These illustrations accompanying an article by Charles Vining about diploma mills where anyone could get a degree through the mail. As part of the investigation, Vining had the office boy at the Star Weekly get a degree.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 6, 1943.
“How about a movie?” suggested Jimmie Frise.
“That’s rationed, too,” I stated. “At the least, it’s as good as rationed. All the shows in town are war pictures. And that makes them rationed, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a dandy murder mystery at one of the neighborhood theatres up in the north end,” said Jim, studying the ads in the newspaper.
“Well, that’s rationed, too,” I insisted, “because we haven’t any gas to drive away up to the north end. And I’m certainly not going to spend two-and-a-half hours in street cars to go look at a murder mystery.”
“It’s funny how rationing rations far more than the item under control,” admitted Jimmie. “Now, I was going to suggest we spend tonight tying up a few trout flies. The season is only eight weeks away. Yet we would both feel ridiculous tying trout flies.”
“When they rationed gasoline,” I submitted, “they rationed a thousand other things besides. Trout flies are one of them. Because we certainly aren’t going to get any trout fishing this spring. We can’t drive. We can’t go by bus. And it would be sinful to take up space on trains…”
“Besides,” said Jim, “there are no hooks to be bought for trout flies.”
“And since nobody can get any shotgun shells,” I added, “there aren’t any duck feathers to be had for trout flies. Yes, sir. With a little skill in rationing, you can pretty near cut off all the normal activities of the human race.”
“Well, it’s a total war,” explained Jim.
“But they don’t have to make all the movies war movies,” I protested. “I think the moviemakers are a pretty dumb lot. Here is the biggest chance in their history to establish themselves as a great literary force. Now, more than ever in history, is the time to produce great literary masterpieces that not only will help the public escape from the woes of war, but will remind mankind of the greater, more eternal values of life. But what do the moviemakers do? They produce newsreels with a little story mixed up in them. Every movie producer seems bent on producing artificially a more realistic newsreel of war than the newsreels themselves. They don’t realize how hungry humanity is, right now, for a spiritual and emotional experience that will remind them of the depth of beauty and meaning of human life, and help them, escape from the idea that humanity is a pretty hopeless and helpless muddle.”
“The producers are all working hard,” Jim said, “at propaganda.”
All This Rationing
“Well, I sighed, “if they can all be lined up for propaganda as easily as they are now, we are going to see some fun when the war ends, and half of them are propaganding for the great social changes that are foretold, while the other half are propaganding for the old order.”
“Pshaw,” said Jim, “the social changes are as good as in already. What do you think all this rationing and control is but the training we are getting for the socialism to come?”
“Unless,” I submitted, “we get a good strong party that presents as its platform the getting rid of all the controls and rationings. They’d get a pretty terrific following.”
“Listen: “This rationing,” said Jim, “will have effects that never can be eradicated. When you put both the rich and the poor on one patty of butter per meal, do you imagine that will ever be forgotten?”
“Who by?” I inquired.
“The poor,” said Jim.
“My dear sir,” I cried. “I don’t know much about socialism, but I know enough about it to know you’ve got it entirely backside foremost. The idea of socialism isn’t to make everybody do with one patty of butter. It is to give everybody all the butter they need. It is not to give everybody the same. It is to make sure that a few don’t get all they want, while the many have to lead lives of quiet desperation in order to get what little they can.”
“You have to have some incentive…” began Jimmie.
“Don’t say it!” I cried. “Don’t say it, Jim. It is the worst blasphemy ever uttered against humanity. If the incentive of gain were the only thing that kept mankind alive, we would all have passed off the face of the earth 5,000 years ago. Any one of the hundreds of times in human history when no gain was possible would have wiped us out. No, sir; men work for the sheer love of work. And the greatest proof of it are those rich men who are among the most ardent preachers of that incentive stuff.”
“But we wouldn’t work so hard…” began Jim.
“Why should we?” I demanded. “That’s the whole question in a nut shell. Who says we have to work hard? Only the guys who, for no practical reason on earth, want to bully mankind into giving them a million times more than anyone else, and a million times more than they deserve, for all their brains, ingenuity and willingness to work themselves. Just because a guy is no unnatural and inhuman that he wants to collect a billion dollars, why should we let him make boobies and coolies out of all the rest of us?”
“Without leaders, in industry, finance, and…” tried Jimmie.
“Utter hooey,” I assured him. “Take those same guys and cut their salaries to $2,500 not $25,0001, and they would still want to be boss, they’d still work like horses, they’d still use their brains, and energies exactly as they do now. They’ve been kidding us. We’ve let them get away with murder. They can’t help working. They can’t help being clever and ingenious. It’s the way they are born.”
“Do you mean to say,” scoffed Jimmie, “that if we cut the head men down to the same wages as us, they would continue to work as they do, while we go fishing…”
“Certainly,” I replied. They couldn’t be loafers if they tried. You are a loafer because that is your born nature. Or you are a working, scheming fool because that is your nature. If all the money in the world won’t change you and me from being loafers at heart, why do you imagine all the money in the world would change the boss from being the boss.”
“Then?” cried Jim, amazed.
“Take the money away from him, and watch him be himself anyway,” I triumphed.
“I don’t believe it,” muttered Jim incredulously.
“The real enemies of the big social reforms coming,” I submitted, “are not going to be the rich men. Not even the sons of rich men. The real body of public opinion which is going to fight the reform are going to be the gamblers. The guys who live moderately by their wits. All of us you see jammed into the Gardens to watch hockey games, and at the races. The hundreds of thousands among us who believe that winning is a matter of brute strength, skill and smartness. The worshippers of sport. Those are the guys who are afraid of social justice, not the rich industrialists. Every measly little bird you see in our city, with crafty bloodshot eye and a cunning shut mouth – he’s the enemy of reform. He’s the bird who doesn’t want to work. He wants to live by his wits. Very few of them are rich. Countless thousands of them, however, will fight with all the genius of foxes and weasels against any system that prescribes honest work as the basis of their livelihood.”
“You’re pretty tough on sport,” protested Jim.
“I just used sport,” I explained, “to make a quick picture for you men in the mass. You could say the same about the movies or a political rally. The next time you hear anybody talking about incentive and private enterprise, make immediate inquiries about him. And ten to one you’ll find he is a promoter, whose only work is chiselling a few dimes off the man who makes something and a few nickels off the man who buys it.”
“This is tough stuff,” complained Jimmie.
“Listen,” I said loudly, “a man likes to work if for no better reason than to escape, for a few hours a day, from his wife and kids.”
“Put that in a movie,” scorned Jimmie.
“How about a movie?” I demanded. “There is nothing else to do.”
