Life’s Like That

Some things – like awkward conversations about the birds and the bees – are as old as time itself, as this 62-year-old letter from May 1955 shows.

It was Saturday evening and I was waiting for a friend in front of a store on our local Main Street. Nearby stood a cowboy in boots and Stetson, beside him a small boy who was a junior-sized version of him. The child stared for a time into the shop window, which featured a display of brassieres, and then asked: “What are those, Daddy?”

The cowboy turned his head briefly to look, then drawled, “Well, son, they’re kinda like holsters.”