Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
California’s coast is a big bathing beach. The state is not only famous
for its walnuts, but for its beach nuts one sees every day, especially
Sunday.
The ocean strand is covered with half-dressed women, boys and girls
sprawled out like goats and satyrs hugging the shore and each other. It
is the playground of the sexes.
At many bathing resorts Sunday is anything but religious. The cross
gives way to Cupid’s bow and arrow. The Bible is the book of nature
done in calf. Brown lads lie with their heads in the laps of half-naked
brunettes, forgetting that to do so and not mean harm is “hypocrisy to
the devil” who tempts their virtue. They make no attempt to hide under
beach umbrellas. One may question their propriety, but neither their
nerve nor shape. Their speech is low, but if actions speak louder than
words, their conduct is often vulgar if not vicious. We saw a place
advertised as the “safest beach,” but without falling into the deep
water we fear the devil’s undertow is carrying many out beyond their
moral depth. “Love one another” is the favorite text, and the “laying
on of hands” is not omitted. All the flesh-pots were not in Egypt.
Cleopatra had a good time on the Nile and “Clara” has the same time here.
We saw many couples and decided that more marriages were made on the
beach than in heaven. Position in society is everything. Here there was
everything in position. Heads in laps, arms around waists, boys in girls’
laps, girls in boys’, legs linked, or arms and legs tied up in lover’s
bow-knots. All were taking “Sea”estas in their “surge” suits. The sight
was very “surf”eiting. In this Cupid school we saw girls with pearly
teeth, but with no pearls of wisdom; many who could paint their face,
but not paint a Madonna; girls who could play with the boys, but not the
piano; the only apparent study was that of anatomy.
Breakers on the beaches are divided into three classes: ocean-breakers,
law-breakers and heart-breakers. California is a fruit state and we
looked everywhere to see the “peaches” on the beaches—but most of them
were dried, and there were more old Iowa valetudinarians and bearded
bipeds than anyone else. Timon of Athens was a misanthrope who went to
the seashore to get away from mankind. Had he come to this beach, the day
we were there, he would have prayed for a tidal wave to wipe it off the
map.
Scripture says of the beautiful lilies, “they toil not, neither do they
spin.” Of these painted, half-dressed, lounging, walking, posturing
beach-combers with their dry feet, we say, “They toil not, neither do
they swim.” We came away from the beach that Sunday with a composite
picture of pop-eyed, pot-bellied promenaders in the sand, vulgar Venuses,
wobbly wenches, living links, heavy-hipped hags, sinuous, shrunken men,
tattered tights, tousled head nymphs, and vain cock of the walks admiring
their own shape and gazing on their feet and fingernails.
We wish we could forget the bather’s singularity and angularity, the
plethoric paunch, the blinking, bawling, calling, sprawling, mawling,
drawling, squalling figures that defaced the beauty of the sky, the sea
and the sand. Oh, the water cataracts running and dripping from shaking
sides, heavy hips and swinging busts! If Ulysses and his crew sailed by
this shore with its sweating sirens and howling hurdy-gurdies, they would
stop their ears—but not for fear of being enticed ashore.
The poet sings of the “smile” of the sea—we do not wonder at laughing
waves when they see some of the freak styles. What are the wild waves
saying? Some things we think we better omit. To watch this beach of
bathers is like having a front seat at the Winter Garden Follies. The
visitor may study the contour of beach and bathers. Here he meets
the living skeleton of angles and the bag of bones, as well as her
heavy-set sister with all her capricious curves, crests, elevations and
depressions. How unlike the pictures in the Sunday supplements, and how
like the caricatures in the comic supplement. When first they appear all
nice and dry they are passable, but look at them if you dare and can,
when they take a dip or flop and come out with their homely lines all
emphasized. No Greek statues, no things of beauty and joy forever, but
shattered, disenchanting dreams, or nightmares rather.
Farewell to this flotsam and jetsam, foam and scum, these sand-flies.
If you want to have a “good time,” go to the beach where the volume of
nature and human nature is “wide open.” The text books you should bring
and study on the seashore are Shelley, Burns, Sand, Crabbe and Bacon.
* * * * *
Dickory, dickory, docking,
The mouse ran up her stocking,
But I’m afraid
Up there it stayed
Which makes it twice as shocking!
* * * * *
A marriage certificate is a mere scrappy paper. One divorce leads to
another, but the marriage vow will always be taken ad-in-fun-item.
