The Kennewick Courier Reporter

Communicated

DEAR EDITOR:

Some foolish person aimlessly asked me what was the main trouble with the present set up in this fair country and what steps should be taken to remedy the condition. Now I am not a prophet neither am I an oracle but judging from the painful experience gathered from sixty years of wasted life I would say off hand that the attitude of our young people towards life in general has more to do with the fix we are in than any other one thing and the main reason for that is that they have had every thing so easy that they have grown indifferent to the general welfare of the nation. I have no complaint to make, neither do I care what becomes of the present generation or their country after I am through with it.

I still claim that I have been fortunate to have lived at a time when the whole world was right at her dirty best and to have been permitted to pass my life in the best part of the best country in it. I came West just after the last Indian uprising was settled was permitted to see and help civilize a new country and stay to see the development of all our so-called modern inventions.

But in order to enjoy all these many blessings I had to have the desire to do so and the faculty to appreciate and enjoy them as they came along.

Like some of the youngsters today I was rather wild for awhile, but soon settled down to the stern realities of life and realize that if I was ever to get any place I had to go there.

When I was fourteen years my father got some of the neighbors to help him and threw me down and nailed on my first pair of shoes and started me to school. The first book I picked up was a geography and when I saw where and what Missouri was and how big the rest of the country was, I loaded the family in a wagon and started West.

I didn't have much trouble with any of them except grandpa. Now this man was about ninety or a hundred years old, healthy as a billy goat, active as a cat and as set in his ways as it is possible for a human being to be. And besides he had a hobby and that was honey bees. He had lived and improved his bees until they were as big as humming birds, as swift as bullets and as busy as housewives in the spring time. But he didn't go in for it in a big way and kept only enough bees to make just one pound of honey a day. Every evening at sundown the old man would go out to the hive take out his pound of honey -eat it- pat his faithful workers on the head and then go away and leave them alone for another day. If there was too many bees or too much honey the old man would have a few quiet words with the queen and if there wasn't enough honey he simply raised hell with every body. No difference how poor the foliage or pasture, those bees could not or would not go to sleep before that pound of honey was gathered, finished and capped.

Naturally after a life time of such intimate relation the old man and his pets became very fond of each other, so I wasn't a bit surprised when I learned that grand pop wouldn't go to California or anywhere else unless he could take his bees with him.

Now there are lots of more agreeable things to have around a moving wagon than a hive full of busy, hard working, nervous honey bees, but to an active hard-working boy who had spent his life time around the business end of Missouri mules and lived a perfect blameless Republican life in a strong Democrat state, you can imagine that I would not let a little thing like bees interfere with my well-laid plans to better the living condition of my whole family. Well, sir, we all got on amazingly well. Those bees followed the slow moving wagons, worked among the many free blooming flowers and actually seemed to enjoy the novel experience. And every evening the old man had his pound of honey for supper.

Then we struck a hundred mile strip of desert where there was neither grass, flowers or water. The first day wasn't so bad. We were all strong and husky and still had a little water left in the barrels and were thoroughly inured to the hardships of overland travel. The second day was not so pleasant, the third was terrible, the fourth was worse and the fifth was enough to try the patience and endurance of even the strongest men and live-stock And those bees. You should have seen them work. Of course they had a whole lot of extra mileage to make but they had been bred for hard work and held up admirably well.

Every evening the old man would go to the hive, give his faithful little friends a pat on the head, treat them to a peppy fireside chat, eat their honey and go to bed as happy as a kid.

Now any of you saner-minded people, who are trying to read between the lines and find some hidden purpose of this frivolous tale and want to liken our journey into the dessert to the Ship of States venture into five years of New Deal recession, please desist -relax and enjoy what blessings you have and let the brain trusters worry about what they are going to have you do next.

As I said before and am about to say again, the fifth day was one of horrors. The sun was scorching hot, there was no vestige of shade— we had not had a drink for several days and the sifting sand made it almost impossible to breathe or see. And when grand pop went to the bee hive his pound of honey had not been quite finished. He cussed and fumed and would not be comforted. He knew something was wrong and sure enough when he counted his bees one of them was missing. We tried every way in the world to pacify the old man, but nothing would do, but we must organize a search party and go out and look for the missing member of the faithful flock.

Reluctantly we saddled our tired horses and started out upon the most futile journey ever conceived by the fickle mind of frivolous man. As we rode along wishing we had a drink and trying to figure where we would be if we were a tired bee, we met "Old Tom" coming in. And when I say he was coming fast is to express the plain truth in the fewest possible words.

Just imagine. He had to fly fifty miles to find any flowers, then gather his load of honey on a range that had already been hunted over. rustle himself a drink of water and then fly fifty miles back to the hive and make the round trip in fifteen minutes you know he was going fast. That episode discouraged the old man and seemed to take all the heart out of him, He was bound and determined to turn back in a vain effort to save the precious lives of his adoring pets. We set around and argued all night but nothing we could say would cause the old man to change his mind. The golden west will never know how near it came to losing our uplifting influence. but the next morning when the bees raised out the hive they started west and we knew that their unerring instinct told them that we were over half way across so we came on and all was well.

There isn't much more to say. About the time we reached our destination one of those fast flying insects flew against the old man and killed him and there was no one to take the honey out of the hive. The poor things didn't know just how to act, but the "habits of a life time are hard to change" and they just kept on working.

In the lush pastures and nectar-laden flowers of California those busy insects soon accumulated enough surplus honey that they could give the old ones a pension and put the young ones on relief. With the hive full of idle bees there was no work for the queen and she soon began flying out with the California drones so there you are.

The great Palouse Philosopher says: "A man's hobby shall be his own undoing," and I guess he is right.

Hoping you are always the same,
I beg to remain, yours truly.

LESLIE J. SMITH