POLITICAL NOTES: Wagon Wheels

> Even Thanksgiving Day was political matter in the U. S. last week. Twenty-two States’ Governors proclaimed Thanksgiving on Nov. 23—23 proclaimed Nov. 30—three proclaimed both days. Ribald Republicans called Thanksgiving I “Franks-giving.”

> In Boston, Maine’s Republican Governor, big Lewis O. Barrows, waved aside a turkey he was to have carved at a formal banquet, gobbled: “You wouldn’t eat oysters in July. . . .* You wouldn’t eat a turkey on November 23.” Forthwith he whipped from his pocket a can of sardines, self-consciously ate them.

> In Uvalde, Texas, a spry, bowlegged little man with a stubborn back-hair cowlick celebrated his 71st birthday by packing a lunch (including a hunk of birthday cake baked by his wife), rode off after deer. Six days late was John Nance Garner in bagging his annual buck; but he was on time at the hunt campfire, where he dished up his special concoction—”Son-of-a-gun stew,” which supposedly includes a dash of everything.

> Office-holding Washingtonians began to receive their annual invitations to the Jackson Day dinner, set for next Jan. 8, grumbled their usual grumbles at the price ($100), but decided to be there in case Guest-of-Honor Franklin Roosevelt took that occasion for a third-term pronouncement.

>In New York City, breast-beating Columnist Hugh S. Johnson, roaring like any sucking dove, nominated Utility Tycoon Wendell Willkie as a good 1940 G. O. P. possibility. Said Mr.” Willkie wryly: “If the Government continues to take over my business, I may be looking for some kind of a new job. General Johnson’s is the best offer I have had so far.”

> In Cleveland, Paul Vories McNutt united—for one evening at least—the numerous scrapping Ohio Democratic elements at a binge given by New Dealer Dan T. Moore, regional SEC chief. Even big businessmen, Republicans, and three-time Republican Mayor Harold H. Burton came, saw and were temporarily conquered by tall, tan, terrific Mr. McNutt.

> Record for the most courageous, most politically inept 1940 campaign statement thus far went last week to Ohio’s Senator Robert A. Taft. In Des Moines, Iowa, corn kernel of the country, Mr. Taft bluntly announced his wholehearted opposition to the New Deal’s corn-loan policy—on the very day the Agriculture Department announced a 57¢-per-bushel corn loan, thus pouring into the State about $70,000,000.

> Crooning Flour Salesman W. Lee O’Daniel was elected Governor of Texas in 1938 on a promise of $30-a-month pensions. Texans last week cast up accounts, noted that after a year’s fiddling and finagling, “Pappy” O’Daniel had sliced the average $8-a-month old-age pension to about $6, had in some cases cut pensions as low as $1, was stalling on a tax bill to pay off his promises. Dissatisfaction flamed. O’Daniel’s impeachment on a technicality was proposed, to permit calling of a tax session of the legislature by Lieut. Governor Coke Stevenson. A more lyrical O’Daniel promise was next impeached: His campaign song, Please Pass The Biscuits, Pappy, was bitterly recalled by a critic who dashed off a sarcastic rejoinder, Biscuit-Cutting Blues (tune: Shortenin’ Bread):

“Oh, Mr. Pappy,

Why don’t you

Pass dem biscuits

Like you promised to?

Chorus: “Pappy’s little baby

Loves biscuits, biscuits,

Pappy’s little baby

Loves biscuit bread!

“Ol” winter’s coming

But what you do?

You cut my biscuit

Square in two!” (ad inf.)

* Any member of the A.F.E.O.I.A.M.Y.W.T. (Association for Eating Oysters in Any Month You Want To) would.