* * * * *
Nice day for swimmin’!
What swimmin’?
Loo swimmin’.
* * * * *
“Your new stenog, I hear, is a beauty. Can she spell?”
“What does that matter?”
_Questions and Answers_
=Dear Captain Billy=—What is meant by “A third rail girl?”—=Inoa Recipe.=
It probably means one dangerous to touch.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—What is your idea of the height of
indifference?—=Goofey Gander.=
Spilling coffee in your lap and not caring which leg it runs down.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—What is the difference between kissing a horse and
an ugly girl?—=Paul Bearer.=
No difference whatever. In either case it’s a horse on you.
* * * * *
=Dear Whiz Bang Bill=—I am a great lover of literature, but find that
friends borrow my books to read. Did you ever hear of anything like
it?—=Oliver Mudd.=
We know an old fogy who married a flapper.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—My sweetheart got angry at me last night and said I
had feet like a camel. What did he mean?—=Rebeccah.=
He probably inferred that your feet had gone too long without water.
* * * * *
=Dear Capt. Whiz Bang=—A friend informs me his wife ran away with a “bank
walker.” I have heard of bank tellers and bank cashiers, but never heard
of a “bank walker.” Please tell me what he meant?—=Bob Sledd.=
Your query has been referred to the swimming editor.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—Will you please tell me the origin of the
expression: “Mother, who is this silly ass?”—=S. O. Elly.=
It originated in France after the close of the war when a poilu returned
and, finding his home disrupted, left again to vow further vengeance on
the German.
* * * * *
=Dear Cap=—Please tell me how to grow fat.—=Slim Jim.=
Breed hogs.
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper Bill=—What is a cure for a horse that slobbers?—=Artie
Fishel.=
Teach him to spit.
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper=—What is the difference between a sewing machine and a
kiss?—=B. Qrious.=
One sews seams nice and the other seams sew nice.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Whiskers=—What is a crazy bone?—=Howe D. Dew.=
A dollar spent on a girl.
* * * * *
=Dear Kapten Billy=—An electriek trolly goes through my corn feild. Would
it be against the law to uze it to shock my corn with?—=O. G. Kroakim.=
No, but be careful and not let the juice wet the kernels.
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper=—What is meant by “self respect”?—=Dottie Dimple.=
Self respect, Dottie, is a comfortable feeling one has in having escaped
detection.
* * * * *
=Dear “Skipper”=—Who was the Duke of Peruna?—=C. C. Pill.=
Lydia Pinkham’s husband.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Bill=—Please give me a definition of a cannibal.—=Student.=
Sure. One who loves his fellow man.
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper=—Kindly furnish me with an illustration of “Poetry of
Motion.”—=Awsthetic Awlice.=
How would this be: A picnic girl with a bug down her back?
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper=—Do leaves of trees turn red in the fall from blushing
because they are showing naked limbs?—=Bon Jurrows.=
No, it’s because they realize how green they were all summer.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—I had a tussle with my beau last night. How may I
recover myself?—=Petite Fifi.=
Go to a tailor.
* * * * *
=Dear Capt. Billy=—I am ambitious for a career on the stage. Can you
suggest an act that will be entirely new and up-to-date?—=Art Gumm.=
Why not try kicking a giraffe in the mouth?
* * * * *
=Dear Cap=—I am a member of a newly formed organization known
as the “Woman Hater’s Union.” Could you suggest a motto for our
association?—=Fat Chance.=
“Oh, kill me now and call it the end of a perfect day.”
* * * * *
=Dear Skipper=—When is a good girl not a good girl?—=McNotty.=
About half the time, we’d say.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Billy=—What is the difference between a rehearsal and a
show?—=Plain Jane.=
A rehearsal is the same as a show, only nobody comes around to see it.
* * * * *
=Dear Captain Bullybeef=—My fiance says I have a peachy complexion. What
does he mean?—=Kitty Furr.=
He probably infers, Kitty, that you have a yellow and orange shade with
fuzz on your face.
* * * * *
=Dear Doctor Bill=—Why, oh why, did the police inspect her?—=The Duke o’
Dubuque.=
Possibly to help the “deek” detect her.
* * * * *
A convalescent requiring whisky and beer for rapid recovery is
convalescent all over except his thirst, and that’s in the acute stages.
* * * * *