Pearl Harbor got Horsesense Hank mad.
Something ought to be done about it--and
he was the man who was going to do it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories May 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Like the rain-drenched angler said as he reeled in a fish, "Life is
just one damp thing after another!" I thought I'd fixed everything all
hunky-dory around the campus of dear old Midland U. when I finally got
my friend "Horsesense Hank" Cleaver engaged to Helen MacDowell. Which
just goes to prove that you shouldn't count your chickens until they're
hitched. Because That Man stepped in and messed up everything.
You know the guy I mean. The chief germ in Germany. The little
ex-housepainter with a scrap of old paintbrush on his upper lip. First
he "protected" himself against the poor Austrians. Then the Czechs and
the Poles. Then came Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg--it
sounds like a geography lesson, doesn't it?--then France, the Balkans,
Greece and Crete. And finally, as his armies, having come a cropper
against the outraged Russian bear, stalled on the icy steppes of
Moscow's doorway, he invoked the aid of his yellow-skinned and -spined
allies, the Japs.
While their envoys calmed Washington with soft words of peace, their
air-arm bombed Pearl Harbor with grim weapons of war. It was then that
Horsesense Hank came to me and said soberly, "Well, so long, Jim. I'll
see you later."
I asked, "Where are you going? Down to Mike's for a hamburger? Wait a
minute; I'll go with."
"I'm goin' further'n that, Jim," said Hank, "an' the chances are I'll
be gone a mite longer. I--" He wriggled a bulldog-tipped shoe into the
carpet embarrassedly--"I reckon I'm agonna sign up for the duration."