little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn’t like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more orders.

Sausage is the one subject of all others that a fellow in the packing business ought to treat solemnly. Half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough. Only last week the head of our sausage department started to put out a tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but I made him take it off the market quicker than lightning, because I knew that the first fool who saw the tin-tag would ask if that was the license. And, though people would grin a little at first, they’d begin to look serious after a while; and whenever the butcher tried to sell them our brand they’d imagine they heard the bark, and ask for "that real country sausage" at twice as much a pound.

He laughs best who doesn’t laugh at all when he’s dealing with the public. It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There’s nothing in the world sicker-looking than the grin of the man who’s trying to join in heartily when the laugh’s on him, and to pretend that he likes it.

Speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow’s mustache tickles. Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn’t really disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him what he wanted for the little cuss.

The fellow hawed and choked and wiped away a tear. Finally, he fetched out that he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke his heart to think of parting with him; that he wouldn’t dare look Dandy in the face after he had named the price he was asking for him, and that it was the record-breaking, marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on dogs; that it wasn’t really money he was after, but a good home for the little chap. Said that I had a rather pleasant face and he knew that he could trust me to treat Dandy kindly; so--as a gift--he would let me have him for five hundred.

"Cents?" says I.

"Dollars," says he, without blinking.

"It ought to be a mastiff at that price," says I.

"If you thought more of quality," says he, in a tone of sort of dignified reproof, "and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a better reputation."

I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open, so I just said: "The sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such price for light-weights. Bring around a bigger dog and then we’ll talk;" but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked off.

I simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he’s apt to affect the sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There’s such a thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending to believe that he’s paying for pork and getting dog is pretty apt to get dog in the end.

But all that aside, I want you to get it firmly fixed in your mind right at the start that this trip is only an experiment, and that I am not at all sure you were cut out by the Lord to be a drummer. But you can figure on one thing--that you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates.

A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk. Goods ain’t sold under Marquess of Queensberry rules any more, and you’ll find that knowing how many rounds the Old ‘Un can last against the Boiler-Maker won’t really help you to load up the junior partner with our Corn-fed brand hams.

A good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in baseball, and funny stories, and Tom Lipton, and that business is a side line with them; but as a matter of fact mighty few men work up to the position of buyer through giving up their office hours to listening to anecdotes. I never saw one that liked a drummer’s jokes more than an eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard. What the house really sends you out for is orders.

Of course, you want to be nice and mellow with the trade, but always remember that mellowness carried too far becomes rottenness. You can buy some fellows with a cheap cigar and some with a cheap compliment, and there’s no objection to giving a man what he likes, though I never knew smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one except to make a fool of himself.

Real buyers ain’t interested in much besides your goods and your prices. Never run down your competitor’s brand to them, and never let them run down yours. Don’t get on your knees for business, but don’t hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it. You’ll meet a good many people on the road that you won’t like, but the house needs their business.

Some fellows will tell you that we play the hose on our dry salt meat before we ship it, and that it shrinks in transit like an all-wool suit in a rainstorm; that they wonder how we manage to pack solid gristle in two-pound cans without leaving a little meat hanging to it; and that the last car of lard was so strong that it came back of its own accord from every retailer they shipped it to. The first fellow will be lying, and the second will be exaggerating, and the third may be telling the truth. With him you must settle on the spot; but always remember that a man who’s making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure. With the second you must sympathize, and say that the matter will be reported to headquarters and the boss of the canning-room called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen again. With the first you needn’t bother. There’s no use feeding expensive "hen food" to an old Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are that the car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his trade.

Where you’re going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but if you don’t learn pretty quick you’ll not travel very far for the house. For your own satisfaction I will say right here that you may know you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things:

First--When you send us Orders.

Second--More Orders.

Third--Big Orders.

If you do this you won’t have a great deal of time to write long letters, and we won’t have a great deal of time to read them, for we will be very, very busy here making and shipping the goods. We aren’t specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened. If you like life on the road you simply won’t let it happen. So just send us your address every day and your orders. They will tell us all that we want to know about "the situation."

I was cured of sending information to the house when I was very, very young--in fact, on the first trip which I made on the road. I was traveling out of Chicago for Hammer & Hawkins, wholesale dry-goods, gents’ furnishings and notions. They started me out to round up trade in the river towns down Egypt ways, near Cairo.

I hadn’t more than made my first town and sized up the population before I began to feel happy, because I saw that business ought to be very good there. It appeared as if everybody in that town needed something in my line. The clerk of the hotel where I registered wore a dicky and his cuffs were tied to his neck by pieces of string run up his sleeves, and most of the merchants on Main Street were in their shirt-sleeves--at least those that had shirts were--and so far as I could judge there wasn’t a whole pair of galluses among them. Some were using wire, some a little rope, and others just faith--buckled extra tight. Pride of the Prairie XXX flour sacks seemed to be the nobby thing in boys’ suitings there. Take it by and large, if ever there was a town which looked as if it had a big, short line of dry-goods, gents’ furnishings and notions to cover, it was that one.

But when I caught the proprietor of the general store during a lull in the demand for navy plug, he wouldn’t even look at my samples, and when I began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers he reckoned that he "would paste me one if I warn’t so young." Wanted to know what I meant by coming swelling around in song-and-dance clothes and getting funny at the expense of people who made their living honestly. Allowed that when it came to a humorous get-up my clothes were the original end-man’s gag.

I noticed on the way back to the hotel that every fellow holding up a hitching-post was laughing, and I began to look up and down the street for the joke, not understanding at first that the reason why I couldn’t see it was because I was it. Right there I began to learn that, while the Prince of Wales may wear the correct thing in hats, it’s safer when you’re out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the hotel clerk sets; that the place to sell clothes is in the city, where every one seems to have plenty of them; and that the place to sell mess pork is in the country, where every one keeps hogs. That is why when a fellow comes to me for advice about moving to a new country, where there are more opportunities, I advise him--if he is built right--to go to an old city where there is more money.

I wrote in to the house pretty often on that trip, explaining how it was, going over the whole situation very carefully, and telling what our competitors were doing, wherever I could find that they were doing anything.

I gave old Hammer credit for more curiosity than he possessed, because when I reached Cairo I found a telegram from him reading: "Know what our competitors are doing: they are getting all the trade. But what are you doing?" I saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that the moment for resigning had arrived; so I just naturally sent in my resignation. That is what we will expect from you--or orders.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

Copyright 1997-2007 by Heritage Publishing. All rights reserved.