Letters To The Editor: “W”Ketchup To The Rescue

"Dear Editor, I enjoyed reading your article on the “W”Ketchup that is being hawked by the Republican Party as an alternative to Heinz ketchup. I first came across "W" ketchup in November of 2000 when my family took a vote on whether we should get some. The majority ofus voted against it and so you can imagine my surprise when,the following January,it appeared in our kitchen cabinet. "W" pretty much just sat in the cabinet doing nothing for the next nine months – we referred to it as being on permanent vacation – until a curious event happened that still has me stymied. That September, when I opened the kitchen cabinet door,a hornet flew out and without any warning - stung me; in fact it stung me twice. My mate,seeing me writhing in agony and looking for a weapon,picked up the bottle of"W" ketchup. I thought she was going to use the bottle to squash the marauding hornet but instead used it to squish one of those thousand-legged creepy-crawly things that were scurrying across the counter. In amazement I asked her why she killed the legger thing instead of the hornet to which she countered that the creepy-crawly thing was known to have poisonous barbs and thus posed a greater threat. In the confusion,the damned hornet got away and I went outside to make some mud for my wounds.I preserved that purported-to-be-poisonous bug but to this day have not found any signs ofany poisonous barbs. After that incident, we pretty much put the bottle of "W" ketchup back on the shelfand have never really had much use for it. However, we have decided that we will throw it out this November." -Mark E. Tatro

The whole Warwick Valley D!spatch newspaper (from the New York area) in PDF