"Greg and Jim"

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 15, 1939.

This Greg-Jim adventure is from Gregory Clark’s book, “Which We Did,” published by Reginald Saunders, Toronto.

“I have been invited,” said Jimmie, “to act as adjudicator in connection with some amateur theatricals.”

“What the heck,” I begged, “is adjudicator?”

“It means judge,” said Jim.

“Then why not say it?” I inquired.

“Ah,” said Jimmie, “that’s the drama of it. In the drama, it is how you say things; not what you say.”

“As a matter of fact.” I agreed, “there really isn’t very much to say in life, is there?”

“Drama,” said Jim, “is the memorable saying of things about which there is very little to say. Now you take Shakespeare. Take Romeo and Juliet. A couple of kids fall for each other. But it turns out that their families have been pulling some raw business deals on one another and aren’t on speaking terms. It’s a very common situation. You’ll find it in every town and village. Especially villages. So, these kids try to get together secretly, but everything turns out against them. You could tell the whole story in about two paragraphs in a newspaper. But Shakespeare takes five acts.”

“How different,” I confessed, “from the newspaper business. There it doesn’t matter how you say it. It’s what you say that is all important. The news. The facts. Get it across quick.”

“And how different,” said Jim, “from the movies. In the movies, it is what you do, not what you say, that counts.”

“This is the age of action,” I pointed out. “Doing is more attractive to us nowadays than saying.”

“The movie business,” said Jim, “hasn’t yet got over the discovery of the movie camera. You’d think they would get used to the idea sooner or later. But no. The guy with the camera is really the boss. There he sits, demanding that everybody move. And the director obeys, and makes them all move. It’s like on a fishing trip, when you take a bunch of the boys with the little amateur movie camera. They all feel they have got to wave their arms and lift the strings of fish up and down, to prove it is a movie. You can go to the movies for a whole year and never hear an intelligent remark or conversation that lingers an hour in your memory. Why? Because the conversation in the movies is nothing but part of the sound effects. They still make the movies the way they did back 20 years ago. All movement, with sound effects.”

Two Kinds of Everything

“I can’t say,” I confessed, “that I could I stand for movies consisting of just two people sitting a half hour at a time quietly chatting, the way it used to be in the stage drama. Or even soliloquy. Do you remember soliloquy, where the actor used to stand all alone on the stage talking to himself out loud?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Jimmie. “I can still remember, as if it was only yesterday, the scene in ‘Liliom’ where Joseph Schildkraut¹, as Liliom, debated with an old crook the question of God. You could put that on the movies. Just the two of them, sitting in a dirty old back yard. Because what they were saying was fascinating. W. C. Fields² talking to himself is one of the greatest features of the modern movies. Yet they cut him short, and hustle him into movement again. The trouble with the movies is, they are camera struck.”

“Like everything else,” I suggested, “the public will probably get weary of seeing nothing but action and begin to yearn in time to hear some words of beauty or wisdom.”

“No,” disagreed Jim. “There’s no hope in that direction. The great mass of the public have only the one sense, visual. Their only power of appreciation of beauty is optical. It is their weekly two bits, or twice-weekly two bits, that make up the vast fortunes of the movie industry.”

“Then,” I surmised, “the stage drama is going to survive after all?”

“What I think,” said Jim, “is, there are. two kinds of everything. Two kinds of cars, cheap and dear. Two kinds of clothes, houses, churches, schools, fishing rods. In a little while, there will be two kinds of movie theatres. The big cheap ones where the same old whang-doodle goes on for ever and ever. And small, expensive movie theatres where the true artists, the real dramatists, actors, stage-craftsmen, will perform for a minority who are eager to pay the cost. We are all at the vaudeville stage of the movies now.”

“But,” I disagreed, “there will still be wandering minstrels. There will still be actors and actresses forlornly travelling the wide world, making personal appearances in small hotels, conservatories and church basements.”

“Ah,” agreed Jim. “And there will still be amateur theatricals.”

“That’s a thing,” I said, “I never had any yen for when I was young, amateur theatricals.”

“No, because you had sport,” said Jim. “You dramatized yourself with gun and rod and canoe. You ranged the rocks and hills, imagining yourself a mighty hunter before the Lord. For one deer you have ever really shot, you have, in a thousand dramas of your own invention, shot ten thousand wild and fierce creatures.”

“How do you know that?” I asked in astonishment.

“We’re all alike,” said Jim. “Drama is a word that comes to us straight from the ancient Geeks. It means to perform. Every living being loves to perform. It is the very spirit of life itself. One minute, we are nothing. Then we are alive, for a few brief minutes. Then we are nothing again, forever. But during those few minutes that we are alive, the one great yearning in us, between those two dreadful darknesses, is to perform, to move, to act, to do something, however strange.”

Pretend They’re Other People

“And amateur theatricals?” I asked.

“Most people who go in for amateur theatricals,” explained Jimmie, “are bank clerks, accountants, oppressed, repressed individuals who dare not venture, even in the imagination, away from the ledgers, the desks, the hard realities of their lives. Church people go in for amateur theatricals. Church people are publicly trying to lead a good life. Therefore, even in the secret of the night, or in the shadow of their own hearts, they dare not go gallivanting in any dreams. And dreams are drama. Ah, the uncounted billions of unwritten dramas of humanity!”

“Who are these people you are going to adjudicate?” I asked.

“Oh, just a neighborhood drama league,” said Jim. “A couple of churches, a men’s club and a community association of some kind. I guess they will be pretty dreadful.”

“I remember one time,” I said, “I got into a movie theatre on a juvenile amateur night. I never suffered so much for 37 cents in all my life.”

“It will probably be fun, though,” said Jim. “I am to attend a dress rehearsal of this play, some sort of a drama of family life. Each season, before they present a play, they call in a critic or adjudicator, not, a professional, you understand, but some prominent citizen like me, who is asked to decide if the characters are properly apportioned, if the players are suited to their parts, and if the drama, as so presented, is suitable for a stage offering in the community hall.”

“It’s a nice idea,” I admitted, “I’d like to go with you.”

“Come along,” cried Jim. “They’ll be delighted to have you.”

So, the night of the rehearsal, Jim telephoned to remind me, and called for me in his car.

