But that ain't the beginning.
I suppose I'm partly responsible because it started when I was over for dinner one night. I had been working in the garden and doing odd jobs around the house that afternoon and I finagled it so I was invited for supper. Marge Shannon made chili that I just couldn't stay away from. Thick with beans and meat and easy on the spices so it wouldn't burn an old man's stomach.
Joe and I had just gone into the living room—Marge stayed in the kitchen to do the dishes—and I was feeling stuffed and kinda sleepy. All of a sudden Joe says out of a clear blue sky: "Harry, this is a hell of a world we live in, isn't it?"
Now Joe had never struck me as being the unhappy type. He loved his work, he loved his wife (and just about in that order), and so far as I knew he didn't owe any money. So I tried to feel him out, to find out where the rub was.
"There's nothing wrong with the world, Joe," I says. "It's just the people in it."
He started methodically filling his pipe and tamping down the tobacco and not saying a word and I get the feeling that he's deadly serious about something.
"You're right," he says quietly. "It isn't the world, it's the people."
I sit there feeling puzzled but a lot less sleepy and finally I ask: "Anything wrong, Joe?"
He lights his pipe and settles back in the big, overstuffed easy chair with the flowered slip-cover that Marge made, still frowning. "It's an unhappy world," he repeats.