“Will you even go to a war picture?” asked Jim.
“Yes,” I said bitterly. “And first will be a newsreel full of battle. Next will come a Canada’s War Effort short about making torpedoes2. And then the feature, an unsinkable sergeant who shoots Japs out of every coconut tree and marries an heiress in the W.A.A.C.’s.”
“Aw,” said Jim.
But we went.
Behind Big Hats
And the theatre was jammed. And we went all the way down to the front, with an usher, and found no seats. And then we hunted for ourselves, and off to one side, we got two seats together, climbing all over twelve people’s feet at the very moment the hero of the feature was clutching the W.A.A.C.3 to his many medalled bosom.
And when we got seated, we found that two ladies sitting directly in front of us had those big pie-shaped hats that curve upwards in front.
“Madam,” I whispered between them, “would you mind taking off your hats, please?”
Both ladies turned sharply, sat forward so as to bring a sufficient hauteur into the gesture, and then slowly relaxed back, without touching their hats.
I bundled my coat up for a cushion and sat on it.
But still I couldn’t see past those two hats.
“Can you see, Jim?” I inquired loudly.
“If they’d sit still, I could catch glimpses,” confessed Jim.
The ladies had the habit of leaning together and then drawing apart, a habit not uncommon among those who, while not wanting to discuss the picture play by play, still wish to communicate to each other their appreciation of the finer points of the film.
“Usher,” I called modestly, to an usher, hustling up the aisle twelve seats away.
“Sssshhhh,” said six people. I looked around.
“Can you folks see?” I asked those directly behind me.
“We can see but we can’t hear,” replied a sour lady.
Suddenly, I had an inspiration. I took my hat from under the seat and put it on my head.
Jimmie looked at me with delight, and promptly put his on.
“Hey, there, hey, cut that out,” came several voices back of us.
“If these ladies,” I announced resolutely “can wear their hats, so can we.”
As I turned around, someone from behind swiped my hat off my head, and it bounced off Jimmie and went into the darkness three or four seats to the west.
Meanwhile, the two ladies had leaned forward slowly in their seats and turned equally slowly, and were surveying the disturbance with high disdain.
“Pass me my hat, please,” I requested.
Jim’s was still on his head. After a few scuffles, my hat came back to me and I placed it at once on my head.
Now fifteen or twenty people were standing up behind us and among the angry outcries were calls for “usher, usher.”
We sat grimly, holding our hats to our heads.
Deep-Rooted Customs
A social revolution is a sudden thing. At first, just a few angry outcries, lost amid a widening mutter and murmur of discussion. Then all of a sudden, everything explodes.
My hat was jerked from my head and I didn’t even see it depart. Jim’s I saw go sailing ahead fifteen rows. Ladies began screaming. One of the proud ladies in front, with the offending hats, rose to her feet and shouted into the darkness:
“George, where are you. Come quick!” And from three rows behind, two gentlemen, apparently the husbands of the offenders, came hurdling and grunting, and all was great confusion of shoves and hoists and bunts with knees, until I found two ushers helping me to escape, Right behind me, two more ushers were helping Jimmie along.
And without any delay whatever, we were hurried out the doors where the large elderly commissionaire at the ticket escorted us rapidly down the slanting parquet.
“Our hats, our hats,” I protested hotly.
“Inquire for them,” said the commissionaire, “at the box-office after hours.”
And he dusted us out on to the sidewalk.
This being a neighborhood theatre, we did not wish to attract the attention of any people who might know us by standing on our rights or even our dignity. So we pretended we were just leaving the theatre anyway, and we hurried a few doors east and went into the ice cream parlor and got a sheltered booth in which to recover our composure.
“Well, anyway,” I stated, “my hat was an old one, and I was thinking it was time I got a new one.”
“The same here,” said Jim. “But that just goes to show you. You can’t try innovations. You can’t easily upset old, established customs.”
“I’ll bet those ladies have got their hats off now,” I argued. “It takes a few revolutionaries like us to bring about social justice.”
“I bet they still have their hats on,” retorted Jim, “and I bet not only do they feel like social heroines, but half the people around them are looking admiringly at them.”
“If their husbands hadn’t been sitting back of us,” I stated, “I bet we would have won the argument.”
“Naw,” said Jim, “it is you that doesn’t understand human society. Things are too deep-rooted even for justice. It is an old, deep-rooted custom for ladies to wear their hats in movies, even if they constitute a public nuisance. But it is unheard-of for men to wear their hats in theatres.”
“But how about justice?” I demanded heatedly.
“Okay,” smiled Jimmie, smoothing his ruffled hair, “how about it?”
Editor’s Notes:
- $2,500 in 1943 would be $44,800 in 2025. So $25,000 would be $448,000. ↩︎
- Not the same thing, but if you want to watch Canadian Army Newsreels, they are on Youtube. ↩︎
- W.A.A.C. was short for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, a term used in various wars and countries for women who volunteered to help free up men for combat roles. It became a catch-all term for women in the military, though there were other acronyms. In Canada in World War 2, they were the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC). ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, March 1, 1952.
To offset the rigors of civic life, Ontario’s Premier Frost1 holds sessions of his Kitchen Cabinet in a country cabin
An Old Ontario Expression
Premier and Mrs. Frost were in Port Arthur and Fort William not long ago in connection with a civic function. At the reception, a little old lady came up and, after a few minutes conversation, said to Gertrude Frost:
“Everybody told me how plain you were. I’m so happy to find it is true.”
Mrs. Frost patted her hairdo, and, at the first opportunity, looked at herself in her compact. For down around Lindsay, “plain” means only one thing. It means “homely.”
A few minutes later, the little old lady’s husband presented himself to Mrs. Frost.
“When my wife told me how plain you are,” he confided to the prime minister’s wife, “I knew you wouldn’t mind me coming up and speaking to you.”
It then dawned on Mrs. Frost, who is a highly personable woman, that in the Port Arthur and Fort William idiom, “plain” means “unaffected.”
With a large wicker market basket on his arm, the Prime Minister of Ontario2 reaches into his pocket for his keys.
The contents of the basket are discreetly hidden under a green cloth.
The prime minister is a big, strongly-built, long-legged man who walks with a barely perceptible limp. He is wearing old hunting clothes – canvas pants, a hip-length quilted hunting jacket, red-lined cap and lumberman’s rubbers. All nicely worn.
He finds the keys and selects one. With it, he opens the back door of the log cabin, set deep in the snow. It is not one of these fancy imitation log cabins; its timbers are more than a century old and they are chinked roughly, in the old fashion.
Inside, it is icy cold. But the prime minister lets out a hearty yell, and the two or three men coming through the snow behind him echo the cheer.