“You’re late,” I said. “It’s 8.25.”

“I phoned them,” said Jim, “and they said they would start and we could come in after the fuss of getting going was over.”

“We the only audience?” I asked.

“Just us,” said Jim.

We arrived at our destination, a handsome big home. It was all in darkness. We rang the bell; but there was no response.

“That’s funny,” said Jim. “They said 102.”

“Maybe it is 120,” I said. “You’re not very good at figures.”

“They said 102, I am sure,” said Jim, as we walked down to the pavement. We strolled east. Down a few doors, there were several cars parked in front and an air of activity in a brightly lighted house.

“That’s 112,” I said. “You got it wrong by one.”

Number 112 was the house, all right. The shadows of people moving on the blinds, the sounds of voices, of voices raised in mock passion.

We rang the bell.

“They’re going good,” said Jim, as we heard a woman’s voice rise in tearful entreaty.

We rang the bell again.

“I guess,” said Jim, trying the door knob and finding the door open, “they can’t hear the bell for the racket they’re making.”

A crowd was assembled in the living-room, so Jim and I quietly tip-toed in and hung our coats and hats on the crowded rack. Through the hall curtains, we could see the drama going on, full bang. Around the living room, seated crowded on chesterfields and chairs and standing leaning against the walls, were the players, four or five middle-aged or elderly men and women and about seven or eight younger persons. In the middle of the room, the centre of all eyes, were two of the company, a middle-aged woman a middle-aged man. As we slipped in by the curtains and took our stand against the wall, the action was not interrupted, and a few of the players threw brief glances and smiles.

“For 40 years of my life,” the woman was saying, in a deep. tremulous voice, and I was impressed to see very real looking tears on her face, “I have been a faithful daughter to him, devoting my life to him. I denied myself marriage…”

“Ha, ha,” laughed the man who was standing with her, undoubtedly the villain, though an elderly villain. “Denied yourself marriage, you say?”

“Yes,” cried the woman, in a hoarse, broken voice that was most dramatic, “denied myself marriage.”

“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed the villain, and all the other players around the room smiled at his humor, “I tell you, Lizzie, you have been the joke of the family all your life for the desperate efforts you have made to capture a man. Why, even the little boys of the neighborhood make jokes about your next attempt.”

“You brute,” gasped the woman, staring tragically around at us, “you filthy brute. To think, a brother should ever speak to a sister in such words! Why, even as a little girl, who was it stayed home with Daddie while you others went your ways? When he had the typhoid fever, who was it nursed him? Where were you when he had the typhoid fever, I ask you?”

The male villain was now standing over against the mantel, with his arm resting on it, in the approved attitude.

“Lizzie,” he said, “we all see through you. There isn’t one of us in this room, young or old, that could not testify in a court of law that you had deliberately prevented us, time after time, from doing acts of kindness to Daddie. Eleanor, there…”

The pretty girl cried out –

“I tried to take Granddaddie for motor rides.”

“Hah,” cried Lizzie, the lady standing up, “let a rattle brain like you take a nervous old man driving? You who’s been in three dreadful accidents, all your own fault?”

“Lizzie,” said the villain, pointing a lean finger at her, “you can’t face it. No court of law would uphold you. Every member of this family will testify that you usurped the old man’s love; that you poisoned his mind against us all; that you misrepresented us all to him; that you frustrated us in all our attempts to show him a natural family affection.”

“Affection?” screamed Lizzie, whirling about the middle of the room to stare at us all most tragically, “Affection? Why half of you, didn’t come to his funeral. You were too busy playing golf or grubbing your filthy money.”

“Filthy money?” sneered the villain, “Heh, heh, heh! I tell you, my dear sister, unless you voluntarily divide up Daddie’s estate among us, his proper heirs, we’ll take you for a ride through the court of this country that will take every cent he left you, make you a public character, and make you wish you had never been born.”

Lizzie, standing there in the midst, burst suddenly into tears. It was magnificent acting. Real tears cascaded through the fingers of her hands as she covered her face.

“Oh, oh,” she wailed, in an entreaty to Fate more moving than any words could be.

Jimmie stepped forward.

“Ladies and gentlemen, he said, smiling, and even Lizzie stopped crying and everybody stared.

“My dear friends,” said Jim, “as adjudicator, I think I might interrupt at this stage of the proceedings to say that the acting of the villains the way he leans on the mantel, the way he sneers so and points his finger, is a little too melodramatic. In real life he would be cold, soft-speaking, insinuating and threatening. My dear sir, you will forgive me, but I think you bluster too much.”

There was an instantaneous outburst of mutter and murmur and chatter.

“Who,” demanded the villain, advancing on Jim, “are you?”

“I’m the adjudicator,” smiled Jim.

“The what?” cried the villain.

“The adjudicator,” said Jim. “Didn’t you invite me here to act as critic of your little drama?”

“Drama?” said the villain. “I thought you two were her lawyers.”

Dazed Triumph

There was a sudden burst of excitement and everybody stood up and crowded around.

“I thought,” said Lizzie, “they were your lawyers. Who are you two gentlemen, please?”

Jim and I stood side by side.

“Pardon us,” I said, for Jimmie was temporarily at sea, “but we are just a couple of newspapermen, who were invited by a local amateur theat…”

“Newspapermen,” muttered the villain, looking fearfully around. “Newspapermen,” the others all muttered, starting for the hall. Men, women and young folk, they all seemed like children when the fire bell rings, so eagerly did they bump into one another on their way to the hall, grabbing their coats and hats. “Newspapermen,” they all mumbled and muttered and gasped, with sideway glances. And the sound of engines starting up and cars departing in gear filled the night while Jim and I still stood bewildered, and there was nobody left but Lizzie and us two.

“But,” said Jim, apologetically, to that lady who stood with a look of dazed triumph on her face, “we thought this was where the neighborhood drama league was rehearsing. We were invited.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lizzie. “God sent you.”

“No ma’am, we just mistook the house number,” confessed Jim.

“Mistook?” sighed the lady, like Jane Cowl³. “Mistook? My dear friends, those were my brothers and sisters and their children, come to rob me of my rights, a poor woman who has devoted her whole life to a dear old neglected man. And you come in, two newspapermen, and are witnesses of the whole dreadful thing…”

“Ma’am,” said Jim, deeply, “we are dreadful sorry. Never a word of it would either of us ever breathe.”

