Unregistered Bull in a Hotel Lobby

Choice gleanings from 45-plus years of Unregistered Bull.

John was ready with a new communiqué to his congressman this week:

"Dear Duly Elected:

"I hope it won’t interfere with your poker game too much to read a little note from one of your cow country constituents. After all, it hurts me worse than it does you: I’m missing a chance to check the double six into some of the boys down at the domino hall while writing this, and I don’t have a highly polished secretary to do the writing like you have.

"The only reason I’m writing is on the long chance that before you go back to Washington to resume your back-breaking work of making up a quorum, you’ll try to do a little talking with the low-down, illiterate, demanding voters of this country. You’d be surprised at how smart some of them are.

"For instance, for the last two years, I’ve heard cowpunchers, filling station attendants, and even a few wet Mexicans commenting on how much scrap iron was being hauled from this country to Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. I don’t claim to know anything about this, but do you? Before the Japs jumped us at Pearl Harbor, it was the same way for several years — every highway leading to the Mexican border was full of trucks hauling scrap. Now, we’re being told once more to save scrap metal for defense. I know ordinary, unenlightened people like me who say they’ve seen this scrap metal going through a smelter just across the border and then loaded on flat cars headed further south.

"Where has all that metal been winding up? Is it possible that while you boys in Washington have been so busy shipping money to the rest of the world, somebody else has been shipping the metal we need so much?

"Now, I don’t expect a real answer to this question, any more than I expect an answer to the following, but I’ll ask it anyway:

"What is your idea about the way United States citizens are being manhandled by some other countries?

"If I remember right, there was a time when it was risky business for a foreign country to throw an American citizen in the jug without giving him a chance for legal defense. Now, it’s the common practice. Our so-called allies treat us fairly well as long as we keep sending plenty of money. Our enemies put our citizens in the calaboose and threaten to keep them there unless we fork over plenty of money.

"In plain United States, has our government lost its guts entirely? I don’t believe everything I hear, but I do hear that United Nations casualties in Korea, aside from the South Koreans themselves, total something like 109,000 and that 101,000 of these are American soldiers. Still, in the UN, we’re supposed to be just one of the boys and not say anything to hurt anybody’s feelings.

"Teddy Roosevelt said something about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. It looks to me like our diplomats can’t do anything but talk in circles and the only stick they seem to have is a toothpick. Of course, it’s not good manners to use that out in public.

"How would you like a polite diplomatic protest if you were in solitary confinement behind the Iron Curtain?

"What would you think of a suggestion that we start looking around for a stick — something on the order of a corner post — and then putting it in the hands of an American who didn’t talk so politely, but when he did the rest of the world would pay attention instead of snickering and asking for money?"—(S.F. 12/06/51)