"Greg and Jim"

“Let men go into concealment again. Nature gave us a natural ambush but we came out of it. And look where we are!” So Greg and Jim let their beards grow long.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 21, 1939.

“You haven’t shaved this morning,” observed Jimmie Frise.

“I have some kind of frost-bite,” I explained, “here on the corner of my chin.”

“I bet you’d be a handsome little coot, with a square red beard,” admired Jimmie.

“It would accentuate my shortness,” I replied. “Only tall men should wear beards.”

“You’re mistaken,” stated Jim. “A little man could add tremendously to his prestige with a good big beard. A tall man doesn’t need a beard. A little man does.”

“In the army,” I recollected, “I often thought of growing a beard. We used to be sometimes a week or more without a chance to shave, and I’d have the grandest red stubble all over my face. I looked like one of the 12 apostles.”

“Judas, likely,” commented Jim.

“But the army regulations,” I went on, “forbade beards. Moustaches were encouraged.”

“It’s a long time since beards were really in fashion,” remarked Jim.

“Yes, and there is reason to believe that the world has gone to pot partly on account of the disappearance of beards,” I stated.

“It’s as good a reason as many another I’ve heard,” admitted Jim.

“As a matter of fact, it’s a better explanation of the world’s confusion,” I declared. “We always look for deep, hidden causes, when the real cause is probably right on the surface. Why did men cut off their beards, to begin with?”

“To please the ladies, I imagine,” said Jim. “What lady would like to have a huge beard stuck in her face every time Pappy wanted a kiss?”

“To please the ladies,” I repeated darkly. “I believe that was it. A thousand years ago, a beard, I imagine, was a fairly unsanitary appendage. There would be soup in it, and wassail and perhaps even a few smaller chicken bones and things caught in it.”

“Don’t forget,” said Jim, “the Romans shaved. All the statues of Caesar and the great emperors show clean-shaven men.”

“Pshaw,” I cried, “three thousand years before the Romans, the Egyptians were clean- shaven. A thousand years still further the other side of the Caesars than we are from them, men shaved.”

“Did they have razors that long ago?” asked Jim.

“Funny looking tools, too,” I said. “You can see pictures of Egyptian razors¹ in the encyclopaedia. They look like a little hatchet, only all four sides of the blade were sharpened. They were bronze, and brought to at high degree of sharpness. The four or five edges were used for getting in around the corners and curves of the chin. In some ways, an Egyptian razor of the year 3,000 B.C., that is, 5,000 years ago, is better designed than the finest razors of today.”

“Well, look at Egypt,” said Jim, “just a few pyramids and pillars dug from the dust of ages. That shows you what happens to a nation when its men shave.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “The first trouble about shaving is, that a man reveals his true character when he reveals his countenance. Behind a beard, a man could hide such weaknesses as tenderness, sympathy, humor. A man could go about the business of creating and defending an empire when his face was hidden in a beard. But the minute he shaved, all his native humanity showed and could be appealed to by his victims.”

Beards Used to Be Holy

“In the great old days,” said Jim, “beards used to be holy. Men used to swear by their beards.”

“Don’t you remember in the Bible,” I asked, “where David’s ambassadors to the enemy are humiliated by having half their beards shaved off, and David sent them the message. ‘Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown’²?”

“Why don’t you grow a beard?” cried Jim, suddenly. “You’d have a dandy in two weeks, at the rate you show this morning.”

“It’s too late,” I pointed out. “Everybody knows my character now. My family, my friends, the office, everybody. They’ve seen my face. I am exposed. But if I ever move to another community. I’ll sure grow a beard so that nobody will ever know my true character again and, boy, will I make hay while the sun shines!”

“I’ll grow a beard if you will,” stated Jim, very concentrated.

“What’s the idea?” I demanded.

“To change our luck,” said Jim. “And maybe we could start a fashion and change the luck of the world.”

“Beards have come and beards have gone.” I informed him, “all across the history of the world. The ancient Egyptians shaved, but the Assyrian and Babylonian kings grew great beards which they oiled and curled and braided with gold wire.”

“Gold wire?” said Jim. “What a mess!”

“Oh, don’t feel so superior,” I declared. “Henry the Eighth, who was one of our craftiest and most useful kings, had his beard knotted.”

“Knotted?” gasped Jim.

“Yes, sir.” I informed him. “His barber, instead of shaving him, had to come every few days and tie little knots in the beard to take up the slack. So Henry’s beard was a beautiful little snug mass of knotted hair close up against his chin.”

“Ugh,” said Jim.

“In British history,” I enlightened, “beards came with the thoughtful kings and vanished with the battlers. The Richards were clean shaven or with mere tufts, but the Edwards were bearded. The battling Henrys wore no beards at all, or else little forked or tufted beards, fancily designed: but the thoughtful and scheming Henrys wore beards. Edward, the famous Confessor, wore a forked beard down to his girdle.”

“I suppose,” said Jim, “if you had a long beard to stroke reflectively, you would be a reflective man.”

“Correct,” I said. “We are reflective or not reflective, depending on our little habits, not our big ones. Queen Elizabeth had an ambassador named George Killingworth who had a beard five feet long.”

“Good grief,” said Jim.

“Well, you see, a bare-faced queen could not very well impress foreign powers,” I submitted. “But when her ambassador walked into the foreign court behind a colossal bunch of whiskers five feet long, by golly, the political disadvantage of a queen was balanced.”

“The more I think of it,” reflected Jim, “the more I believe there is something to beards. The late King George had a beard and Britain was a power all over the world. And the minute he died, we’ve been getting into one jam after another.”

“Look what Hitler can do,” I pointed out, “on just the least little moustache.”