They are what is called his Kitchen Cabinet. They stamp into the room.
The log cabin consists of three rooms. In the far-end one are two double beds, with homemade quilts on them. This middle room we are in has three rocking chairs in it, a bench, a couple of less noble chairs and a Quebec heater3, which the prime minister immediately attacks, with kindling in his hand.
The other end room of cabin is the kitchen, small because of the largeness of the cook stove.
The No. 1 man of the prime minister’s Kitchen Cabinet the Minister, let us say, of Cuisine – is Col. George Weeks, manager of the Victoria and Grey Trust Co., of Lindsay, Ont., a 30-year chum of the prime minister. The others in the party might be Jack Deyell, who owns a printing business in Lindsay, or Judge McGibbon, or Ernie Fee, of Fee Motors, Ltd., Lindsay. They dump down their parcels and haversacks. The minister of cuisine takes the prime minister’s wicker basket off the table and carts it into the kitchen, along with his own packages. He whips off the green cloth.
Four steaks, maybe, or a large hunk of peameal bacon: chops maybe, thick; loaves of bread, pickles, potatoes, onions.
“Wow!” says the prime minister, looking in from the middle room, where the fire is now hustling.
“Aaaah!” says the minister of cuisine, unwrapping his own contribution to the kitchen table, which may be more steaks, or a hoarded roast of venison. And he attacks the big stove with kindling.
The weekly meeting of the Kitchen Cabinet is now in session. To this log cabin, with one or two or three of his oldest friends. Leslie Frost, landslide prime minister of Canada’s richest and most industrialized province, comes every weekend from the capital city of Toronto, where he has no home but only a hotel room.
You might suppose this log cabin is away in the wilderness. It is only 10 miles from Lindsay, which is the Frost home, and Lindsay is 78 miles from Toronto. Not merely is it only 10 miles from Lindsay, it is only 100 yards from the Frost summer cottage on Pleasant Point, Sturgeon Lake. Some miles away in the Haliburton backwoods, Leslie Frost found an old pioneer log house, built of broad-axed square timbers. He had the timbers brought down to the open field behind his summer home, and the cabin was erected. It is his hideaway. And unless the business before the Ontario Legislature is really desperate, every weekend of the year, session or no session, and no matter how cold the winter, Leslie Frost, in his fishing clothes or his hunting clothes, in season, beats it away from the great world in which, almost unwillingly but certainly without any great intention, he finds himself enormously involved.
Not every weekend does he take his friends. Often it is his wife, Gertrude, who goes with him to the sanctuary of the log cabin. Whatever it is that Frost has got which so attracted the Old Man Ontario spirit of the Ontario voters last November that they returned his government to power with the overwhelming majority of 81 seats out of the 92, it is here in the quiet that he keeps it alive and unimpaired.
And it was here, in one of the three big rocking chairs of the middle room, that I talked to him, sitting in his mother’s old rocker, in an attempt to get a sort of profile of this small-town lawyer who guides, if he does not indeed control, the destiny of an enormously wealthy and tremendously expanding industrial province.
In the first place. he is not a small-town lawyer. That is one of those handy newspaper phrases that are entirely misleading. More misleading though enthusiastic descriptions have been uttered of Leslie Frost than of most contemporary public men. They say he is a great, good-natured, easy-going character. But he can get as mad as a hornet. And no less easy-going man ever chased an elusive phrase through 40 pounds of legal volumes. He is an insatiably curious and tireless man.
As for being a small-town lawyer, he and his brother, the late Cecil Frost, KC, who was his partner in Lindsay ever since they graduated together from Osgoode Hall in 1921, were two of the best-known lawyers in Canada – in courts of all degrees, in city and town – and built up a law practice and an insurance business that was so lucrative that everybody in politics knows it was a great personal sacrifice for him to enter politics at all
Sitting there in his old hunting clothes in the big rocking chair, he nonetheless conveys the impression of all these very misapprehensions: he does seem like a big, easy-going, kindly country lawyer. He resembles physically and very remarkably the English actor, Michael Redgrave, whom I met last summer.
His speech is quiet and filled with plain English. It is full of such phrases as “You’re right!” and “That’s a fact!” or “Now, let’s see!”
He is no orator, no spellbinder, either on the platform, in the courtroom or in a log cabin. He has a habit of pausing abruptly in the midst of an easy and casual flow of words. He reflects. Like a hunter following a track, you see him scanning the ground. Then he proceeds with what he has to say.
And after a little while with Leslie Frost, the characteristic that you have been puzzling to find becomes suddenly clear.
He may be a lawyer, he may be a businessman, he may be a politician – but what he is, above everything, is a wise counsellor. It was in that character that he built up, with his brother, a prosperous legal practice in Lindsay. It was with that characteristic that he made himself countless personal friends in Lindsay and throughout the counties of Victoria and Haliburton, in all the little villages and hamlets with such endearing names as Manilla, Little Britain, Fingerboard, Coboconk, Omemee, Buckhorn, Janetville, Norland, Elsie.
He was 39 years old, and with no thought of public life in mind, when his reputation as a wise counsellor and the wide local popularity it had inspired, shoved him into an election in 1934. That was in the whoop and hurrah of the Hepburn era. Frost was beaten. But in 1939, he was elected. From his first entry into public life, he was earmarked for office. Though in the Opposition in 1939, he was delegated by George Drew, the Conservative leader, to be financial critic of the government. And when, in 1942, Drew formed a government, Leslie Frost was appointed provincial treasurer and minister of mines.
That was in the midst of war. But it was also, in some sense, the real beginning of that enormous industrial expansion of Ontario, caused by war production, which has not slackened since. And to get this man, rocking in a chair in a log cabin, into full focus, the simplest thing to do is to state in plain figures the rather staggering statistics of the money he as provincial treasurer, has had to find, account for, provide and spend in the 10 years he has been provincial treasurer, and the three years he has been prime minister.
This is what has happened in Ontario, in its expansion as an industrial province, since he took over the account books:
In the last year of the Hepburn regime, the budget showed Ontario’s expenditures for 1942 were $96,337,015.
Frost’s budgets show the subsequent provincial expenditures to have risen from $92,000,000, when he took over, to $250,000,000 last year! This year’s budget, to come down soon, will be bigger still.
How does all this spending jibe with the figure of that good gray character, Old Man Ontario? Since 2,000,000 of Ontario’s 4,500,000 people live on the land, and since a great many of the other 2,500,000 who live in communities are village and small-town people, how does it come about that the man who handles the spending of all that money was returned to power in a political landslide? Don’t the little people worry about money any more?
