By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 7, 1935.
“Lookit,” said Jimmie Frise, “that fruit!”
We were doing forty along the highway, and every farm had its roadside display of fruits and vegetables.
“Beautiful, Jimmie, beautiful,” I agreed. “At this season of the year, is anything in the world lovelier than a great big fat double-chinned, ripe, red, home-grown tomato?”
“And peaches, look,” said Jim. “Forty cents.”
“Keep your eye on the road,” I warned him. “I’ll give you a play-by-play account of the fruit stands as we go by.”
“You know,” said Jimmie, “I wonder at the farmers of Ontario going to market at all. Here they have a million-dollar pavement running right past their doors. Then they have a quarter-mile of shop front in their fields all along the highway. Why don’t they just set everything they grow out on the side of the highway and make the buyers come to them?”
“A good idea,” I agreed.
“Instead of their stuff miles and miles to a town,” pursued Jim, “at some expense of gas and wear and tear on their truck; and instead of going into a town where they are at a disadvantage, why don’t they draw the buyers on to their own ground, where the buyers are at a disadvantage? In town, at the market, the buyers know the prices prevailing. They know just how much produce is on hand. They have the upper hand of the poor farmer. But if the farmers just set their stuff out on the highway along their own property, and the buyers had to come out and compete with one another, the farmers would get better prices, the dealers would have to buy quick, for fear some other dealer is cornering the supply – you can see how it would
“Why don’t you suggest that to the farmers?” I asked. “It’s a swell idea. Makes the world come to the farmer instead of the farmer coming to the world.”
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I sometimes think only the innocent and gentle people are left on the farm. A sort of natural selection has been going on this last fifty years. All the shrewd people, the weasels, the wise guys, the smarties, have left the farms for the towns and cities. Gradually, year by year, the process has thinned out all the sharp-witted ones, and now only the kindly, slow-going, honest people are left on the land. The way they let the city dwellers put it over them seems unexplainable to me, except by the theory that they are too gentle in their spirits to struggle against city weasels.”
“Like us?” I asked.
“Yes, like us,” stated Jim. “Even we try to put it over country people whenever we deal with them. I bet you if we stopped along here to buy a basket of apples, we’d chisel the price and we’d pick the best basket, and fiddle and fume, as if we were buying a house and lot. Yet do you realize what the farmer gives us for forty cents?1“
“A basket of apples?” I hazarded.
To Haggle and Pry
“He gives us,” declaimed Jimmie, “the patient toil of years, the clearing of his land, the plowing, and the planting of little apple trees. He gives us all the patient years of waiting for the trees to become big enough to bear. Years and years of patience that is utterly unknown to-day in any other industry. Then at last, after he has plowed among them, and sprayed them and pruned them, and watched and tended them, at last they bear. And he sprays them again and guards them. Then he performs the last joyous rite of climbing ladders and picking these apples and selecting them and basketing them – and he sells them to us for forty cents!”
“You don’t think of that,” I admitted.
“No,” cried Jim. “Yet when we stop to buy a basket of apples, we sort and pick and shift the baskets around, and mumble forty cents, forty cents, to ourselves, doubtfully, hoping he’ll say thirty-five to you, mister. We’re weasels, that’s what we city folk are, just weasels.”
“And what’s more,” said Jim, “I think more, we ought to stop along here somewhere and pick up basket or two of apples. At this season of the year, every Canadian ought to bring home a basket of something every day. This is the harvest home. As an act of grace, every Canadian ought to bring a basket of God’s bounty home every day, so long as the harvest lasts.”
“Hear, hear,” I applauded, watching eagerly ahead for a good roadside stand. We passed a couple of small ones where there didn’t seem to be much of a display. Then a fine big show loomed up.
“Ah,” said Jim. “Here’s the one. A real enterprising fellow, this.”
He had a wooden stand, like a counter, with the baskets set cleats so they leaned outward for the inspection of the passers by. We slowed down and got out.
A small dark man, who looked more like a city slicker than a farmer, rose to greet us.
