IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN VIRTUES like modesty, all-around gentlemanliness, and thoroughbred behavior, you'll usually find them in the person who is the best in his line. Like a personality I knew whose nickname was Bob. He was known all over the world as 'way head and shoulders The Best in his line. He never actually did his stuff in America, yet he was idolized and respected here just the same as he was at home. I met him once and, jeepers, what a Natural—warm, tolerant, understanding, calm, simple, but what an aristocrat. A man with his qualities might pull this world out of a few of the holes we've gotten into. Unfortunately , however, I'm not talking about a man. I'm talking about a big chestnut horse named Phar Lap. Anybody who is real big and who knows what he's doing and has his finger on his number all the time is usually a "good guy" like Phar Lap 180 27. was. Phar Lap, by the way, is a Siamese name and means "Wink of the Sky"—in other words, Lightning —and he sure was, too. Came in first in every start, but modest and all. Let the others kick up at the barrier and carry on so fancy. That's just because they're not real sure of themselves. They don't know what they're doing. You know, the farther away I get from Mason City by the calendar, the faster I seem to be coming back to the old values and things we used to take for granted back home—like not taking things for granted. Everybody back home took for granted that certain things were just naturally worth while, like making jelly and tomato preserves in the summertime so you'd have them for later on in the winter. But when you busted through that paraffin in December or January to enjoy that jelly you never forgot for a minute how Mama worked in August—filling the cheesecloth bag with the crab apples, twisting it around the faucet in the sink, twisting and twisting till the jelly juice got all squeezed out. But I was saying about it's real good to know what you're doing. If you don't, it makes a lot of sense to quit it and get to doing something that feels more comfortable to you. Some kids in our manual-training class couldn't drive a nail straight—like me. I fussed around for months trying to make a pair of book ends (clover181 [3.146.65.212] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 23:07 GMT) leaf pattern). Now you've never seen anything as awkward in your whole born days as (i) me working on those book ends and (2) those book ends after I finished them. They wobbled a couple of times on the table next to the hall tree and fell down and never did get up again. It's just lucky for the book-end people that I took up the flute. Oh, sure, I took up the drums first.Everybody takes up the drums. But I was just as awkward with the drums as I waswith the book ends, only I didn't have brains enough to recognize it because the drums were pretty fascinating, and besides, you got to march in the W.C.T.U. parade and all. Mama was the one who knew I didn't seem to be taking to those drumsticks any too well, so she put the flute idea into my head. All I wanted to say was it's good to think about Mason City and remember summer's apple squeezing when you're enjoying winter's jelly, and also your whole life is more enjoyable when you work at things you feel comfortable doing instead of awkward. Like one day when I went to get a haircut on a Saturday without an appointment and naturally found all the barbers tied up except Harry, the owner of the shop, who is a remarkablebusinessman that everybody knows out here and also likes, and Harry said, "I've got an extra chair because 182 one of my barbers is sick and if you don't mind my stopping frequently to handle the cash register , because my cashier is sick too, I'll cut your hair myself." Well, all the barbers in that shop are just great, but I've never in my whole...