Dear Dumb Dad

W. W. McClintock, maternal grandfather of frequent Pajamas Media contributor Charlie Martin, was born in the Choctaw Nation in about 1894.  After a short and notably unsuccessful career as an Indian Bad Man, and a consequent interval in Mexico, he served in the U.S. Navy, became an inventor, entrepreneur, part owner of the Southern San Luis Valley Railroad, and rancher in the San Luis Valley in Colorado. He died in 1958.

“Dear Dumb Dad”

By W. W. McClintock

Ca. 1935

My father, poor misguided gent,

Wasted his life — a life misspent

By working hard and working late

From 6 A.M. till way past eight.

Poor Dad! He’d fume and fret and toil

And burn the blooming midnight oil

For nothing but a little cash

To buy the daily beans and hash.

Poor Dad! He was so mild and meek

He’d work six days in every week

And 14 hours every day

To try to keep the wolf away.

Now father, meaning well, but dumb,

Amassed a rather tidy sum

With which he planned to buy some beers

To brighten his declining years.

Then the NEW DEAL came; simple Dad!

Who worked so hard for all he had

Awoke one morn to find that he

Was now a public enemy.

A louse, a Scrooge, a national cyst!

An economic royalist!

So Dad, industrious but dumb,

Is now the source from which will come

The coin to buy the gasoline

For some poor underdog’s machine.

To bring the more abundant life

To every loafer and his wife.

From Dad will be extracted sums

For radios to ease the hells

Of all the chronic ne’er-do-wells:

For booze, so labor’s little Nell

Can tell the boss to go to hell.

Poor Dad, a faithful, trustful goon,

Was born just 30 years to soon.

L’ENVOI

A moral lurks along the hall

In all this fancy fol-derol,

And it is this: That any cheat

Who says you ought to work to eat,

Is simply nuts, out of his head–

Sit on your tail or stay in bed,

The government will see, by gad,

That you get yours from chumps like Dad!