Doc McGillicuddy ordered me not to write my column this week because I am just getting over a bout of the pleurisy, and I need my bed-rest. McGillicuddy suggested I consent to what he called a “re-run,” or a printing of a previously published column.
Every tendril of my body is dead-set against such a practice. But since I am given no choice, I must relent. I had my man-servant Standish sift through dozens of bound volumes of past Onion issues for a worthy re-run. The following column, which represents the culmination of that search, was recently published in 1932:
I hear that our great Republic is in the throes of what is being called the Great Depression. Evidently, there is great unemployment and hard times for many because of a Wall Street stock crash of several years ago. I myself have not experienced any financial troubles: I’m still as fat as a Christmas goose, because I keep all my money wrapped in an old union-suit inside a secret cubby-hole behind a false panel in my armoire.
I am sure a lot of you need some cheering up, lowly and destitute as you now are. Many of you already waste your time at the picture-house watching the anthropomorphic movable drawings anyway. As luck would have it, I recently came across an old volume of humorous jokes, stories and pictures in my study, and I spent the better part of an evening sipping brandy and chortling over this light-hearted tome. I will share one of the witty exchanges with you.
Wife: What is that you are taking?
Husband: Quinine and whiskey for my cold.
Wife: Do you take the whiskey to hide the quinine?
Husband: Yes, that’s just it.
Wife: But you always say you dislike the taste of whiskey.
Husband: So I do. I take the quinine to disguise the taste of the whiskey—don’t you see?
Is that not the most side-splitting thing you have ever read? I would also include an absolutely hysterical exchange between two Esquimaus, but I am out of space.
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
