REWRITING THE DICTIONARY - In searching through the many dictionaries we have in the Reporter editorial department, I was a bit disturbed when the words “screwee” and “screwor” were not listed. Perhaps those new words can be found in a book of slang. I went to the trouble of purchasing S. I. Hayakawa’s Modern Guide to Synonyms, but our-Republican senator failed to include these words in his book.
Before progressing too far with this article, my apologies go out to the readers who would interpret the two words in the connotation of another activity.
Actually, the entire nation is plagued by a screwee and screwor syndrome. Basically the root of all of our problems today can be attributed to a willingness of too many people to subscribe to the screwee-screwor untested theories.
My personal interpretation would suggest that a screwor is a person who has the advantage in an encounter with a screwee.
Our television screens are constantly suggesting ways and means of getting even with Uncle Sam by using one of several “shafting” procedures which you can subscribe to or which you can gain by visiting offices set up for this purpose.
Today “tax shelters” are acceptable parts of the way we live; we pay experts to help us circumvent the Internal Revenue Service; tax free bonds, at one time used wholly for non-profit organizations, have invaded the private sector, and it has become fashionable to go out into the money market and search for these tax dodging investments. Hell, the screwors are running the nation, outnumbering the military.
President Ronald Reagan, a professional conveyor of rhetoric, in only two months has already infested the minds of many millions of Americans. He is to the nation today what the famous Knute Rockne was to Notre Dame. It can be said that when E. F. Hutton talks everyone listens. When Ronnie Reagan gets before a microphone he mesmerizes his listeners, and it seems to be paying dividends.
The screwee and screwor division among our people has come about in recent years, all attributed to our monetary ambitions where everyone wants to be the richest body in the cemetery.
Now Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wants to rearm the United States, suggesting a multi-billion-dollar program so that the nation will be as strong as the Russians. According to defense department figures, Russia at present is the screwor and the United States trembles as the screwee. Weinberger wants to put the United States and Russia on even military potentials, giving both countries the title of screwor, but the question remains: “Who are they going to screw.”
Despite many inequities on the American scene today, only a minority few would want to go back to the days when screwors and screwees were considered few and far apart.
But it may be enlightening to go back a few years and compare family life and the radical transitions of the past half century. How many times recently have you been invited to a hog butchering festival at your neighbor’s ranch, where you pitched in and helped stab, scrub, cut the meat, melt the fat, and stuff the sausage casings - And when the day was done everyone sat down to a dinner, with the meat cut from a portion of that hog.
One of the more prominent gathering places in our Yesteryear was the ranch of the late Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Fadley. Not only present were the nine Fadley kids, but dozens of youngsters of both sexes from downtown or neighboring ranches would assemble to play basketball, baseball and other outdoor sports, then hang around and wait for the home-made ice cream to be dished out. That was the advent of the “open door” policy, and one which has vanished from the American scene today.
How would you have coped with bringing into our population 16 children as was accomplished by Mr. and Mrs. Alasio Rositano. Twelve of these children, and the mother, are living today. This horde of Vacaville natives lived under one roof, worked in the fruit industry here as one unit. Just imagine under today’s life-styles the impossible task of raising a family of children in that number.
Throughoutall his years my father cherished his talents as a brick mason, and in the Vacaville area today can be found outdoor bread ovens, water tanks and other construction accomplished by him and others with similar talents.
Those outdoor bread ovens were unique, and would be highly acceptable today because of our energy shortage. Built in the shape of an elevated igloo, the oven space was large enough to hold at least 20 large loaves of bread.
The ovens were fired with trimmings from fruit trees, with the fire allowed to burn long enough to heat the brick interior and floor. Then the ashes were swept from the “igloo,” and the pans with bread shoved in on a wood paddle; the oven door was sealed, and as the hot bricks gradually cooled, the bread slowly cooked to the proper texture.
When it was time to open the oven door and take out the loaves of bread, everyone for miles around knew when neighbors were doing their baking.
At the pace we are moving today there is no time for some of the accepted pleasures in our past.
But my problem at the moment is to find the synonyms for screwee and screwor. I think a note to Senator Hayakawa may give me the answers.
Link: http://articles.solanohistory.net/7093/ | Solano History Database Record
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Vacaville Heritage Council