Well, in the nine years of Frost budgets, there never was one cent of deficit. Each year there was a surplus, ranging anywhere from $1,000,000 to $25,000,000.
And here, in a rocking chair in his old hunting coat, with the Quebec heater humming, sits the man who has to say “Yes” and “No.”
I had the budget statistics in my notebook as we talked. And I told him I was trying to rationalize them in terms of a small-town lawyer. Frost smiled and shoved his hunting cap back on his head, as though the room were getting warmer now.
“Well,” he said, “there were quite a few people elected besides me last November.”
Which is true. He has a fine company of men in his cabinet; and, because of his characteristic habit of consulting high, wide and handsome, has many a good adviser among the rank and file of the membership of the House. He sits in his cabinet as the chairman. And if he is a wise counsellor by nature, habit and training back in Lindsay. Little Britain, Omemee. Buckhorn and Fingerboard, it is not much of a move to become a wise councillor at the big table in Queen’s Park.
Besides which, of course, he has his Kitchen Cabinet. Every weekend.
“In 30 years,” says Col. George Weeks, who is the cook at the log cabin and a very gifted cook against whom even Mrs. Frost is not keen to compete – “in 30 years, there has never been a political gathering of any kind at that summer cottage or that log cabin. Now, mind you, I don’t say we don’t talk politics. But there has never been a gathering of politicians.”
In fact, it goes farther than that. With very few exceptions, Leslie Frost has never invited any of his political colleagues down to Pleasant Point. It is strictly a retreat, a hideaway from the big world. And on the couple of occasions on which big shots in the business or political world were so ill-advised as to come down uninvited and unheralded to the log cabin, just to “drop in” on Leslie Frost, they got what might be called a frosty reception. His cronies say that the premier never gets mad about big things but always about little things like that.
Two years ago. Premier Frost’s large, amiable imperturbability was broached by one of the more gadfly members of the Opposition in the Legislature, and he lost his temper in the sudden, spectacular fashion common to the imperturbable. The account of it made the headlines, of course. And a couple of days later, he got a personal note from the late Mackenzie King, perhaps one of the last such letters the old statesman wrote, in which he cautioned Frost against allowing anything to shake his temper, and to be sure to take plenty of relaxation away from the pressure of office. Premier Frost treasures that letter among his most precious possessions.
“As a matter of fact,” he admitted, in the old log cabin, “I have to confess I try to model my own political life on that of Sir John A. MacDonald and Mackenzie King. I have read all their speeches, studied their lives, to try to convert, into terms I can understand, their political attitudes to what is good for Canada and good for us all.”
Leslie Frost is 56 years old. He was born in Orillia, Ont. He and his brother, Cecil, who was a year and 10 months younger, went to World War I as lieutenants and came home captains, both badly wounded – Leslie with a severe hip injury that hospitalized him for 17 months. He and Cecil, most devoted brothers, went to Osgoode Hall, in Toronto to study law, and then bought a practice in Lindsay, a town not far from Orillia, in which they were on familiar ground.
They married sisters, the daughters of John Carew, MLA, of Lindsay. The Frost boys being the sons of “Daylight Bill” Frost, of Orillia, who held nearly all the elective offices in that municipality, there was consequently a fairly lively awareness of politics in the whole Frost-Carew family setup. Cecil became mayor of Lindsay and president of the Ontario Conservative Association. But Leslie was approaching middle age before he even thought of entering public life.
Leslie and Gertrude Frost, therefore, have no great pretensions about public life or politics. They have no children. They have never set up a home in Toronto, despite Frost’s 10 years of service as a cabinet minister and prime minister. They have a beautiful red brick house in Lindsay, a cottage down on Pleasant Point located exactly on the site of a former small settler’s cabin which, in 1921, the two young captains home from the wars rented and lived in, six months of the year, commuting each day by steamboat up to Lindsay, until they got their law and insurance business perking.
And they also have this log cabin in which the so-called small-town lawyer, who only gets mad at little things, can, each weekend, take wise counsel with himself, his wife and his old, old friends, so that, on Mondays, he can go back happy to his office as chief administrator of a $250,000,000-a-year enterprise – a province bounding ahead into an industrial destiny that beggars the dreams of only 10 years ago.
About the only thing Premier Frost didn’t like about last November’s election was that he missed the deer hunt.
“What kind of a deer hunter is he?” I asked one of his cronies.
“Awfff!” snorted his friend. “About the same as he is a fisherman.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Instead of sitting still and fishing,” explained his chum, disgustedly, “he keeps saying, ‘Well, I think I’ll just row around that next point and see what’s beyond there…’ The man is desperately curious. Hunting, he’s always got to see over the next hill. I never saw such curiosity. Of course, he gets his deer, too.”
“And fish?” I queried.
“Oh sure,” admitted the friend. “That is, unless he comes across some old ruined log shanty, or hears of an Indian burial ground or something. The guy is a historian gone wrong.
There isn’t an old homestead, a pioneer family, a long-abandoned lumber camp or sawmill within miles and miles of Lindsay that Les Frost doesn’t know all about. He can give you the vital statistics, names, dates and every last pernicketty particular…”
I might conclude this sketch of Premier Frost with the remark that while I called uninvited at the log cabin on Pleasant Point, he did not get mad, but, on the other hand, offered me a lift back to Toronto in his car. He drove me right to my home, away across the other side of town, and then, at my invitation, came in and shook hands with my wife and daughter, just to show them what a big guy I am to have prime ministers trotting me around.
Editor’s Notes: This article appeared in Weekend Picture Magazine.
- Leslie Frost was Premier of Ontario from 1949 to 1961. He became Premier when we was elected leader of the Conservatives on May 4, 1949 after George Drew resigned to run for federal office. His first election as Premier occurred on November 22, 1951, a few months before this article. ↩︎
- The term “Prime Minister of Ontario” remained in colloquial use until the government of Bill Davis formally adopted the usage of the term Premier in 1971. ↩︎
- A Quebec heater historically refers to a type of tall, cylindrical, cast-iron wood or coal-burning stove used for heating homes and cabins.
↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, February 28, 1948.
“What’s eating you?” demanded Jimmie Frise.
“Pigeons,” I informed him dully.
“Ah, those beautiful creatures!” cried Jim, enchanted. “Symbols of peace and serenity! From the earliest times, doves and pigeons have been beloved of mankind as the inseparable harbingers of happiness and good fortune.”
I cocked a lack-lustre eye on him.
“Pigeons!” mooned Jimmie. “I used to keep them as a boy. In ancient days, every home that was a home had a dove cote1 or pigeon loft as an integral part of the house structure. The pigeon…”
I interrupted him bluntly.
