A SPECIAL SHADE TREE OFFER 
MELIA UMBRACULIFORIMIS—Texas Umbrella. 
■ Each '10 100 
3- 4 feet .:....30 $ 2.50 $ 20.00 
4- 5 feet .40 3.50 30.00 
5- 6 feet .-.50 4.00 35.00 
THESE HARD TIMES? 
ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY “HARD” 
George McKee, Anderson, S. C., says times are not hard. Here’s 
the way George puts it: 
“Don’t talk to me about hard times. I was born 8 miles from 
a railroad, 5,miles from a school house, 9 miles from a church, 885 
miles from New York, 200 yards from a wash hole, 15 feet from a 
cornfield and 8,767 miles from Hongkong. 
“Our nearest neighbors lived two miles away and they couldn’t 
read or write. I never saw a suit of underwear until I was 17 years 
old, and that revelation didn’t belong to anybody in our family. The 
only book in the house during my early childhood was a Bible and 
a catalogue" somebody sent us. 
“There were twelve members in our family, ‘but, you see, we 
had three rooms to live in, including a dining room, which was also 
the kitchen. Everybody worked at our house. We thought every¬ 
body else in the world had gravy and bread for breakfast, liver and 
cracklin’ hoecake for dinner, buttermilk and corn pone for supper, 
’cause that’s what we had—and liked it.” 
“Some of us wore brogan shoes occasionally in the wintertime. 
We had nice white shirts for summer time use. We slept on straw 
ticks, and pillows were not thought of or required. I didn’t know 
that money would rattle until I was nearly grown. Father got hold 
of two half-dollars at the same time, and let us hear them rattle. 
Taxes were not higher, but harder to pay than now. 
“We owned two kerosene lamps, neither of which had a chimney. 
Our house wasn’t ceiled, but two of our rooms had lofts in them. 
We had a glass window in our ‘company’ room. Our nicest piece of 
furniture was a homemade rocking chair. Our beds were of the 
slat and tight rope variety. The ‘trundle bed’ took care of all the 
younguns under 5 years of age, and it stayed full all the time. 
“We went to school two or three months in the year, but not in 
a bus. We attended church once a month, but not in a car; we 
used a two-mule wagon. We dressed up on Sundays, but not in silks 
or satins. We neither wrote letters nor received any. We made our 
own lye hominy, distilled our own lye from our own ash-hopper. We 
drank sassafras tea and never had a yearning for coffee. 
“We sopped our own molasses; we ate our own meat; we con¬ 
sidered rice a delicacy for only the preachers to eat; we had heard 
of cheese, but never saw any; we knew of some store-bought clothes 
but never hoped to wear any; we got a stick of candy and three 
raisins for Christmas and were happy; we loved pa and ma and 
were never hungry, enjoyed getting naked, didn’t want much, ex¬ 
pected nothing. And that’s why our so-called hard times ain’t hard 
on me.” 