A Natural Ambush

“The women,” announced Jim, “have had their way long enough. It’s time we began to take stock and put them back where they belong. The emancipation of women may be a very noble idea, but not at the price of world confusion and possible disaster. Delilah the world over, that’s what it is. Just to get a smooth kiss instead of a prickly one, women have sold out the power and strength of mankind.”

“You said it,” I agreed, rubbing my stubble, which was itchy.

“Open diplomacy, openly arrived at, to heck with it,” cried Jim. “Let men go into concealment again. Let us adopt a universal poker face. Let us get into ambush once more. Nature gave us a natural ambush, and we came out of hiding by choice, at the soft, cooing request of women. And look where we are!”

“It’s not easy to grow a beard,” I pointed out. “It takes a long time to get it out far enough to be manageable. And it’s awfully itchy for the first few weeks.”

“If you have no strength of character left,” declared Jim, leaping up, “very well, give way before the smiles of your friends, surrender to the astonished looks of strangers on the street.”

“I’m one day ahead of you, anyway,” I retorted, sticking out my chin resolutely.

“We’re just like everybody else,” said Jim, “we take the easiest way. Is nobody ever going to get his back up? Are we going to drift and drift, instead of grabbing hold of some reality, even if it is only whiskers?”

“Are you serious, Jim?” I demanded. “Do you mean it?”

“All our leaders,” said Jim solemnly, “plead and beg us to seize hold of democracy or justice or some other abstract thing that can’t be grabbed hold of, any more than the wind can be grabbed hold of. I’m tired of all this exhortation. I’m going to take my stand for mankind before it is too late, and I’m going to take my stand in some small, tangible way. First, I’ll grow a beard. And from there, the next step will be easy. I don’t know what it is, but at least I will have made a start. Freedom is at stake. Why? Because we have surrendered in little things, until, like sand slipping from under us, all things are surrendered.”

“What can one beard do?” I asked.

“Two beards, you mean,” said Jim.

So, it being Friday, we had the week-end to get things started. It caused a little trouble at home, especially for Jim; but he invented some pimples on his face as his excuse. And on the street, Sunday afternoon, when I called on Jim to go for a little walk, we met neighbors who did not conceal their astonishment and amusement, depending on how well they knew us.

One neighbor condoled with us, thinking we were ill.

“You look like a couple of galloping declines,” he said.

Jim’s beard, despite his white hair, came out nice and black, but was spotty. It grew in patches, as it were. At a little distance, it did give him a scabby look.

Mine, on the other hand, came out a sort of brindled gray and brown, with a tinge of red in it. The hairs, instead of growing out stiff and straight, like Jim’s, curled, and I had feeling that the tip of each hair was movable, and kept up a constant little tickling all the time. The frost-bite was all better, and I was able to do a little comforting scratching, but scratching seemed only to make more flexible the little curled ends, and they tickled all the more.

Monday morning, we drove down together to the office real early, not because we were afraid to arrive with the crowds, but because we really had some work to catch up on.

“And I never felt work slide so easily under me,” said Jim, about 11 o’clock. “I have a feeling of strength and determination that I never experienced before. I bet shaving takes a lot out of a man.”

“Naturally,” I explained. “It is the instinct of hair to want to grow. You can’t simply speak to your hair and tell it you don’t want it. Naturally, also, hair consumes energy out of your system, in order to grow. So here are our beards, year after year, desperately trying to do their duty. The more we cut them, the harder they struggle to perform their function. Beards were provided by nature to protect our chins and throats. So when our beard cells feel the cold, after shaving, they try all the harder. As soon as we quit shaving, even to this small extent, the slower our beards will grow and the less they will consume of our energy.”

“In other words,” said Jim, dashing off cartoons at a terrific speed, “when we get real good beards we’ll feel ten times the energy we feel this morning.”

“It stands to reason,” I agreed.

Braving the Public Eye

“Boy,” breathed Jim, filling his lungs. “I shave every day. Each day I cut off, say, one-16th inch of beard. Let’s see. One inch every 16 days. Two inches a month. I have been shaving since I was about 20. That means, mumble, mumble, times mumble, divided mumble, mumble; that means I have shaved off 60 feet of whiskers from my chin, or a beard 20 yards long! No wonder I’ve felt debilitated this last 15 years.”

“It’s a tremendous waste of energy,” I submitted. “It’s a wonder modern industry with its scientific attention to all phases of efficiency, hasn’t refused to hire any but bearded help for the past 20 years.”

So we agreed and conversed, until lunch time, and went forth to brave the public eye, which is the hardest part of growing whiskers. Fortunately it was storming and we were able to bury our chins in our mufflers and bow our heads to the blizzard. We decided to steer clear of our usual lunching place, not because we were afraid, but because of the time it would take explaining to waitresses and the manager, who is always keen about the health of his customers.

“Don’t let’s get into any of the big noisy places,” I suggested. “Let’s try one of these quiet little restaurants.”

So, after looking in the windows of three or four of the little hole-in-the-wall places, we selected one which had plenty of men in it.

As we entered, the proprietor, a Greek gentleman, was standing at the cash register and he looked at us narrowly. We smiled easily at him.

We walked down the narrow cafe and selected a table and took off our mufflers and coats, revealing ourselves brazenly.

The proprietor came walking down after us and stopped to have a good look.

“Not here,” he said, laying his hand on the back of Jimmie’s chair and starting to pull it.

“What’s that?” I demanded indignantly.

But it is difficult to look properly indignant with only stubble. With a beard, yes. You can look very indignant, because nobody can see how nervous your mouth may be.

“Not here,” said the proprietor. “Scram. We don’t serve bums.”

“What are you talking about?” stated Jim, quietly. “How dare you call us bums?”

“Look,” said the proprietor, gesturing with his open hand first at my face and then at Jim’s.

I reached into my pocket and hauled out a handful of silver and displayed it before the proprietor’s eye.

