This is another early Jim comic. Pre-World War 1, there were a series of gentle, non-political comics like this starring an ordinary city family.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 10, 1941.
“Uncle Abe has invited me down…” began Jimmie Frise.
“I thought it was understood,” I cut him short, “that as far as your Uncle Abe is concerned, you and I are no longer partners. Every time I’ve visited your genial Uncle Abe it has turned out a lot of hard work.”
“It’s about his will,” explained Jimmie. “He wants to make some changes in his will, and I’ve always sat in with him…”
“Will my neck,” I assured him. “One time he had the lumbago and we ended up plowing. Another time he invited you down to get some maple syrup and we ended up mending his tractor.”
“No, it’s his will, all right,” said Jim. “He changes it about every two years. He’s been kind of poorly this winter and I have been expecting him to send for me. He likes to keep his will up to date.”
“Okay,” I said. “You go down if you like. But I swore I would never go back after that last time when we landed right into the barley threshing and I had the job on top of the straw stack.”
“It’s a swell time of year to visit a farm,” pleaded Jimmie. “There won’t be any work. All the plowing’s done and the seeding. It’s really his will, I feel sure. While I’m sitting in with him re-writing his will, you can wander over the farm looking at bird nests and helping Rusty stalk ground-hogs.”
“No, Jim,” I said finally. “You go yourself. A will is too intimate a document for a lot of strangers to be hanging around. Anyway, what the dickens has your Uncle Abe got to leave in a will?”
“Well, he’s got the equity in the farm,” said Jim, “and all the stock and implements. And his house and furniture.”
“Won’t he leave all that to his wife?” I demanded.
“Yes,” explained Jim, “but he’s scared to death he and Aunt Emma will be killed at the same time in a motor accident or something, and he has a hunch his relatives will get everything.”
“You, for instance?” I inquired.
“No, no,” said Jim. “There are a lot of relatives and he wants his will so fixed that certain of them…”
“Aaaaah,” I smiled. “So you’ve got your eye…”
“No,” protested Jim, “all he’s leaving me is an old walnut highboy, the most beautiful old thing you ever saw; and the farm bell.”
“Bell?” I queried.
“There’s a bell in a little cupola on top of the back shed,” said Jim, “that I have envied all my life. It is a regular farm bell. about the size of a church bell, with the sweetest tone. They used to ring it to call the hands in off the fields for dinner. But there haven’t been any hands to call now for thirty years and the bell is never rung.”
“What would you do with it?” I asked.
“Put it on my summer cottage,” said Jim, “to call the children in for meals.”
When the World is Young
“I wonder if any of the other farms in the neighborhood might have a bell they’d sell,” I said. “That’s not a bad idea to have a bell at the summer cottage to call the kids home.”
“There might be,” said Jim. “In fact, there’s sure to be. You come down with me. and while I’m closeted with Uncle Abe, you can roam around the neighborhood. In fact. Uncle Abe is sure to know if any of the neighbors have bells. You could probably buy one for $51.”
“Besides,” I admitted, “there is a rose- breasted grosbeak nesting in that woodlot on the hill back of Uncle Abe’s farm. The male bird will be singing like an angel at this season of the year.”
“I’m glad you’ll come,” said Jim. “There’s no time of the year so lovely on a farm.”
It is less than 100 miles, to Uncle Abe’s, and you can get there in two hours by main highways. But main highways are no way to travel in May. Highways are for traffic. And by traffic I mean something mean and greedy. The highways are filled with trucks rushing merchandise at the fastest rate possible in order to get to its destination before somebody else’s merchandise gets there. Highways are filled with salesmen racing at breakneck speed to beat all other salesmen to a dollar. Highways are really low-ways. From highways, people without greed in their souls should keep away. There is always a much nicer way of getting any place in the world than by the highways.
Especially in May, when all the world is like a girl of 17 or a boy of 21. So Jimmie and I went the round-about way to Uncle Abe’s, and we did it in three hours instead of the highway’s boasted two; but the extra hour bought us far more than an hour’s worth of pleasure. For we saw miles of countryside filled with farms where people live in quiet happiness though the world goes mad. And we saw villages and a couple of towns with a back-road quiet and content in them that was like a physical balm to the minds and hearts of us war-rasped denizens of cities.
“These people,” I declared to Jim as we drove through the villages and towns and farm lands, “are collecting the dividends of the investment their pioneer fathers made of themselves and their lives in a new world.”
“Canada doesn’t realize how lucky she is,” agreed Jim.
“The people who first cleared these fields,” I persisted, “and first built these little villages did not come away from the Old World because they saw an easy life ahead of them. They saw a hard life. The men and the women who took the awful chance of leaving their families and friends and homes and all the familiar world to venture across menacing oceans to come to a savage and wilderness land must have had a lot of courage.”
“Or a great discontent,” added Jim.
“Well, these people living here,” I submitted, “are the heirs of that courage and that discontent. I wonder if they realize what a great legacy has been handed down to them by their all-but-forgotten forebears.”
“If it hadn’t been for those venturers,” admitted Jim, “all these people would have been back in the Old World right now.”
“Every one of them,” I agreed.
Uncle Abe is “Poorly”
“Do you figure there is much courage or much discontent left in these people?” inquired Jim.
“Well, look at your Uncle Abe,” I cried. “An elderly gentleman troubled with lumbago the minute the plowing or the harvesting comes along…”
“Now you go easy on Uncle Abe,” warned Jimmie. “He’s never had much money. He never went to school past his entrance. He was born and lived his entire life on the farm. When he was young, Ontario farmers were our well-to-do class. There was no better or more profitable life in the province than farming. But Uncle Abe has lived his life through a period of change and revolution in which the whole trend went against the farmer. All the power of modern science and invention went to the benefit of the cities. Every new improvement in the art of living went to the cities. All the comforts and conveniences of civilization went to the industrial communities. The city mechanic, even the common laborer, lived a more comfortable and a more interesting and attractive life than the farmer. The control of prices and the development of marketing by transporting farm produce, meat, vegetables, fruit, milk and everything else from one part of the country to another has gradually pushed the farmer against the wall. Uncle Abe has lived through that great period of decline. Now, to make a living at all, he has to work harder than any laborer in a city. And he has no union to protect him.”
“Why don’t the farmers form a union?” I wondered.
“Some day they will,” assured Jim. “When things really get bad, the farmers will form a plain, ordinary trade union on the lines of industrial unions.”
“Why haven’t they done it already?” I insisted.
“Politics has always scuttled them so far,” explained Jim. “But, like the industrial workers, the farmers will one day realize that their politics are of secondary importance to their rights.”
So when we drove down Uncle Abe’s lane and up to the side of the house and found Uncle Abe in a rocking chair on the side porch, in the sun, I looked upon him with a warmer and friendlier eye than I expected of myself after past collisions with him.
“I’ve been poorly all winter,” he answered our first inquiries. “I don’t think I am long for this world.”
The old boy looked the picture of ruddy health and he was fatter and more genial-looking than ever.
We protested his fears and told him how well he looked. But when Aunt Emma brought chairs and we all sat down on the porch, Uncle Abe went into a detailed account of how poorly he had been all winter, and like a seed catalogue, he went alphabetically over his symptoms. It was obvious from the way he itemized everything that he had had plenty of practice at the job of recounting his poorly condition.
