>Why your pater should have chosen the ides of March for his annual warning (if warning it were, indeed!) is not immediatewly apparent.
I wondered if anyone would get it. His entire warning was: "Eschew Communism. Beware the ideas of Marx."
He was known as one who would grasp any opportunity to make a pun. What follows is one of which he was quite proud:
My friend Sam has lived in many places, at many times. Once he lived in classical Rome, where he kept a journal that proved just how odd the Romans were. According to this journal, all things reproductive were cherished, but most especially a certain elderberry, which was reputed to be the dwelling place of the gods. It was illegal, on pain of death, to pick or eat an elderberry, and all of the plants were the property of the republic.
Sam was on one of his jaunts when he saw a really pretty elderberry bush, and it suddenly dawned on him he could make a great deal of money if he transplanted the bush to a place where it could serve as a focal point of a religion. Within a year or so he was fabulously wealthy. But he feared the religious police so he retired from the priesthood, married, and gave the plant to his wife as a wedding present.
Weeks later there came a knock at the door, where Sam was soon held at spearpoint by the phalanx of Roman soldiers who waited without. Blustering, Sam said, "Have you come to worship my wife's elderberry plant?"
"No," replied the centurion, "we are here to seize her berry, not to praise it."
