5. Papa’s Young Protégé

That was a tedious winter, memorable for its high gales, heavy snowfalls, wet feet and bad colds.

But when spring finally arrived it came in with all the hustle, bustle and bounce characteristic of the tardy.

Tossing aside its earmuffs and mittens it had the audacity to rebuke us for not having the garden readied for seeding; and why hadn’t we mulched the cherry trees?

In a week the country roads had shed their snowdrifts, and the mud had been milled into dust. The mammoth perennial peonies, for which northern Indiana was famed, began to unfold. Soon the tender lettuce leaves spelled my sister’s name and mine in the small plots assigned to us.

Bright gold dandelions were peeping through the grass. How happy we always were to see them bloom, and how hard we worked to exterminate them when they began to go to seed. It seemed to be equally true of People. Babies were always welcome but Old Folks could be a pest.

Now that we have the new miracle medicines to prolong life, Old Folks have become a serious threat to the whole “economy,” a word that was never used in reference to the nation’s financial structure until the Government began to spend far in excess of its income.

When I was a youngster, “economy” meant “economizing”; and if some wastrel, either by incompetence or extravagance, dissipated an estate for which he had been appointed a trustee or executor, his malfeasance was never referred to as “deficit spending”; it was called “embezzlement.”

While we lean on our hoes and rest a minute (for we are planting potatoes this morning and the day is hot) let me call your attention to a few other words and phrases which have been earning time-and-a-half for overtime.

A couple of years ago somebody at the seat of government said that something (I forget what) was “within the framework” of something else. This brought on a veritable deluge of things that were “within the framework.” For some inexplicable reason, whenever anything got “within the framework,” it meant more taxes, and the private citizen shuddered at the phrase.

Then “package” and “packaging,” especially when contained “within the framework,” increased the deplorable habit of taxpayers’ taking sleeping pills. This was quickly followed by “impact.” Everything made an “impact”—and no foolin’. Some words, rarely used until lately, are sick-abed from overwork; “implementation” and “reactivation” being conspicuous among the more pitiable cases… Perhaps we need a new dictionary.

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