“Good pickings today, huh?” said the proprietor. “Never so, scram. No bums. It ruins my business.”

We heard a sort of quiet and glanced around the little restaurant, where a lot of earnest-looking people, the kind who eat in little places, were all paused in their eating, looking at us with obvious lack of sympathy, if not distaste.

“Quick,” said the proprietor. “No bums. Sorry. I got to think for my business.”

He rattled the chair under me, decisively.

“Just a minute,” I began.

But Jim rose abruptly from his chair, snatched his coat and muffler and started for the door.

I followed.

“So,” I said, as we emerged into the storm, “so you hadn’t even the courage to face it out.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “you do look like a bum.”

“If you want any comparisons,” I retorted, “you might take a look at your own face, all blotchy and scrofulous looking.”

We didn’t say any more, but hurried back along King St. and into a barber shop and had a quick shave, with hot towels and witch hazel, and then went and ate at our usual place, amongst our own bare-faced and cowardly kind.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. A sample can be seen here. ↩︎
2. From 2 Samuel 10:5. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 11, 1941.

“I think,” stated Jimmy Frise, “I have got the world’s troubles solved.”

“Good for you,” I said thinly.

“It came to me just before I fell asleep last night,” said Jimmie. “That’s when I do my best thinking.”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I warned him. “This snow is getting deeper and the first thing you know…”

“Let me talk,” explained Jim, “and I’ll drive slower. The more intelligently I talk, the slower I drive.”

“Then talk all you like.” I assured him. “Because I don’t like the look of this road, and we’re going into the ditch in a minute if you don’t take it easy. There hasn’t been a car along here since the snow started.”

“Okay,” said Jim, slackening speed and sitting up behind the wheel with an intent expression on his face. “The way I figured it out last night, in that lovely lucid moment just before I fell asleep, was this: it is useless to try to improve the social system. It is human nature we have to improve.”

“Old stuff,” I informed him.

“Maybe it is,” said Jim hotly. “But we’ve got to look at it again. Here we are in an awful mess in the world because of what? Because one section of the world wants to change our system of life and the other section wants to keep the system it has.”

“You haven’t solved anything,” I emitted.

“From the beginning of time,” went on Jim firmly, “men have been experimenting with systems of government. With ways of life. And after trying one system for awhile, there is a terrific convulsion and they start all over again on a new one. It’s been going on for thousands of years.”

“And may it never end,” I prayed.

“It can end, to the complete happiness of all mankind,” cried Jim, “if we will just face one fact. And that fact is, that it is human nature that has to be changed.”

“You might as well try to change jackal nature or weasel nature as try to change human nature,” I stated.

“The day may be almost at hand when we will change,” declared Jim. “This war, if it goes on long enough, may finally shake human nature loose from its basic error. Century after century, we have gone ahead in the firm and unshakeable belief that human nature can not be changed. So we have tried one pitiful scheme after another to work out a way of life that will somehow fit human nature. Our efforts have been tragic and dyed with blood, always. We ought to realize by now that no scheme can be invented to fit human nature as it is. Therefore, human nature has to be altered to fit some simple, ideal scheme.”

To Change Human Nature

“Religion has been trying to do exactly that for five thousand years,” I protested.

“And politics always crowded religion out,” agreed Jim. “The problem has been divided in two. Let religion look after the spiritual welfare of man. And politics will look after his social welfare. That day is ended.”

“Do you mean you’re going to join up church and state again?” I snorted. “It took centuries to divorce them.”

“I’m not interested in organizations,” replied Jim. “There are as many different kinds of political systems as there are religious systems. All I am interested in is human nature. If mankind gets badly enough hurt in this war, I think maybe it will come to the natural conclusion that it is human nature that has to be changed, not any system.”

“People have to have a system,” I cut in.

“That’s the first mistake,” stated Jim. “That’s the mistake at the bottom of the whole shemozzle.”

“We have to have law and order,” I insisted. “And that is the beginning of what finally works out as a government or a social system.”

“You only need law and order,” explained Jimmie, “because human nature has not changed.”

“How,” I scoffed, “are you going to change human nature to the extent that we won’t need law and order?”

“The theory I worked out last night, just before I fell asleep,” said Jim, “is that after this war we will realize for the first time in human history that it is not the system that is wrong. It is us.”

“Well, I must say,” I said, “that you have been driving slower this last half mile. But that’s about all I can say for your theory.”

“You wait,” prophesied Jimmie. “Just you wait. About every thousand years or so, humanity makes one important discovery. We haven’t made any important discoveries for nearly 2,000 years now. America wasn’t any discovery. Steam, electricity, they’re not discoveries in the larger sense. The last great discovery we made was that the pure in heart shall see God. That was 2,000 years ago, less about 30. Since then we have been too busy rooting in the swill tub to look up and see a new truth. But it looks to me, right now, as if the whole human race was about to make another mighty and shaking discovery. And it might well be something about changing human nature instead of changing the system of trying to govern human nature.”

“Watch the road,” I interrupted. “We very nearly went off the shoulder that time.”

“It’s some blizzard, isn’t it?” said Jim, turning the windshield wiper on stronger.

“I wish we had come home last night,” I declared.

“And missed that evening with Aunt Mary and Uncle Ned?” cried Jimmie aghast. “And that dinner? And that midnight visit to the barn with the lantern to see the horses and the cattle bedded down? And that breakfast?”

Driving in a Blizzard

“I hate driving in a blizzard,” I muttered.

“You said, this morning,” accused Jim, “when we left the farm, that you had never experienced a more delightful 24 hours in your life than this visit to Aunt Mary.”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “But I still hate driving in blizzards.”

“You don’t need to spoil everything,” said Jim, “by saying you wish we had left for home last night, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said, “okay. Keep her in the middle of the road.”