“How would you like,” I demanded, “to have a bunch of pigeons come every morning, at daybreak, and start yelling outside your window?”
“Yelling!” protested Jim.
“It’s the worst kind of yelling,” I yelled. “It’s subdued yelling. When you’re sound asleep, at the break of day, busy with the loveliest sleep of all – those couple of hours from dawn on – you suddenly become aware, through your dreams, of a horrible and mocking sound. It sounds like demons moaning. It sounds like lost souls, half a mile away, yelling in torment. It sounds like somebody starting to throw up.”
“Oh, what a horrible misrepresentation of the cooing of doves!” cried Jimmie, shocked.
“Jim,” I stated desperately, “for the past 10 days, a gang of rowdy pigeons has adopted my house. Somebody in the neighborhood, I suppose, has got sick of them and driven them off their premises. And they’ve squatted on mine. I won’t have it.”
“You’ll get to love them,” assured Jim.
“To me,” I glared, “those last couple of hours of morning sleep are precious beyond anything else I can possess. By daybreak, I’m really coasting in sleep. I’m deep, dark, down in such a bower of lovely sleep that I… I…”
I took a deep breath and went on:
“Jim, they not only yell and gobble and quack…”
“Not quack!” corrected Jim doggedly.
“They not only emit,” I declared, “the most insidious, penetrating and disturbing sounds with their beaks, but they scratch with their toenails. From the crack of day, they all start waddling restlessly around, back and forth, back and forth, like the feeble-minded creatures they are, just scratching their toenails on the galvanized iron eaves, on the raspy roof shingles. What’s the matter with pigeons? Why don’t they sit down and relax like anybody else?”
“It’s their nature to be active,” submitted Jim.
“Active!” I sneered. “Not only do they keep up this endless mooing and gagging, not only do they keep endlessly scratch-scratch-scratching back and forth on the roof: but every few minutes, they jump up and take a short fly, of about five yards, with a lot of whistling and whooshing of wings, only to settle right down again and start that lunatic toenailing back and forth, back and forth… And a poor guy trying to sleep…!”
“Look: why don’t you get up and shoo them away?” asked Jim kindly.
“I do; and they come right back!” I groaned.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jim – quietly, for he could see I was a desperate man.
“Jim, I’ve done it!” I informed him. “I’ve got a trap made. With slats and chicken wire. I’m going to set it up tonight, on a little shelf sort of place above my window. I can reach it from an attic window. I’m going to bait the trap with dried peas. And when I hear the fool “things in the trap, I pull a string. And bingo! I’ve got the pigeons!”
“And then?” inquired Jim, sternly.
“Well, they’re trespassers,” I asserted. “I could wring their necks. Or I could cart them down to the Market and give them to one of those poultry butchers.”
“Pardon me,” said Jim coldly. “But do you realize that pigeons come under the heading of livestock? How do you know that those pigeons aren’t the prized possession of some pigeon fancier in the neighborhood?”
“Any pigeon fancier,” I retorted, “who can’t feed his birds enough to keep them around home isn’t entitled…”
“Oh, yes he is!” assured Jim. “At this season of the year, the pigeons are beginning to feel the first faint notions of spring. They get restless and explore around. All I want to do is warn you that maybe those pigeons on your house may be racing pigeons, worth hundreds of dollars.”
“Oh, nonsense!” I said.
“I’m telling you!” insisted Jim. “You’ve got to be careful fooling with pigeons. There’s a lot of law involved…”
“Okay!” I announced. “You come with me. You know so much about pigeons. You come and help me trap them. And then, if I keep them a couple of days maybe the owner will come hunting them up. You know how kids will spread the news. If he wants them, he can have them: after hearing an earful from me. Otherwise, if nobody claims them..!”
Jim, shaking his head, got his coat on and we went over to my place. In the yard, I showed him my trap; an arrangement made out of an old box and some slats and bits of chicken wire. It had a simple flap front that fell when pulled by a string.
It was no trick at all to carry it to the attic and put it out on the ornamental shelf above my bedroom window. No trick at all to set the front flap to fall, by a yank of cord from my window below. And just as I said, all the kids in the neighborhood were gathered to watch the installation. Both girls and boys, they clustered from far and wide below while Jim and I worked out the attic window.
“What’re you gonna catch, Mr. Clark?” yelled one of the nosiest little girls of the neighborhood. “Pigeons?”
“No, muskrats,” I replied disagreeably. “Now, run along; beat it!”
Which brought all the more.
“Anybody who owns pigeons around here,” I muttered, “will know about this before tomorrow.”
When the trap was set, I sprinkled a handful of dried peas on its floor.
“Now,” I said, “at the crack of dawn tomorrow…”
“You won’t have to wait until the crack of dawn, interrupted Jimmie.
For like vultures wheeling came a flight of seven pigeons, their wings V-ed, floating and flapping overhead while they came to peer at the new contraption under my roof edge.
“Why, the blame things!” I ejaculated, as we ducked in the attic window. They can even hear the rattle of a few dried peas!”
We hastened down to my bedroom, where, leaning out the window, I reached the dangling cord of the trap and drew it tenderly within.
“They’re very trusting,” said Jim, “when it comes to food. Give them a little time. Let one in the trap. The rest will follow.”
The seven landed on my roof and came and peered, their heads bobbing as if on rubber necks, over the eave trough. True to their character, they anxiously and aimlessly waddled this way and that; bobbing, peering.
“Grrrr!” I growled, my hand trembling on the trap cord. “Listen to their toenails! See what I mean?”
“Those are fine birds,” commented Jim, as we crouched behind the curtains.
Without much delay, the leader of the flock, or its most foolish member – I don’t suppose there is much difference – flipped lightly off the eave trough down into the trap.
One, two, three – the rest followed. And slam fell the front flap. Seven startled, indignant pigeons were flapping frantically inside the box.
Jim and I galloped to the attic, reached down and secured the flap. And the wild yells of kids up and down the block spread the news that Mr. Clark had trapped 100 pigeons.
We lifted the crate in through the window. We carried it down to the back cellar, which is cool yet not cold; the ideal place, in Jim’s opinion, in which to keep the birds prisoner until such time as their owner was located.
We set the trap on an old washtub bench and I turned on the lights. The birds were still flapping and fluttering in bird-brained irresponsibility. The more tenderly we approached them, the more panicked they became.
“They’re so…” sighed Jimmie, “… so gentle, so timid, so childlike. Of all birds.”
As we sat, they quieted; though they kept twisting and turning among themselves. I had never bothered much to look closely at pigeons. They were things seen mostly, you might say, out of the corner of my eye.
“Man,” I said, “look at the colors on that one!”