“You won’t need to,” laughed the lady almost hysterically, seizing our arms. “You won’t need to not if I know my brothers and sisters. I’ll never even hear of them again.”

And laughing and crying, she threw herself on a chesterfield and laughed and cried, while Jimmie and I got into our coats and hats and said good-by 12 different ways and times, and went out and shut the front door, with her still sobbing and laughing.

And we never did find those amateur theatricals.

---

Editor’s Notes: As indicated at the start of the story, this was originally published in Which We Did (1936).

1. Joseph Schildkraut, an Austrian-American actor, played the title role in the first American stage production of Liliom, the play that eventually became the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. ↩︎
2. W. C. Fields was an American actor and comedian. ↩︎
3. Jane Cowl was an American film and stage actress and playwright. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 12, 1941.

“Isn’t that the same old coat?” inquired Jimmie Frise.

“Yes, it’s the same coat,” I informed him stiffly. “And the same old suit underneath. And the same old shoes. Probably you’ve forgotten there is a war?”

“I suppose you are not doing any spring cleaning at home this year,” surmised Jim, “on account of the war.”

“Being neat and tidy is one thing,” I stated. “But spending money on new clothes is another. The money I might spend on clothes I might lend the government to buy war material.”

“You might, is right,” agreed Jim. “But if you are the average person, you will just buy enough war bonds and certificates to keep your conscience from yelling out loud. And then you’ll weasel along as usual.”

“I haven’t bought any new clothes,” I insisted.

“But have you bought any new war bonds?” inquired Jim.

“No,” I confessed. “But at least I am in a position to buy some; which I wouldn’t be in if I had spent the money on clothes.”.

“In other words,” said Jim, “if they can persuade you, you can be persuaded. I see.”

“I don’t like your tone,” I informed him. “The government would rather have you save your money than spend it. Every dollar you spend these days on personal things, on non-war things, is a dollar’s worth of work done by somebody else on non-war jobs. And a dollar’s worth of material used for non-war purposes.”

“So if we starve a lot of tailors and clothing store clerks,” pursued Jimmie, “we are helping the war. Is that it?”

“Well, they can join the army,” I pointed out.

“I see,” said Jim. “And the $40¹ you would have spent on a new suit of clothes will buy them uniforms and feed them for three days or so.”

“If,” I explained, “I lend the government the $40.”

“Then they come back from war,” said Jim, “and take off the uniforms. And then you want your $40 back from the government – plus interest. Where does that money come from?”

“The government can issue a new lot of bonds, peace bonds,” I explained, “and pay back the war bonds.”

“Who’ll buy these peace bonds?” inquired Jim. “There will be no war profiteers this time to soak away their loot in bonds.”

“Well,” I explained, “when I get my cash back I’ll go and buy the suit of clothes I’ve been putting off. And tailors and clothing store clerks who have just taken off the uniform will be back on the job to sell them to me. And they’ll start making money again. They can buy the peace bonds.”

“Won’t they want a new suit of clothes, too?” demanded Jim.

“It’s very complicated. Jim,” I showed him. “All I know is, a lot of clever men are working on this problem of war finance. And we’ve got to accept their advice.”

Using War As Excuse

“Who says they’re clever?” asked Jimmie.

“Well, they’re the cream of the financial world,” I assured him. “They proved their cleverness by rising to the top of their profession in the past few years.”

“What does that prove?” demanded Jim. “Maybe they’re the same birds who got the world into this mess.”

“Okay,” I submitted. “Who will we put in their place? You and me? Or some of those wild-eyed agitators? Or just another bunch of the same sort who are in now? Jim, I don’t think it’s the leaders of the world who are fuddled. I think it’s us, the people of the world.”

“We’re sheep,” said Jim. “We’ve got to have a shepherd.”

“Good sheep usually have a good shepherd,” I reminded him.

“In that suit,” declared Jim, “you sure look like an old sheep that had been let run wild. You’ve got stouter since you bought it. It pulls at all the buttons. The pants are shiny. I can faintly see your shirt through the elbow.”

“I’m going to make it do until summer,” I stated. “Then I can put on my old gabardine suit. Next fall I’ll get a new tweed.”

“Come clean,” wheedled Jimmie. “What is it you are buying instead? A new boat? An outboard engine? You’re just like millions of other people. You are using the war as an excuse. You are going around in old clothes, creating an impression of how patriotic you are, and getting away with it; while really you are soaking your money away into something else you’ve really wanted all your life but couldn’t afford because you had to keep up with the Joneses.”

“Jim, being cynical won’t get you anywhere,” I assured him.

“I’m not cynical,” said Jimmie. “I’m just trying to figure things out. And to figure things out, you’ve got to face the facts. And the easiest fact to face is you. And me.”

“And what light do you see in me?” I inquired.

“Look,” said Jim. “We’re at war. We insist that we are not at war with nations, but with certain gangsters in those nations. However, the people of those nations are not like us. They are not giving what they feel like giving. They are giving all. Do you realize that if you want a new overcoat in Germany you have to turn in your old one?”

“It’s a good idea.” I agreed. “We should get an allowance on all our old clothes when we buy new ones.”

“They don’t get any allowance,” said Jim. “How many coats have you got? They’re only allowed one. And when they buy a new one, they turn in their old one without any allowance or without any question. The idea is that they can’t have any more of anything than they actually need. It goes for food, for household furniture and goods of all kinds; for books, lawn mowers, soap, handkerchiefs, everything.”

“They’ll rebel,” I assured him. “Human nature is human nature.”

“All these people who are allowed as little as possible,” went on Jimmie, “are organized by harsh law to produce as much as possible. But since there is no possible demand for clothes, furniture, books, soap, lawn mowers, they produce only what the government wants. And that is bombs, planes, guns, and food for soldiers.”

“Now you see the reason,” I exclaimed, “why I am not buying a new, suit.”

“Suppose,” said Jim craftily “the government suddenly announced that you couldn’t buy a new suit?”

I looked down at myself. It was true my vest buttons all drew my vest in ridges and creases. It was true my trousers bagged. I examined my elbow. I could detect a faint whitish tone through the tweed.

