Show WHEN THE BONES WERE POPULAR small boy of a generation ago invariably had a longing to become a minstrel man at one of the variety theaters the other night said the man with ith the double chin there was a fellow who had a great knack of playing the bones he was the first bone soloist I 1 ve heard in a good many years even the minstrel shows don t pay much attention to the bones nowadays and I 1 guess that the next generation will look upon us folk as savages for ever having listened to the music of the bones the things that this soloist played nith the other night t I 1 imagine sure enough bones they were probably fashioned of some kind of wood I 1 can remember when every small boy in the country had a mad passion to become an artist with the bones that was more than a quarter of a century ago when minstrelsy was a big thing and all the youngsters in the land ached and longed way down deep in them to become famous min men the ambitions of most of the kids of my day centered on the bones end and we used to practice with the bones for hours at a stretch I 1 used to wait tor for my mother to get a rib roast and the good woman would hardly have the meat off those ribs before I 1 id d have em out in the back I 1 yard sawing and hammering away at em and tinkering them into shape to be used for bones I 1 id d devote houra hours to scraping them when I 1 had sawed them into shape and then I 1 d place them where the summer sun would hit them tor for about a week to thor hughly dry them the i they d be ready for use and I 1 d proceed along with all the rest ot of the kids in the neighborhood provided with bones to drive the older folk craze with the horrible noise there s a whole lot of science in manipulating the bones properly I 1 used to practice about half halt a day at a stretch with the right hand bone and then I 1 d round up the rest of the day getting the hang of the left hand bones and I 1 ve seen strong men be compelled to take to their beds from nervous col lapse after spending a week in a neighborhood infested by a bunch of small boys getting the hang of the bones things are not like they used to be bet there are thousands ot of young fellows who are of age right in this town who never scraped a set of bones when they were youngsters and who never indulged in the exalted dream of one day becoming ce lebrat ed minstrel men |