Making money watching the news in 1968...

This week we bring you this classic G. George Ostrom column he selected from 1968...

Have you ever noticed how some dollars are harder to make than others?

Last Friday evening, Iris interrupted my watching of the Huntley Dinkley Brinkley Report to ask if I could spare $20 for some kind of “extra” expenses coming up on Saturday.

Rather than get engaged in a lengthy discussion I’d just wind up losin’ anyway, I got my wallet and handed over the only 20 I had (this caused me to miss what Humphrey is going to do about gold depletion).

In five minutes, she was back explaining that she needed some more ones to pay the paperboy. I explained that the only money left in my wallet was four ones, and she’d break me if I gave her those (this interruption caused me to miss what Reagan is going to do about registering guns).

In two minutes, Iris was back with a five dollar bill, which she gave me for my four ones (this caused me to miss what Rockefeller is going to do about birth control). Then she explained that I could pay her back the dollar I owed her as soon as I cashed a check (this caused me to miss what Nixon is going to do about Israel).

It was at this point that I told my wife to get lost, which she did, but she came back in three minutes and said, “I’ve decided you don’t have to pay back the dollar you owe me if it will cut you too short.” By the time I’d thanked her, the program was over and I yelled, “Just on account of your pesterin’ me I don’t know what was going on in the world.”

She said, “Don’t feel bad, honey. There aren’t very many men who can make a whole dollar just watching that silly news.”

This was the month when many of the boys over in the state hoosegow at Deer Lodge had apparently scheduled their vacations.

Some stole cars, some rode the rails and others hot-footed it over the hills. Don’t suppose it’s too good a feelin’ starting out on your vacation with the blood hounds on your track.

On of the first to end his vacation was 21-year-old Richard Cox. He somehow managed to get a bus ticket, but when his bus arrived in Kalispell at 1:45 in the morning, the bus driver couldn’t wake Cox up, so he called the police. Got to be some real irony in that one someplace. Perhaps those Intermountain Lines people can coin a new slogan, “Let them escape by bus and leave the catching to us.”