So at last I brought the matter to a head. “I understand you have some private business to talk over with Jim,” I said, rising, “so I’ll just go and prowl around…”
Aunt Emma took me down to the barn to see the new calves and the two colts. We also saw a new litter of pups that Trix, the farm collie, had borne. Then we heard Uncle Abe calling and we met him and Jimmie coming down to the barn.
“Uncle Abe was just going to show me the sheep,” explained Jim. “They’re ready for shearing.”
I walked around to the far side of Jim and gave him a sharp nudge. I pulled his coat. But he ignored me.
“One of the best sheep shearers in this country,” Uncle Abe was saying, “used to do mine. But this war has upset everything. He was a Scotchman. He went to war.”
Aunt Emma left us and said she had to go and get lunch.
“I only have 17 sheep,” said Uncle Abe, who was walking slowly with his back bent at the kidneys, one hand back holding himself there. “That Scotchman would have done the lot in an hour. You never saw the like. He just grabbed them, rolled them over, run the shears into them and laid that blanket off so slick. You couldn’t believe your eyes.”
“I’ve helped shear sheep,” said Jim excitedly. “But I don’t think I ever handled the shears.”
“It’s no trick at all,” said Uncle Abe. “It’s a lot easier than skinning a fish.”
And he gave me a look out of the corner of his eyes.
“I suppose anything is easy if you know how,” I agreed. “How are you going to get them sheared? Probably one of your neighbors…”
“The last offer I had,” said Uncle Abe, stopping and having a twinge in his back which made him roll his eyes in agony, “was 50 cents a sheep. Perfectly absurd. Fifty cents a sheep2. Why, that Scotchman worked by the day. Two dollars a day. And when he had finished the sheep, he plowed the rest of the day.”
“The war has certainly put an end to those good old days,” I confessed.
“And the war,” contributed Jim, “has done a lot of good by bringing out unsuspected qualities in men. I bet I could shear a sheep if I really tried.”
“Oh, Jim,” cried Uncle Abe, “would you? What a good lad you are! Always coming to help your old uncle at the very minute I’m stuck with a problem.”
“It would be a pretty patchy job,” submitted Jim.
“My dear boy, I don’t care how patchy,” said Uncle Abe.
“Could you hold them while I shear?” inquired Jim.
“Oh, I’m afraid my back…” said Uncle Abe helplessly.
And the two of them had the effrontery to stop and look straight at me.
The sheep were the most unpleasant gathering of animals I ever saw. They were shaggy and clotted and matted and filthy. They were full of burrs. They smelled high3. The ram, who was in a pen back of the rest was the most yellow-eyed devil of a rank old ram I ever saw.
“Would I have to hold them?” I inquired. “By the neck?”
“You have to hug them,” explained Jim. “I grab them, then you reach under and grab the off leg and throw them on their back, Then you sit and hold the sheep sort of on top of you while I shear it…”
“Jim,” I interrupted, “if it is anything like skinning a fish, I will do the shearing. You do the hugging.”
So Uncle Abe went and got the shears and then had to leave us to go and sit in his rocker because the ache was coming on.
The fool sheep seemed to know that something was coming. The lambs bleated anxiously and the sheep emitted silly, flat squawls and the ram in the inner enclosure kept taking little short back-ups and sudden short runs with his head down.
Jim climbed into the pen and cautiously, with arms spread, drove the sheep this way and that until one old ewe, with a high-strung face and a turn-down mouth that seemed to be made for bleating, was cornered. Jim jumped and grabbed her by the thick wool of the back.
“Hold her head,” he gasped, “while I throw her.”
At a Disadvantage
I got a half Nelson around her neck. She kept continually going ahead and backing up and it was a struggle to hold her. Jim got down and reached under.
“Now,” he grunted, giving the sheep a roll and landing her on her back, himself sitting down violently and getting under so that he had her forelegs and shoulders in the air and her hind legs waving madly.
The other sheep stood back aghast and a lone lamb came and bleated hideously in my ear.
“Hang one leg across her hind legs,” gasped Jim, struggling, “and then start the shears right there.”
He stuck his finger in the wool up near her neck.
“Then snip along, laying it off in a wad, like a blanket,” he directed.
The first one was a mess. The wool came off in various sized wads. I was afraid of nipping the animal, which trembled and shook as I snipped with the grass cutters. Some places I had the wool off right to the pinkish skin of the beast. Then would come a patch where I left it an inch long. I saw several ticks sticking horribly in the skin, fat blue slugs.
“Ugh,” I said.
“Swell,” said Jimmie, heavily. “Now easy up around the neck here.”
But I left a kind of ruff around that one’s neck. The second one came off easier, and almost in one piece. The third one was hard to catch and two lambs came and bleated in my ear while I labored. The others in the pen kept up the helpless bleating as if we were murdering them, instead of doing them a great favor for the coming of summer.
Jim swears he did not see the ram coming. I heard various thuds and bumps back in the inner pen. But it seems the crying of his wives and children had given the ram new strength. He broke down or vaulted the inner pen. And just as he came through the outer bars, I started to rise from my kneeling position to get at a new cut on the sheep. And he had me at the famous, the historic disadvantage.
On the way home in the car, I rode in the back seat, lying down crossways, with my knees up.
“Was it five times he hit me, Jim?” I asked.
“No, it was only three,” said Jim, kindly.
“Well, for the fifth time,” I stated, “I am through with visiting your Uncle Abe.”
Editor’s Notes: The title comes from a proverb, ‘God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb’ (God is especially gentle towards those who are very vulnerable).
Uncle Abe and his farm are regulars in these stories.
By Gregory Clark, May 7, 1921.
For one day spent in the trenches, the infantry soldier spent at least two or perhaps six or ten days well and safely back of the trenches – depending on what part of the war he saw.
We are just beginning to get perspective on the war. And it is astonishing the number of queer beliefs and misapprehensions that are entertained as to the kind of life the youth of Canada led for four years.
One of the commonest pictures in the minds of the elder generation is of two endless, straggling trenches, filled with thousands and thousands of fiercely-firing Britishers and opposing Germans, with cannon in rear of the respective trenches belching furiously a la Sebastopol1 – a sort of insane, bloody, awful melee.
Stealth is the big, predominant idea to be borne in mind when visualizing the war.
Stealth.
A vast loneliness. A belt of country several miles wide in the broad day light, in which not a living thing moved.
A wide scene of wreckage; neglected meadows, smashed farm-houses. crushed villages, all still in the sunlight; all still and motionless and lonely.
For man was underground, in trenches, in cellars, in holes burrowed fifty feet down into the earth.
The cannon – little guns firing swift shells the size of a quart bottle, of and big, fat howitzers firing slow, droning shells as big as nail kegs2 – the bright cannon were painted grey, covered with rubbish, and desperately, secretly, hidden away.
All the horses, all the motor lorries, the engines, the teeming camps, the “dumps” of food and shells and supplies all the machinery of war was back beyond those two opposing horizons.
But between those two horizons lay absolute peace.
