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ANOTHER thing I miss in regard to all them vanished barrooms being
closed up is kind feeling about respect to the old especially to parents
and them that has departed.
Where is the younger generations of posterity going to learn how to be
kind hearted about home and mother now that the barrooms is all closed
up I would like to know?
It used to be that a lot of fellows would get all tanked up of an
afternoon or evening and in the right sort of a place they would get to
singing songs.
All them songs about home and mother and to treat her right now that
her hair had turned gray. I never was much of a one to sing myself
especially unless I had a few drinks into me.
But whether I helped sing them or not all them songs would make a better
man of me. You stand up to a bar or sit down at a table and listen to
them songs for two or three hours and if you are any kind of a man at
all you will wish you had always done the right thing and now that all
them songs about home and mother has been took away from me I ain't the
man I used to be at all.
I feel myself going down hill because my softer emotions and feelings
ain't never stirred up by nothing any more.
Well, this Eighteenth Commandment is going to make a hard-hearted
country out of this here country. Nobody is never going to think as much
of home and mother as they used to. And I guess them prohibitionists
won't feel so smart when they see all them old ladies with gray hair
flung out onto the streets in the rainy weather just because nobody
would pay the mortgage off. Lots of times when I was a young feller
after hearing them songs for awhile I would say to myself I will set
right down and write a letter to my mother, I ain't wrote her for five
or six months. And when I got older after she passed on I used to say
to myself some of these days I will have to make a visit to the old home
place and take a look around there.
But all them softer feelings has been took away from me now and what I
would like to know is how is the younger generation going to grow up.
Hard hearted, that is how.
Some of these here fine days I may be cast out into the street myself
with the rain drops dripping down offen my hat brim into my eyebrows
just because nobody won't pay a mortgage and it has got to be a
hard-hearted country.
I hope none of them there smart alick Prohis will be flung out onto
the street thataway. Because they got no friends would pay off their
mortgages and they would just naturally be destituted to death. I ain't
hard hearted like they be and I hope that don't happen to none of them.
But if it ever did they would find out a few things.
In my next chapter I will get down to brass tacks and give a true
description of them barrooms that has perished off the face of the
earth.