“The government wouldn’t do that,” I declared.

“Certainly it would,” cried Jimmie, “if we, the people, wanted it to.”

“Ah,” I smiled. “If we wanted it to.”

“There are plenty of people shouting at the government to do more than it is doing,” said Jim. “And about the only thing they haven’t done is start to interfere with the private lives of Canadians.”

“They don’t let us go to Florida for a holiday,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t affect the people of Canada,” scoffed Jim. “That only affects a tiny minority of people who have the money to think of their comfort. Wait until the government starts telling you what you can buy with your money.”

“They’re telling us now,” I retorted. “By taking our surplus in taxes, they’ve cut me off of a lot of things I intended to buy.”

“That isn’t the same as being told you can’t buy a new suit,” warned Jimmie. “Or that you can only have one pound of bacon a week. Or you can only buy ten gallons of gasoline a week.”

“Will it get that tough?” I wondered.

“It’s that tough and a thousand times tougher in Britain now,” said Jim. “And it is Britain we are supposed to be helping.”

“Aren’t we helping?” I demanded.

“Well, there are a lot of people yelling, for the government to go full out in the war,” said Jim. “Remember, in our country, the government represents the people. And if the people suddenly agree that we want to go full out, the government will obey. Then they’ll take all your money, not borrow it. They’ll tell you what you can buy. They’ll tell you what work you’ll do. We can save democracy all right by throwing it over.”

“I can have this suit pressed,” I considered. “If it doesn’t look right then, maybe I will get a new suit.”

“After all, it’s Easter,” said Jim.

“And besides,” I said, “I wouldn’t want to be caught by any high-handed government decree that I can’t buy any clothes I want…”

“That’s the spirit,” cried Jim.

“You won’t know this suit in a couple of days,” I said. “I’ll send it to be pressed tonight.”

“Look,” said Jim, “there’s a while-you-wait pressing place just a block north. At lunch, let’s both go in and get all pressed up. I could do with a little smartening up, seeing it’s Easter.”

“What kind of a place is this pressing establishment?” I inquired.

“It’s just up in the next block or the one next to that,” said Jimmie. “I can’t just place it. But I’ve seen it lots of times. We’ll find it. You sit in little cubicles while they press your suit. It only takes a few minutes…”

“Probably one of those cheap little joints,” I protested, “where they leave a smell of gasoline all over you…”

But we had a quick sandwich and went out looking for the press-while-you-wait shop that Jimmie had often seen. And after walking around four blocks and not finding it, we finally asked a cigar store man if he knew of it. And he said it was two blocks farther west. He knew it well. His cousin ran it. So we went into a rather down-at-heel neighborhood, mostly garages and warehouses, found the press-while-you-wait shop as directed.

It was hardly the kind of place I would have selected myself. There were two or three very odd-looking gentlemen sitting in the front part of the shop, reading the papers. They had long sharp noses and sideburns. They were all smoking cigars which they had tucked halfway into the very corner of their mouths. They looked up at us when we came in as though we were the funny-looking customers, not they.

There were no cubicles, as Jimmie had promised. Only a large screen. The place was barely furnished. There were a couple of second-hand cupboards partly filled with a few shabby garments on hangers. But at the back there was a man working very casually at a hot smelling pressing machine. Not a very modern pressing machine at that.

“Can you press us up while we wait?” asked Jimmie pleasantly, as this gent left his job to come and attend to us. He, too, had a cigar butt jammed away off in his east cheek.

“It’ll take three-quarters of an hour,” he said rather impatiently.

“Let’s leave it, Jim,” I said. Because from the back of the shop two more men came out, looking at us with the same cold, appraising eye. Behind them I could see others. The place was alive with them, all the same kind, lean, oddly dressed, and all with cigars shoved away over in their cheeks. And most of them with sideburns.

But Jim had his coat off and was undoing his braces.

“Let’s get it over with while we’re at it,” he said.

So the proprietor shoved the screen impatiently around to shield us, and the men sitting and standing about resumed reading and muttered to one another, and some of them drifted into the back room.

“Gimme,” said the proprietor, reaching for our pants and coats.

Jim picked up a paper to read. It was a racing paper, like a railway time table full of small print.

I picked up some annual of the pressing and cleaning trade. And the thudding of the pressing machine came to us behind the screen. Jim was intent on his catalogue of horses and I was glancing over the pressing journal when a sudden scuffle caused us to prick up our ears.

The door opened and we heard a loud voice say:

“Nobody budge!”

But everybody budged. There were scuffles and thudding of feet. There were soft, startled yells of warning and loud bellows. Everybody budged but Jimmie and me, sitting there behind the screen, in our underwear, unable to see what was going on, but very much interested, I can assure you.

In the midst of the rumpus, there appeared around the edge of the screen a large and startled policeman.

“Now what’s this?” he said very cheerfully.

“What’s what?” inquired Jim, hiding the paper he was reading behind his back.

“Come on, me buckoes,” said the policeman. “Get your pants on.”

He hailed somebody over the screen and two more policemen came and stood looking at us.

“A new one,” said the oldest.

“Evidence,” said the second, “of the honest character of the establishment.”

“What is this, constable?” I demanded with dignity.

“Come on, get your pants on,” said he. “It’s chilly in the wagon.”

I was the first to smell singeing.

“Whose pants?” I yelled, leaping up and trying to dash past the constable.

They were my pants. The proprietor had my trousers on the machine and in the excitement he had left the pad down, with the power on. It was an old-fashioned machine. And when the policeman lifted the lever, there was very little left of my good tweed pants.

Meanwhile, ignoring us and our tragedy, other policemen were leading men out of the shop half a dozen or more coming from the back room. Upstairs, we could hear tramping and scuffling, and still more came down the back stairs.

“It’s a raid,” said Jimmie. “And if I’m not mistaken it’s on a handbook outfit².”

“Wrap something around him,” said the head policeman, “and get him in the wagon.”

“Inspector,” I cried, “we can prove we are innocent customers who just dropped in.”

“This one,” said the first cop, “was reading a racing form when I popped around the screen.”

“There was nothing else to read,” retorted Jimmie indignantly.