The sun beat down beautifully, or the grey rain fell drifting, on a wide land of silence; motionless.
To be sure, once in a while, a far thud would wake the silence, a swift or slow but unseen creature would come wailing through the air and land with a terrific explosion in a cloud of blackish smoke and dust, somewhere in the peaceful scene. You would think this astonishing event would have disturbed the uncanny desolation.
But nothing happened. The smoke drifted away. Nothing stirred. Nothing appeared.
Oftentimes, for an hour at a stretch, those unseen missiles would come wailing and rushing in dreary regularity, a couple of minutes apart, to strike insanely in and about one particular spot. These were shells coming from some unseen, remote cannon to seek out a battery of our own unseen guns.
Other times, the shells would wearily drop one after another along the course of a dirty rambling ditch – sometimes hitting, mostly missing – “searching” a trench position, they called it – all through the lonely afternoon.
Stealth lay all day between those two horizons.
For each stricken plot of ground absorbed all the sensations of the plunging, aimless shells. Whatever horrors were created by the vicious bursts, nothing showed. Men agonized in secret, and died by stealth.
At evening, the hidden guns came alive, began barking and coughing, the dusk became filled with faint flashes and electric flickerings, and shells began to rush singly and in fearful flocks, to burst on trenches, on gun positions, on roads.
For at dusk all that stealthy world awoke. Over those ominous horizons came strings of wagons hastening in the first dark with food, ammunition, supplies for the thousands of men who lived in this eerie belt; came strings of wary-stepping soldiers to relieve some of those who had been living a week or more in it; came new guns: came muffled working parties to dig, to build, to improve that uderground world of the land of stealth.
All night men and horses came and went over the hidden horizons. All night men prowled – in the narrow strip between the two fierce front trenches: or repeating their ditches: carrying, distributing food, letters, water, bombs, shovels.
A regiment would come over the horizon in the night and “relieve” a tired regiment, take over its trenches, its tunnels, holes in the ground, its hidden “posts” out in the narrow plane called No Man’s Land. And the tired regiment would rack up and straggle in the darkness back over the horizon.
While all the long night the guns would flash and bark and cough heavily, the shells trying to seek out these furtive parties in the night far and near.
Then softly would come dawn, and silence.
A few guns would fire parting, bravado shots through the pearly mists. A belated wagon, a delayed platoon or working party, would scurry back over the horizon.
Then day – and silence, and stealth!
The weary troops greeted the sun; then sought out their burrows to sleep. Where the night had fostered a feverish activity, the sun found silence, with a few shying aeroplanes peeping and prying.
Of course, occasionally there was battle. The night or the dawn or the day would go mad with raving guns, and the curtain of mystery was torn aside in flame and smoke, while the thousands surged up out of hiding, and floundered in the open a little way; to disappear again, after a few days or a few weeks of wild confusion and abandon: when the sun would once more shine down on a desolation like unto Balclutha’s3.
But here is the point: the infantryman did not remain long in this unearthly country between the haunted horizons. He would do six or twelve or sometimes twenty days in it. He would return again to the same part of it a few times. But ever so often, he went weary and anxious in the night back over that horizon, to find himself at daylight in a camp of tents or huts. And ever so often, he would move still further back to a village, where there was baseball, little shops, drill, and taverns.
And then once in a longer while; he would go back twenty miles to a village or town, for two or three weeks, where there were civilians, girls, women, human beings, homes, hearths; just to remind him that all mankind was not in uniform, ordered about like galley-slaves, living like rats by night and hiding by day.
The war was stealthy, not at all like old valiant wars.
But the average soldier, counting up his days, finds he spent a minority of them in the blasted, forlorn country between the two horizons.
Editor’s Notes:
- This is reference to Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War of the 19th century. ↩︎
- Nail kegs were just barrels that nails came in. ↩︎
- Balclutha derives from the Gaelic Baile Chluaidh (“City on the Clyde”, a poetic name for Dumbarton). ↩︎
In Toronto in 1917, the Y.M.C.A. opened a recreational club specifically for First World War soldiers: The Red Triangle Club.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 2, 1936.
“A ha,” cried Jimmie Frise, “new neighbors.”
He pointed up street, where a massive van was just backing before a vacant house.
“That house,” I commented, “hasn’t been vacant very long. I wonder what they’ll be like?”
“Probably,” said Jim, “they’ll have a large and vicious dog that will take six months to decide who he can lick along this block.”
“Probably they’ll have about six sniffly kids,” I said, “all prone to whooping cough and mumps. We’ve been pretty lucky in this block for some years. I guess this is the end.”
“On the other hand,” said Jim, “it might be a rich widow. Or maybe an elderly childless couple.”
“At that,” I submitted, “it might be some fellow we’d grow very fond of around here. Maybe the kind of man who would raise choice roses and always want to be giving rose bushes to his neighbors.”
“By jove,” said Jim, “he might be the kind of fellow who keeps a lawn roller and one of those lawn-edging machines with a wheel on it.”
“I’d rather be optimistic about them, whoever they are,” I agreed. “Because a neighborhood needs new neighbors every now and then. A neighborhood kind of gets tired of itself, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes the most sensational things,” mused Jim, “happen as the result of a stranger moving into a community. The most incredible things. Lovers may change. Death may move in with that new neighbor.”
“Brrr, Jim,” I said.
“In this new family,” declaimed Jim, “may be a beautiful young girl who may be your future daughter-in-law. By such chances as this are romances born to our midst. On the other hand, who knows but this stranger may be a man of destiny, a man of ideas, who, as the months go by and he gets to know us all, may alter the lives of every one of us. Give us new and powerful ideas. Take us into partnership in some fabulous gold mine. It is just that way that fortune comes to us.”
“Jim,” I said, “let’s stroll up street and see what kind of furniture they’ve got. Get an idea of what they amount to.”
“Maybe this stranger,” said Jim, “is a villain. Maybe at this moment, while only the moving van stands there before a vacant door, maybe already tragedy and disaster have come to this street. Maybe he will be a robber of widows and orphans. Maybe he will run off with somebody’s wife.”
“Let’s go and take a casual look at their furniture,” I suggested anxiously. “If I don’t like the look of their stuff I’ll take darn good care not to let this bird chum up to me.”
Jim got slowly to his feet, so heavy were his ideas.
“The moving in of a new neighbor,” said Jim, “is a momentous occasion. Is it any wonder, on moving day, that all the curtains of the world are stirring as curious ladies stand within studying each item of the new arrival’s belongings?
“It’s no idle curiosity,” I said, restraining Jim with my hand, so that he would stroll more slowly.
New Neighbors’ Furniture
“I think it is the right of everybody,” declared Jim, “to express some interest in new neighbors. Not only in self-defence. But in order to offer a friendly and neighborly hand, if need be.”
The van men were already, with that modern speed and efficiency moving men have developed, laying articles off the huge van. They spread burlap out on the lawn, and as Jim and I slowly approached they set down an entire dining-room suite. It was of oak, massive and simple in design. It was decidedly impressive.
“I see no scuffs and footmarks on the legs of the chairs,” I said in a low voice to Jim; “from which I deduce that there are no young children in this family.”
