TODAY’S THOUGHT: Ah, Wintertime!

It’s winter in Pennsylvania

And the gentle breezes blow

(Seventy miles an hour,

At twenty-five below.)

Oh, how I love Pennsylvania

When the snow’s up to your butt

You take a breath of winter

And your nose gets frozen shut.

Yes, the weather here is wonderful

So I guess I’ll hang around

I could never leave the lovely State of Pennsylvania

I’m frozen to the friggin’ ground!

POST SCRIPT: We’d like to take credit for the poem but we didn’t
write it. We certainly can relate to the sentiments, though.

A FUN TIME: Remember when the comics pages were called “the
funny pages” or “funny papers”? We must admit, we do, and so does
Jim Bryner, a lifelong Bradfordian now retired and living in
Webster, N.Y., who has a question for our readers.

“A number of years ago, long before television, a major source
of entertainment were the ‘funny papers.’ Four of the popular
cartoons usually found on the back page were: Jiggs and Maggie,
Ella Cinders, Mutt and Jeff, and Barney Google.”

“A unique feature which I recall was Maggie and her rolling pin,
that she used to biff Jiggs over the head with when he didn’t
behave,” Jim reports. Can you recall other unique things? Let us
know.

JIM OWENS: Pat Franco drops us a line about Jim Owens: “I went
to school with him. He was a year older than I. Our bus from Lewis
Run got there first, and Gifford, Cyclone and Ormsby got there
shortly after. We would stand in the hall by a heater and tell
jokes and stories ’til school started.”

“We played ball in I believe the Babe Ruth League against each
other. Jim was a good pitcher, but he couldn’t beat Lewis Run. He
played for Cyclone. We won all our games the last year of that
season 17 in all. That league broke up or something, and the next
year he was pitching in the McKean-Elk League.

“We played football against each other. We had teams from
different places around. It was tackle with no equipment. Those
were tough games like in the pros.

“When he moved away, I never saw him again.”