Yeah, Slag, Jerry's pretty good at spotting a cockamamie idea (and I have to admit that liberals—we liberals—are often pretty prolific at coming up with them—uh—but we're not the only one's, of course) and showing you why it won't work. I remember one occasion when the subject was a recent famine in or around India, and someone (not me) cited all the surplus grain that the U. S. had stored away at the time and said, "Why don't we ship all of that to India?" implying that the reason we didn't was some vast capitalistic conspiracy. Jerry took all of this in without saying much, but he pulled out a notebook and pen and made a few notes.

The following evening, he came into the Blue Moon ("And the usual crowd was there…."), and when he got his schooner of beer, he flipped open the same notebook. He'd done a little research and he'd crunched the numbers. He proceeded to inform us that the amount of surplus grain in the U. S. at the time was such that it would take all the merchant ships that the U. S. had some twenty years to ship all that grain to India, and it would be enough to feed the famine-stricken portion of India's population for about three days.

We certainly didn't disagree on everything, but we did tend to look at things quite differently. We were good friends, though, and I knew that if I ever got into a bind, I could pretty well count on him for help. And he, me.

Don Firth