By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 28, 1934.
“Did you ever,” asked Jimmie Frise, “do any flying?”
“In the war,” I said, “I once went up by accident.”
“By accident?”
“Yes,” I explained. “Out of curiosity I visited an aerodrome and there I bumped into a chap I knew. He said he would like to drive me down to see my brother at an aerodrome about fifty miles away. That was four days’ march for us infantry. So I said swell. He led me over to an aeroplane. He assisted me in. He got in front. Before I came to I was rushing through the air, with the earth tilted up on its edge below me, and he couldn’t hear me yelling to stop.”
That must have been awful,” sympathized Jim.
“It was,” I assured him. “You have to think fast in this life. When he said ‘drive me down’ I thought he meant in one of those numerous trucks, motorcycle sidecars and so forth that the air force was equipped with. But there I was, pushing through the air at a frightful speed, with towns and slag heaps of mines zipping past underneath, and me clinging to a piano stool in the back end of a sort of a box kite called a Bristol Fighter1. Phew!”
“Did you like it?” asked Jim.
“After I got down,” I explained, “I liked it fine. That is the main thing about flying. Once you are on the ground flying is a lovely sensation.”
“Do you get giddy?” inquired Jim.
“I can’t hang a picture from a step- ladder,” I assured him, “without either losing my balance or having to go and lie down for half an hour.”
“You get sea sick too,” pointed out Jim.
“Indeed I do,” said I.
“It is all imagination,” declared Jim.
“Is that so?” I sneered.
“Absolutely imagination,” repeated Jim. “All those feelings of giddiness, dizziness, sea sickness, car sickness are just the result of having a soft and limp mind. You can control almost everything by your mind.”
“Listen,” I said, “if I get on a merry-go-round I get so dizzy I can’t walk straight for two or three hours. My knees turn to jelly. My heart flutters. My head swims. I feel I am still on the merry-go-round, going round and round. I walk in big curves, thinking I am going straight.”
“All nonsense,” stated Jim loudly. “Perfect nonsense. Your imagination is playing tricks with you. Probably always has. What you need is a little discipline of your mind. You must get it into your head that mind has power over matter. You can will yourself to be warm when you think you are cold. Or to be cool when you think you are hot.”
“Rubbish,” I said, unbuttoning my vest, because it was a hot day.
On the Neck of a Giraffe
“A man of your intelligence,” said Jimmie, “should know the power of his own mind. You could be a steeplejack. You could be an ironworker on some of those thirty and forty storey buildings away up there in the sky…”
“Stop, Jimmie, stop!” I commanded. “I am getting slightly ill just thinking of it.”
“Really,” declared Jim, “you ought to do something about it. You have been letting your mind go limp for so long, by George, you some day may not be able to control it at all. Why don’t you try to control your feelings?”
“I am what I am,” I stated.
“Free will,” retorted Jim. “You have free will, haven’t you? Just say to yourself, I can climb the tallest ladder and not feel dizzy.'”
“I feel dizzy just thinking about a tall ladder.” I replied.
“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Jimmie. “To-night we’ll go down to Sunnyside2. We’ll get aboard the merry-go-round and I’ll sit beside you and keep your mind drilled. I’ll take charge and keep saying. ‘You’re not dizzy, it can’t make you dizzy, you are enjoying the breeze, you are enjoying the fun,’ and if you get dizzy, after really making-up your mind not to, I’ll draw your nose without that jag in it after this.”
That jag in the nose happens to be the one sore spot in a long and happy friendship.
“I’ll try,” I agreed.
Jimmie and I both love amusement parks. We like the smell of them and the sound of them and the sights of them. We love to see our fellow men unawares. We love to watch men and women and youths and children and babies all off parade, going along with never a thought or a care. And you can see them more careless at amusement parks than anywhere else. In their eyes is the true expression of themselves, unaware, unguarded. And those expressions are so much more lovely than the expressions they put on.
Jimmie, a man of action, led me resolutely to the merry-go-round. It was mostly occupied by young girls in fluffy dresses who stand holding on to the neck of a giraffe or a lion and whirl round and round with a breeze against them, and by perspiring young fathers holding two-year-old pop-eyes on the back of a zebra for a tiger.
The music slacked, the merry-go-round slowed and in the rush of people off it and on Jimmie and I got discreetly aboard the inner ring of animals, I choosing a giraffe and Jimmie a lion. Jim sat crossways and with easy grace. I got my feet in the stirrups and took a good warm clutch on the long neck of the giraffe.
“Ha, ha,” I laughed excitedly. “It can’t make me dizzy.”
“Atta boy,” said Jim.
A lone lady, middle-aged, thin and anxious looking, struggled to climb aboard a prancing horse just ahead of me and found it too difficult. She turned and, with a nervous smile, held her purse out to me.
“Pardon me,” she said, “would you hold my purse, please?”
“Certainly, madam,” said I, remembering I have an honest face.
I took the purse, a brown, rather young-looking purse for so lean and severe a lady. She tried to mount the horse again; last-minute people were scampering aboard, grabbing what was left. The merry-go-round started and the lady, moving away from the horse, with a little gesture of fright, took a quick run and jumped off just as the machine got going.