From our coats, we were able to produce identity cards.

“Identity cards won’t help you,” said the head policeman. “You were found in. You can prove your identity and innocence in court. Our job is simply to raid the joint and collect all those found in.”

 “Are you going to ruin my good name,” I demanded, “when you can see the charred ruins of my pants right there on that pressing machine? What will the judge say to you when I tell him that evidence of my innocence was still smouldering before your very eyes?”

So they took our names and addresses. And in the cupboard they found a pair of pants that would at least carry me as far as the nearest clothing store. In fact they drove Jimmie and me to the store in one of the scout cars.

And that is how I got this very handsome Donegal tweed³ I’m wearing.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. $40 in 1941 would be $785 in 2025. ↩︎
2. A “handbook outfit” is a criminal organization involved in illegal gambling, like a bookie. ↩︎
3. Donegal tweed is a woven tweed manufactured in County Donegal, Ireland. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 5, 1947.

“Hasn’t this,” yawned Jimmie Frise, “been a perfect evening!”

“We ought to have them oftener,” I agreed, glancing at my watch.

It was 10.30.

“Just sitting here in front of a fire,” sighed Jim, gangling himself deeper and wider in his easy chair. “I suppose we have to be middle-aged before we really appreciate an evening like this. When we were younger, we had to be on the go. We had to have something to do. An evening was considered wasted, if we just sat like this, chatting.”

“Not in the good old days,” I pointed out. “Jim, before the invention of the motor car, or the movie, or the radio, the vast majority of men spent nearly all their evenings like this, not only the middle-aged, but even the young men.”

“Of course, they entertained,” put in Jim. “In the good, old days, people visited around with one another more than we do now.”

“Not any more than you having me over here tonight,” I countered. “This is the way men spent their evenings, fifty, a hundred years ago. Invite a neighbor over to sit and converse.”

“Just look at that fire,” gloated Jimmie.

We sat drowsily gazing at the fire, in the wide fireplace. It had burned down to a slumbering bed of ruby embers. Little lazy fingers of flame waved up, and then vanished. The fire was like us; warm and content and quiet, after a pleasant evening.

“Men would live longer,” I submitted, “if they so arranged their lives that they could have three nights a week like this.”

“It’s impossible,” sighed Jim. “How many nights a week could we get our families ALL out? Somebody is bound to be home; and even if there’s only the one at home, then the radio is going, doors are opening and shutting, footsteps tramping around, telephone conversations going yakety-yakety…”

“Probably the idea,” I suggested, “of gentlemen’s clubs arose out of this problem, Jim. As a man gets past his youth, he yearns for a little peace and quiet and the fellowship of other men his own age. So they found a club, where they sit around a fire in the evenings, just the way we’ve been doing.”

“We’d live longer,” agreed Jim.

“With all the wonderful discoveries of medical science in the past fifty years,” I propounded, “men don’t live any longer, really. In fact, I sometimes think men don’t live as long as they did in our grandfather’s time. Why? Because we don’t get enough of this sort of complete relaxation, this snoozing. I think all men should snooze so many hours a day. Sleep isn’t enough. Snoozing is in the very nature of man.”

“Well, then,” suggested Jim half-heartedly from the depths of his chair, “how about us trying to join one of these exclusive men’s clubs?”

“Aw, no, Jim,” I explained, “they’ve all gone to pot. The old-fashioned snoozing club has vanished, just the way the old-fashioned home has. And for the same reason. Men’s clubs are just business organizations now. They’re an extension of modern industry and commerce. Do you see the members snoozing now? No, sir. They’re all gathered in nasty little groups, talking furiously. Selling.”

“Mmmmmm,” dozed Jim,

“We take vitamins,” I pursued, “we have annual checkups. We take carefully prescribed exercise, such as golf or bowling or trips to Florida. But we still die of hypertension. Ten, maybe 20 years younger than our grandfathers.”

“I’ve got an idea,” murmured Jim, rousing himself slightly. “How about us bribing our families to go out three nights a week? This has been too perfect an evening to be wasted in its lesson to us. We’ll take turns. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we’ll bribe our entire families to go out for the whole evening. Yours, Monday. Mine, Wednesday, and so on.”

“All it would cost us,” I agreed, “would be a few movie tickets, maybe a few concerts during the season, a few gallons of gas for the car…”

“Cheaper,” submitted Jim, “than joining an expensive men’s club.”

“Think,” I cried, “what a delight it would be to look forward to three evenings like this every week, where nobody can get at us. Nobody disturbs us. We just sit here, idly conversing about all the things that really interest us, all the events of our lives that have gone unnoticed, actually…”

The telephone rang.

“There,” grunted Jim, “Probably one of the kids wanting me to go and fetch them in the car…”

He got up heavily and slithered in his slippers out to the hall.

But it wasn’t one of the kids.

Jim’s voice was confused. It was a cross between agitation and politeness. Between warmth and chill.

“Why, certainly…” he said, “Why, of course, of course. What time is it..?”

I looked at my watch. It was 10.35.

“What time does the train leave?” asked Jim carefully. “Okay! I’ll be right there! No, no, don’t mention it. It’s nothing…”

He came bounding back into the living room.

“There!” he grated. “Peace, eh? Peace and quiet eh…!”

And he dashed upstairs for his shoes and coat.

“What is it?” I yelled up.

“Neighbor,” called Jim. “Old uncle from the country has to catch the 11 o’clock train. Car won’t start. Can’t get a taxi…”

I began putting my overcoat and hat on.

Jim came galloping down the stairs.

“They saw my car standing out in front,” groaned Jimmie. “So they… “

We nipped out the door and down the walk.

“You don’t have to come,” reminded Jim.

Three doors up, a party of agitated neighbors gathered on the lighted verandah. Jim swung the car into the side drive.

“No time to lose,” gasped an elderly gentleman with a suitcase in one hand, travelling bag in the other, charging down the steps.

“This is my Uncle Wesley,” introduced the agitated neighbor, his hands and elbows full of large packages and cartons, Five in number.

“How do you do, how do you do,” we greeted, stepping out while the valises and bundles were hurled into the back seat of the car.

“Are you going?” the neighbor enquired of me eagerly. “If so…”

“No, I’ll just walk home, around the corner,” I said, backing slightly.