He was not merely lustrous. He was opalescent. For all the indignity of his situation, he stood with a proud look: his breast high; his eye like a jewel. Over his beak there was a tiny white ruff like a comb.
“Jim,” I claimed, “he’s beautiful.”
“More than that,” amended Jim, “he’s valuable. See that ring on his leg? That’s his registered number, I bet. He’s probably a famous racing pigeon. Maybe worth $200.2“
“Holy smoke!” I muttered, getting around the side to look at some of the others. They were all characters. They were blue and gray and white. They were plump, strong, compact. They ALL had rings on their legs.
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “maybe I ought to release them this once, after a warning…”
We heard the buzz of the doorbell overhead in the kitchen; heard footsteps answering; and then a male voice – a loud male voice.
Then footsteps across the kitchen and the cellar door opening.
“You down there, Dad?”
“Yes.”
“A gentleman to see you.”
And down the stairs came large legs followed by a large bully, if ever I saw one.
He was a stranger to me, though I believe I had occasionally seen him around the corner drug store.
“Ah!” he barked, halting on the bottom step. “My pigeons!”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I retorted promptly, being a great believer in taking the offensive with large men. “These birds have been trespassing on my…”
“Trespassing, eh?” sneered the bully. “Fine. That’s fine! Well, your dog has been trespassing on my verandah. So I’ve got him outside in a crate, too!”
“My dog?” I inquired lightly. “Oh, no. My dog doesn’t trespass on anybody’s verandah. Besides, she’s not a him. She’s a her. And she’s never out of our garden.”
“I think I know your dog when I see it,” declared the big bully. Advancing truculently and seizing the cage full of birds, he lifted it in his arms.
“You can come and see,” he glowered, marching up the cellar steps.
We followed. We went out the drive. In the open trunk of his car was a crate. And in the crate, very dejected, sat Rusty, Jimmie’s Irish water spaniel.
“Why,” cried Jim hotly, “that’s MY dog!”
“I always thought…” protested the bully, “I always took this for HIS dog!”
We hastily lifted Rusty and crate out of the car trunk and the bully set his pigeon crate in its place.
“When the children,” declared the bully, agitatedly, “told me about my pigeons being trapped, why, I just thought…I just… well, you see, this dog is always trespassing around my place…”
He paused, and took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
“No, by Jove, he doesn’t trespass!” he declared loudly. “He’s as welcome as the flowers in May; and has been for years! Many’s the time I’ve come near to making you a proposition for this dog, Mr. Clark. Many’s the fine visit we’ve had together and many’s the fine walk. I live ’round on the other block…”
“Well, now, Mister… Mister?” I replied.
“Hoogenbeck,” he supplied. “Joe Hoogenbeck.”
“Well, now, Mr. Hoogenbeck,” I said warmly, “about the pigeons. In the last few days, they’ve been coming onto my roof at dawn and waking me…”
“Pigeons,” said Mr. Hoogenbeck, with dignity, “can’t wake you if you’ve got an easy conscience. That’s an old saying.”
“I don’t think,” cut in Jim, hoisting Rusty out of the crate, “they’ll wake Mr. Clark after this.”
So Mr. Hoogenbeck and Jimmie shared Rusty for a few minutes while I went and peeked in at the pigeons.
Editor’s Notes:
- A dove cote is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in the Middle East and Europe and were kept for their eggs and dung. ↩︎
- $200 in 1948 would be $2,725 in 2025. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, February 27, 1915.
One-Fifth of Enrolment Will Possibly Enlist in Canadian Expeditionary Forces.
Sturdy Patriotism of President Falconer Largely Responsible for Splendid Showing.
Not more than three months ago a good many men were looking slant-eyed at the University of Toronto, sniffing and snouting excitedly, and demanding the instant pulverization, of three very inoffensive professors who were so unfortunate as to be of German blood. Some members of the University’s own governing board publicly denounced the gentle and humane way in which the three professors were side-tracked, and demanded that the president accord them the very treatment the abhorred Germans would have doled out had the incident been in a German town. The result of that whole affair left a very unpleasant regard for the University in a section of the public mind. Varsity was quietly labeled as a secret hotbed of sedition, whose staff was in sympathy with Germany.
Let those who have been so loud in condemnation of the president and his “half measures” turn an eye on Varsity to-day. So far, one hundred and eighty-six students who have already enlisted have been granted their year – that is, marked as having passed the examinations they would have been trying this coming April. Eighty-six of these are with the first contingent and are now somewhere in the fighting zone. One thousand eight hundred students are enrolled in the Varsity Officers’ Training Corps and are drilling and attending military lectures. Each day sees another batch of men applying at the registrar’s office for permission to go to the front. With the closing of the term in April and with the opening of a training camp outside the city exclusively for Varsity men, the number of students actually going to the front will be, according to the word of a man intimately identified with the military movement at Varsity, not two hundred, as it now is, but six hundred, which is one-fifth of the male attendance at Varsity.
A Patriotic Centre
For the fact is, despite the snuffings and snoutings aforesaid, which were mostly on the part of those who fancied they could discredit certain members of the governing board of Varsity for political reasons, the University is one of the most practically patriotic centres in Canada. There is a daily practice of patriotism in drills and in attendance on dry technical lectures on military topics. What other body of men – banks, factories, shops, foundries -would so unanimously devote its leisure to drilling? And the drilling has not ceased with the novelty of it.
The handling of the military movement at Varsity is a delicate job. In a body of young men in which there is fraternity, rivalry, and ambition, it is no easy matter for one man to see another don a uniform and depart amid applause. The wonder is, indeed, that when one Varsity man went, the whole establishment didn’t go! There are, therefore, many sensitive young men at Varsity to-day. How to make it easy for the students to go and yet not force them into going, how to maintain the proper display of patriotism without making several thousand sensitive young fellows feel that they are committed, is the big problem at Varsity, the man who is handling it, and handling it successfully, is President Falconer.
Difficulties Increased
The difficulties facing President Falconer were tremendously increased by the German professors affair. War-time and an uncertain public temper: a deficit of $80,000, to be paid by a publicly controlled Government: and three Germans to be disposed of with the assistance of a warring board of governors! Of course, we now admit that the president took the only course in keeping with British fair play. But starting with such a muddle, the whole situation at ‘Varsity has been easy matter to handle, and to have got 200 away already and the whole institution maintaining a natural pitch of patriotic spirit, is the neatly diplomatic and tactfully developed situation to the credit of President Falconer.
