| OCR Text |
Show f BATTLE Creek A Since he no longer got his living liv-ing the hard natural way, his beak continued to elongate. To him, this was of small concern. He no longer had to peck for a living anyway. As his beak grew longer, he waxed fatter and weaker. Even the work of clamboring over the This is the story of a woodpecker. wood-pecker. His way of life was changed. chang-ed. He became fat and indolent. He lost the spirit of independence and free enterprise and came to a self-imposed untimely death, all because life became too easy. I saw him first in early October of 1922. Each morning at about 7:30, when I arrived for my teaching teach-ing duties at Lincoln High School, he would greet me with his clarion clar-ion call and flash to the top of a nearby Cottonwood tree the exemplification ex-emplification of strengtth, grace and self-reliance. As time went on and the mornings morn-ings grew more crisp, he failed to fly buoyantly away upon my daily arrival. He was far too busy to be bothered with such nonessentials. non-essentials. Climbing over the walls of the newly-constructed building, he feasted on the myriads of flies that roosted on the brickwork and had become stupified by the cold. In common parlance, he had struck a bonanza, not unlike "100 per cent of parity" or the "guaranteed "guar-anteed annual wage," all rolled into one. In fact, he had never had it so easy and so good. There was just one drawback to this bird Utopia, however, Nature had equipped him with a strong, sharp beak, to be used to bore a living out of dry, hard, worm-infested wood. Wisely enough, his body metabolism was so arranged that as his beak wore down with use, natural growth kept it at prop-" prop-" er length and in prime working condition. bricks had become a laborious chore. The day finally came, I think it was in December, that I lifted his lifeless form from the ground under un-der the school office window. His beak was twice the normal length; frail, bent and useless. His dead body was still plump; but composed com-posed of little other than fat and feathers. Weakness and physical malformation had taken their deadly dead-ly toll. Not unlike the woodpecker, mankind man-kind has been equipped by a wise Creator with all the mental and physical attributes necessary for an independent and purposeful life intelligence, ambition, aggressiveness, ag-gressiveness, physical strength and a desire to achieve by individual effort. Each time I note the increasing number of formerly independent Americans whose main objectives now, are to become wards of government gov-ernment or industry, I recall with regret the tragic and untimely fate of the indolent woodpecker. Subsidies, doles, grants and guaranteed guar-anteed wages are little other than flies on the artificiial veneer of the brick-work of our national economy. So long 'til Thursday. |
