Mrs. Brown’s Cat Has Kittens
When I was a schoolboy back in the olden days in Richfield, a couple of friends and I would occasionally make “newspapers.” We would sometimes do this when we were supposed to be listening to the teacher lecture.
Or, sometimes we were supposed to be following along in our literature books while students took turns reading Shakespeare out loud. We would be “taking notes” on sheets of paper in our three-ring binders. I thought of it as our multi-tasking “journalism” class.
When we finished our fictional, satirical papers, we’d trade them around with each other – and laugh our heads off. We were easily entertained.
Some of the mastheads of our “papers” would be “The Burrville Times,” “The Kanosh Planet,” and “The Scipio Gazette.” (Many of you know that these places are all authentic, yet small, communities. I think they were smaller then than they are now, with perhaps the exception of Burrville, which is part of the greater Koosharem metropolis. I’m sure you know where that is.)
We would write news stories for these papers with headlines like: “Boy Finds Dime on Sidewalk,” “Mrs. Brown’s Cat Has Kittens,” and “Local Farmer Falls off Turnip Truck.” Names of the people in the articles might be: Seth Headgate, Cleeta Clothesclutcher or Orville McGillicuddy. We thought this stuff was hilarious. But you have to remember that we were the same kids who thought that Jerry Lewis movies on television were hilarious too.
I believe I still have an original copy of “The Sterling Star” that I made at some point in school. It’s strange now that I live in Sanpete and made a fake newspaper of a small Sanpete town. One of the “classified ads” was “For Rent: a used calculus/trig theory book – excellent for spare time reading.”
Since algebra class was the bane of our existence, we’d sometimes put a “math corner” in the paper with our version of a math story problem: “If George and Alice go to the show and it costs George 75 cents and it costs Alice 50 cents; how many pigs are there at Dixon Pack?” (a local slaughter house and meat packing plant during that time.)
That kind of question made about as much sense to me as genuine algebra problems did. I’m still trying to figure out what “X” is.
I think we were partially inspired by the small-town news, which appeared in the Richfield Reaper at that time. I believe the print edition of the Reaper still runs those columns. Many of the small towns in the service area of the paper had a correspondent who would write each week about what had been going on around town.
For example, you could look at the “News of Koosharem” and you could read who had been home for the weekend from college. It would tell you who had broken an arm or hurt their back and how long their recuperation was expected to be. Often, you’d find out who had given talks in church. Sometimes you’d learn who had apricots ripe and ready to give away. You might find out who had caught a big fish at the reservoir or up at Fish Lake.
As I read and hear the regular news in the media these days, it seems pretty depressing. The endless wars. The constant shootings. The accidents on the highways. People treating other people badly – especially children being mistreated. And on and on.
I can’t help but feel we’re going from one “train wreck” to another as I read the news items of the day. (Some days the train wrecks are literal.) And I haven’t even mentioned political news. Talk about annoying and depressing.
Sometimes I lean back in my chair and think to myself that familiar question, “Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?”
I think of Simon and Garfunkel’s repeated lyric in the song “The Only Living Boy in New York” which is: “I get all the news I need on the weather report.”
And then, without warning or premeditation; I think of “The Burrville Times” and the article headline: “Mrs. Brown’s Cat Has Kittens.”
Life is complicated and awful things happen. But right now, I’m wishing that we had more uncomplicated, less awful news to read and hear about. — Merrill