Show HELPFUL HUSBAND LARGELY A MYTH little gained by letting him tinker men alen are supposed to be handy with the hammer and good nt at doing odd jobs joba round the house but from what I 1 hear bear froni from women who have them husbands I 1 mean not hammers its a tradition lacking in truth if ifa a trusting wife asks her spouse to repair a chair leg or an electrical fixture it cannot be done until a suitable kit of expensive tools ta Is bought when the tools arrive he daei not know how to use them in the end the wife has to hire a workman and instead of saving money she Is out the tha price of the tools one wife decided it was ridiculous to pay a carpenter to hang the porch swing owing when bed husband and grown son were able boded and reasonably intelligent the twain were willing to lend both brains and brawn and started operations by tapping the porch roof to locate the joist tho the sound told nothing to their untrained ears so they bored eight experimental holes ever touching the secretive beam eventually the lady of the house sent for a carpenter who filled up the eight holes and bung tho the swing one summer this same father and son tried to save the family budget by building a coal bin in the basement in which to hoard coal bought at low prices their fancy carpenter work loosened the brick foundation so that the cellar leaked all winter and in the spring a brick mason repaired the damages at considerable expense then theres the woman who hated to spend 10 for an outside aerial for her new radio she insisted that her husband could eave money by building one accordingly he bought the necessary material lie ile crawled under the edge of the house to ground the wire properly and as he was a hefty brute lie he got stuck under the foundation and pulled a floyd col lens sympathetic neighbors dug him out and he went to bed to nurse his bis bruises while a hireling built the aerial instead of saving money he paid a doctors bill the most interesting trait these helpless husbands show Is their thear willingness to spend hours in inventing a way to escape the work their wives assign to them this tendency y has led to most of our important household inventions of course it was a man who first thought of washing ironing sweeping and beating eggs by electrical power probably hla his wife asked him to help her one day when she was sick As often as not his inventive powers lead him to grief instead of success as in the instance of the roan man too lazy to carry out his cifes garbage pall she kept the garbage inthe in the rear by the garage doorene orend do door and asked him to put it on the curb each monday morning therefore when he backed the car out ho he would place the garbage can ori od th the e running board and stop at the curb long enough to park the can thus saving at least a hundred feet of unnecessary can carrying one morning he lie forgot to remove the garbage can from the running board and never gave it n thought until he made a quick stop at a prominent traffic intersection there was a fearful clatter on the left of the car and lie he looked out in time to see his breakfast grapefruit peels rolling beneath a flossy limousine not to mention coffee grounds and potato parings strewn all over the scenery this husband insists that he be never recovered from the resultant inferiority complex and his wife lost her garbage can which he be possibly stop to coll collect act the fond father who spent 2 for a bomb to amuse his children on the fourth of july meant well when he put it on top of the grape arbor before he lit it his idea was to remove it as far as possible from the bodies of his young hopefuls it fell oft off an and exploded in hla his cifes favorite flower bed uprooting the pride ot 09 her life and ana undoing months of bar hard labor there are some women who can do more with a hairpin than the men of the family can accomplish with the most useful tools the vaunted superiority of the male in all mechanical matters often falls flat when he Is asked to tinker sometimes its safer to leave the head of the house behind the newspaper and hire outsiders to take tahe care of repairs its cheaper in the long run to pay one bill instead of several indianapolis news |