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?”
Editor’s Note:
- $1.15 in 1941 would be $21.40 in 2024. ↩︎
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