From a Kazoo Kulture To Wheaties Democracy

To those few of the intellectual patricians making up the Cambridge Scene who are tuned in on the main line of American folk culture, the names of Stella Dallas, Dick Tracy, Arthur Godfrey and Betty Crocker are not ciphers in a general twentieth-century void. These names and others like them are significant contributions to a respectable mass of Americana, as worthy of preservation as the Declaration of Independence or George Washington's garter.

Especially we of the Silent Generation, silent because listening to the radio, value the sociological and cultural eminence of such personalities as Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong and Hop Harrigan. We remember Captain Midnight's Decoder Badges, Sky King's Secret Signal Mirrors, and Secret Compartment Rings. We remember that voice: With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains brought law and order to the early Western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of Justice. Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN!

We remember Sergeant Preston and his dog King, "On King! On you huskies!", brought to us by Quaker Oats, the cereal shot from guns. We remember the sidekicks: Vic, Tank Tinker, Jim and Penny and Clipper. We remember the villains; the Gray Ghost, Dr. Martelli, the secret agents with German accents, who called one another Klaus and Fritz and Karl. There were, of course, comic books, and we are not unfamiliar with Superman, Batman and Robin, or the Plastic Man. But mostly we listened, and imagined.

Yes, we were the Silent Generation. And I, whose first literary discovery was a book entitled Dick Tracy Meets the Night Crawler, feel proud to be a member.

We remember, yes, but we must not forget, that there have existed other eras, and other Generations--Generations that have made just as important contributions as our Wheaties Democracy, to the rich fund of Americana.

Some time in our shadowy national past, before really big bombs, a culture existed carefree as birds, blithesome as Puck, bawdy as only early twentieth-century Americans can be. Yes, back in the days when no one in the country seemed over seventeen years old, when nothing mattered but humor. And, of course, gadget-makers that we are, we manufactured it. Yes, the days of the Joke Generation.

How did this Joke Generation subsist? How was its Life Source of gadgets purveyed? By the J and S book. The J and S Book, as it was affectionately known, was the catalog of the Johnson and Smith Company of Racine, Wisconsin. The Company ran intoi trouble in the frigid climate of the early 'Thirties, when people decided practical jokes were impractical. But there yet remain copies of the catalog, virtually unchanged since the pre-World War I days, which are now of unestimable value.

The Johnson and Smith Catalogue supplied the humor for a nation, for decades. In its crumbling pages (carefully preserved in the famous 'X' cage of famous Widener library) is enough material for a hundred Soc. Rel theses.

We find Joy Buzzers, Trick Squirt Badges, Rubber Hunting Knives, Soap Cigars, Soap Pickles and Soap Chocolates, Exploding Fountain Pens, Plate Palpitators, and Shoe Squeakers. There are Imitation Gold Teeth, Cuckoo Clothes Brushes, Rubber Swollen Thumbs, Bunged Up Eyes and Joke Teeth and Tongues. There are, of course, Itching Powders, Jumping Fleas, Crying Towels and Whoopee Cushions. There is soap that turns your face black, soap that is rubber, cheese that is soap, and cigars that are cheese. There are Snake Candy and Jam Jars. There are Shimmy Inspector Badges. There are Exploding Cigar Boxes, Agitating Match Boxes, and Chameleon Dice. There is, in fact, a complete Kazoo Band--"You Can Play Them If You Can Talk!"--from Baby Jazz Kazoo Saxophones, to Cornet and Trumpet Kazoos, to Kazoo Slide Trombones. With the Kazoo Band there are instructions on How To Organize a Kazoo Band:

Get together any desired number of persons; arrange their voices as in chorus. Play simple airs first, until you get acquainted with your instrument and with each other. It is so easy that in a few minutes you will play as well as if you had the instrument for years. The usual range of each voice has two octaves, hence an air sung by a bass voice lowest octave, by tenor or contralto at one octave above, soprano two octaves above. Every church without a paid choir should organize a Church Choir Band as a means of earning money for church purposes, and render KAZOO KONCERTS, as they invariably draw FULL HOUSES.

Some other selected passages will indicate the significance of this catalogue in the modern American cultural synthesis:

IMITATION ICE CREAM, NO. 2819, 15*, 3 for 40* or $1.35 per doz. postpaid.

Placed on a plate with a spoon, it looks such a tempting morsel that they won't be able to wait to eat it. However they quickly wait to eat it. However they quickly discover, to their surprise, that it is nothing but an excellent imitation. It's a good joke to play on your unsuspecting guests serving it for desert instead of the real ice cream. Well made and can be used over and over again.

One is inclined to agree that when the American public finds out who the great They is, upon whom all the jokes are played and by whom all decisions are made, the dilemma of our national neuroticism will be dissolved.

THE MARVELOUS ENCHANTED CIGAR BOX $1.00

"This is one of the best illusions in our list, and the results are of such an extraordinary character that no amateur or professional conjurer can afford to be without it.

Taking up a cigar box from your table, you open it and show it full of cigars. To convince even the most skeptical, you pass the box around and allow one or more male members of the company to first select a few cigars. After doing this you place the box upon the table in full view of everybody, and command a