MR. AND MRS. JACOB ZOLSKY returned this
morning from their summer cottage in a nearby Wisconsin resort.
While they did not have much to unpack,
nevertheless they were busy putting wearing apparel and other items away in the
right places.
“I must say,” Mrs. Zolsky addressed her
husband in a satisfied tone, “that you put it over in a nice way. This was the
first year that I realized what it means to have a rest.”
Her husband grinned:
“Well, something had to be done to keep the
mob away from our cottage.”
“You did it in such a way that one in a
million would not have thought about it, and it worked.”
The story behind their conversation is
this.
The Zolskys are popular in the neighborhood
where they reside. They are known for their kindness and for their cooperation
with all those who need help.
While they appreciated such recognition and
popu-larity when in town, they paid the penalty while summer-ing in their
country cottage.
Most of the week, Jacob Zolsky stayed in
town attending to his business, but he never failed to join his wife and their
three children for weekends.
But alas, instead of having a rest and
enjoying a few days with his family, he had to assume the responsibility of
helping his wife take care of the uninvited guests who “dropped in.” The
funniest thing was that most of them managed to “drop in” at the lunch hour or
at supper time.
True, Mrs. Zolsky tried her best to hire
help. But because of the labor shortage, she and her husband had to do all the
serving themselves.
Time and again, Mrs. Zolsky expressed her disappointment
to her husband.
“If some of the women would pitch in and
help a little, it would not be so hard. But they fall upon us like locusts, and
what can you do?”
Of course, they had to tolerate their
relatives and did not mind showing hospitality to some of their customers, but
they could not understand why they had to be troubled by the butcher from whom
they bought meat or by the cobbler who repaired their shoes!
Even those who were not invited to eat
naturally had to be treated with a glass of orange juice. This, too, required
work, particularly when the oranges these days have such thick skins and so
very little juice.
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