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Page 7 · column 4 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
Day by Coon
By CARL COON
Sam Cliffton and his bride Kathy had a good wedding reception at the Gottlieb’s place a few weeks ago. A bunch of mostly tow-headed kids were rattling around, making noise and getting underfoot, but that’s what we’ve come to expect at these occasions.
Young Ted Day, armed with his usual mischievous twinkle, had a silver-painted helmet on and was going around whacking his peers with a more or less imaginary sword. A nicely dressed lady whom I hadn’t seen before turned to me and asked, “Is he a knight?”
“No ma’am,” I replied, "He is a Day.” Well, that caused a bit of confusion, but we straightened it out, and talked about other things, so I guess I have to give Ted some credit as an icebreaker.
There always seem to be a lot of Walter Day’s grandchildren around these days. (It’s Walter’s column so he gets front billing, but in all fairness I should mention that Eileen Day shares responsibility for this population explosion).
Somehow that reminds me of a brief visit Jane and I made to Swaziland last February, mostly because it was on the way to another place we wanted to get to.
While there I immersed myself in an ultrabrief, you might say instant course in Swazi politics. It may be my informants exaggerated, or that I have an exaggerated recollection of what they told me, but anyway, I got the impression that in that little kingdom, which is really not more than a couple or so counties out our way, the King is literally the father of his people, or most of them.
He’ll have a hundred or more wives in the course of his kingship, and thousands of kids. They have a complicated system involving the merit principle for deciding which of the late King’s thousands of offspring will succeed him. Pretty democratic, given the demographics.
If Walter’s grandchildren continue to populate this county as rabbitly as he and his kids did, maybe we’ll come to something like that here. Or maybe I’m just spewing sour grapes; I only have 10 grandchildren; and only 40 percent of them live here.
By the way, I’m a firm believer in population control as at least half the answer to most of the problems on the planet.
80.6%