﻿T-BONE SLIM SAYS:

A South Street seaman flashed a 1923 picket card on the strike committee.
“Why, this is for the 1923 strike; how come?”
Seanman: “I never heard it was called off.”
Committee: “But this is a new strike.”
Seaman: “You better settle that other one first before you start any new ones.”
So I guess it is a chronic trouble. 
A strike in 1912. A strike in 1919. A strike in 1921. A strike in ‘25-’26. A strike in 1934. A strike in 1936-37.
Does that look like a passing indisposition?
Anyone who can read history at all must be able to see there will be another strike, for the shipowners will begin discrimination just as soon as this strike is ended. So it is up to us to consolidate our position even while this strike is flourishing, and just as soon as it is ended, we must begin to prepare for the next one.
Seamen are able and willing to strike at all times. But this time we got away to a bad start––it takes us so long to get warmed up to the subject.
This strike is not over, by a long shot and we may as well begin right now to warm up for the next one.
Read it over again: A strike in 1912, ‘19, ‘21, ‘23, 25-’26, ‘34, ‘36-’37––not a bad record but the mutton stew is not there yet.

“Somewhere in New York Harbor” snarls the bill of lading on a coal barge. New York Harbor is only 875 miles of waterfront, so it’s quite easy for the captain to predetermine the exact spot where he will land and arrange his social pursuits to match the adverse tides! (Although it is true some have taken up the study of astrology.)
“Stay on the boat, you bum,” snarls the office when he calls up. “Go back to the boat and stay there,” is another favorite expression f the office tribe.
Bargemen are on the war path and their swearing is the most wonderful spelling I’ve ever heard. They’ve already damned the nincompoops of the office front. Patronage and paltdonage is a dangerous business to engage in in this here and now enlightened age, and if I was a snarler-in-waiting to the Chief, I would demand a platoonage of police ascorts when I go home and eat my vegetable oysters.
(This isn’t a threat––it’s a red flag.)

Tuesday morning I felt exceptionally kind-hearted and sympathetic, so I went and bought me a cup of coffee.
Sitting there, sipping my coffee, I got to mulling over my many good deeds while I waiting for the world to straighten out, for it was terribly warped.
Of a sudden it occurred to me, all those glowing and glorious accomplishments rated another cup of coffee. (Here there was an interruption for gentleman pulls out his pay-envelope and the waitress almost broke a leg getting over to him to pick up the dishes.)
This over, sez I: “Slim, have another cup of coffee! You deserve it.”
“I will,” sez I,––and just as the waitress lifted up the ticket to give the second punch, sez I: “Young lady, punch it in the same hole.” And do you know, when I came out to look at my ticket, such was the sad case, it had only one hole.
There’s power in my words, and the waitress was little more than a child.

Despite the heavy bombing by Franco’s Freaks, the El Camino Real is still open to hitch hikers, and Baltimore Turnpike still raises the best balloon blisters.

All it takes to be a good boss is to toss the boys a tasteless good morning, and look as if you just ate one.
I suppose all them bad plays on Broadway is just farce of habit.