And at a scant 20 miles an hour, we pushed through the ever increasing snow storm, the wind driving the big, heavy flakes against all the car windows. Every mile, the snow on the road grew thicker and drifts began to appear. The farther south we came, the deeper the drifts, as though the blizzard had been raging longer down this way. Few cars met us. None passed us.

“It looks like the annual winter tie-up for these parts,” said Jim. “By tonight, I bet they won’t be able to get through at all.”

“At this speed,” I suggested, “we may not get through ourselves.”

“Do you want me to step on it?” inquired Jim, giving her the gas.

“No, no,” I cried. “Don’t be so touchy. All I was doing was mentioning it. Can’t a guy talk?”

“It’s you that wants to keep the speed down,” said Jim. “And it’s you that wants to bellyache about not getting home.”

“It has not occurred to you, Jim,” I said, “that there is such a thing as being content with something and wanting to be free to complain about it at the same time.”

“It sounds screwy to me,” declared Jim.

“It’s human nature,” I informed him, “at its most human.”

“There’s a village ahead,” said Jim. “What do you say we stop for a few minutes and get warm in the general store?”

“Let’s push on,” I argued, “because every 10 minutes we waste, these drifts are getting bigger.”

“The general store,” said Jim, “is a sort of clearing house for all the news of the township. Maybe the store-keeper can advise us which road to take. Maybe the road we are heading down is badly drifted.”

“We could just pop in for a minute,” I consented.

And it was a welcome break in the slow, tortuous business of driving in a blizzard to enter the cross-roads general store where a warm stove glowed in the midst and eight or 10 other visitors leaned around on the counters or sat on boxes, enjoying the radio which played soft afternoon music.

Jim and I created a little interruption of the quiet scene when we inquired of the storekeeper how the roads were south.

“Well, she’s drifted up pretty bad straight south,” said the merchant. “But it’s just as bad west of here. In fact, I wouldn’t suggest anybody try the road west.”

Several of the other visitors in the store walked over and listened to the discussion. They were all husky, weather-beaten men in heavy coats and ear-flap caps, with that shy look that people from the country and from villages wear. The kind of people who seem to be nursing a secret.

“How About a Shovel?”

“Most of the folks in here,” said the merchant, “are waiting for the weather to clear before pushing on.”

“How about waiting?” inquired Jim of me.

“We might be laid up here all night,” I protested.

“Indeed you might,” agreed one of the others. “I recollect waiting for the blizzard to slow up one time down near Lindsay. It kept on and I was holed up in a little place smaller than this for three whole days.”

“I say we get on, Jim,” I submitted.

“The road straight south,” said the merchant, while the others in the store gathered round in silence, “has two bad drifts on it. One about a mile south of here. And the other about four miles south, along a high hill on the right hand side…”

“How bad are the drifts?” inquired Jim doubtfully.

“Well, I should think there would be a hundred yards of digging on the farthest one,” said the merchant. “You might you might be able to plow through the first one, a mile down.”

“How about a shovel, Jim?” I inquired.

“One thing I never carry in my car,” said Jim, “is a shovel. It gets you into more trouble than anything else you can own.”

And all the folks laughed pleasantly.

“I’ll go halves on a shovel,” I proffered. “I think we ought to push on before it gets too late.”

While we debated, two or three more men stamped into the store and joined our circle. They too listened with interest to the debate between Jim and me and the grocer. But they did not appear to be in any hurry. They just leaned back on the counters and sat on crates and boxes and talked in brief monosyllables and glanced about with shrewd bright eyes. It would have been good to relax as they relaxed: good to sit on a box here in this cozy store while the blizzard raged without, and the static of the storm crackled faintly on the low, muffled music of the radio.

“Here’s a shovel at $1.15¹,” said Jim, coming from the back of the store.

So we bought the shovel between us, and after amiable farewells to the enviable group around the big stove, we pushed out into the blizzard and found our car already blanketed with snow. There were eight other trucks and cars huddled around the side of the general store, with ours.

“It’s only five miles to the highway, Jim,” I reminded him, “and they’ll have it plowed.”

“Keep the shovel handy,” replied Jim, stepping on the gas.

And with a few slews and skids, we got out onto the untrodden road again and at a cautious 20, fared south.

The road was rapidly becoming impassable, as we could well see. The car labored even on the level, and on the slight grades lurched and plunged alarmingly.

“We might better have stayed at that village,” said Jim gloomily.

In about 10 or 15 minutes, we came to the first drift the store-keeper had spoken of. Wind whipped the snow in spirals and drifty clouds. Jim put on dangerous speed and charged the snowbank which was maybe only 20 feet through at its deepest. In about six feet, the car stalled.

“Okay,” said he, “I’ll have to nurse the engine. We don’t want it to choke up. You shovel and I’ll drive her through.”

“We can take turns,” I suggested.

But Jim just raced the engine, for fear it might stall with wind and snow.

It took me a good 50 minutes hard shovelling to clear a path through the 20 feet of drift. Jim edged the car up each yard I gained, and kept the engine racing and idling, but I could see through him.

But Life is Like That

When I finished, and was getting back into the car, I was surprised to see, about 200 yards back up the road, four or five cars lined up and all stopped in a row:

“Why,” I said, “the low down…”

I called Jim’s attention to them.

“They’re following us,” I cried, “and waiting there for us to cut through the drift.”

“There’s no law against it,” said Jim.

“Let them pass us,” I fumed, “before we get to the big drift the store-keeper told us about.”

At 10 miles an hour, we poked along. But the cars behind held their respectful distance. In fact, they allowed the distance to widen between us.

“Stop,” I cried, “and let them pass us.”

So Jim drew carefully to the side of the road. I watched out the back window, and when the first of the following cars came over the rise and saw us, he stopped and the others behind him dutifully stopped too. They were about 300 yards back.

