Show ir w i i i n bolt ak aou t heroes of the southwest agthe GALLUP ALLUP N 11 through the dust of vanished yester days we weve ve just traveled the high ranges of the earlier pat garrett of the itchy trigger finger and john wesley hardin the texas preachers boy turned scorpion and doc doe holliday the cough ing dentist with his nervous manner ism of shooting peo pie and that babyish king of all the killers little sawed off billy the kid who smiled his diffident buck toothed emile smile even as he blasted out a life f for or every one of the twenty one years of his life not count ing as he himself would say mexicans and find irvin S cobb lne e viewed the his bullet pod poci s and their personal onal burying grounds and we dischi discovered ered just one survivor of those ancient two gun clans a rancid octogenarian wearing the look about him of a ven yen erable shamefaced sheep where he sat with a gingham apron draping the withered flanks banks which once had s sup P ported his artillery and he shelling shelling peas by the kitchen door of his pres ent cifes boardly boarding house As somebody pre prematurely remarked before I 1 thought it up myself the old southwest Is gone but you never saw service stations than we passed nor shinier beauty parlors and the curb curl service wis excellent destructive pests AS S THOUGH it t bad enough already with a presidential cam laign on this year grasshoppers have threatened growing things in the midwest true to their advance notices the 17 year locusts are popping out along the eastern seaboard in ontario a plague of caterpillars covered the railroad tracks so thickly trains could not run on schedule there s no word yet from our little southern friend the boll weevil but news Is expected maybe hes lies waiting for the return of the cotton crops that we used to plant for the export trade when we had an export cotton trade the pine borer Is reported on the job in the north woods to date out here we have only the regular rest resl dent pests including the white ter mite the red ant and the mother who can prove her child Is another shirley temple if it somebody would only Us lis ten of the last named we already have upwards of SO and more ar riving every day still we cannot hope to escape presently the party who goes around taking straw votes on the election will start multiplying rapidly and then professional california spellbinders will be binding and at any moment upton sinclair is liable to start run ning for something what makes news SOME gentleman who must work at the postoffice post office because seemingly stamps don t mean a thing in the world to him keeps taking issue with me for saying the reason why success ful newspapers feature so called sen above news of art and science and literature Is not through any desire to pander to morbid or vulgar tastes but because the average pub lisher being a smart merchandiser puts such wares in his shop window which Is his front page as are calca to catch the eye and win the trade of the general public my correspondent demands deminds an an awer all right let lets s make it a par able suppose S appose mister that tomorrow through the town where you live passes a train bearing a d shed savant who has made some great dis dig covery say the cause and cure of botts and on another train there Is a taffy haired lady who after a spec murder trial has just been tri antly acquitted on the ground of self defense for shooting a gentleman friend eight or nine times in the back aimel which one of these two travelers elers will draw the biggest crowd down to the station and brother which train will you meet favorite son keynoter BACK paci home the folks are all puffed up with pride our own albin W barkley keynoted for the democratic convention until the rafters warped besides being a grand person and a hard working senator beg he s one of the last of the real southern silver tongued the kind that can make a song of a syllable and turn any reasonably long word into an anthem and does he come from the place where the true faith prevails the ma bority stabilized just as soon as we got a lot ef of old timers to quit voting for jeff davis we weaned them OB oa W J bryan ours Is probably the only congressional district in the union that never has gone republican although when al smith ran it had a campara close call from going baptist let the creatures of entrenched greel beware As goes paducah so sc goes paducah IRVIN S COBB COES 0 ce av |