“I was thinking,” suggested the neighbor, as he hoisted Uncle Wesley into the back seat,” that if there wasn’t any room for me, I’d just stay and try to get my car started. I don’t know what’s happened…”

“We tried all over for a taxi,” cried the lady neighbor from the verandah.

“We’ve got to get cracking,” said Jim pleasantly, racing the engine.

“Okay,” I said, springing in beside Jim.

And out we backed, while the neighbors waved thankfully, and Uncle Wesley waved in response and puffed.

“Whew!” he said. “Those people are always in some kind of a panic.”

“We’ll make it,” assured Jim, speeding out onto the night streets.

“Have you got far to travel?” I enquired, facing around chattily.

“No,” said Uncle Wesley, “only about 40 miles out. But I like this night train, because it gets me in around midnight. And my son is the station agent, and he drives me home, as he’s through for the night. It’s a nice arrangement.”

“Been shopping?” I supposed.

“I come down every spring,” explained Uncle Wesley, “for a couple of days visit with my nephew back there… drat the man! … he’s always in a tizzy like this! Yeah, I come down for a couple of days, and visit all the seed houses, and the implement dealers, and lay in a little stock of this and that. Some harness. A new bunch of felt for horse collars…”

Uncle Wesley, in the dark of the car, was feeling over his various packages, to see they were all there. Seven pieces in all.

“Yep,” he said. “All here.”

And we skimmed down deserted blocks, and whanged around corners, and I kept my eye on my wrist watch to see 10.45 come and go. And then 10.50. And at last, at 10.53, we came into the stretch and pulled up with a screech in front of the station. Jim slid into a vacant space, for once, and I leaped out to help bail Uncle Wesley free of his bundles.

“No red caps¹,” breathed he heavily.

“Red cap!” I sang out, in the best big city fashion.

But no red caps were to be had.

We divvied up the luggage. Jim took three pieces and Uncle Wesley and I two each.

“What’s your car number?” I asked.

“Day coach,” whuffed Uncle Wesley.

It was 10.56 as we barged into the station rotunda. It was 10.57 as we rounded the buoy and showed Uncle Wesley’s ticket to the gateman. The gateman didn’t attempt to stop Jim and me with the bundles.

Up the stairs we hustled. It was 10.59 when we galloped along the platform, away to the head of the train where the day coaches were. And the conductor was chanting “board … boooaaarrrddd!”

“Take it easy!” gasped Jim at old Uncle Wesley’s heels. “Here!”

We had to jostle several other people scrambling at the car steps.

We boosted Uncle Wesley on.

We started to heave his bundles in after him.

“Hey!” commanded the conductor. “Don’t leave those bundles there! You can’t obstruct the vestibule.²“

Uncle Wesley glared wild-eyed back down over the heads of others scrambling on.

“Okay, just a minute,” cried Jim. And he leading and I following, we shoved into the group struggling up the steps.

“We’ll just,” cried Jim, “toss them up into a parcel rack.”

“Booaaarrrddd!” boomed a fateful voice behind us.

“Hey, Jim,” I shouted, trying to drop my two bundles. But somebody was shoving from behind, so that I couldn’t even drop them.

The air brakes gave that long, lazy hiss and the train creaked.

“Aw, here, wait a minute,” I groaned, as I was shoved ahead into the passageway alongside the drinking water tank.

I could see Jim struggling, two places ahead of me now, trying to chuck his bundles, a la basket ball, into parcel racks already full.

There was a jerk; and the train started.

Behind were a dozen heads, flushed and excited. Ahead, Jim pushed for all his might towards me, but in vain.

We were off.

By a species of wriggling, struggling and sidewinding, Jim and I got together at last on the vestibule. The brakeman had just slammed the doors.

“We’re carried off,” I cried.

“We’ll get off at a suburban station,” soothed Jim easily but loudly.

“No stop at any suburban station on this train,” said the trainman, picking up his lantern to go.

“But hold on,” exclaimed Jim.

“See the conductor,” advised the trainman briefly.

Well, it was far past the last suburban station when we found the conductor. And it was in defiance of all the rules, he explained, that he would arrange to stop the train, just for 20 seconds, at a village about 20 miles out.

“The first stop,” he said, “is 40 miles out.”

That would be Uncle Wesley’s.

“Men of your age,” said the conductor sternly, “ought to know better than get carried off. By rights, I should charge you the fare.”

Uncle Wesley was most indignant, when we passed him on our way to the vestibule where the trainman was to let us jump. “Coming to the city,” he declared hotly, “is getting worse all the time.”

At the dim little village, we jumped.

All was dark. It took us a good half hour to find anybody who would taxi us back 20 miles to town. And because it was after midnight, he charged us special rates – $10.

And, of course, when we reached Jim’s car, parked in front of the station, there was a ticket on it – for parking in a limited area.

“Well …” said Jim, in a high, patient voice, as he grasped the wheel and stepped on the starter, “maybe we’d better join an exclusive men’s club after all.”

“There’s no escape, Jim,” I countered darkly. “If it isn’t the family, it’s the neighbors. If it isn’t the neighbors, it’s somebody else. The truth of the matter is, society has just got too damn social!”

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Red Caps are train personnel who helping you move and pack your luggage and provide other services on the train. ↩︎
2. The vestibule of the train is the doorway at the ends of the car used for loading and unloading passengers. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 27, 1937.

“I could eat,” said Jimmie Frise, “an “Eskimo’s boot.”

“I’m a little hungry myself,” I agreed. “Where will we eat?”

“Eating,” said Jim, “is not the casual matter most of us think it is. What a man eats, he is,”

“Let’s have a good sit-down lunch to-day,” I said.

“It isn’t how you eat,” stated Jimmie, sinking deeper into his chair, “but what you eat. A man consumes food. That food, by a chemical process, becomes him. You are not you really. You are what you have eaten.”

“I’m too weak to argue to-day, Jim.” I explained. “Let’s go and eat.”

“Eating,” stated Jim, “should be by rights a spiritual exercise. It is as important as religion. What is the use of a man trying to implant high spiritual truths in his brain if that brain consists of fibres taken from bulls, hogs, oysters, mud-turtles¹ and turnips?”