“Jim,” I said, with heat, “this is an outrage.”

“They’re in no hurry,” explained Jim. “They’re just easy-going people in no need to get anywhere in a rush.”

“They deliberately waited in that general store,” I stormed, “for some poor devils like us to come along who are in a hurry, who have to get through.”

“Okay,” said Jim, “what is wrong, then, with them benefitting by our deed? Somebody always has to be first. It’s usually somebody like us, with urgent need shoving us.”

“It’s a dirty trick,” I declared.

“No, life is full of situations like it,” said Jimmie. “The guy who has to do something does it first and shows how. The rest of us follow.”

We drove on. We came to the big drift. At a respectful distance the cars, now nine in number, had patiently followed us, slowing when we slowed, and now stopped.

“Jim,” I demanded, “back the car up to them. They can’t get away. Back the car up to them while I give them a piece of my mind.”

“Look,” said Jim patiently, “what’s wrong with what they’re doing? They’re in no rush. They’ve been waiting, quite pleasantly and happily, for somebody to come along that had to get through. You’re the one that’s in a hurry. Why should they dig out drifts for you?”

“I’m digging out drifts for them,” I shouted.

“So it happens,” agreed Jim. “But every road you travel on was cut through the bush by somebody else, and built and paved and maintained by somebody else – for you. There always have to be first goers. There is always the pioneer.”

So I got out and shovelled. And it was a long, long shovel. Jim came and helped me a couple of times. But he shovels slower than I do, and wants to pause and talk all the time. So I made him get in the car and keep the engine warm by creeping after me as I dug.

“You sure have to change human nature,” I yelled at him, when the idea recurred to me.

“Yep,” called back Jim, “and the question is: shall we make the slow pokes move faster? Or will we slow down those who are forever in a hurry?”

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Editor’s Note:

1. $1.15 in 1941 would be $21.40 in 2024. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, January 3, 1948.

Jim and Greg disagree over the most fitting method to dispose of a 50-pound gift of Maritime lobsters

“Hurray!” yelled Jimmie Frise, waving a letter aloft.

“From the income tax department?” I inquired sweetly.

“Lobsters!” exulted Jim excitedly. “Good old Joe Havelock down in New Brunswick has shipped me a 50-pound box of lobsters. They’ll be here Saturday.”

“Fifty pounds?” I suggested. “That’s a lot of lobster. They won’t keep. You’ll have to divide them up among your friends.”

“To heck with that!” cried Jim. “I’ll give a stag party.”

“Whenever you get a barrel of oysters or a box of sea food from your Maritime friends,” I protested, “the tradition up here is to scatter them around among your friends.”

“Tradition be hanged!” enthused Jim. “I’ll stage a stag party. Fifty pounds of lobster! Man, we’ll put on a party that the gang won’t soon forget.”

“Lobsters,” I pointed out doggedly, “are a delicacy, Jim. You don’t want to stuff anybody with lobster. The best thing to do would be to keep what you can use in your own family, then distribute the rest around among your immediate friends.”

“I’ll get the womenfolk,” interrupted Jim, “to crack up about 10 pounds of them and make a nice lobster salad, with mayonnaise, on lettuce, in a great big salad bowl. Then the rest…”

“Nobody,” I pursued firmly, “wants to be surfeited with lobster, Jim. You invite five or 10 of the gang here…”

“Five or 10?” scoffed Jim. “I’m going to invite 20. Maybe 30. The whole gang. Everybody we know. We’ll have Skipper and Bumpy and young Art, and Bill Sparra and Billie Milne…”

“Some of them may have ulcers,” I pointed out. “Maybe they can’t EAT lobster. Now, my idea, if you want my advice, would be to keep a few pounds for yourself and make a nice little holiday season gift to…”

“I’ll have that big salad, with mayonnaise,” ignored Jimmie, “and then, whole lobsters on platters, trays, cake plates. Every dish and platter in the house, I’ll have spread out all over the dining room table and on the buffet and on side tables. Lying on big lettuce leaves, whole lobsters by the dozen, with little pots of mayonnaise scattered handy, to dip the delicate morsels in, as they crack them.”

“Crack them?” I pointed out. “How many tools are you going to have lying about? Eh? Have you thought of that? How are your 20 or 30 guests going to crack their lobsters? Have you got 20 or 30 sets of nut crackers, pliers, wrenches, hammers?”

“They’ll be cracked in advance,” said Jim triumphantly. “You and I will spend the afternoon, preparing the whole lobsters the way they are done in restaurants. We’ll crack the shells just enough so as not to spoil the looks of the whole lobsters, but enough to let the boys get at them. Man, there is no way to eat a lobster except right in your hands, breaking it open and extracting the luscious meat.”

“You want my help,” I accused, “But you don’t want my advice. I assure you, Jim, that the traditional way of disposing of one of these wholesale gifts from our friends and relatives in the Maritimes, a barrel of oysters, a crate of lobsters, is to distribute them around among our intimate friends. Just a few of our closest, most intimate friends…”

“All right,” announced Jim. “I’m starting a new tradition, right now. From now on, when I get a load of oysters or lobsters, I stage a party and serve the whole business at one swoop. It’s the only proper, decent thing to do. It should be a celebration. If your friends down east wanted you to have a taste of oysters, they’d send you a dozen. If they wanted you to have a little lobster for supper, they’d send you a couple in a candy box. But when they send you a BARREL or a 50-pound crate of lobsters, they expect you to do something about it in a style befitting the occasion. If those Maritimers knew what we did with those barrels and crates, they’d never send them. Puh! We either hide the barrel away until half the contents spoil, or else we hastily call up our friends to come over and get a dozen oysters or a lobster. Not me! I’m staging a celebration, in honor of the great Canadian Lobster!”

