Evening Star Newspaper, May 26, 1929, Page 111

'The Picnic:Season for STAR, WASHINGTON. anting Out of House PG, MAW 26 1929 AR 7” and Home Omar Had the Right Idea When He Limited His Picnic Iimpedimenta to a Book, a Jug and a Loaf of Bread. BY WEARE HOLBROOKX. ODAY I saw a litlle green caterpillar. That means that the picnic season is open, for it was a species of caterpillar that is indigenous only to potato salad. Soon the countryside will be scething with tired excursionists intent upon devouring their groceries al fresco. According to the Holiday Throng estimator, these earnest people who erouch upon the ground while eating are called “pleasure seekers,” as distinguished from the “pleasure finders” who sit on chairs and eat their meals at the table. They are exer- cising one of these “certain ¢but not as certain 2s fhey used to be) unalienable rights”’ men- iione@ in the Declaraiion of Independence— namdly, the pursuit of happiness. Of all forms of happiness the perfect picnic is th> most elusive. Like the Delaware peach crop, it is affected by many eléments which are beyond mortal control. Temperature, topog- raphy and transportation must be just right; the tastes and tempers of the entire party must be in accord, and some one must remember to bring the ginger ale opener. There are misanthropes who assert that the only good picnic is a postponezd picnic. That statement is merely a generalizaticn, like one of epigrams beginning, “All women may be ided jinto two classes,” which are so populpr witlh people who enjoy putiing on the tism, ; Of course, as every one Kknows, you m%-dvhb all women into two classes. They keep changing their seats. And by the same token there must be occasional picnics at w! & fedsbnably jolly time is had by all. h I have never participated in any- of them; I have often heard them spoken of, and I believe in them just as I believe in royal flushes and holes-in-one and men who break the bank at Monte Carlo. They are bound to happen every so often—at least until Congress reepals the law of averages. ‘The word “picnic” is derived from the French words “pique” (meaning ‘‘quarreling, bickering”) and “nique” (meaning “nothing else but”). Ac- ones were perpetrated with malice afore- thought. % l'roeumedatAvknon.wthemu - Gaspard, le Duc de Veau d'Eau-Deau, in the year 1329—just 600 years ago, mes enfants, Think of it: 600 years of picnics and science has not even devised a practical method of getting olives out of a bottle without anointing the elbows. It was a sunny afte®.oon in May. Gaspard and his brother, Gasjet, were dining in the kitchen of the chateau—a smoky, low-ceilinged with an open fireplace at onc end and a SR . A spark from the fireplace ited the straw on the floor and the flames were spreading rapidly. “Il fait tres chaud aujourd’hui,” said Gasjet. (Old French idiom meaning “the house is on fire.”) Gaspard stopped eating. “Ou est le paraplule de mon oncle?” ' (“Are you sure about that?”) “Oul.” (“Yes.”) <“Je .desirc acheter des cartes postales.” (**Then let’s get out of here.” i EL: i SEIZ!NG the mutton and the bread, Gdspard dashed out of the burning building, while his brother followed with the flagon of wine. The chateau was soon reduced to a heap of blackened embers. Gaspard and his brother, feeling that nothing could be done about it, sat down on the ground and resumed their inter- rupted meal. The townspeople stared at them curiously, and not without envy. How pleasant it must be, they thought, to dine beneath the open sky, away from the smoke of fireplaces and the odor of greasy pots! How carefree Gaspard and Gasjet seemed as they reclined on the cool green grass and flung their crusts to the mag- pies! That, obviously, was the life. And immediately thereafter an epidemic of fires broke out. Whenever any cne wanted to have a picnic he set fire to his house: it was the only excuse he could think of. Soon almost half of the dwellings in town had been con- sumed by flames. It was several years before the good people of Avignon realized that arson need not be the inevitable prelude to an out-of-doors meal. By this time the picnicking habit had fastened it- self firmly as & whole, and it had many devotees beyond the boundaries of France. At the end of the fifteenth century, through- out the entire Continent, people were to be seen eating in the most unlikely places and attitudes. Even in those days insects were the bane of the pienicker’'s existence. In Germany, for in- stance, flies kept falling into the beer and cater- pillars into the sauerkraut. The Emperor Fred- erick finally issued an order that all steins must be equipped with lids. But the plague of cater- pHlars continued unabated until 1521, when Martin Luther uttered his famous protest against’ the diet of worms. This made a deep impression upon theé German people; from that time on they ate only at home and in restaurants, opera houses, theaters, museums, gymnasiums, stores, offices and art galleries, - TRENUOUS efforts werc made to suppress picnicking in England curing the reign of Henry the Eighth. The innkeepers and pastry “Omar had the