The thing to do, when the tough young son of a tough old friend (now departed) comes to you for advice and help with regard to getting a job, is to give him a letter of introduction to the toughest old cuss you know.
To spare the innocent, as they say in the radio dramas, I will have to employ false names in this little item. We will call the young fellow Butch, and the tough old cuss will be Andrew McGurgle, president, general manager and secretary-treasurer of the firm of A. McGurgle & Co., general contractors.
When this young Butch opened my office door, I knew him instantly, though I had never heard of him before. He was the son of an old, old friend who was one of the most hard-boiled men I have ever known. He had graduated in engineering last spring; spent the summer growing muscles up in the Labrador iron-mine construction job; and he said his father, before he died, had mentioned me as a possible contact if he ever needed help in getting a job.
I hastily sized Butch up. He had the build of a shorthorn bull and the mild and gentle countenance of a Jersey heifer. Some of the darnedest men I have ever known had that Jersey-heifer look. I decided not to inflict Butch on any of my more delicate acquaintances; and my thoughts naturally turned to A. McGurgle & Co., general contractors.
I wrote Butch a nice letter to Andy. Butch walked out of my office and went to the parking lot where he had left his jalopy. He had about 40 blocks to drive out to the office and yards of McGurgle & Co. But he had not driven two blocks, in this populous city of a million people, before he almost ran down an elderly man who was defying the red light and striding across Butch’s right of way on the green light. Butch tramped on his brakes. The pedestrian was a heavy-built, brindled character with a protruding jaw. He and Butch engaged in a few well-chosen words. They were about evenly matched. I understand they turned the air bright blue all over the intersection. Butch didn’t know it, but he was addressing A. McGurgle, president, etc., etc., of A. McGurgle & Co.
He drove out to the plant and had to wait some little time, chatting with Mr. McGurgle’s secretary. Like all construction-company presidents, Andy always comes in the back door of his office. His secretary took my letter in. A moment later, Butch was summoned into the presence.
Ten minutes later, I had a telephone call.
“Lightning rods!” bellowed the voice of my old fishing friend, Andy McGurgle.
“Which?” I exclaimed.
“Lightning rods!” repeated Andy violently. “Who the Sam Hill was this crazy young chump you sent me with this letter of introduction? What would I want with lightning rods on my summer home? You know I haven’t got any summer home…”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I broke in. “What’s all this stuff about lightning rods?”
“Didn’t you send me this young punk So-and-So with a letter of introduction?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But he doesn’t sell lightning rods. I sent him to you to see if you could give him a job. I knew his dad well, a great guy. This boy graduated last spring…”
“I got all that here in the letter,” said Andy. “But you don’t mention anything about a job!”
And suddenly Andy McGurgle began to howl. He whooped and hooted and I could hear him banging his desk. When he recovered, he said:
“I thought I recognized this kid! I was just coming out from lunch at the club at noon today and was walking across the street when a car almost ran me down. A car driven by as bull-headed and bad-tempered a young punk as I ever saw. The names he called me, Greg! Why, I never heard such language…”
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“It’s the same kid!” yelled Andy McGurgle. “Half an hour later, he comes in here with your letter! He figured I recognized him. So he goes into this act about selling me lightning rods. Look, Greg! Where do I find this boy?”
Butch had left me his telephone number. I called and left a message. About 4 P.M. a rather subdued Butch called me. I asked him how he had got along with Mr. McGurgie. Not very good, he confessed. And then he told me the whole story of nearly running down an old fathead crossing against the red light; his arrival at the McGurgle plant; and his awful moment on being ushered into the old boy’s presence.
“I figured it was hopeless,” said Butch.
“What made you think of lightning rods?” I asked.
“Well, when I stood there in front of him,” he said, “I felt a terrible need of lightning rods sticking up all over me. So I grabbed the first out that offered. I told him I was a lightning-rod salesman and went into a big act about selling him lightning rods for his summer home…”
Butch went out right away, and at 5 PM. was being shown over the McGurgle plant by his new and enthusiastic employer.
“Now that’s too much,” said Jimmie rising to his feet in the stern… “I’m going to tell the warden they threatened us.”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 28, 1939.
“Though the heavens fall,” declared Jimmie Frise, “we ought to get one day’s good duck shooting.”
“We should fiddle,” I muttered, “while Rome burns.1“
“No good purpose,” stated Jim, “will be served if everybody in the Empire goes gloomy. The secret of morale is a high heart.”
“Mister,” I warned, “we are fighting a totalitarian state. Every atom of energy, men, women, boys, girls, the weak, the strong, all the energy of the enemy is being directed against us.”
“So we should waste our energy,” retorted Jimmie, “by sulking at our desks. By sitting and brooding.”
“We can cut out all idle waste.” I submitted. “Waste of gas and oil in going some idle place. Waste of powder and shot shooting at ducks. Waste of time that we might better employ in some war work.”