It is planned to open a training camp exclusively for Varsity men after the close of the year, in May. It will be somewhere outside the city, possibly at Long Branch or Niagara. It will be conducted by the Officers’ Training Corps under Col. Lang. As many as want to go to the front can then go, and, considering the need in the Imperial army of men not only trained as officers, but as engineers, surveyors, linguists. doctors, and all branches of education ‘Varsity will no doubt see her opportunity.
The Faculty of Medicine has done most in recruiting. The Medical College, by no means the largest college. has sent over 60 students and members of the teaching staff. Arts have not done so well, considering their numbers. But the Arts enlistments will no doubt be swelled by Victoria College, which has taken the greatest interest in the military movement. The opening of the training camp will without doubt see 600 recruits from ‘Varsity.
Marcell waves were a popular hair trend in the 1920s, along with bobs.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 20, 1943.
“Forty cents!1” protested Jimmie Frise loudly. “Forty cents to develop a film!”
“Ah,” I explained, “but that includes printing the snaps, too. If they’re any good.”
“Forty cents,” muttered Jimmie. “I bet there isn’t two cents’ worth of chemicals used. In fact, the way they put through 500 amateur rolls of film at one time, in a bathtub, I bet the chemicals wouldn’t cost a fraction of one cent per roll.”
“There’s the overhead,” I explained.
“Some little old dirty damp darkroom,” snorted Jimmie. “In some back attic of some old downtown warehouse.”
“Okay,” I submitted. “Then why don’t you develop your own rolls? You say it used to be a hobby of yours when you were a kid.”
“As a matter of fact,” declared Jimmie, “everybody who takes pictures should develop his own. Not only is it a fascinating hobby. It rounds out the whole art of photography. All over this city are nice, happy people with cameras, shooting pictures for all they’re worth. Pictures of soldier sons or soldier sweethearts in their new uniform. Pictures of new babies. Pictures of new brides. A lot of happy, eager people doing their best to capture in pictures a moment, a mood, a crisis of joy or happiness. And then what happens?”
“I know,” I said. “They can’t buy any film.”
“No,” cried Jim. “Suppose they have a film. In 100 different places, at different times of day, by different lights, sunlit, dull or almost dark, these pictures are taken and then rushed to the corner drug store. From the drug store they are collected by the bathtub corporations that develop and print the pictures. The precious, hope-laden films, shot by all these expectant amateurs, are rushed downtown to some damp mass production darkroom, where the whole works are dumped into hog troughs, bathtubs and vats with 19 cents’ worth of chemicals taken from barrels. The whole lot is swished and whirled around for a few minutes and then fished out.”
We Shouldn’t Dogmatize
“What do you expect for 40 cents?” I inquired.
“Well,” declared Jim, “every one of those films in those hog troughs and bathtubs was taken under different conditions of light, under varying conditions of expertness. To get the best out of them, every one of them should, be developed separately, in front of a ruby light, the operator watching with expert care to see that the utmost value of the film is preserved, giving it neither too much nor too little development…”
“Maybe you can get that kind of developing,” I suggested, “by paying for it. But it would be a lot more than 40 cents for a roll all developed and printed.”
“I’ll bet you more swell pictures,” declared Jim, “are ruined by mass development than by amateur shutter snapping.”
“What do you expect?” I demanded. “This is democracy. This is not technocracy. Under our system, anybody is free to buy a camera and shoot pictures. Some buy cheap cameras and never learn how to run them. Others buy costly cameras and make a technical and intricate hobby of it. The ones who buy the cheap cameras and never learn how to operate them are perfectly content to take their films down to the drug store and let the bathtub boys develop them. If they turn out lousy, the least surprised of all is the owner of the cheap camera who doesn’t know how to run it. That’s democracy. It permits anybody own a $500 camera or a $2 camera: whatever you like. It also permits anybody to become his own amateur developer. It also permits a bunch of the boys to organize a little company and gallop around daily, by motor car, to all the drug stores, picking up rolls and pitching them into bathtubs.”
“Democracy,” agreed Jim, “gives elbow room for all the saps. Imagine a guy paying $500 for a camera.”
“And imagine a guy,” I inserted, “paying $2 for a camera and then not knowing how to run it.”
“The more money spent, the bigger the sap,” maintained Jim.
“False,” I decided. “Because maybe the guy who spent the $500 has plenty of money, and if he hadn’t spent it on a camera he might have spent it on a 10-year subscription to all the professional hockey games until the end of the season of 1953. You can never dogmatize about the way a guy spends his money. Maybe the sap who bought the $2 camera and then didn’t learn how to operate it spent $498 on a lawyer to get him out of a breach-of-promise suit. No, sir. You never can say one man is a sap and another isn’t. The safest course is to believe that everybody is a sap. Then you can’t go wrong.”
Sly Digs At Democracy
“Is this a veiled attack on democracy?” inquired Jim sternly.
“Not at all,” I assured him. “The question is: Does democracy breed saps? Or do saps breed democracy? Hitler tried to find out. So he’s finding out.”
“Look here,” exclaimed Jimmie, “you’ve been taking some pretty sly digs at democracy lately. What goes on? Where do you stand?”
“It isn’t democracy,” I explained. “It’s just humanity. Look: we live under a free, democratic system of government in which the elected representatives of the people sit in parliament. Is that agreed?”
“Correct,” said Jim stoutly. “Representative government.”
“Okay,” I submitted. “An election is coming along. So, in the riding in which we live a meeting is held to choose a candidate for the Liberal party. Is that meeting announced? Maybe. If it is, would you and I give up movie to attend it? Maybe. At any rate, in St. Hoosis Hall in our riding on the 27th a meeting is held of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal Association. Forty-seven guys turn up, of whom 16 are professional politicians, each bringing a friend, making 16 more, and the rest of the 47 are guys out for a walk to the corner to buy cigarettes who, seeing St. Hoosis Hall doors open, walked in.”
“Aw now,” protested Jim.
“Meantime,” I went on, “in St. Pollywog’s Hall, in the same riding, the St. Hoosis riding Conservative Association is holding its nomination meeting. It being Toronto, no fewer than 51 people are in attendance. Maybe the same night, in a church basement or in a dancing academy up two flights, the C.C.F. are holding their nomination meeting. It being a slightly northerly section of Toronto, no fewer than 60 people are present.”
“Aw,” said Jimmie.
“Now,” I explained, “besides these riding associations there are the provincial party committees. And besides the provincial and district committees there are the federal party headquarters, with big offices in Ottawa. Now, who do you think is the chairman at each of these three nomination meetings here in St. Hoosis riding in Toronto? Is it just some guy was on his way down to the corner to buy smokes? Or is it somebody they even know about away up in Ottawa, in those national head offices? Which do you think?”
“Aw,” protested Jimmie loudly.
