By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 5, 1947.
“Hasn’t this,” yawned Jimmie Frise, “been a perfect evening!”
“We ought to have them oftener,” I agreed, glancing at my watch.
It was 10.30.
“Just sitting here in front of a fire,” sighed Jim, gangling himself deeper and wider in his easy chair. “I suppose we have to be middle-aged before we really appreciate an evening like this. When we were younger, we had to be on the go. We had to have something to do. An evening was considered wasted, if we just sat like this, chatting.”
“Not in the good old days,” I pointed out. “Jim, before the invention of the motor car, or the movie, or the radio, the vast majority of men spent nearly all their evenings like this, not only the middle-aged, but even the young men.”
“Of course, they entertained,” put in Jim. “In the good, old days, people visited around with one another more than we do now.”
“Not any more than you having me over here tonight,” I countered. “This is the way men spent their evenings, fifty, a hundred years ago. Invite a neighbor over to sit and converse.”
“Just look at that fire,” gloated Jimmie.
We sat drowsily gazing at the fire, in the wide fireplace. It had burned down to a slumbering bed of ruby embers. Little lazy fingers of flame waved up, and then vanished. The fire was like us; warm and content and quiet, after a pleasant evening.
“Men would live longer,” I submitted, “if they so arranged their lives that they could have three nights a week like this.”
“It’s impossible,” sighed Jim. “How many nights a week could we get our families ALL out? Somebody is bound to be home; and even if there’s only the one at home, then the radio is going, doors are opening and shutting, footsteps tramping around, telephone conversations going yakety-yakety…”
“Probably the idea,” I suggested, “of gentlemen’s clubs arose out of this problem, Jim. As a man gets past his youth, he yearns for a little peace and quiet and the fellowship of other men his own age. So they found a club, where they sit around a fire in the evenings, just the way we’ve been doing.”
“We’d live longer,” agreed Jim.
“With all the wonderful discoveries of medical science in the past fifty years,” I propounded, “men don’t live any longer, really. In fact, I sometimes think men don’t live as long as they did in our grandfather’s time. Why? Because we don’t get enough of this sort of complete relaxation, this snoozing. I think all men should snooze so many hours a day. Sleep isn’t enough. Snoozing is in the very nature of man.”
“Well, then,” suggested Jim half-heartedly from the depths of his chair, “how about us trying to join one of these exclusive men’s clubs?”
“Aw, no, Jim,” I explained, “they’ve all gone to pot. The old-fashioned snoozing club has vanished, just the way the old-fashioned home has. And for the same reason. Men’s clubs are just business organizations now. They’re an extension of modern industry and commerce. Do you see the members snoozing now? No, sir. They’re all gathered in nasty little groups, talking furiously. Selling.”
“Mmmmmm,” dozed Jim,
“We take vitamins,” I pursued, “we have annual checkups. We take carefully prescribed exercise, such as golf or bowling or trips to Florida. But we still die of hypertension. Ten, maybe 20 years younger than our grandfathers.”
“I’ve got an idea,” murmured Jim, rousing himself slightly. “How about us bribing our families to go out three nights a week? This has been too perfect an evening to be wasted in its lesson to us. We’ll take turns. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we’ll bribe our entire families to go out for the whole evening. Yours, Monday. Mine, Wednesday, and so on.”
“All it would cost us,” I agreed, “would be a few movie tickets, maybe a few concerts during the season, a few gallons of gas for the car…”
“Cheaper,” submitted Jim, “than joining an expensive men’s club.”
“Think,” I cried, “what a delight it would be to look forward to three evenings like this every week, where nobody can get at us. Nobody disturbs us. We just sit here, idly conversing about all the things that really interest us, all the events of our lives that have gone unnoticed, actually…”
The telephone rang.
“There,” grunted Jim, “Probably one of the kids wanting me to go and fetch them in the car…”
He got up heavily and slithered in his slippers out to the hall.
But it wasn’t one of the kids.
Jim’s voice was confused. It was a cross between agitation and politeness. Between warmth and chill.
“Why, certainly…” he said, “Why, of course, of course. What time is it..?”
I looked at my watch. It was 10.35.
“What time does the train leave?” asked Jim carefully. “Okay! I’ll be right there! No, no, don’t mention it. It’s nothing…”
He came bounding back into the living room.
“There!” he grated. “Peace, eh? Peace and quiet eh…!”
And he dashed upstairs for his shoes and coat.
“What is it?” I yelled up.
“Neighbor,” called Jim. “Old uncle from the country has to catch the 11 o’clock train. Car won’t start. Can’t get a taxi…”
I began putting my overcoat and hat on.
Jim came galloping down the stairs.
“They saw my car standing out in front,” groaned Jimmie. “So they… “
We nipped out the door and down the walk.
“You don’t have to come,” reminded Jim.
Three doors up, a party of agitated neighbors gathered on the lighted verandah. Jim swung the car into the side drive.
“No time to lose,” gasped an elderly gentleman with a suitcase in one hand, travelling bag in the other, charging down the steps.
“This is my Uncle Wesley,” introduced the agitated neighbor, his hands and elbows full of large packages and cartons, Five in number.
“How do you do, how do you do,” we greeted, stepping out while the valises and bundles were hurled into the back seat of the car.
