That point has now been reached where for the few things
left for which you pay no tax,
You have to diplomatic wax,
And secure a written permission
From a Board or some Commission.
If you want to tighten the valve on your steam radiator, or hang a picture,
You have to ask Washington through a Congressman, or some other ficture.
A friend of mine, because he had to wait two weeks on permission to have a bathroom leak repaired, became an amphibian;
And, although he had always been considered more of a poor fish than a swimmer, won himself at the sport a blue ribian.
And another, because no grant to put a new handle on his lunch bucket was handy,
Did a fast that put completely to shame the good Mahatma Ghandi.
Tat for tit, and tit for tat.
Permission for this, and permission for that.
And it’s most inconceivably inconvenient at times, for it’s common knowledge that a refrigerator always fails in the hottest weather, and a furnace in January,
To catch the unwary. Or even the wary. Disgusting, very.
And a chap who sits for 31 days in a furnaceless house in Jan.
Awaiting a permit to fix said furnace, is apt to wind up a
frozen-face, or maybe a dead-pan.
They won’t be able to tell a Yankee from his Chinese cousin across-the-sea if one fails
To get a dispensation to trim his nails.
Or slack his sails.
Or wear his tails.
Or clean his pails.
Or date his frails.
Don’t hesitate when you want to empty that waste-basket
To hunt up the proper Board and its permission asket Although it is still unrestricted I sense
Soon it will be illegal to laugh without a license.
I can see pnly one way to treat all this with the proper
derision:
Get authority to sit on the Board that passes out the permission.
When it comes down to where you have to ask for and wait on
permission to burp,
A couple of fellows in our office are destined to blow urp.
Which proves quite definitely that, if we take the trouble to turn it over and look at the right side
Even the darkest of clouds has its bright side!
by Ray Romine Sunday, May 9, 1943