right idea.” cooks of London united in an attempt to dis- courage it by making their food too heavy to carry comfortably—a practice which has con- tinued even to the present day. Sir Evelyn Skulpit in his diary for February 8, 1552, re- ports having partaken of “a great Yorkshire puddynge which did weighe 13 stone in ye stockynge feete.” But the confirmed picnic addicts, or “slant- heads,” as they were called, continued to gather in the parks and meadows to eat their lunches, defying all British traditions of common sense and comfort. In 1603 the notorious “picnic riots” occurred at Whitechapel—an open clash between the Conservatives (who took along folding camp stools) and the Liberals (who sat testes as good as a thick, juicy steak broiled over an open fire. That thick, juicy steak is legendary—a sort of will-o’-the-wisp which lures men on, making them forget the discomforts of the moment. In the end it usually turns out to be a soggy paper dish full of lukewarm beans. All the staple commodities of a picniz dinner begin with the letter “B"—beans, bread, butter, bacon, bologna and bugs. One of the principal joys of eating in the open used to be the post-prandial flinging of garbage to the four winds. It was great fun to sail wooden plates into the empyrean, toss bot- tles into the shrubbery and saunter home with empty hands and a full stomach. But things are different now. There are more people and fewer pleasances. You can’t even chuck an eggshell over your shoulder without hitting a fellow picnicker. Bread cast upon the waters returns in the form of a stern reprimand from the park commissioner, and the excursion- ist comes home from his outing as lavishly en- cumbered as when he set out—more so, in fact, for tissue-paper wrappings, when crumpled, have a tendency to multiply themselves by three. Omar had the right idea when he limited his picnic impediments to a book, & jug and a loaf ’Protected Milk Supply of bread. But if he were rubaiya’ting today h> would sing: Two round-trip tickets underneath the bough, Six baskets and a thermos jug—and thou Beside me struggling for more elbow room— Oh, wilderness were paradise—and howl Swans Win Point. WHEN it comes to the question of the swan, the hunters of the country and the Biologi- cal Survey of the Department of Agricultufe’do not agree. 2 The hunter thinks that these beautiful and rare birds are endangering one of his favorite sports, duck hunting. The survey doesn’'t agree with him. 4 The hunter wants an open season when he can shoot these birds, and the survey counters with the statement that an open season on swans wculd be in violation of this couniry’s migratory bird agreement with Great Britain® Having settled the issue, the survey's chief, Paul G. Redington, goes on to show the hunter he is all wrong. The hunters claim that the swans, by their feeding habits, destroy the source of food supply for other water fowl, This, Mr. Redington says, is not true. The swan in his eating. leaves seed, parts of roots and tubers for the next year’s supply of water grains. If this were not true, he points out, swans would soon be forced to abandon their favorite wintering grounds to avoid starvation, The difficulty in distinguishing between trumpeter and whistling swans is given as sn- other reason for a completely closed season.on swans. The former have b2en near extinc~ tion for years and an open season would soon wipe them out entirely. And to settle the whole argument Mr. Red~ ington points out that the swan does not steal the food of other birds. Being a wild fowl-it« self, it is entitled to iis share of the available food supply and takes it. So it is up to the hunter to make up his mind to get along.with the swans, At Freak of Striking Clock. 'HE bell on the House of Parliament in Lon don may be heard for a distance of 4 miles, and within that radius there are points where it is possible to hear the clock strike 22 through the combined utilization of the wire« less and the sound waves. This is at 11 o’clock each day when the time signa from Daventry. There seconds between the of 4 miles, five or six strokes less, before the first of the sound waves and then five or six afterward, so that under these conditions it is possible to hear the bell, “Big Ben,” give off 22 strokes. THE District of Columbia is.particularly fortunate in having a Health Department which exercises the most careful super- vision over the farms from which Washington receives its milk supply. This is a matter of the greatest importance to a coms munity and is a service in which we have always given whole- hearted co-operation and support. Ip_t this connection we have gone a step further than the actual requirements of the department—for years we have paid a bonus for higher quality milk and cream. Thus creating a real incentive for the producer to not only comply with the requirements, but to exceed them. This,in turn, has helped us to maintain our standard of The Highest Quality Dairy Products Selected as the World’s Model Dairy Plant and Rated 100% by the District of Columbia Health Department Phone Potomac 4000 for Service