You may talk if you like about living fast,
But the prize fast liver I’ve found, at last:
The evaporation of gasoline
Is slow to the life of a… magazine!
The Publisher rushes to beat a date,
Pushing his help at a horrible rate;
Then it’s rushed with all possible dispatch and speed
To the train where hurry is guaranteed;
And the train chugs quickly to local scene
Where the Postoffice takes over our magazine.
“One side, correspondence that we’ve wet-nursed:
The Department wants this should go through first!”
So, the clerks rush it through to the carrier-men,
Who take it out in the air again.
On the mailman’s back, up and down the streets,
Until it up with its owner meets,
Who hurries to read it before his wife
Sells it to the junk-man–such is life!
But here’s the moral we’d like to preach:
That “it” is only a figure of speech.
“It” in the school-house (town or rural)
May have been singular–here it’s plural.
By “it” we mean “Colliers”, “Scouting”, and “Life”,
“Jack & Jill”, and “The Farmer’s Wife”;
“Better Homes & Gardens”, and “American Home”,
(Household helps from here to Nome);
“Ladies’ Home Journal”, and “Comics True”,
“Christian Herald”, and “Column Review”;
“Woman’s Home Companion”, and, oh yes, “Red Book”,
“Readers’ Digest”, and “Elks”, and “Look”;
“Popular Mechanics”, and “Flower Grower”,
“Country Gentleman”, and many, many more.;
The “Poet”, and “Vogue”, and “Harper’s Bazaar”,
And others, if I c’d remember what they are.
“Liberty”, “Eagles”, “Hobbies”, and “Time”–
Still others, but group ’em so they rhyme.
Armfuls and armfuls of magazines–
And the race is on ere the wife house-cleans.
The futility of it’s what I decry:
The August issue the first of July–
This fuss to get ’em to us a month ahead,
When we haven’t got last month’s magazines read!
by Ray Romine Wednesday, July 7, 1943
