MASTERPIECE #3189

/// To a Chop Suey joint the gals dash
on their lunch hour. They’re both short on cash.
They believe foreign foods
will improve their foul moods.
(They don’t know that it’s faux-Chinese hash.)

/// These two work friends are Millie and Maisie.
Both are silly, but Millie is crazy.
Hopes to keep her job dashed—
the stock market just crashed
and her boss called her stupid and lazy.

/// Maisie tried to cheer Millie, “Don’t cry!
Take a look at that pretty blue sky.”
From their office next door
out the seventeenth floor
window— whoosh… splat. (Their boss had dropped by.)

/// Their boss, frantic, went bankrupt today.
There were margin calls he couldn’t pay.
Might insurance provide?
Not for a suicide.
The Depression had hit U.S.A.

/// As the girls finished up their chop suey.
Maisie said, “Millie, this may be screwy,
but it’s time to be brash.
Let’s work here slinging hash.
If they hire us our spirits will buoy.”

/// The gals had first met in St. Louis
after dawn while the grass was still dewy.
Both were hired that day
(getting minimum pay)
‘til the “Crash” made most lives go kerflooey.

/// It was tragic, the girls’ situation.
Witnessed death and had no preparation.
For, without explanation
they heard noise, felt vibration.
Their boss died of self-defenestration.

/// So, what happened to Maisie and Millie?
Saved their earnings and then moved to Philly.
The Chop Suey fad waned
but they never complained.
Cooked and sold secret-recipe chili.

/// As the thirties went by they survived.
When the war came their business revived.
They’d both married G.I.s,
(two ambitious good guys).
Happy ending— the two families thrived.