The Boston Red Sox won the World Series. The victory came the night before Halloween. Several players reportedly disguised themselves for Trick or Treat by shaving off their beards. Nobody recognized them. The players who kept their beards got up before daylight and went duck hunting.

I read that some schools in New York had closed their playgrounds to baseball, dodgeball, and tag. I guess because somebody might fall or get hit by a ball. Then the Post Office was forced to throw out millions of new stamps showing children having fun playing different sports. Someone noticed that one stamp shows a kid standing on his head, without a helmet. And another jumping into a pool. He didn’t have a helmet either. I knew helmets were recommended for football and bike riding, but swimming and gymnastics?

I guess “my” old habit of lassoing girls’ feet from behind as they walked to school would be frowned on today. It was frowned on back then too, but nobody passed a law agin’ it. Those girls always got even though, made me wish I had a helmet.

Congress is still working on the Farm Bill. Both the Senate and the House voted to cut a little from food stamps, they just can’t agree on how much to cut. The problem is they want to cut everyone the same amount. Maybe a better idea would be to line up all recipients from the poorest, neediest, hungriest ones on up to folks that barely quality because they are healthy and their income is above the poverty level. Common sense would say you take care of the folks at the bottom, and when you run out, the ones who are not so poor can buy their food the same way they did a few years ago. But in Washington, this is no time for common sense.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers (on farm bills):

“Here is my Farm Relief bill: Every time a Southerner plants nothing on his farm but cotton year after year, and the Northerner nothing but wheat or corn, why, take a hammer and hit him twice right between the eyes. You may dent your hammer, but it will do more real good than all the (farm relief) bills you can pass in a year.” DT #169, Feb. 13, 1927.

“Hoover called on Congress to aid farm relief. Up to now there has been one thousand and twenty-seven bills introduced; one was for farm relief and one thousand and twenty-six to aid the members that introduced ‘em. It was supposed to be just for Farm Relief, but they got ‘em in there for everything from Birth Control to Mass Production.” DT#850, Apr. 17, 1929

“(The farm bill) gives relief to the farmer in so many complicated ways that even if he received no relief at all, why, just trying to study it out will keep him so busy that he will forget he ever wanted relief. Then there is two or three billion appropriations in there to put mortgages on farms at a small rate of interest and long time payments. Well that’s fine but they all already got ‘em on… Then there was gold and silver. All in the farmers’ bill mind you. Now the poor farmer hasn’t even seen a few copper pennies, much less any gold or silver.” WA #542, May 14, 1933