“Apples,” he said, “fifty cents, these and those are sixty. Green tomatoes, fifty. Gherkins, sixty.”
“Mmmm,” said Jimmie, examining the baskets. “Apples fifty, eh?”
“Now, now, Jim,” I protested.
“Well, I only mean,” Jim hastened; “they’ve been forty cents all along the road.”
“These are choice,” explained the little dark man. “These are all hand-picked. No fallen goods here. Look, the quality, mister. Look at those silver onions? Did you ever see peas in a basket better sized?”
Jim scooped a handful, revealing larger ones beneath.
“They’re a nice size on top,” said Jim, “but underneath, look!”
“Jimmie,” I protested hotly. “What were you saying only five minutes ago? I thought you weren’t going to haggle and pry and fiddle.”
“I’d let that basket go for fifty cents,” said the little dark man. He was looking at his watch.
Buyers Become Sellers
“Come, Jimmie,” I said, “the gentleman is perhaps getting ready to close up shop. Do you want any apples or don’t you?”
“I was looking for snows,” said Jim.
“They won’t be on the market for a month yet,” said the little man, shortly. He again looked at his watch.
“It seems funny to me,” I explained to the little man. “My friend and I here were only five minutes ago discussing you farmers, thinking how you are chiselled and set upon by us city people.”
“It’s a fact,” admitted he.
“And yet here, the first thing, we are complaining about your goods,” I laughed, “and trying to get a lower price.”
“It’s a fact,” said the little man, gazing up the road as if expecting somebody.
“I suppose you sell quite a bit in a day, though?” I chatted, since Jimmie was still gloomily picking up this basket and that and setting them down and looking below the top layers of apples.
“I haven’t sold one dollar’s worth all day,” said the small man, grimly. “Not one dollar. People stop and look and drive off. They are all buying to a price. Το save five cents, they will drive thirty miles. Huh.”
“It must be pretty trying.” I said, “seeing this stuff that you have planted and nurtured and grown so patiently, being sniffed at by strangers.”
“It’s a fact,” agreed the little man. “Have you gentlemen five minutes to spare?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“I’m expecting a lady coming to my place to supper; I think she must have gone to the wrong place. Would you mind tending my stand here for five minutes while I go and make a call?”
“Why,” said Jim, “all right. We might change your luck. Will we sell, if anybody comes, or just hold them till you return?”
“Sell,” said the little man, walking over to Jim’s car and leaning in to look at the dashboard. “You haven’t got the right time, eh?”
“I haven’t a clock,” said Jim. “All right, we’ll see if we can’t do some salesmanship for you.”
The little man walked back the lane towards the farm house. Jim and I stood, in businesslike attitudes, in front of the stand, looking with expectant air at each car that whizzed by. Some of them slowed. One of them stopped while a large, surly, sow-like lady in expensive. clothes leaned out the window of the car and stared wordlessly at our exhibit.
“Puh,” she said, and drove on.
“I don’t mind if he takes his time,” said Jim. “I rather like this. Isn’t it a funny feeling, having something to sell? You don’t realize how different a feeling it is, buying and selling. I feel all this stuff is wonderful, now. A few minutes ago, I thought it was lousy.”
A truck with two men came along and slowed.
“Buyers,” hissed Jim. “Dealers.”
The man at the wheel called out:
“How many apples you got?”
“Eleven baskets,” I answered smartly.
“How much?”
“Fifty cents.”
The two men got off, and looked our display over. Eleven of apples, six of gherkins, five green tomatoes, four of green onions, three plums, three crab apples, and some sundries.
“We’ll take the lot,” said the dealer. “Figure it up.”
Something Pretty Funny
He drew out a wad of soft one-dollar bills and wet his thumb, while Jim started to count up. The other man began lifting the baskets on to the truck, and I helped him.
So while we rapidly loaded the stuff on to the truck, Jim did his adding first by mental arithmetic and then by pencil and paper. And he was just finishing it on paper when the man I was helping threw up the back of the truck with a bang.