Whirling Through Space
“Hey, lady!” I called, above the music, waving the purse.
But I had to attend to other matters. The merry-go-round started its wild surging, round and round, and I was busily engaged in getting a good strong hug, with both arms and both elbows, around the neck of the giraffe.
“Atta boy,” came Jim’s voice from behind me: “this can’t make you dizzy! You’re o.k. You’re enjoying it. The breeze. The whirl, eh!”
There was a wild blur of faces and bodies passing me and to look for the lady who had given me her purse was out of the question, so every time I came past where I thought she had got off I waved the purse slightly to reassure her.
Blur, music, surge, blur, blur, blur. I began to feel rather damp and the familiar sensation of weakness at the knees, elbows and wrists began to creep over me.
“Atta boy,” cried Jim, above the rowdy music. “From now on, no crook in your nose. It’s a promise!”
I clung tighter to the giraffe’s neck. I felt myself leaning far out to the edge, though I knew by the feel of the giraffe’s neck that I was still square on top of it.
Blur, blur, blur. Would the fool thing never stop! I ceased waving the purse. I hoped the lady would be right handy when I got off, because I did not want to have to weave my way amongst any crowd when I got off. I had no feeling any more, but just a vast empty wheeling sensation. My eyes felt permanently crossed. I gripped the giraffe’s neck until my arms ached, yet I felt as if I were leaning at an incredible angle far off to the right.
“Hold tight; it’ll soon be over,” assured Jimmie.
I felt he could tell I was not earning a straight nose.
I felt the whirling machine start to slacken. I clung all the tighter. Slowly it came to a stop, but I and the giraffe kept whirling straight onward, forever and forever, round and round. I could see the crowds climbing down and off and new ones scrambling on and up. But I just held grimly until Jim came and helped me off.
“Not so good, eh?” asked Jim, steadying me.
“WooooOOOOOooooo,”I assured him. I wove dimly amongst the wild beasts.
Two young ladies got in front of us.
“That’s my purse!” hissed one of them. She made a snatch at it.
“Pardon me,” I said unsteadily, “but it is not. A lady much older in a gray woollen dress gave me…”
“Give me my purse or I’ll scream police,” cried the young lady, angrily but quietly.
“Hush!” interposed Jimmie. “Come outside, please. There is some mistake.”
“I’ll scream police,” warned the young lady, while she and the other girl followed me, close.
“I’ll Call the Police”
But in the dimness of the merry-go-round we paused.
“You are not the person who gave me this purse,” I said, while Jimmie held me up.
“That’s my purse. My name is in it and five dollars,” said the young lady shrilly. “And it was snatched out of my hand in the crowd here not ten minutes ago!”
“Miss,” I said, “so help me, a middle-aged lady gave it to me to hold.”
“Look in it. My name is Brown. It’s written inside the cover.”
I opened it. There was “Brown” written inside the flap.
“There,” she said. “And five dollars.”
I opened it.
There was nothing in it at all. Not even a copper.
“Oh,” wailed the young lady. “I’ll call the police.”
“Wait a minute,” cautioned Jim. “Just a second. I tell you I saw the lady give him the purse!”
“You’re both thieves,” cried the young lady more loudly, and her friend started taking a deep breath to let out a yell.
“Shhhh!” I begged. “Look, won’t you believe that this purse was given to me? Maybe the other lady snatched it from you and then got me to hold it.”
“Will the police believe that?” asked the girl suspiciously. “We’ll see.”
And she started to swell up for a yell.
“Here,” cried Jim, “don’t be foolish. It will just create a lot of trouble. Here, give her five dollars.”
“I won’t be gypped,” I cried, while around me the lights whirled and the music of the new revolving merry-go-round made me lurch and cling to Jim’s arm.
“How dare you?” cried the young lady.
I reached in and gave her my one bill, a five.
She put it in the purse.
“The very bill,” said she, glancing at it easily, “that was in it before.”
She and her friend whirled their skirts at us and vanished in the throng.
“Let’s,” said Jimmie, “follow them. I bet you any money in the world that the older woman is working with them and that you were framed. I bet they are a gang. I bet she wouldn’t have yelled for the police for five hundred dollars. Come on.”
“WhoooOOOOoooo, Jimmie,” I begged. “Don’t let go of me.”
We went over to a bench and while Jim sat, talking loudly about how one woman planted the purse and another one claimed it, I went on a private journey, round and round, round and round, sitting on that magic bench that went nowhere, yet went round and round.
After about half an hour of silent prayer, concentration, contemplation and sitting with eyes squeezed tight shut I asked Jimmie:
“How about the twist in my nose?”
“That,” said Jim, not unkindly, “is not a jag or a twist. It is a crook in your nose. And it stays in, in memory of this night.”
Which I suppose is only fair to a man with a limp mind.
Editor’s Notes:
- This would be a Bristol F.2 Fighter. ↩︎
- The Sunnyside Amusement Park existed from 1922 until 1955. ↩︎
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