As we walked past the van we glanced in.
“Mmm,” said Jim, “very nice, very nice.”
“Jim,” I said eagerly, “I think I am going to like our new neighbors. Did you notice the quality of that walnut bed? It was genuine colonial or I’m a Dutchman.”
We strolled up to the corner, paused a moment, and then started to stroll slowly back.
“Take it slow,” I warned. “There is no harm in two gentlemen walking up and down their own street.”
“See what’s coming,” hissed Jim. “A gun cabinet, isn’t it?”
It was a gun cabinet. In hand-rubbed walnut, a tall, commodious cabinet with plate glass front and racks covered with red baize inside to support guns.
“Jim, I’m going to call on this new neighbor,” I cried, “very soon and get a sketch of that gun cabinet. That’s what I’ve wanted for years.”
“Look” said Jim, as we drew nearer, “a real old walnut cupboard. Say, these new folks have taste.”
The moving men were delicately lifting the huge old-fashioned cupboard, tall and massive, plain as a pail, charming as only old things can be. Jim and I halted to admire it.
“Easy, boys,” grunted the boss moving man. “This is one of the pieces the dame was so excited about.”
They eased it to the pavement.
“I never saw a more beautiful walnut cupboard,” said Jim. “Not a curlicue, not an ornament or a scroll on it. Every line of it is beautiful. Boy, I wonder where that came from?”
The moving men hoisted it.
Jim and I continued, after a quick glance around at the articles on the lawn, to stroll past, while the men grunted and stumbled with short paces towards the house with the huge cupboard.
“Whoever they are,” said Jim, “they’re somebody.”
Down street a little way we turned about and strolled back. The men had the beautiful cupboard to the front door and were clustered at the door, darting anxiously this way and that, the way moving men do when they are stuck. Loud voices shouted brief orders. The figures moved briskly, taking fresh holds of the huge cupboard.
“Let’s give them a hand,” I suggested. So Jim and I hurried up the walk and stood to.
“Here, boys,” said Jim. “A couple of neighbors to the rescue.”
“Lift from the bottom,” called a breathless voice, “while I lower her over.”
We seized hold and lifted tenderly. It was lovely to lay hands on that satiny old wood. Its deep patina, its gloss, modest but like a layer of richness over the glorious old brown wood, was a balm to the eyes as we leaned down close to it, almost pressing our cheeks against it.
“Eeeeaaaasy,” said the voice. And in a moment, with four heavy steps forward, we had the lovely cupboard in the front hall of the vacant house.
“Thanks, gents,” said the boss, amiably. “I’m much obliged to you.”
“Just a neighborly act,” I said.
“Call us if you need us again,” assured Jim.
But we both had time to take a quick look around the empty house, noting the fine mantel and fireplace, the elegant though restrained decoration of the living-room.
Thus Jim and I walked pleasantly, back and forth in the bright afternoon, while the huge van continued to pour forth its treasures. There were walnut bookcases and decidedly custom-built bedroom suites. There was a perfectly magnificent chesterfield, with two matching easy chairs, upholstered in wine red. There were cases and cases of books and pictures, all carefully covered with burlap.
“I’d like to get a squint,” I said, “at those books. You can tell more of a man by the books he keeps than by anything else.”
“Unless it’s his pictures,” said Jim. “I’d like to see his pictures.”
At this moment the boss of the moving men came to the door of the house.
“Gents,” he called, “if you don’t mind?”
We hurried up the walk eagerly.
“That big chesterfield,” said the boss. “The dame wanted it up in the sunroom at the back of the first floor up. I wonder …”
“Certainly, certainly,” we assured heartily.
They had the chesterfield half-way up the stairs to the turn, and there they were stuck.
“I don’t see how it will go up,” said the boss, anxiously. “She said she measured it and it would go up easy. I wish that dame was here.”
“Patience does it,” said Jim. “It’s astonishing the things you can bend around a stairway.”
We all took hold and we wiggled it this way and that, lifted, turned, twisted, shoved.
“That dame,” sighed the boss moving man, heavily. “You might say all women are bad when it comes to moving. But this one is the worst I ever saw. And where is she?”
“You’d think people with stuff like this,” I said, as we all rested to have a cigarette on the stairway, “would be on hand to see it arrive.”
“Why,” cried the boss, angrily, “she said she would be here ahead of us. She drove away in her car ahead of us. Women like her give me a pain in the neck.”
“Maybe she had a flat tire,” I suggested.
“I wish she had,” said the boss. “For one thing, she spent about a month arranging this move. She’s been down to the warehouse at least six times in the past two weeks. She looked me and my boys over, as if we was candidates for the church or something. Our moral character. And did you ever, boys, hear anybody like her when we was loading this stuff?”
“Never, boss,” chorused his three helpers.
“And now, when we’re stuck, where is she?” demanded the boss.
Keeping Their Tempers
“It’ll go up,” I assured them.
And we took a new grip on the chesterfield and hoisted. And turned over. And turned up on end. And turned upside down. And grunted and sweated and kept our tempers nicely, the way moving men do.
And at last Jim, on a particularly strong shove, had the left rear leg of the chesterfield come off in his hand.
“My, my,” we all said. And then the chesterfield went up as slick as a whistle. When we got it back in the big sunroom Jim said:
“I’ll fix this leg on some way, boys, while you are getting the stuff in.”
“Okay,” said the boss; “I don’t mind if you’re here when she arrives. She may take it from a neighbor when she wouldn’t from us.”
We worked on the chesterfield as the boys slowly and patiently carried up beds and springs and dressers and chests of drawers. Chests of drawers that would make your mouth water. Walnut and colonial, with the genuine look.
And while Jim struggled with the leg of the chesterfield I started arranging bookcases and tables that the men laid down in the big sunroom.
I unrolled a rug. I set the writing table along by the window. From one of the crates of books I took a few armfuls and placed them artistically in the shelves of the bookcase. The former tenant of the house had left picture nails in the walls and, more because they were unsightly than that I wanted to see the pictures, I undid one of the boxes and took out some pictures.
“Jim,” I cried, “look at this water color. Isn’t that a beauty?”
Jim got up off the floor and came and helped me hang pictures.
“We may not have these pictures in the right place,” said Jim, “but it is a neighborly thing to do to get them up somewhere anyway. They give such a homey look, don’t you think?”
Jim hung the pictures and I unloaded the book boxes and stacked the books in the bookcases. There were books on law and sets of novels, the works of Parkman; there were a large number of quite old editions of the poets, Longfellow and Wordsworth, and so forth.
“The new neighbor,” I said to Jim, “has a pretty nice taste in books. I think he is a lawyer.”
“A lawyer,” said Jim, busy with a large etching, “will be a nice addition to this street.”
I set vases in the window sills and spread an Indian rug over the writing desk.
“There,” said Jim, standing back. “How’s that?”
“Lovely, Jim,” I cried. “This is surely the must curious thing. A true, old-fashioned housewarming. Think of having neighbors that would come in and arrange your house for you.
“While we’re at it,” I said, “we might as well fix up another room. We may not get it the way she wants it, but it will be a great help to have the stuff laid out.”