“O.K..” he sang out.
“O.K.,” said the other man, taking two strides and swinging aboard the truck.
“Hey,” Jim and I yelled.
The truck roared and lurched on to the highway.
“Get the number,” screamed Jimmie, darting out on to the road.
But to both our astonishments, there was a potato sack hanging down at the back which totally concealed the license plate.
“Oh, oh, oh,” we said to each other. And out the lane came the little dark man.
He halted in amazement, staring at the poor bare wooden rack where his fruit had been. Fruit of his toil.
“Where the…?” he asked.
So we explained it to him.
“But didn’t you get their truck number?” asked the little sad man, spreading out his hands pitifully.
“There was a sack over it,” we told him.
“Couldn’t you identify it no way?”
“It was too sudden, and anyway, we didn’t want to leave without explaining to you.” said Jim.
“Well,” he said, “where do I get off?”
“It was our fault,” I stated.
“I asked you to mind it, though,” said the small man timidly.
“There you go, Jimmie,” I pointed out. “See, he wants even to take the blame. You were right about country people. They are too gentle, too innocent.”
“I’d take half the blame,” put in the small man.
“That’s fair,” we agreed.
So Jim showed us his figuring, and it came to seventeen dollars and forty cents2, We paid nine dollars to the little man. Four-fifty each, which I borrowed from Jim.
“Gentlemen,” said the small man, “you are both very kind. You have no idea how this would ruin me.”
“We want you to know” I explained, “that we both have the deepest respect for the farmer.”
“Well, you excuse me, please,” said he. “I have to catch the bus.”
A bus was snoring towards us at a little distance.
“Wait,” yelled Jim, as the little man started to run down the highway, “we’ll give you a lift.”
But he paid no attention, ran swiftly two telegraph poles down, signalled the bus and piled aboard it.
“Now that’s a funny one,” said Jim. “That’s a real funny one.”
We stood looking after the bus. Then we looked at the skeleton of the fruit rack. Just a poor little jimcrack thing it was now, bereft of its glowing baskets.
“Somehow, I don’t like that,” said Jim, scratching his head and looking in down the lane at the small farm house crouching amidst the lilac bushes.
We got in the car. Jim reached for the key on the dash. Then he fumbled in his pockets.
“The key, the key,” he suddenly yelled.
“What?” I asked.
“The key,” he yelled again. “Did you see anybody touch the key?”
“The little man leaned in to see the time on the dashboard,” I said.
“Oh, oh, oh,” said Jim, leaping out of the car. “Come into the farm!”
The little farm house was all still. No dog. Nobody in the kitchen, with its open door.
“Hello,” we called.
“Milking,” said Jim, heading for the barn.
We found a lady in a straw hat, milking cows.
“Oh,” she said, rising. “Are you the gentlemen for the keys?”
“Yes,” cried Jim. “Did you…”
She reached into her apron pocket handed Jim his car keys.
“I’ll be…” I said.
“Who gave you the keys?” asked Jimmie politely.
“Don’t you know him?” asked the lady, surprised. “I only know him as Jake.”
“How did he happen to give you the keys?” asked Jim.
“Why, a few moments ago,” she said, “he came to ask if he could use the phone to call his truck, and he handed me these keys and said a gentleman will be along presently to ask for them.
“Do you know this little man out in front of your place?” I put in.
“I only know he came last Wednesday,” said the lady, “and gave me a wonderful talk about how poor we farmers are at selling, and asked if he could set his stand up on our front there.”
“Is he a farmer?” I inquired.
“Pooh!” laughed the lady. “He’s some sort of crack-brained fellow from the city. He brings his stuff out from the city every morning in a truck.”
“Oh, oh,” said Jimmie and I.
“But he’s had his fill of roadside marketing,” the lady laughed, preparing to sit down by the cow again. “He told me to-night he hadn’t sold a dollar’s worth. I guess we’ve seen the last of him.”
“I guess we have,” said Jimmie and I.
So we thanked the lady for our keys and drove home without buying any apples at all.
Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).
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