The Bulletin’s Day Book

First it was a venomous Nazi who, under the clever guise of being a “Constant Reader of Slants on Sports,” took a vicious verbal poke at me. While I was still reeling from the effects of that underhanded blow, my own wife stepped in and crossed her right to the whiskers (which is sports jargon for a punch on the jaw).

Now, while still trying to shake the cobwebs from my brain after that wifely wallop, I am confidently expecting a sound spanking from my mother.

And for this old-fashioned laying-on-of-hands which I am sure will be administered, my spouse, or rather the vile Nazi Svengali of Berlin who has “Trilbied” her via remote control, is certainly to blame.

Here, for the sake of those readers who have been falling behind in their Day Book study, allow me to execute a bit of a flash-back. Trilby, as I shall call Mrs. H. W. until she gives evidence of having given Svengali of Berlin the slip, really started the whole mess.

One day she frowned in disapproval of one of my columns. It’s lousy, she said, unashamedly admitting that she was fed up on reading about Nazis and anti-Semitism. Her sneers goaded me into putting it up to the public in the form of a contest.

How do you want your Day Books in the future? I asked the public. Tell me in not less than 500 words, I coaxed. Nazi or non-Nazi? And to make it more interesting I offered an inducement.

The inducement was a ticket apiece to the writers of the ten best letters. The ticket would admit the bearer to the Empire of Zoo. And the best of the lot also would get an introduction to Oscar Ostrich, organizer and fuehrer of Zoodom’s anti-Semites.

Shortly after the first announcement of this contest came the so-called sports lover’s blast, which I revealed as being obviously intended to start a disastrous feud between two friendly columnists with a view to diverting the Jewish Daily Bulletin’s attention from the nefarious doings of the Nazis. Then came Trilby’s letter, which was reproduced yesterday with my own enlightening annotations and comments.

Now the reader is up to date.

In the letter, you may recall, Trilby seriously suggested attacking such famous Jewish dishes as gefilte fish, potato latkes, matzoth balls and other culinary delights of the Jewish table.

To me, of course, this suggestion was evidence enough of my contention that the Reich Svengali had gained evil control over my poor wife’s brain.

Now that explanation might be plausible enough to myself and to most of my readers. But it has just struck me that, to my mother’s practical mind, it will certainly be a complete washout, a fizzle and a flop.

And if Mrs. H. W. Sr. takes the attitude that Mrs. H. W. Jr.’s attack on gefilte fish, potato latkes and matzoth balls was instigated by envy of a mother-in-law’s cooking skill, rather than by an imaginary Svengali, how in heaven’s name will I be able to say her nay?

You see my mother makes perfectly swell gefilte fish. She makes the finest potato latkes in the world (and if she promises to make some for me Sunday I’ll break an important engagement once more to sample their browned succulence). And her matzoth balls make Passover a holiday to look forward to.

So you may understand what a terrible spot even the mere publication of that insidious Trilby letter has placed me in.

As a matter of cold fact, if my mother should send me a stinging letter making that very change of envy against her daughter-in-law, although I suffer a cleaved skull for it, I would be obliged to concede that there was an element of truth in the charge.

Diabolical concoctions, eh! Perhaps, Trilby, they’re diabolical because they’re so hard to make properly. Because they require such tender care, such loving patience in their preparation, such exhausting attention to detail, such care and such patience and such attention to detail as the modern young housewife can’t muster for her hard-working spouse. Eh, Trilby? Confess, now, isn’t that why you find these dishes so diabolical, as you call them?

I’ll wager that if gefilte fish, potato latkes and matzoth balls could be made with a can opener, you wouldn’t find them so tough on the digestion.

And as for getting indigestion from these delightful foods, you know very well I couldn’t honestly attack them on those grounds. You know darn well that I enjoy nothing more than a long, cool draught of bicarbonate of soda at 3 o’clock in the morning. So objecting to gefilte fish, potato latkes and matzoth balls on the slim pretext of indigestion would be a pretty rotten alibi for me. And I’d have to agree with my mother that it would be a pretty rotten alibi for you.

And now, Mrs. H. W., would you rather I went back to socking the Nazis?

H. W.