So we went and did the bedroom next. This woman was certainly a good manager. With chalk she had marked every piece of furniture, every picture, every single item, large and small, with the position of the room it was to go in. This made it easy for Jim and me. We set up the bed. This is always an awful task. Sometimes it takes half an hour just to assemble the side boards to the ends with those dizzy bolts that don’t fit and everything.
We untied the mattress and laid on the springs, hung pictures, opened a case full of ornaments, doilies, objects of art, which left to Jimmie’s instinct to place artistically around on the dresser and tables.
The boss and his boys were still patiently climbing and descending, bearing their burdens. They looked in at us and smiled.
“A blame nice neighborly idea,” agreed the boss.
We had finished the master bedroom and were just in the act of surveying the other bedroom across the hall when we heard a harsh female voice screaming down at the front door. We listened.
“You fools,” said the voice, and meant it, “I’ve been hunting all over the city for you. What are you doing here? This isn’t the house! This isn’t the street! It’s only an hour until dark. Get that stuff back into the van!”
“Jim,” I whispered, “the back stairs.”
Jim led. Tip-toe.
As we went down the back stairs we heard a kind of war party coming up the front stairs. And the lady was still screaming.
“You stupid fools,” she yelled. “Why didn’t you look at the paper I gave you? Why didn’t I lead you by the noses first and show you the place? Would I live in a joint like this? You crazy, you, you, you.”
By which time Jim and I were going out the back door; and at that instant we heard a terrible shriek which sent us at a fast jack rabbit canter out the side drive and across the street.
So we went and sat in Jim’s parlor window, behind the curtains.
“How do you suppose the key those moving men had would fit the wrong house?” I trembled.
“When cock-eyed things like this happen,” groaned Jim, “the key always fits. Or maybe the boys had a skeleton key. They usually have.”
So we sat, long into the dusk, watching the boys carry out the stuff and pack it back into the van.
And the lady, whenever she appeared the door, looked both busy and angry.
And when dark fell the van rolled away.
“Mmmm, mmm,” said Jim. “No neighbors yet.”
Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on April 29, 1944 as “New Neighbors!”. Before I was aware of the repeats, I published this story before. It also appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).
By Gregory Clark, May 7, 1932.
Although he loves Toronto for its pure drinking water, its fine schools, its beautiful department stores so close together that you can easily walk across the road from one to the other to compare the prices, every time the eminent Griffin comes home from a trip to New York, he is pretty hard to get along with for a week or so.
“The trouble with Toronto,” says he the ether day, “is it has no night life.”
“I never phoned you after ten o’clock at night,” said I, “that you weren’t in bed already.”
“Granted,” said Griff, “but what is the virtue in in going to bed in Toronto when there nothing else to do? Now, in New York, you get a wonderful sensation by going to bed at ten o’clock. You feel you are making a noble choice.”
“Oh, Toronto has its night life,” said I.
“Pah,” said Griff. “A couple of frowsy beaverboard dance halls out in the suburbs. Half a dozen soda fountains. A few all-night restaurants with the police standing looking through the plate glass windows.”
“I could show you something,” said I.
“What could you show me?”
“Oh, I could show you a few things,” said I. “Toronto isn’t so straight-laced as you think. There’s a quiet little night life going on in this town that would open your eyes.”
“What do you mean?” asked Griffin. “The monthly meeting of the Stamp Collectors’ Club? The Roller Canary Society? The Ward Four Conservative Club?”
“Just because you are a stay-at-home except when you go to New York,” said I, “is no reason for supposing that this town is dead. Now, a real man about town–“
“Sez you,” says Griff.
“Step out with me some night,” I retorted, a little angrily, I fear. “That is, if you’re not too sleepy.”
“How about to-night?” Griffin said quietly, with a level glare.
“I shall pick you up at ten o’clock,” said I. “Dress, dinner coat.”
“Right,” said Griff.
I realize now that we both called each other’s bluff and we should have known better. But the older the friends, the worse jams they get into.
During the afternoon I did a little quiet telephoning to some of my youthful acquaintances, and told them I had some friends up from New York that I would like to show about. Did they know of any high spots where we might go slumming? They didn’t. It was pretty late in the season. Most of the new places that opened up in November had failed by now and were in the receivers’ hands as usual. Hinky Dink’s out on the Kingston Road had been closed up on account of cockroaches or something, and the Live Oyster, out on the Hamilton Highway, had been taken over as a fruit market.
By six o’clock, I was in rather a sweat, and I had several of my younger brothers over for supper to draw me maps and charts.
“There’s a place over the other side of Hamilton,” said one of the young ones.
“Have you been there?” I demanded of the flaming youth.
“No, but I’ve heard about it,” said he. “I think it’s near Grimsby.”
“Isn’t there anything around town?” I begged. “How about Jarvis St.? There used to be some funny joints on Jarvis when I was at Varsity.1“
“There have been big changes since the nineties2,” said the youngest one.
“Very well,” said I. “I can see you are merely deceiving me. I shall find out for myself.”
Heading For the Hot Spots
And I confess that when I picked Griffin up at ten o’clock, I had no information whatever to guide me in showing my doubting Thomas the night life of the tenth biggest city in America.
Griffin was obviously a little excited, although he tried to hide it.
“Well,” said he, settling himself back in the car, “if we had left it until August you might have taken me out to a lively corn roast out on Scarboro Heights. Or a month or so earlier, we might have gone skiing up at the Summit Golf Club.”
“Sit tight, boy,” said I, “it is early yet, but I’ll be showing you something shortly. Just for old-time’s sake, I am going to take you down into what we called the Ward a few years ago. I am going to drop in at Frascati’s. Did you ever hear of Frascati’s?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, sir, there was a joint! We students all frequented it, in the old days. I hear it is still going. Spaghetti, ravioli, insalata, anti-pasto, not to mention the odd bottle of Chianti and certain red wines–“
Griffin sat forward respectfully and began to help me to drive.
“Where is this place?” he asked.
“I’ll show you. Right in the Ward, almost beneath Big Ben.”
We wiggled around the Ward and I stopped in front of Frascati’s. Or where Frascati’s used to be. Just an old corner store, with shuttered windows, a homely restaurant. But it had a side door.
Except for a few children playing about at such an hour, the Ward was deserted. No light showed in Frascati’s. I approached the side door of my past, and after feeling in vain for a bell or knocker, I rapped with my knuckles.
A young man in shirt sleeves answered.
“Excuse me,” I said, “is this Frascati’s?”
“Whose?” said he.
“Is this Frascati’s, the restaurant?”
“You got the wrong number,” said the boy.
“This is Mrs. Frankenstein’s boarding house.”
Griffin cleared his throat back of me.
“Didn’t this used to be Frascati’s Italian restaurant?” I asked rather wistfully.
The boy turned and yelled:
“Oh, maw!”
“Yes,” answered a distant voice.
“Did this used to be Frascati’s restaurant?” yelled the boy.
“Yes,” called the faint voice, within.
“Yes,” said the boy, politely, to us in our dinner jackets at the door. “This used to be it.”
“Thank you,” said I.
The boy closed the door.
So we went back and got in the car.
“Now where?” asked Griff.