“Are you going?” the neighbor enquired of me eagerly. “If so…”
“No, I’ll just walk home, around the corner,” I said, backing slightly.
“I was thinking,” suggested the neighbor, as he hoisted Uncle Wesley into the back seat,” that if there wasn’t any room for me, I’d just stay and try to get my car started. I don’t know what’s happened…”
“We tried all over for a taxi,” cried the lady neighbor from the verandah.
“We’ve got to get cracking,” said Jim pleasantly, racing the engine.
“Okay,” I said, springing in beside Jim.
And out we backed, while the neighbors waved thankfully, and Uncle Wesley waved in response and puffed.
“Whew!” he said. “Those people are always in some kind of a panic.”
“We’ll make it,” assured Jim, speeding out onto the night streets.
“Have you got far to travel?” I enquired, facing around chattily.
“No,” said Uncle Wesley, “only about 40 miles out. But I like this night train, because it gets me in around midnight. And my son is the station agent, and he drives me home, as he’s through for the night. It’s a nice arrangement.”
“Been shopping?” I supposed.
“I come down every spring,” explained Uncle Wesley, “for a couple of days visit with my nephew back there… drat the man! … he’s always in a tizzy like this! Yeah, I come down for a couple of days, and visit all the seed houses, and the implement dealers, and lay in a little stock of this and that. Some harness. A new bunch of felt for horse collars…”
Uncle Wesley, in the dark of the car, was feeling over his various packages, to see they were all there. Seven pieces in all.
“Yep,” he said. “All here.”
And we skimmed down deserted blocks, and whanged around corners, and I kept my eye on my wrist watch to see 10.45 come and go. And then 10.50. And at last, at 10.53, we came into the stretch and pulled up with a screech in front of the station. Jim slid into a vacant space, for once, and I leaped out to help bail Uncle Wesley free of his bundles.
“No red caps1,” breathed he heavily.
“Red cap!” I sang out, in the best big city fashion.
But no red caps were to be had.
We divvied up the luggage. Jim took three pieces and Uncle Wesley and I two each.
“What’s your car number?” I asked.
“Day coach,” whuffed Uncle Wesley.
It was 10.56 as we barged into the station rotunda. It was 10.57 as we rounded the buoy and showed Uncle Wesley’s ticket to the gateman. The gateman didn’t attempt to stop Jim and me with the bundles.
Up the stairs we hustled. It was 10.59 when we galloped along the platform, away to the head of the train where the day coaches were. And the conductor was chanting “board … boooaaarrrddd!”
“Take it easy!” gasped Jim at old Uncle Wesley’s heels. “Here!”
We had to jostle several other people scrambling at the car steps.
We boosted Uncle Wesley on.
We started to heave his bundles in after him.
“Hey!” commanded the conductor. “Don’t leave those bundles there! You can’t obstruct the vestibule.2“
Uncle Wesley glared wild-eyed back down over the heads of others scrambling on.
“Okay, just a minute,” cried Jim. And he leading and I following, we shoved into the group struggling up the steps.
“We’ll just,” cried Jim, “toss them up into a parcel rack.”
“Booaaarrrddd!” boomed a fateful voice behind us.
“Hey, Jim,” I shouted, trying to drop my two bundles. But somebody was shoving from behind, so that I couldn’t even drop them.
The air brakes gave that long, lazy hiss and the train creaked.
“Aw, here, wait a minute,” I groaned, as I was shoved ahead into the passageway alongside the drinking water tank.
I could see Jim struggling, two places ahead of me now, trying to chuck his bundles, a la basket ball, into parcel racks already full.
There was a jerk; and the train started.
Behind were a dozen heads, flushed and excited. Ahead, Jim pushed for all his might towards me, but in vain.
We were off.
By a species of wriggling, struggling and sidewinding, Jim and I got together at last on the vestibule. The brakeman had just slammed the doors.
“We’re carried off,” I cried.
“We’ll get off at a suburban station,” soothed Jim easily but loudly.
“No stop at any suburban station on this train,” said the trainman, picking up his lantern to go.
“But hold on,” exclaimed Jim.
“See the conductor,” advised the trainman briefly.
Well, it was far past the last suburban station when we found the conductor. And it was in defiance of all the rules, he explained, that he would arrange to stop the train, just for 20 seconds, at a village about 20 miles out.
“The first stop,” he said, “is 40 miles out.”
That would be Uncle Wesley’s.
“Men of your age,” said the conductor sternly, “ought to know better than get carried off. By rights, I should charge you the fare.”
Uncle Wesley was most indignant, when we passed him on our way to the vestibule where the trainman was to let us jump. “Coming to the city,” he declared hotly, “is getting worse all the time.”
At the dim little village, we jumped.
All was dark. It took us a good half hour to find anybody who would taxi us back 20 miles to town. And because it was after midnight, he charged us special rates – $10.
And, of course, when we reached Jim’s car, parked in front of the station, there was a ticket on it – for parking in a limited area.
“Well …” said Jim, in a high, patient voice, as he grasped the wheel and stepped on the starter, “maybe we’d better join an exclusive men’s club after all.”
“There’s no escape, Jim,” I countered darkly. “If it isn’t the family, it’s the neighbors. If it isn’t the neighbors, it’s somebody else. The truth of the matter is, society has just got too damn social!”
Editor’s Notes:
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