“Well…” I sighed helplessly: I had done my best to get a half, a quarter or even an eighth of that box of lobsters.

Without more ado, Jim sat down and began writing out a list of the gang he was going to invite: It did not take him long to write 10 names. The next five, bringing it to 15, took a little more time and thought. To get it to 20, he had to rumple his hair and stare out the window. Not many men have 20 friends. Friends, that is, close enough to come in on a Saturday afternoon, at 4:30 and crack lobsters.

But he got it. And then started phoning.

“Saturday!” he said to them all. “Come around 4:30. Just a stag party. I got a whole crate of lobsters from NB. Yes. Fifty pounds. Okay! Around 4:30.”

So, one by one, I saw those lobsters vanishing into thin air.

Saturday morning, as soon as we got to the office, Jim telephoned the express company and inquired if there was a box of lobsters for him from the Maritimes.

After a lot of delays and being shifted from one department to another, Jim finally got hold of a man who said that the express from the East hadn’t been sorted yet. He would look up the manifests and call back. Jim gave him our number.

By 11 o’clock, Jim was in a tizzy. He telephoned the express company again. And after another long delay and after being shifted again from department to department, he at last got hold of the same guy, who said he hadn’t had a chance to examine the manifests yet. But he’d call back. Jim had the good sense to get the man’s name and branch telephone line.

“You’ll call me back?” pleaded Jim. “It’s very important.”

“You should have waited,” I explained, after he hung up, “to invite your stag party AFTER you got your lobsters.

“Joe Havelock SAID they’d be here Saturday,” declared Jim hotly.

“Aw, you know the express,” I comforted.

When there was no telephone call from the express by 12:15, Jim telephoned again, direct to the man. And a stranger informed us that the man had gone for the day. He quit at noon. So, after a lot of recapitulation, repetition and backtracking, the new man said he’d look up the manifests and see if there was a package addressed to Frise. And call us back.

“If it’s come,” he explained to Jim, “it will be out in the delivery now.”

“That,” Jim informed him, “is exactly what I have been trying to avoid. Goodness knows when it’ll be delivered.”

We took turns going out to lunch, so one of us would be in when the express man telephoned. But there was no call. And at 2 o’clock, Jim telephoned again, and here was NO answer.

So we got in the car and drove down to the express company warehouse. It was 2:45 when we found the correct department of the warehouse. It was 3:10 when we found the right official to deal with.

He led us on a tour of exploration.

“What’s that over there?” demanded Jimmie, pointing to a pile of gloomy boxes.

“Oh, that’s fish,” explained the express man.

“Might lobsters not be among the fish?” inquired Jim wanly.

We looked. We shifted 20 boxes of fish. And there, right as a dollar, was our box, addressed in bold large characters to Mr. James Frise.

“Aw, it just got mixed up with the fish,” explained the express man.

It was 3:45 when we hoisted the box of lobsters into the back of Jim’s car. It was 4:20, due to the icy streets, when we pulled up at Jim’s house. And already three cars were in the driveway.

“Gosh!” chuckled Jim. “The boys must be hungry!”

They were enthusiastic, anyway. For half a dozen of them, Bumpy, Skipper and Sparra among them, came tumbling out of the house to help us carry the big box into the back kitchen.

“Leave it here,” commanded Jim. “We’ll open it here in the back kitchen, so as not to get ice and water all over the linoleum.”

“They’re well packed,” remarked Skipper. “The box, isn’t leaking at all.”

No wonder it wasn’t leaking! Jim got the hammer and screwdriver, and started prying the lid off.

“If it hadn’t been for this express mix-up,” grunted Jim, “Greg and I by now would have had these all cracked and on the platters.”

“Don’t fret,” consoled Old Skipper. “It will be all the more fun. Every man cracking his own…”

With a squeak, the top board came off.

But instead of cracked ice, we beheld to our astonishment a soggy mass of dark purplish brown.

“Seaweed!” remarked Old Skipper promptly.

Jim pried off another board.

We stared down at the sodden mass.

And it MOVED!

“Live!” shouted Old Skipper. “Live lobsters!”

I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. And at that moment, the front door bell rang.

“Here they come,” muttered Jimmie dully. We lifted the top layer of seaweed off.

There, slowly waving a huge, vicious olive green claw with yellow ruchings, emerged a great big five-pound lobster.

Skipper gingerly reached in and picked him free of his encumbering weeds. He was a beauty. His long whiskers moved mechanically. His bulging claws, tied together with a chip between them, waggled and twitched. His eyes – on stems – clicked to right and left.

As the gang poured in from the front of the house, we unearthed a dozen large and several small lobsters; not pretty red, packed in ice; but dark sea green, olive green, packed in dank seaweed.

“I thought,” announced Jim to the gathering, “I thought they’d be boiled lobsters. It never occurred to me…”

“We’ll boil ’em!” encouraged Old Skipper heartily.

“What in?” demanded Jim hollowly. “What can we boil all those great big things in?”

“Get the cook book,” I suggested.

Jim read from the cook book: “Take a large cauldron and fill with sea water…”

“Sea water!” he halted. “See?”

“Aw, don’t boil them,” put in Bill Sparra, anxiously. “It’s horrible! Every time you drop a lobster into the water, it screams.”

“No!” denied Old Skipper.

“Yes!” insisted Bill Sparra. “A little high scream. You can hear it all over the house.”

“Utter nonsense,” protested Bumpy, hotly. I’ve seen dozens of lobsters boiled…

“Broil them!” I suggested brightly. “Broiled live lobster? It’s a feature on the best sea food menus.”

By now the back kitchen, the kitchen and the hallway, were filled with the stag party guests.

“What on earth…” muttered Jim, helplessly, “… do I do? What’s in the house to eat?”

