In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
Today, most women are surrounded by ingenious gadgets. They don't grow the peas or raise the chicken that they serve for dinner; instead they hunt and gather in the grocery store. They go through catalogs or department stores to buy clothes instead of shearing sheep, carding wool, and weaving cloth for skirts and coats and blankets.
My father was a sheep shearer, so I grew up in a caravan; we'd go around from shearing shed to shearing shed. My mother always wanted us to be educated, so I went to a school.
Once, at Thanksgiving, a neighbor wandered in while my cousin Lisa worked on a turkey, shearing meat off its frame and sliding the steaming slices onto a big flowered plate. 'Hey, that's the man's job,' she yelped, in between slurps of her Big Gulp. No one even paused to acknowledge the comment; everyone just laughed and laughed.
Willy Wonka: [while passing a room where Oompa Loompa's are shearing pink wool from sheep] I'd rather not talk about this one.
Willy Wonka: [while passing a room where Oompa Loompa's are shearing pink hair from sheep] I'd rather not talk about this one...
