And in the old days when there was barrooms you would go into one
still feeling mad and say Ed, mix me one of the old-fashioned whiskey
cocktails and don't put too much orange and that kind of damned garbage
into it, I want the kick.
No sooner said than done.
And after a couple of them you would say, well after all, the Old Woman
means well, I wonder if I didn't treat her a little mean this morning I
orter call her up on the telephone and give her a jolly.
And then you would think of her relations that you hate and get mad at
her again on account of always sticking up for them, and say, Ed, that
don't set so well, let's try a whiskey sour.
And you would meet a friend and have another with him, and pretty soon
eat some breakfast and think how, after all, it was eggs you was eating
for breakfast and they wasn't cooked no ways as good as the old woman
would of poached them for you on toast if you hadn't been so darned mean
to her.
And your friend would say his old woman blowed him up for coming home
pickled.
And you would have another drink and say that was one thing your old
woman never done to you. My old woman has got some sense, you would say
to him, she knows how a man feels about taking a drink, and she never
blows me up.
And you would set and brag about your old woman and you had never had a
cross word between you in thirty years. And then he would begin to brag
about his old woman, too.
And pretty soon you would say to yourself you better go to the phone and
call her up. She has her mean streaks all right, but who knows, she may
have been right this morning after all, and you take another drink and
get her on the telephone, and give her a chance to say how sorry she was
about the way she treated you that morning and maybe you go and pay an
installment on a new carpet sweeper for her.
Well, it was that way in the old days. Liquor kept your Home Life
running along o. k. You would get mad with your wife and then you would
get sorry for her and give her an excuse to make up with you again.
But now, with no chance to get a drink when I am away from home if I
treat the Old Woman mean in the morning I don't give her a chance to get
on my good side again. And I can see sometimes that it is breaking her
heart.
That's what prohibition is doing to this country. It is breaking the
women's hearts and it is breaking up the Home Life on every hand.
What is going to become of a country where all the Home Life is broke
up?
And what is going to become of the children if there ain't any Home Life
running along smooth any more?
These Prohibitionists that is so darned smart never thought of that I
guess when they put that Eighteenth Commandment across onto us.
Whenever I think of all them women's hearts that is breaking and all
that Home Life that is going plumb to the dogs all on account of the
barrooms being closed up it well-nigh makes a free thinker out of me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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