Meanwhile Down On The Farm ...
Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 12:25 pm
Was looking thru a pile of vintage comics this morning & decided to read one, something I haven’t done since I was a kid. It’s “Walt Disney Comics” (Donald Duck) and was published sixty five years ago in 1951.
I can still remember when I was very young sitting on Lola’s lap after supper while she read a comic to me. Whatever message or moral lesson might have been interwoven into the adventures of Uncle Donald, Huey, Louie, Dewey or Scrooge McDuck, was totally lost on me at the time. It was to me simply an entertaining story, nothing more or less.
In the story I read today, Scrooge keeps his fortune in a three cubic acre corn crib on his farm. This because he figures that nobody is gonna be dumb enough to want to steal corn. His nephew Donald together with his three nephews are employed by Scrooge to hoe, rake, feed pigs, shear sheep, collect eggs and milk cows. Whilst the three boys are quite happy with their lot, Donald continually wishes he had $1 million so that he wouldn’t have to work anymore.
Then one day a cyclone hits the farm & Uncle Scrooge’s “vast fortune” is sucked up into the sky. Huey, Louie & Dewey give Uncle Scrooge the bad news but he’s quite unconcerned. As he says: “If I stay here & tend to my beans & pumpkins, I’ll get all my money back.”
Donald in the meantime has goofed off and gone fishing with Cousin Gladstone down at the river. Suddenly no less than $2 million in notes & coins fall from the sky next to them. They divide it up equally & Donald returns to the farm carrying his $1 million in his sailor cap.
Here he invites his nephews to join him on a trip around the world but they turn him down because they have to "take care of the farm." So Donald & cousin Gladstone set off alone by car but they soon discover that from “ocean to ocean” fortunes have dropped into people’s hands from the sky. They can’t buy gas or food or anything because “everyone has gone to see the world.” Everybody has $1 million so nobody has to work anymore.
So Donald returns to the farm & Scrooge gives him his job back with the proviso that if he wants breakfast, eggs are $1 million each. Soon as other people come to beg for jobs or to buy food, Scrooge charges $1 billion for hams, $2 million for cabbages, $3 million for a peck of corn & $4 million for an ounce of wool. Pretty soon Uncle Scrooge gets all his money back.
I’ll leave you to decide the moral of this story, bearing in mind of course that, although Uncle Scrooge McDuck is the richest “man in the world", he employs child labour, the adults on the farm are all related unmarried men and nobody wears pants!
I can still remember when I was very young sitting on Lola’s lap after supper while she read a comic to me. Whatever message or moral lesson might have been interwoven into the adventures of Uncle Donald, Huey, Louie, Dewey or Scrooge McDuck, was totally lost on me at the time. It was to me simply an entertaining story, nothing more or less.
In the story I read today, Scrooge keeps his fortune in a three cubic acre corn crib on his farm. This because he figures that nobody is gonna be dumb enough to want to steal corn. His nephew Donald together with his three nephews are employed by Scrooge to hoe, rake, feed pigs, shear sheep, collect eggs and milk cows. Whilst the three boys are quite happy with their lot, Donald continually wishes he had $1 million so that he wouldn’t have to work anymore.
Then one day a cyclone hits the farm & Uncle Scrooge’s “vast fortune” is sucked up into the sky. Huey, Louie & Dewey give Uncle Scrooge the bad news but he’s quite unconcerned. As he says: “If I stay here & tend to my beans & pumpkins, I’ll get all my money back.”
Donald in the meantime has goofed off and gone fishing with Cousin Gladstone down at the river. Suddenly no less than $2 million in notes & coins fall from the sky next to them. They divide it up equally & Donald returns to the farm carrying his $1 million in his sailor cap.
Here he invites his nephews to join him on a trip around the world but they turn him down because they have to "take care of the farm." So Donald & cousin Gladstone set off alone by car but they soon discover that from “ocean to ocean” fortunes have dropped into people’s hands from the sky. They can’t buy gas or food or anything because “everyone has gone to see the world.” Everybody has $1 million so nobody has to work anymore.
So Donald returns to the farm & Scrooge gives him his job back with the proviso that if he wants breakfast, eggs are $1 million each. Soon as other people come to beg for jobs or to buy food, Scrooge charges $1 billion for hams, $2 million for cabbages, $3 million for a peck of corn & $4 million for an ounce of wool. Pretty soon Uncle Scrooge gets all his money back.
I’ll leave you to decide the moral of this story, bearing in mind of course that, although Uncle Scrooge McDuck is the richest “man in the world", he employs child labour, the adults on the farm are all related unmarried men and nobody wears pants!