Little Casino

The burdens of the Depression

HAVE A SPAGHETTI SANGWICH! HAVE A spaghetti sangwich with pieces of cold frankfurter on it! Have a cod-liver oil sandwich, a sammich that’ll put hair on your chest, your head, your hands, and your freezing feet!

A ketchup sammich? A ketchup-and-mustard sammich? Or how does a cold stringbean sammich strike you, little fella? A canned pineapple sandwich might go well with a big jelly jar chock by Jesus Christ up to the brim with lemon Epco or grape Kool-Aid, as too might a canned-spinach sandwich. Succotash on moldy rye? Mmmm.

A cottage-cheese-and-cold-boiled-puhtaytuh sangaweech on stale Bond bread, now that is the absolute ticket! You’re talking nutrition? Then, too, sandwiches of sliced green pepper and Crisco will surely refresh after a long day of career discussions. And don’t neglect to pop over to friendly Gallagher’s, sport, for a pitcher of Trommer’s: crisp, light, and tingling! And zesty! It’s the Ivy League beverage of choice, you’ll recall?

How to feed your family of five, or even six, on a dollar a day, without endangering their health or welfare. Just takes a little g-u-m-p gumption!

Stay away, oh, stay far hence from those terrible crumb buns, cinnamon buns, coconut buns, crullers, doughnuts, and Danish pastries: they’ll send you to your grave, yowzah.

Break out the lettuce-and-oleo sammiches, pliz. Look at those smiling children in the sunny kitchen! Look at those cavities and suppurating ears! Bacon and eggs and sausages and toast with butter, again! That will do it every time.

Afterward, when the coughing lets up a little, these tykes can build a little character selling Liberty at the subway station. “How to Feed Your Growing Family on Fifty Cents a Day” is in the latest issue, wow!

And for the love of God, who does not cotton to the idle poor, as we all know, please avoid those thick steaks, buttered mashed potatoes, rich sauces, cream-laden desserts, all those deadly foods that will damage the courageous heart, OK?

Lard on toast might allay certain yearnings, but moderation, moderation.

How amazing that the poor have always eaten a healthy diet, rich in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, and low in fat and sugars. They’ve had it puh-retty darn good!

Here you go — a kohlrabi sangwich on what looks like a fetching pale-green slice of Silvercup! Fulla vitamins Q and T.

Herbert Hoover died at the age of 137, of course. It is said that he never ate a steak in his life, and that his favorite dinner was farmer cheese on soda crackers with skim milk.

He did not call the unemployed “the shiftless idle,” and the rumor that attributed this remark to him has been traced to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, described as “Godless un-Cristian [sic] Jews” in Jesus Knows News. It is a cruel rumor, and one that is in very poor taste as well.

When the burdens of the Depression and such aberrations as the Bonus March could not be lightened by cheery thoughts of Tom Mix, Mr. Hoover often went fly-fishing, called “the sport of dukes.” He wore his Stanford tie.

“Don’t fence me in!” the doughty President would exultantly cry to the aromatic woods. And soon it would be time for a raw onion.