“That was just a cast in the direction of the past,” I assured him brightly. “Now we will head out for the night clubs, road houses and dance halls. You will not find the elite there. You will find the youth of the time, the gilded youth, the incandescent youth, and all that sort of thing. Later, as the evening ripens, I shall take you to the hot spots, where society diverts itself.”
“Yes,” said Griff, “this used to be it.”
I drove down to the lake front and out the highway. Past gas stations, tire depots, shoe repair shops, all brightly lighted, we drove, watching eagerly. The fruit stores were the gayest. We passed through Mimico and New Toronto. At Long Branch I got out and went into a cigar store.
“Are there any dance halls or road houses out this way?” I asked the sporty looking gent who was reading the Running Horse behind the counter.
“Up the side roads,” said he. “Up the side roads. I don’t know where they are exactly, but I’ve seen some suspicious looking characters driving up the side roads. Try some of the side roads.”
A Mysterious-Looking House
I selected a paved side road, and we drove into darker Ontario. The pavement ended and the mud began, and nothing in the nature of a road house appeared. We came to Dundas St. and turned back toward the city.
“What’s that?” asked Griffin suddenly. Sure enough, hidden back amongst the bushes was mysterious looking house with dim lights, and several cars parked on the drive.
I turned in. We dismounted and with beating hearts approached the front door.
“A sign said, “Chicken dinners.”
“I’m not hungry yet,” said Griffin. “That sign is just a blind,” said I. “Chicken dinners, haw!”
In answer to the bell, a middle-aged lady in a pretty blue uniform and white apron opened and ushered us in.
In the deserted hall was a hatrack with a straw hat and a raincoat on it.
No sound of revelry greeted us.
“Is there any dancing or anything?” I inquired.
“Oh, no, sir no dancing ‘ere. Just dinners.”
“Are there many here to-night?”
“No, sir, not at the moment, sir; but we I did ‘ave the loveliest bride and groom for tea.”
“The cars parked outside?”
“Ah, they belongs to the market gardeners who ‘ave the farm back of us ‘ere, sir. They live in that little shanty back there, sir.”
“Well, my friend and I were looking for a little excitement, and we thought there might be music and dancing. Do you know of any place along here where there might be dancing?”
“No, sir, unless there was some sort of do in the Community ‘All, sir; that’s at the second crossing further east.”
Griffin was pleasantly silent as we got back into the car and drove on to the highway. There was quite a procession of cars.
“There’s Toronto’s idea of night life,” said Griff. “Driving out the Dundas Highway3 and so to bed.”
“The hour is just approaching,” said I. “We’ll now head out the Kingston Highway4. I know of a spot or two out there.”
“Crumpets,” said Griff, “will be served at midnight, the witching hour.”
Across Bloor, out the Danforth, across that happy miles and miles of busy, easy, small city, with its Italian fruit stores, its flower stores, furniture, red cigar stores, with its throngs of late people, all busy going home from nowhere, we drove. You get a tremendous sense of Toronto if you drive, at 11 p.m., from the Humber to Scarboro, across the great Bloor-Danforth artery.
It was midnight when we struck the nose of the car out past the lonely seminaries on the remote fields.
The stores became fewer. The gas stations grew dingier. We were abroad.
“Let’s go to Whitby,” said Griff. “They have one fine institution there5. It ought to accommodate both of us, especially you.”
“I am just putting in time,” said I, “driving around looking for these road houses. You can understand, surely, that in Toronto, the road houses do not flaunt themselves. They take some finding.”
“True for you.”
Suddenly we rounded a curve, and there, gleaming with crafty lights, lay some sort of establishment. And out in front of it were parked at least a hundred cars.
“Ahhhhh!” said I, slowing, and wheeling into the mass of cars.
“Ruin My Place, Would You?”
As we turned our engine off we heard the strains of an orchestra and rowdy voices singing.
“Heh, heh!” I cried, slapping Griff on the back. “How’s this!”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Griff, cautiously. “I don’t like the sound of that singing. It sounds like Rotary to me.”
We walked up the lane that led toward the roadhouse.
A large man in his shirt sleeves, a huge, angry, towsel-headed man, was standing near the front door, watching us eagerly. I undid my overcoat and threw it back to show the boiled shirt to indicate that we were gentlemen in search of diversion.
“Yah!” howled the huge man, leaping toward us. “Where the — have you been!”
And seizing me with one hand and Griff with the other, he propelled us violently toward the side of the house and along a dark drive.
“What’s this, what’s this!” said Griffin, attempting to struggle.
“Arrrhhh!” snarled the big brute. “Ruin my place, would you! You’ll get it for this! I ought to beat you up.”
Griff says now that he thought discretion was the better part of night life, and that is why he did not battle the big guy. I have no excuses. I found out long ago that when two hundred pounds takes hold of one hundred, arbitration is the better course.
With rude violence, the big man shoved us, taken entirely off our guard, down the side drive to a door. The door was burst open and we found ourselves thrust unceremoniously into a huge steamy room, filled with the reek of cooking.
It was a kitchen. Half a dozen excited and bedraggled and perspiring men and women were struggling about it, some at stoves, some at tables. There was an air of frenzy about the room, frenzy in a fog of steam.
Aggrieved faces stared at Griff and me.
“Off with them coats!” commanded the big man violently. “Snap into it!”
He yanked my overcoat off and pitched my hat into a corner.
I had time to whisper to Griff, who was beginning to look Irish:
“This is a swell joint! They must do this to give you a thrill.”
Then the big man charged down on me and thrust about thirty plates, all in a heavy pile, into my arms.
“Get in there,” said he, “and get busy.”
He gave me a shove through a pair of swinging doors, and I found myself in a large room, where a hundred men, wreathed in tobacco smoke, were sitting at tables singing. An orchestra on a platform was playing. The tune was “School Days.”
My appearance was greeted with scattered cheers.
I grinned sheepishly at my fellow-revellers, and then a hoarse voice hissed in my ears:
“Lay them plates out!”
And obediently, starting at the nearest table, I began putting the plates down while the other guests, all heedless, roared the chorus of “Dear old golden rule days.”
As I worked along, I saw that except for the orchestra, I was the only person in a dinner coat.
Nobody paid the slightest attention, and then the door opened again, and in came Griffin, with a huge armful of plates. He stopped and looked at me, stared dazedly around the room, and with the big man at his ear, followed suit with me and began laying plates down.
Just a Natural Mistake
I tried to get over near Griff when I had run out of plates, but the big man, now wearing a black coat, glared threateningly at me and beckoned me toward the swinging doors.
“Look here,” I said to him as I passed, “what’s the big–“
He gave me a shove through the doors.
Just inside, a large dumb woman was standing with a huge tray covered with plates of soup. She held it out to me. I tried to go around her but she blocked my path with the tray.
“I couldn’t carry that,” I said apologetically.
“Take it,” she growled.
I took it. She held the swing doors open, and as I went out, Griff came in, and he said:
“What is this?”
“Just a minute,” I grunted, staggering out with the tray. The guests were now singing, “Pack All Your Troubles.”