“At any rate,” I pursued, “at each of these three meetings, you might describe as secret societies except there isn’t a tyler2 at the door, highly successful nominations are arrived at. Speakers speak. The calamitous state of the country or vice versa, is dealt with. The candidates are introduced – that is, in case the local boys have fallen out – and then all those entitled, that is, the authentic and accredited members of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal, Conservative or C.C.F. Associations, are called upon to vote. Thus are chosen the people’s representatives in our free, democratic system of government.”
“Aw, that’s cynical,” protested Jimmie.
“Look.” I cried, “you can have your choice: three. The election comes along, and it’s like Christmas. We have three Santa Claus parades instead of one. The three parties parade their people’s choice up and down, and we line the thoroughfares, cheering madly and choosing our one true, genuine Santa Claus. And when it’s all over, the people’s choice is elected. The representative of the people. One of these three guys selected, very, veeeery cautiously, at a little semi-private meeting in a semi-private ward by a little gathering of professionals.”
“We could all attend if we liked,” cried Jimmie.
“So could we all develop our own films,” I submitted. “But it’s easier to just drop them in the drug store on our way past.”
“What you’ve just said upsets me,” muttered Jim. “You make it all sound so cynical.”
“What I’ve just said,” I retorted, “is not mine at all, not a all, not a word of it. It has been said by this country’s very best men, its greatest editors, its greatest preachers, teachers and statesmen for 100 years. If you don’t care for good pictures, okay: let the bathtub boys do your developing and printing. If you don’t care about government – which is how you and your children are to live – okay, leave it to the bathtub boys.”
Jimmie sat silent and grim for a long minute.
“I haven’t got,” he said at last, “a really decent picture of you in my whole album. I’ve got a few snaps of you up fishing at Lac Alexandre and a couple of deer hunting poses. But with that swell old camera of mine I’m entitled to a real, true, characteristic picture of you. We’ve been partners a long time now. I want you to quit at 4 today and we’ll call at my house…”
So we quit at 10 to 4, which is all right for creative workers like us, who are just as liable to run into a million-dollar idea, or a ten-dollar one, which is just as good, riding on a street car as sitting at a dumb desk; and we got to Jim’s before 4.30 p.m., with a fine, ambient winter afternoon light. And Jimmie got his camera and his light meter and sat me on the veranda pillars and made six shots of me at various angles, and I made six shots of him.
“Now,” said Jim, triumphantly, “surprise!”
Unknown to me, he had bought a supply of chemicals, developer and hypo3. And a box of print paper.
And, taking me down to the fruit cellar, he explored amid the barrels and boxes and emerged with a portable ruby light of ancient vintage and several old-fashioned black trays.
“Wonderful,” I crowed. “Why didn’t you tell me you had this equipment long ago. We could have had barrels of fun.”
“After I was first married,” said Jim, “I tinkered with photography. I haven’t even seen this stuff in 25 years. But I knew it was here.”
Jim washed out the trays in the laundry and brought them in full of water of the right temperature. A big tray for washing. lesser trays, one for the developer and one for the hypo or fixing bath. He set them all out in precise like a hostess arranging a table before the guests arrive.
“Orderly procedure,” he explained, “is the whole secret of the job. As a matter of fact, developing and printing pictures is childishly simple. Organize it and you can’t go wrong.”
He then explained to me the process. With the ruby light casting its warm and secret radiance around, we would unroll the spools and then immerse the negative in the developing tray, running it, by a process of up and down, through the chemical for a period of from three to eight minutes, watching all the time, in the glow of the ruby light, to see how fast the developer worked and how the impressions on the emulsion side were coming.
Then, rinsing the film in the water bath, which, under ideal arrangements not possible in a fruit cellar, would be running water, the film would be dipped and run up and down in the fixing bath until all the emulsion was good and hard.
“Then,” said Jim, “15 minutes in the water to wash, and we hang her up to dry. Tonight, after dinner, you come over and we print. Printing is the sport. You can really experiment for artistic results. You can enlarge parts of it. For example, that one I took of you in profile, I’ll enlarge just the head. If I’m any judge, there was a Byronic pose to that one…”
“Come on, come on,” I urged, removing my coat. “Which will I do?”
“I’ll mix the chemicals and you do the slow, even running up and down of the film through the bath.”
“Okay,” I said.
“One last look,” said Jim, checking over each tray, each package of chemical, each spool, all in readiness. “Okay.”
He turned on the ruby light and reached up and switched off the bright bulb.
In the dim ruddy glow, there was an air of mystery, of science, of exploration.
“Wait a minute,” cautioned Jim, “until our eyes get used to the light.”
Main Thing is Ideals
“Stand back a minute,” said Jim, leaning over the trays. And with a spoon he measured out the chemicals, smoothing off the chemicals like a chemist himself. With a stick, he stirred.
“Okay,” he said. “Unroll the first negative.”
I reached and got one of the spools and broke the seal. Carefully I peeled off the outer covering until I came to the film, which I detached according to Jim’s instructions. It was wiry and curly.
“Hold it carefully by the ends,” said Jim, “and now run it slowly and evenly through the bath.”
He stood, superintending. And I dipped the film in the tepid chemical and felt it soften as it slid up, down in the solution.
“How’s it coming?” demanded Jimmie, bending down to get the film between him and the ruby light. “Is it soft?”
“It’s getting wiry again,” I said. “It was soft at first.”
“Whoa,” commanded Jim. “Hold it still in front of the light.”
I held it dripping over the tray while Jim leaned close and peered at it against the red light.
“H’m,” said he.
And before I could utter a word, he reached up and turned on the bright light overhead. In his hand he held one of the packages of chemical, which he was studying intently.
“Just as I feared,” he said bitterly. “You put it in the hypo first!”
“I,” I yelled. “I put it in the hypo!”
So we agreed that, even if we do try to do things right, whether it has to do with representative government or merely developing photographs, it very often means only a lot of fussing, with little result.
“With saps like us,” I explained to Jimmie, after we had properly developed the second roll and found that I had had my finger in front of the lens each time, “the main thing is we at least have high ideals.”
“That’s what really matters,” confessed Jim.
Editor’s Notes:
- 40 cents in 1943 would be $7 in 2025. ↩︎
- A tyler in Freemasonry is an appointed officer stationed outside the closed door of a lodge room to guard against unauthorized intruders. ↩︎
- Hypo is is the traditional term for Sodium Thiosulfate (
), which is used to fix, or stabilize, images as a final step in the photographic processing of film or paper. ↩︎
Here is another submission by Jimmie into the Goblin Magazine. And, no, I don’t get it either. I’m guessing “A.T.” next to the signature wrote the gag.