Well, there were ham and eggs in the house. I skipped over to the corner and bought another three dozen eggs and two pounds of ham.

And Jim and I functioned as chefs and did the cooking.

We had the stag party on ham and eggs; and it was pronounced a great success by all.

The lobsters we took down Monday to our old friend and restaurateur, Arnold Taylor, who got his fish chef to boil the lobsters for us.

And Jim divied them up Monday evening among a few of his closer, more intimate friends.

---

Editor’s Note: A stag party might now more commonly refer to a party for the men in a wedding party, but it can also mean any party where only men are invited.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 29, 1934.

“AAAAAAGHHH,” said Jimmie Frise.

“What is it?” I asked anxiously.

“Ughh,” groaned Jimmie, this Christmas-New Year’s week gets me down. Over eating. Over eating. I feel like a boa constrictor that has eaten three goats. One goat. Two goats. Three goats.”

“Yes,” I said, “I know that lumpy feeling.”

“I could just lie down somewhere and let those colossal gorgings digest,” said Jimmie. “I feel drowsy. Or is it just that I have eaten so much, my skin is tight all over me, and that is what is making my eyes half close?”

“What we need,” I declared, “is exercise.”

“I never felt less like exercise in all my life,” replied Jim, resting himself in another slouched position on his chair.

“Big meals,” I said, clearing my throat, “big meals, Jimmie, should be forbidden by the public health legislation of this country. They should be a crime. In ancient times, when nature was our only law, men, like any other animal, ate whenever they could, but lots of times they went for days and days without a bite to eat.”

“I wish I was starving to death, right now,” moaned Jimmie.

“Lots of times,” I went on, “when game was scarce, whole tribes of men were slowly starving to death. Then all of a sudden, a herd of prehistoric reindeer or a couple of mammoths came along…”

“Ughh,” protested Jimmie.

“A herd of mammoths came along,” I continued, “and the whole tribe rushed out of the caves and slew a couple of them. And what a feast there was then! Up leaped the fires, and great juicy steaks of mammoth went on the pointed sticks to be roasted…”

“Please, please,” begged Jimmie, rising. “If you don’t change the subject, I’ll have to leave.”

“Very well,” I said. “But you see the point. Mankind, in the long-drawn-out early history of us, used to feast only after long fasts. I should say that in the ancient days mankind ate, as a rule, very little, and only once in a long while did they get a square meal. In these days, when we all eat regular meals, we should never, never feast.”

“Agreed, agreed,” said Jim, yawning and groaning at the same time.

“Having all and more than we need to eat, as often as we like,” I said, “it is against the ancient law of nature for us to gorge ourselves. It should be a public crime to stuff.”

“I’m a criminal all right,” said Jim, closing his eyes heavily.

“I’m a criminal, too,” I assured him. “Christmas Day, I started with two fried eggs and bacon, toast, cherry jam, two mugs of coffee and a beaker of orange juice. Then, about two p.m., we sat down to a turkey. Such a turkey. I ate three full-size slices off the breast, cut with a sharp knife. A gobbin of dressing about the size of a grapefruit…”

“Erp,” said Jim, “pardon me.”

“Then mashed potatoes with dark bright brown gravy, and turnips and cranberry sauce with the skins left in, for sharpness….”

Planning a Cellar Gym

“You were saying,” said Jim, heaving himself to an upright posture in his chair, “something about exercise. Talk about exercise. Tell me about walking five miles in the crisp winter afternoon, amidst bright pine trees along the frosty roads.”

“Walking,” I said, “about 120 to the minute, short, strong-legged paces, swinging a cane, with a tartan muffler around your neck, a pipe in your mouth, and steam blowing from your nose.”

“Aaaahhhh,” sighed Jimmie, looking better already.

“And big stout boots on your feet,” I pictured, “and the ground frozen and lumpy underfoot, and chickadees and maybe a redpoll or two in the trees for you to pause and look at, and maybe a pheasant, all dark and burnished, running across the road ahead of you.”

“Get away from pheasants, raw or roasted,” warned Jim.

“In the olden days,” I stated, “when we used to alternate feasts with long periods of enforced fasting, we got plenty of exercise. Hunting the mammoths must have been an arduous sport. Through bogs and swamps and through terrible jungles, with your poor stomach flat against your backbone from emptiness.”

“Beautiful,” murmured Jim.

“And you weary from carrying an immense club studded with bronze nails to kill the mammoths with.”

“Keep the mammoths alive,” urged Jim. “A dead mammoth gags me somehow.”

“I tell you what,” I suggested, “let’s go for a good walk right now. Let’s lock the office and go. Let’s drive as far as the Jail Farm¹ and then go for a big tramp about five miles west, along one of those lovely winter York county dirt roads.”

“I’d die,” said Jim. “I’d just sit down by a snake fence and die. I haven’t enough strength in my legs right now to stand up.”

“The only thing to cure you,” I informed him, “is exercise. A brisk, long walk. A swinging walk through country with cold wind in your face and pushing against your chest.”

“It’s lovely to hear about,” said Jim, “but I couldn’t do it. Just let us talk about exercise.”

“Can’t we do something about exercise?” I asked. “Instead of merely talking about?”

“I’ve often thought,” pursued Jim, “of making a sort of private gymnasium in my cellar. It’s a big cellar, with a nice high ceiling. I could erect a horizontal bar, and rings on ropes, you know?”

“And my wife,” I said, “has one of those rowing machines stored in the attic. I’d lend

it.”

“And a horse,” said Jim. “You know those leather horses for leaping over.”

“Why don’t we just join a gym?” I asked.

“It’s too public,” demurred Jim. “I couldn’t bear showing off my shape in front of a lot of beautiful young fellows built like gods.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Make it a cellar gym.”

