Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, June l6, l92l

My new false teeth are now in place, and they fill out the sunken face that lately I have worn; as substitutes they're a success, and yet I wearily confess that man was made to mourn. There is no perfect bliss below; behind each joy there is a woe, behind each smile a tear; my teeth are always lost, by jing, and I will have to get a string and tie them to my ear. I take them from their dread abode while I compose a stirring ode, to gain the poet's wrath; and then the dinner horn is blown, and I exclaim, with throbbing moan, "Where are those dad-blamed teeth?" An absent-minded gent, I am; I can't remember worth a yam and things I should recall; always losing fountain pens, and pins and pups and setting hens, my watch and tennis ball. But somehow I could plug away when all these things were gone astray, and many more beside; I'd get me other pins and pups and fountain pens and mustache cups, and let the lost ones slide. But I put up some fierce harangues when I have lost my priceless fangs, all shiny, white and new; until they're found I cannot eat the large luscious joint of meat, or anything but stew. Alas, there is no perfect bliss in such a tinhorn world as this, on such a misfit sphere; my ding-donged teeth are lost again and when they're found I'll get a chain and chain them to my ear.

--Walt Mason.

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
June 3, 2002