“I see by the papers that the divorce rate in North Carolina has doubled in six years,” said the Bank Clerk to his friend the Soda Jerker. “With 22,191 marriages in the Old North State last year, 1,317 couples broke over the traces and parted company for keeps. What do you suppose causes so many folks to be so dissatisfied with marriage life these days?”
“It aint just a matter of being dissatisfied with married life,” said the Soda Jerker, who is a wise yung guy and knows a lot about human nature because he caters all day long to human weaknesses. “Folks are dissatisfied with everything. The more you know and the more you see, the more you want. Folks didn‘t used to see so much or know so much and they were happy with almost any old thing.
“But times have changed. When Ma and Pa were married honeymoons hadn’t been invented. Pa went right on about his work pulling a bell cord over a pestle-tail on the farm and Ma went right into the kitchen to show him what a good housekeeper keeper he had married. I’a stuck to the pestle-tail and Ma to the cook stove and the wash tub, and if there was anything else in this world they wanted except each other, they ever saw it or knew anything about it.
“But it’s different now. Women have been sticking out for the rights and taking more time off ?? They don’t stick to the kitchen like they used to. Here in town there are more of them that doll up and come down town to get their Coca Cola every morning before they make their beds up. Then they put on a new frock in the afternoon and come down and get an ice cream soda. Some of ‘em don’t stop at one, but make the rounds of every drug store n town, getting something sweet at every one of ‘em.
“They get acquainted with all the fellows in town and meet a lot of the traveling men that come along. And all the time this sweet stuff they are taking on heats their blood up and gets ‘em in notion for an automobile ride to cool off. In meantime they’ve been doping on a lot of love stuff at the Movies that is so different from the brand they get at home, that they get fidgety with some notion that they aint getting’ all the fun out of life they ought to have. One thing leads to another. Young wives get home for supper and look for flaws in their husbands. Husband has been ogling all the other women on the streets and begins to pick flaws with his Jane. And so it goes.
“I’m not surprised at the divorce rate doubling; I had a notion it was even worse than that.”
“It’s worse in some places than in others,” said the Bank Clerk. “For instance, there are more divorces in Buncombe county than in any other county in the State.”
“Too much bunkum before marriage and not enough bunkum afterwards, has a whole lot to do with it too,” reflected the Soda Jerker, as he rinsed a glass by dipping it in a sink of dirty water and giving it a ??
From the first page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Sept. 14, 1923
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