OCR Text |
Show Chewing Gum, Like the Poor, Always With Us A secure niche has been won in the category of derelicts by chewing gum. America spends upwards of $50,000,000 a year for this delicacy, the equivalent of 5,000,000,000 sticks or 75,000 miles of sweetened chicle enough to send a ribbon around the earth three times. Save in the case of tender infants, not much of it is swallowed. The great bulk finds its place somewhere under foot or hand ; by preference under' chairs in movie theaters, on the decks of excursion steamers, hiding hid-ing coyly beneath the edges of tables in lunch rooms. I once lost a substantial sub-stantial section of a new Scotch tweed overcoat by a virtue of a little remembrance left on the straw seat of a subway train. Another favorite temporary resting rest-ing place is the floor of a dance hall. I say "temporary" advisedly ; the 5,000,000,000 sticks are ever on the march. They know not what it means to die. Stuart Chase in Harper's Har-per's Magazine. |