You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
(Matthew 16: 3)
Church notices and a lewd lingerie advertisement juxtaposed in a small-town newspaper from Texas, 1947.* This was a tocsin of changes that came fast and hard in post-war America. I wonder if anyone noticed that they were about to be taken to a strange new world. A book of bawdy humor published in far-away New York City four years earlier explained:
Unmentionables—Ladies’ underwear, most of which are no longer worn and the rest of which are mentioned everywhere.**
Even right next door to the “At The Churches” section!
*) Caldwell News and Burleson County Ledger (May 30, 1947), p. 10.
**) Evan Esar, Esar’s Comic Dictionary (New York: Harvest House, 1943), p. 293.