Media discussion of how to cope with the current recession put me in mind of this poem I found amongst my mother's memorabilia:
HELPIN' SAVE WITH HOOVER
by Ruth Collins Dixon
Maw's joined the Conservation league,
She's got the big idear
That she's to wallop Kaiser Bill
By cannin' things this year.
The way she screws the lid down grim,
You know she thinks she's cannin' him,
By helpin' save with Hoover.
Us kids is scared our hair'll curl,
We eaat so blamed much crust,
An' Fred's so fat from cleanin' plate
In two more months he'll bust,
Why, paw has learned to sit and scrape
Till t'other night he dug a grape
Off Maw's hand-painted salad plate,
A-helpin' save with Hoover.
Maw routed out her dahlia bed,
An's got a garden growin',
The hucksters drove on some of it
An' saved me that much hoein'.
Dad says the onions tasted queer,
An' Fred he grinned from ear to ear,
"Creamed dahlia bulbs is swell this year,"
We're helpin' save with Hoover.
But, gosh, I'd eat a pickled toad
To help out Uncle Sam;
Besides, he only wants the bread
An' leaves us kids the jam.
We'll save 'em all the sirloin steaks,
They kin have my pie and choklit cakes.
Maw says it's savin' stomach aches
A-helpin' save with Hoover.
I guess you'll have to rewrite a poem about savin' with Obama or maybe goin' broke with Bush...
ReplyDeleteMy mother used to quote that line about scraping the grapes off of the plate. Maybe it was because she had a set of handpainted pottery in a grape design.
ReplyDeleteI am not a poet, but the idea is intriguing. The thing is -- we don't help by saving. We help by spending. And I've been doing quite a bit of that in recent weeks. No big ticket items, though. KW