“Oysters,” I said. “That’s it. We’ll have a dozen Blue Points on the half-shell². They’ll soon be out of season.”

“The human race,” said Jim, “is right on the verge of a great discovery. And that is, that what you put into a man, that is what you get out of him. Food. Food is the secret of it all.”

“All what?” I inquired.

“All our troubles,” said Jim. “We’ve solved everything, yet we are still in a universal confusion. We’ve solved the riddles of science and can make cloth out of wood and wood out of air: we can fly and we can travel under the sea; we’ve measured the stars; we’ve explored the human mind to its uttermost end; we’ve solved all questions of law and justice and society; we’ve solved everything, yet the human race as a whole is closer, in its own heart, to the cave man today than it has been since it started out of the caves.”

“We have gone kind of primitive,” I admitted.

“We’ve mastered everything else,” said Jim. “The whole animal and vegetable kingdom we’ve brought under control. Cattle we’ve taken and altered and changed to our own requirements. Horses, hogs, sheep, poultry, we’ve possessed body and soul and perfected them to our own needs. Wheat, potatoes, vegetables, flowers, trees, we’ve corrected and moulded and shaped and improved to our liking. How? By feeding. The only living creature, other than wild things, that mankind has not bothered to alter or improve is mankind himself.”

“Science.” I protested. “has vastly improved all food products. The very reason we have altered cows and cabbages was to improve their eating quality.”

“Yet,” cried Jim triumphantly, “we let mankind eat what it likes. That’s the point. You don’t catch us letting cattle or vegetables eat what they like. No, siree. They eat what we give them. And see the result of feeding oil cakes to cows or fertilizing celery?”

“Fascism,” I accused. “Jim, I hope you are not advocating that we humans be fed, not as we like, but as the government decrees?”

“Why not?” demanded Jim. “If we’ve brought all the animal and vegetable kingdom so far with science, wild cattle converted into Jerseys and great shorthorn beef; wild plants and roots transformed into those succulent vegetables and salads: why not wake up to the facts and start applying the same successful principles to ourselves?”

For a Government Menu

“Suppose,” I suggested, “that you would have a daily menu published by the government and we’d go to jail if we departed from it?”

“Better than that,” said Jim, who had apparently forgotten it was lunch time. “The first thing would be to appoint a royal commission consisting of scientists, doctors, agricultural experts and so forth to determine what foods are holding us back and what foods would, as the farmers say about steers and hogs, finish us. The whole history of the improvement of other species could be gone over, from Percheron horses to Pekingese dogs. Then the government could adopt the report of this royal commission and establish a new department called the Department of Human Agriculture or something. Each day in the newspapers would appear tomorrow’s menus. Inspectors would rove the streets of cities and towns, like weed inspectors, and pop into homes at meal time, to see that nothing noxious was being served. Restaurants and hotels would have permanent officers of the Department of Human Agriculture working right in them, sort of New Age dietitians.”

“Would they allow potato cakes?” I asked.

“Or Winnipeg gold eyes³? Or Roquefort cheese?”

“At first,” said Jim, “there would be a pretty general lenience, so as to wean the human race gradually away from its wicked and destructive individualism. I have no doubt that our ancestors had quite a time with wild horses, teaching them to eat what was good for them. But let us make it a Five Year Plan. In five years, the whole nation will be eating what is good for them according to the rules we have found so eminent successful in all other animals.”

“Fascism, Jim,” I said. “It sounds like fascism to me.”

“Well,” cried Jim passionately, “what else can you blame, but eating, for the way the world is to-day? We’ve tried everything else. We’ve mastered and conquered and explained in every conceivable direction. Yet man remains as mysterious and unmanageable as ever. I think it’s what he eats. Turn a herd of horses loose in the wild state, and how long does it take them to slide right back into the primitive mustang again? Let a field of turnips run wild and what happens to them?”

“Pork,” I said. “That’s what we’ll have for lunch, some lovely nice white roast pork, with cracklings on it, apple sauce and bright turnips with lots of pepper sprinkled on them.”

“Why,” said Jim, slowly straightening himself up out of his chair, “we can see the results of eating right in our midst. Wallace Beery eats beef⁴. Bernard Shaw⁵ eats vegetables. And look at them.”

“Well, it all depends what you want to do with them.” I said: “if it was a fight in a night club. I’d have Beery: but if it was a witty conversation in a parlor, I’d have Shaw.”

“Where,” said Jim, now upright and reaching for his coat and hat, “will we eat?”

“There are all kinds of places,” I said. “I feel like a sit-down meal to-day.”

“It’s lovely out.” said Jim. “We could eat a stand-up sandwich and spend the rest of the time strolling through the streets.”

“We could go down to the hotel grill room and have,” said I high-pressuredly. “let’s see, first: essence of tomato soup, that pale ruby consomme delicately tinged with tomato; followed by a mixed grill, consisting of a tiny plump lamb chop, a sausage, two strips of transparent grilled bacon, a grilled half tomato and a small kidney.”

“Or let’s go to a cafeteria,” suggested Jim, holding the door open for me. “In a cafeteria, you can see what you are getting. You can even pick the one steak you like out of a dozen steaks sizzling in the pan. Or the exact piece of pie you want out of a great and serried parade of pie. When I look at a menu and read the kinds of pies, apple pie, pumpkin pie, caramel cream pie, rhubarb pie and pineapple tart pie, I can’t visualize then. It’s just a great muddle of pie in my mind. But this is the age of realism. A cafeteria is realistic. I can glance over the pies, and just as you can pick the prettiest girl out of a bunch – though no two men will pick the same girl – you can pick the pie of your heart.”

“Well,” I said. “I’m weak from hunger, but nevertheless, let us go and walk around the downtown until the spirit moves us.”

Which we did; and the noon hour was lovely, and the streets jammed with people looking their best, either because they were just going to eat or because they had just eaten. If nothing else bears witness to the spiritual character of eating, this look of noontime beauty on the faces of everyone old and young does. At no other time of the day down town do you see it. That cold and hopeless and hurrying expression of the morning is gone; the tired, veiled look of the homing throngs of evening, gone. Noon is the hour of joy, of smiles, of freshness and of shining eye.