I laid the soup down, plate by plate. It is really very simple. Your thumb gets soupy, but it isn’t at all difficult. In no time, I had cleared my tray. I dashed for the swing doors to get Griff privately. But out he came as I went in, bearing a full tray. The big man was close on his heels. He had a stove shaker in his hand.
Four trips with the soup, and then Griff and I coincided in the kitchen and I chased over to him.
“This is horrible,” said I.
“Hyaaah!” snarled the big man.
“Just a minute,” said Griff, resting his hand lightly and athletically on the back of a kitchen chair. “What’s the big idea?”
“Get in there and clear the soup plates,” shouted the big man.
“I tell you we will not!”
“I’ll….”
Griff swung the chair slightly.
“The Okay Employment Agency!” snarled the big man, lowering at us. “I don’t believe either of you lifted a tray before in your lives.”
“We are not waiters,” said Griff. “We are two citizens out to… well, we are two citizens.”
“What are you wearing them clothes for?” asked the big man, surveying our dinner coats contemptuously. “Anyway, you started the job. Now you’ve got to finish it.”
At that moment, the kitchen door opened and there stood two draggled gentlemen, above whose overcoat lapels peeped the black and white of servitude of celebration.
The big man charged at them. Griff and I picked up our coats and hats from the corner where they lay in a heap.
As we struggled into ours, the two newcomers were being helped rather strenuously out of theirs.
“Let’s get an apology from this big guy,” I said to Griff.
“He ain’t the apologizing kind,” said Griff. “Are you?”
“Gents,” said the big man, whirling on us, “my mistake. I ordered two waiters for ten o’clock to-night for this meeting of the Queen St. Old Boys’ Reunion, and when I seen you coming up the drive in the dark, why I… Why didn’t you tell me you wasn’t the waiters?”
Griffin, standing in that large steamy kitchen, drew himself up haughtily and looked the big man from toe to head. Then the two of us stalked from the kitchen. Out into the lane. Down to the car. I started her. We drove on to the highway. And then we started to laugh.
“What are you laughing at?” shouted Griffin.
“I’m laughing at us.” I gasped.
“Well,” said Griff, “I’m laughing at you. Night life!”
And he kept on laughing until I let him out at his house in North Toronto.
Editor’s Notes: This is another “proto-Greg-Jim Story, with Frederick Griffin as the partner.
- Varsity is the University of Toronto. ↩︎
- The 1890s when Greg was a student. ↩︎
- Before highways were given route numbers, they referred to by the major cities they connected. The Dundas Highway would be Ontario Highway 5 now. ↩︎
- The Kingston Highway, or Kingston Road was a part of the historic Ontario Highway 2 that was the principal route from Toronto to points east until Highway 401 was constructed. ↩︎
- Here he is referring to the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, then known as the Ontario Hospital for the Insane. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 27, 1935.
“Listen,” cried Jimmie Frise. “I hear a band.”
We stopped the car. In the distance, the music of drums and horns beat on the night air. We were on Yonge St. near King.
“It’ll be one of the regiments,” said Jim, opening the car window. “What do you say we park here and stand on the curb to see them go by.”
“Maybe it might be the Highlanders,” I exclaimed.
“I haven’t seen a parade for years,” agreed Jim.
So we got out and walked up towards Adelaide St. and picked a nice open space for ourselves, where the bright shop lights glowed out on to the street. Here we would see the soldiers striding by.
The band grew nearer. Along King St. they came and then, with their brass and their buttons agleaming, their white shells, or tunics glowing, the Highlanders wheeled up Yonge St. to the magnificent echoing thunder of their great brass band.
Far out in front marched the giant and handsome master of ceremonies, or whatever you call him. Being only a war-time soldier, I don’t remember, and perhaps never did know, the technical terms of the military art. But this remarkable specimen of manhood who strode at the head of the Highlanders was enough to make skyscrapers and handsome department stores curl up with envy. Even men held their breath when he went by. And as for the ladies…!
Respectfully in rear of him came the band. With those little mincing steps of the High- landers, the white spats tapping like a vast ballet, a corps of a thousand dancers, the band and the regiment followed. Nobody on earth walks as proudly as a Scot. Or at any rate, an Irishman or Englishman or a Canadian by the name of Smith or Kelly in a Scottish kilt.
“Ah,” sighed Jimmie. “Did you ever see anything so inspiring?”
“Let’s walk alongside of them,” I suggested.
So Jimmie and I joined the pavement walkers who kept abreast of the straight-looking soldiers. We got level with the band. And the Kiltie with the big bass drum, with the leopard skin across his shoulders, thumped with all his might.
“In the next war,” I shouted to Jim. “I’m going to play the drum.”
“Majors don’t play drums,” retorted Jim. “You can’t have all the fun.”
“I would rather play the drum,” I said, “than capture Quebec.”
“They’d only give a kettle-drum to a little guy like you,” pointed out Jim.
“A bass drum would look all the basser,” I argued, “on a little man.”
With music crashing and clashing up amidst the tall buildings, with legs moving like the legs of a centipede, the Highland regiment crossed Queen St. while traffic stood still and a great throng stood enviously, the young men on the side lines trying to look superior to all this, the young girls clinging to the young men’s arms clinging a little less closely for the moment.
“One Drum and They’re Done”
“I’m puffed,” I said, “let’s stand now and watch them.”
And so we watched them until the last Scottie stamped truly past and the music was growing dim in the distance.
“But the drum you can hear, long after the horns are gone,” Jim noted.
We walked back to the car, “You can understand,” said Jimmie, “how men go to war when you see a regiment go by. It seems to steal your common sense away. I bet if war was declared, one drum up the streets and away they’d all go.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I mused. “A great many of the young men to-day have serious opinions about war. I’ve talked to the ones in their twenties down at the office. It is about the only serious thought they have.”
“One drum and they’re done,” argued Jim.
“Yet would you willingly send another generation to go through what we went through?” I demanded. “Filthy, futile and without a single gain to be credited to it. War is insane.”
“We had some fun,” pointed out Jim.
“If another war came,” I said, “I would lead a non-co-operation movement, like Gandhi. I would probably go to jail.”
“One drum,” said Jim, “and you’d be sitting on a horse roaring.”
“No,” I corrected. “I would lead a great youth movement, enlisting the young men of Canada in a pacifist league. And once it was well organized, I would hand it over to younger fellows and then I would sneak away and join some regiment overseas. That’s what I would do. I would then satisfy both of my principles.”
“So you have two principles?” asked Jim.
“Certainly,” I assured him. “I am against war. I think war is a crime. But at the same time, like much crime, war is lots of fun. I’d hate to miss it myself, although I would willingly die to spare other men having to go to war.”
“You certainly are confused,” said Jim.
“So is nearly everybody else,” I said. “Most men feel just the way I do.”
“Are you a member of any anti-war society?” inquired Jim. “The League of Nations association or anything?”
“No,” I admitted. “They don’t attract me. They aren’t militant enough to attract men, somehow. A peace organization should be full of war. It should have something to fight for.”
“That’s queer,” agreed Jim.
“If you try to get young men into a society for peace,” I went on, “it has a negative appeal. What you want is a positive appeal. Now, for instance, I might start a society for young men called the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only.”
“Ah,” said Jim.