“There,” said Jim, relaxing a little, “we two could meet of an early morning, fresh from sleep and before starting for the office. We could do a crisp half hour of swinging and whirling. We could shake all the stale blood out of our limbs.”

“And heads,” said I.

“We could start our pulses working,” went on Jim. “Evenings, we could do tricks, slowly reviving the lost talents of our muscles. Saturdays we could hold private and personal gymkhanas², competing with each other to see who had the most strength, the most skill.”

“You have me interested,” I admitted.

So that when we broke off work early and went home in the bright afternoon, we called at my house and got the rowing machine out of the attic of my house, and I also contributed a length of big half-inch rope that once I bought for an anchor, not knowing how big half-inch rope really is. An old army saddle I also dug out of the attic, relic of my war days when I tried to ride horses.

“This,” I explained to Jimmie, “will do instead of a gymnasium horse. We can prop it up some way between two chairs or something.”

Jim had timber to make horizontal bars. Old curtain poles of the kind all houses used to have between the living room and the dining room, and all of which are now stored in the attics of the world, Jim produced and we made series of bars on which we could swing like Tarzan, from limb to limb, strengthening our arms and dilating our chests and lungs.

Jimmie’s stuffiness passed off as we got the material assembled in his cellar.

“I feel better already,” said Jim, removing his coat and vest and producing an old box full of hammers, saws, nails and dusty old brackets and things.

First we had to sit down to plan it. We sat down on boxes and planned, with gestures. Over in the corner would be the rowing machine. Along the back of the big cellar would be a series of parallel bars for swinging, grand circles, short arm balances and chinning.

“I haven’t,” said Jim, “chinned myself for so long, it will be a treat to do it again.”

“And rings,” I cried. “Jimmie, when I was at school, I could travel faster around the rings than any boy in the school. I love rings. To swing at arm’s length on rings, gaining momentum and speed. I wonder if we couldn’t get so expert, we could set up two sets of ropes and rings, and swing from one to the other, like trapeze artists?”

“Vaulting the horse,” said Jim. “Now there’s a thing that tests your mettle. You take a run at the horse, place one hand on the saddle, and vault cleanly over it. I would rather see a man vault the horse than see a whole team of military jumpers take the hurdles on horseback.”

So we planned. We would have the horse in the middle of the cellar. I got up and set boxes and things and rested a broom across, and balanced my old saddle on the broom to show Jimmie just how it would look. Then I sat down again.

“It isn’t big enough,” mused Jim, “for a running track down here. But we might get some whitewash like they use on tennis courts and mark off the floor in rings and squares, to make it look gymnasiumy. You know, half the inspiration of a gymnasium is the look of it. It must look appetizing.”

“I thought you were tired of appetite,” I said.

“Now, how about a chest expander,” said Jim, shifting on to the floor and resting his back against the box. “We could attach a couple of bricks to some strong sash cord, and run it up through pulleys. A first-rate chest expander.”

“Swell,” said I. “And how about a rubbing-down table? I could rub you down and then you could rub me down.”

For Fresh Inspiration

“Boy,” said Jimmie, “that rub-down makes me feel good. What would we use for a rub-down?”

“Liniment,” I decreed. “A good cool stinging liniment. With a pungent, turpentiney odor.”

“Ach,” said Jim, “the smell of it fairly catches my breath. I feel like a new man already, just thinking about it.”

He sat up and stretched. He stood up. He walked around the cellar and patted the saddle.

“Think,” he said, “of that grand fresh, feeling of doing twenty minutes fast work on these bars, those rings, that horse, then five minutes on the rowing machine, then a quick rub-down with liniment and so to work!”

“I tingle,” I assured him. “Try a few pulls on that rowing machine.”

Jim stood above the rowing machine, looking down at it.

“Sit on it,” I urged him. “Take a few pulls and see how strong and elastic those springs are.”

“In a few minutes,” said Jim. “I’ve got to run upstairs for a second.”

Left alone, I lay there visualizing the gymnasium. Seeing Jimmie and me in our underwear lithely whirling and twisting, swinging and bending and wheeling. Upstairs I heard Jim’s feet to and fro in the kitchen.

He came down, just as the light from the cellar windows was fading, with a large tray.

On the tray were onion sandwiches, and the tail end of the turkey. The onion sandwiches were Spanish onions sliced thin, as only Jimmie knows how to make them, with salt and pepper, a dash of vinegar laid on with a teaspoon to get it just right, a faint dash of wooster sauce, between well-buttered thin bread.

The turkey was on its last legs, but hidden about its colossal carcase were large gobbets of meat, some white, some dark. Inside were large hunks of dressing still adhering to the ribs.

Jim had also a pot of coffee and a jug of thick cream.

“Ah,” said I, sitting forward.

We just laid the tray on the gymnasium floor and sat to it on our boxes.

After we had finished, I locked my fingers behind my head and leaned back against the wall.

“Well,” I said, “how about the gymnasium? How about doing something for a start?”

“New Year’s dinner will be in a few days,” said Jim, picking a last thread of white meat off from along that big keel bone sticking up drily. “What do you say if we wait until after New Year’s before going on with the gym? It will be a sort of fresh inspiration for us?”

“O-kay,” I agreed.

So before going upstairs to listen to the radio from the chesterfield and the big fat chair to match it, we pushed the bars and ropes and boards and saddle and stuff into a corner where they would be handy.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story appeared both in So What? (1937), and Silver Linings (1978).

1. The “Jail Farm” was the Langstaff Jail Farm. In today’s terminology, it was a minimum security facility for inebriates, first offenders, and petty criminals, an alternative to the dreaded Don Jail.  ↩︎
2. Gymkhana is a British Raj term which originally referred to a place of assembly. The meaning then altered to denote a place where skill-based contests were held. ↩︎