“Jim,” I said, “these girls are like vestal virgins going to the temple, these men – look at that old fellow, there. I bet he is an old buzzard in his office, yet what an air of comfortable and happy expectation is on him now, as he heads for lunch.”

And all the cars at corners slowed politely. and never tooted a toot, it being noon; though in the morning and the evening, these same cars would come angrily to the turns and with indignant horn fling us pedestrians out of their way. And policemen sauntered with far-away gaze. And lads on bicycles whistled tunes. And in the upper windows of office buildings, men sat leisurely on the sills, looking down, embracing their ankles and dreaming.

“Ah, Jim,” I said, “what a lovely thing noon is.”

“How about eating?” suggested Jim.

This Babylon Hour

So we slowed and looked in all the gating places: the drug stores, their windows filled with hardware and shoe trees and globes of the world, with their long counters within where men sat shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow and ate by the wrist movement; the little orangeade places⁶ where the girls sit, with wide eyes and self-conscious mouths, chewing as if chewing were slightly improper; restaurants, with and without beer parlors, where men, mostly in threes, go in and hang their coats up ceremonially, always having a brief flirt with the pretty coat-check girl; cafeterias, where forever somebody is always standing, tray braced against chest, staring helplessly around; funny little kosher sandwich shoppes, the spicy odor of which, skilfully emitted from an open transom, makes an invisible and potent advertisement all along the street whichever way the wind blows; tea shops upstairs and down cellar; armchair lunches where forsaken youths sadly push mops along the damp floors forever, and aged men, bent and tousled, carry great tin baskets full of dirty dishes; gloriously pretty soda joints where even the ham sandwiches taste of vanilla.

So we wandered in this Babylon hour amid the topless towers and the meaningless racket of a great city’s interlude of leisure, and the longer we looked, the less we felt like going into any one of them, for when I said beefsteak Jim said sandwiches, and when I said a chicken pie Jim said liver and bacon.

“The only thing we can do,” declared Jim, “is chuck and chance it. Let’s agree we’ll go into the fifth eating place north of here.”

“O.K..” said I.

And, the fifth was one of those orangeade places, where there were forty girls and only two men eating, and both the men looked as if they had duodenal ulcers and were eating as if they were adding up a column of figures.

“Hang it,” I said, as we paused irresolute, “I never felt more like a sizzling steak in my life.”

“An agreement’s an agreement,” said Jim, thrusting the door open, “but I must admit I could go for a large plate of curried lamb.”

So we went in and stood with the girls at the counter, and watched the little trays coming out, with their mug of coffee and saucer of dinky sandwiches on lettuce, and we studied the complex series of notices, signs and advertisements on the back wall.

I’ll have,” I said, “a tomato, cheese and bacon sandwich. And coffee.”

“Make mine,” said Jim, “a chicken, bacon and tomato sandwich. And coffee.”

And there we stood, while the food continued to stream out the little pantry wicket and the girls around us went seeking pews; and presently, out came our sandwiches.

Skidding and Skating

 They were three-deckers. On white bread. Skewered with toothpicks on which was impaled an olive.

On the little tray there was a knife, fork and spoon. The plate the sandwich was on was a bread and butter plate. But the coffee mug was large and husky and manly.

Jim and I balanced our trays out into the sea of skirts and up by the window found a table just being vacated by five girls. The table was 18 inches square.

We removed our coats, but, except by climbing over several strange young ladies, we could not hang them up. So we sat on the coats.

“I hate these three-deckers,” I said to Jim as we faced our food. “You can’t open your mouth wide enough to get a bite at them, yet, if you unskewer them, they slither all over the table.”

“Curried lamb,” muttered Jim numbly contemplating his sandwich.

The knives were not sharp, and when I tried to cut into my sandwich, the bacon resisted, at which, this the very first attack, the three-decker began to come to pieces. The top slice of bread skidded on the buttered lettuce underneath. The bacon slewed out sideways.

I stabbed it with the fork to hold it firm.

“Easy,” said Jimmie. “I guess we shouldn’t wait so late for lunch. It affects our temper.”

“Whose temper?” I demanded. “I’m not in a temper. I’m just indignant at these silly three-deckers. A sandwich is a sandwich. It is meant to be eaten in the hand.”

I tried another cut at the thing, and the two top slices, resting on cheese and lettuce. skidded in a new and hitherto unsuspected direction. I made a quick stab with the fork and nailed that runaway.

“Pssst,” said Jim, who was sawing cautiously at his.

I laid my knife and fork down and sat back and looked at him.

Jim, with dignity, continued to saw, and presently got a corner loose. This he proceeded to impale on his fork and transfer to his mouth. But tomato is by nature slippery and elusive. The bottom piece of bread, with tomato and lettuce, slipped off half-way to its terminal and fell in Jim’s lap. He made a quick duck with his head and captured off the fork the two upper bits of bread and some wisps of chicken.

“Ha,” said I, resuming knife and fork and advancing to the attack.

I stabbed the largest and firmest part of the sandwich which by now was slithered out, like a pack of cards, all over the little plate. I laid my knife firmly upon it and pressed. I pressed harder. I drew.

The whole business skidded, the little plate tilted, the tray skated, and my sandwich went to the floor.

“Good!” I said. “Now I’ve got you, you…”

And I got down and stabbed it on the floor.

“Pssst,” said Jim, kicking at me. “Keep cool.”

“The… the… the…” I said.

Easy,” said Jim. “Ladies present.”

So, as if by mutual consent, we rose quickly, snatched our coats and hurried out into the street and went down to a drug store and had a double malted egg chocolate, and went back to work much refreshed.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. Turtle soup was a common food until turtles were over-hunted and the soup lost its popularity by the 1950s. ↩︎
2. “Blue Points on the half shell” are a serving of raw Blue Point oysters. Oysters were plentiful and cheap from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, so they were treated as a cheap protein like eggs. ↩︎
3. Goldeyes are a type of freshwater fish. ↩︎
4. Wallace Beery was an actor who was well known for his tough guy roles. ↩︎
5. George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, was a well known vegetarian. ↩︎
6. I’m not sure what these are but it seems like “orangeade places” were restaurants were known for serving small meals that would be more popular with women. ↩︎