“This society,” I expounded, “would attract hundreds of thousands of young men who would be sworn to make munitions at $15 a day1, but who are vowed never to go to war.”
War Without Its Evils
“Fifteen dollars a day,” said Jim.
“That would be the wages,” I said. “Same as the last war. The youth of Canada would be willing to do the same for this country as the old men, the politicians, the bankers and big business men. They would gladly sacrifice their time and energy at making money out of munitions. But they would not go to war. They would die first. How’s that?”
“Your idea has a lot of points,” admitted Jimmie.
“The League of Youth for Making Munitions Only,” I repeated, “is now formed. No wealthy old schemer can complain if the youth of the nation are filled with the same patriotism as his. All across Canada, we will have branch societies, organized and trained, so that at a moment’s notice, they can spring to the machines and get the munitions pouring out. The weekly meetings of the branches of the League could be devoted to training on lathes and machine shop technique. There will be lectures on the great munition makers of the past. Biographical lectures, telling how many millions they made and what they did with them. Mind you, Jimmie, munitions doesn’t merely mean shells and guns. It includes wool and blankets and uniforms; food, such as flour and bacon; leather for boots and equipment. There will be room for every kind of young man in our great league. Tradesmen, merchants, clerks, young executives. Room for everybody in the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only.”
“I have an idea,” contributed Jim. “I’ll give it to the world as a gift. It is the Sinkable Battleship. This invention satisfies everybody. We all admit that building battleships is one of the best ways in the world for the big industrialists to make a few million dollars. It also employs thousands of men. And at the same time there are a certain number of valiant young men whose greatest dream is to die violently, to be blown up. Now, this Sinkable Battleship of mine requires no war. In each ship, as it is launched, is hidden a secret bomb, a very powerful bomb, to which is attached mechanism that will set it off at a certain unknown time, within six months or six years.”
“Jimmie,” I cried. “How perfect!”
“Yes,” admitted Jim. “Therefore, as these battleships rush about the seven seas, at a certain time, unknown to any man living, the battleship will blow up with a terrific bang, all lives will be lost. And right away, the government that owned the ship can place a new order with the big industrialists. More millions can be made by these great shots. More thousands of men can be employed. And another ship’s company valiant young men who want to die can be enlisted. Everybody will be satisfied.”
“And all,” I rejoiced, “without war being declared at all!”
“Precisely,” said Jim. “Every government, even Switzerland, can then have the benefits of war without its evils. It is a remarkable invention, this Sinkable Battleship.”
“If we announce my new league in the ordinary way,” I said, as we drove slowly along the lovely lake shore, “it will only attract a few of those pimply-faced young men with untidy hair who join leagues. We ought to use our newspaper instincts, Jim. We ought to start it off some exciting way. It ought to be started with a bang.”
“With a drum,” suggested Jim.
“Exactly.” I cried. “Why not? Why let war have all the drums? That’s what’s the matter with these peace societies. They have no drums.”
“I could get you a drum,” said Jim. “I know an Orangeman.”
“A bass drum?” I asked.
“A big bass drum,” assured Jim.
And that is how the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only got started. Jim’s friend tuned the big drum for him, tightening the steel bands around it. He lent Jim a fife, too, as Jimmie wanted to have some share in this great movement.
We drove down to University Ave.
“You can always get a following down around Queen and University,” I told him. “If you can’t get soldiers, you can get Communists. There is always somebody wanting to follow a drum down there.”
But when we parked the car, it looked a little forbidding. There were men scattered all along the curbs in the early spring evening. There were men wandering in twos and threes, or stopped chatting.
“Let’s start on a side street,” I said, “and by the time we have a good following, we can debouch on to the main streets. When we have about a thousand following us, we can halt, I’ll jump up on the steps of a monument or something and address them.”
We parked in one of those side streets between Elizabeth and University, where Chinese children were playing and foreign ladies were walking along with live fish wriggling violently in loose parcels of newspaper.
I got the drum out. Jim blew through the fife to get the dust out.
“Ready?” said Jim nervously.
We stood side by side.
“Ready, one, two, three,” I replied.
Boom, boom, boom.
Up Elizabeth St. we started. Jim can’t play a fife. No noise came from it. But it looked good. He wiggled his fingers. He held his head back.
“Don’t go too far up or you’ll disturb the sick people in the hospital,” shouted Jim.
“Correct,” I said. “Left wheel!”
We wheeled down Elizabeth St, again. Little Chinese boys lined the curb, and old gentlemen with large beards stuck their heads out of the doors of little frame shops. “Hallelujah,” yelled a colored gentleman, rushing out of a house.
Boom, boom, boom.
“Don’t go too far down,” said Jim, “or the detectives in the city hall will hear you.”
“Left wheel!” I commanded.
The drum was heavy, but what is more important is the fact that a drum vibrates as you hit it. The louder you hit, the livelier it vibrates. And as you are supporting the drum with your abdomen, your abdomen takes the vibration, as it were.
“How many following?” I shouted to Jim, looking out from behind the drum.
“Nobody yet,” said Jim. “Hit it louder.”
Some foreign ladies with live fish wriggling in newspapers gathered on the curb with the children. Several of the bearded men came and sat on the steps to await what was to happen.
“Left wheel!” commanded Jim.
Up and down the block we marched, Jim pretending fiercely to blow the fife and the drum making a magnificent thunder.
Then a bearded man in a striped apron and wearing a derby hat ran out with his hand held high.
“Stop, stop,” he cried. We stopped.
“You wake all the babies,” he said.
“Sir.” I replied, “we are awaking the entire youth of the nation, perhaps of the world.”
“Would you please wake them on another street?” asked the bearded man, lifting his derby politely.
“That’s a reasonable request,” Jimmie said.
“All right,” I agreed. “This drum is heavier than I expected.”
So we went down and got in the car.
We put the drum in. Through the car windows, I looked back up the street. All quiet. Little Chinese children played on the darkening pavement. The bearded men had got up and gone back into their shops. The ladies with the parcels were pursuing their patient way. It was as if no drum had beaten.
Down Elizabeth St., a slow pacing policeman came to a halt at the distant corner and stood looking up street.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” said Jim.
The doors of the armories, south of us, swung hugely open.
There was a sudden thunder of drums. A sudden scream of bugles. Out of the door marched the first ranks of a regiment. A very tall man leading. He was ceremoniously waving an immense gold-knobbed baton.
The policeman leaped to life. He took the centre of the street, stopping traffic with majestic arm.
“Let’s follow them,” said Jim, stepping on the starter.
So we followed the regiment around nine blocks.
Editor’s Notes: This story also appeared in Silver Linings (1978).
- $15 in 1935 would be $440 in 2025. ↩︎
These illustration accompanied a story by Kerry Wood, an alias for Edgar Allardyce Wood. It was about a scheme to run a pipe between two villages from Alberta to Montana only 3 miles apart, as a part of a bootlegging operation during American Prohibition.
A fifth columnist is a person who undermines a nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy nation. At his point in World War 2, Britain and her Commonwealth allies were on their own, so in this case, Wes Clipper and the gang are implying that the “Gloomy Gus” is acting “defeatist” by saying the war was not going well, and he might as well be Hitler himself.