“Name it,” suggested Jim. “Name some war work we can do this week-end. Will we knit socks? Will we go and walk the streets, tapping young men on the chests saying, ‘How about it, young man?’ Your know as well as I do that more men are ready to enlist than they can accommodate right now. You know that war work is going on in a thousand places, high and low, that factories are being geared, that women are organizing into knitting clubs. War work has to grow, like something strong, like an oak tree, like a lion, slowly, atom by atom, stage by stage. There is no greater waste, no more dangerous waste, than the frenzied and excited effort of undirected enthusiasm – the desire to be doing something for the sake of doing.”
“I feel,” I stated unhappily, “that we ought to be doing something. I’ve had a feeling for weeks that we are letting priceless time slip by.”
“Look,” said Jim. “War is like an industry. Let us say the war is like a new factory opening up in a town. Does the manager of the factory, on the day it opens, blow a whistle and call all the townsfolk in and say to them, ‘Get busy, start work, let everybody sail in now with all he’s got?’ Does he say that? No, sir. When that new factory opens up, first comes a skeleton staff to set up the machinery and to assemble the raw materials. Then a small crew of workers is taken on to start the machinery and test out the materials. It takes weeks, months, for a factory to get going at full production. It’s the same with a war. That is, in a peaceful country that hasn’t been gearing for war all along.”
“Ah, but we’re fighting a country that has been gearing up all along,” I reminded him.
“All the more reason,” claimed Jim, “that we should organize with the utmost caution, the utmost clarity of mind and purpose. Suppose we did jump in like madmen and start enlisting men by the hundreds of thousands, and ordering all the factories to begin one hundred per cent. production of clothing and arms and equipment, where would we be in six months?”
“We’d probably have a good big army,” I stated. “And plenty of material.”
“And,” said Jim, “according to all past experience, such as Russia in the last war, and countless other examples that are on file in the offices of every intelligent ruler on earth, we would have a big, ill-equipped army, the factories of the nations would be packed with hastily made goods, and the country would be broke.”
Building a Hide
“Still, we ought to be doing something,” I sighed.
“Let’s go duck shooting,” repeated Jim.
“It seems wicked,” I protested.
“If it did nothing else,” stated Jim, “it would revive our spirits. What is the chief difference between the Germans and the British? We are both energetic. We are both capable of a tremendous patriotism. We both love leisure and a good time. The Germans love to sit in beer gardens and sing songs and talk philosophy. But the British like to play games. Why should we turn German now, and sit around, gassing and brooding and talking dummy politics? Why not stay British, and go and play games and shoot ducks and be natural? We’ll win this war because we are British, not because we have turned German.”
“One of the first maxims of warfare,” I informed Jimmie, “is to study your enemy, his nature, his character, his weaknesses of temperament and disposition.”
“Correct,” agreed Jim. “Why aren’t the Germans flying over Britain dropping leaflets?2 Because they know that all the British people are too busy playing football or hunting foxes or digging badgers or poaching salmon, in between drilling and working in factories, to bother picking up leaflets. Whereas, it is good policy for the British to drop leaflets to give the Germans something to gas about while sitting in the beer gardens after hours.”
“I would prefer,” I insisted, “to spend the week-end out at the rifle ranges, practising rifle shooting to amusing myself shooting at ducks.”
“Okay, then,” said Jim. “I was merely making the suggestion.””
“Now that I come to think of it,” I proffered, “rifle shooting is pretty old-fashioned. Modern warfare, with its flying machines and its fast tanks and so forth, calls for a different sort of shooting than aiming with a rifle at a perfectly still bull’s-eye.”
“Army rifles,” agreed Jim, “were designed for one soldier to use, lying down, shooting at another soldier lying down.”
“Wing shooting,” I continued, “bring with a shotgun at flying ducks, for example, is the most modern training a man could undertake. In fact, all soldiers ought to be trained at shooting at either wild ducks or partridge, or at clay pigeons, so as to teach them the art of timing, of swing, of leading a moving target. In modern war, all targets are moving.”
“You’re quite right,” said Jim expectantly.
“What a wonderful training,” I cried, “if all our boys were taught to shoot ducks on the wing! What chance would airplanes and fast tanks have against men schooled to wing shooting!”
So we went duck shooting last week-end, as you can surmise. We went to our old familiar haunts, arriving at the farmhouse which is our lodging on duck hunts, and it being a very soft, still, fine evening, and no ducks flying at all, we spent the first night building a hide. The trouble with most duck shooting excursions is that you are too eager. You dash out into the marsh the minute you arrive, and place yourself in some hastily constructed hide, a few bulrushes, a few wisps of grass, and no self-respecting duck would come within a mile of you. What a duck hunter needs is a real blind, a hide built of cedar boughs, rushes, grass, so skilfully woven and pieced together that it looks like a natural little island in the bog, and the body of the hunter is wholly concealed.
Their Favorite Point
A good hide should also be comfortable. It should have a good footing or floor, a good seat for the sportsman to sit on, well down out of sight; and it should be so woven that it is a shield against the cold, windy weather that is the best for ducks.
“And,” I said to Jimmie as we worked at our splendid new hide, “here is another point that should make duck hunting part of the training of the modern soldier. It teaches the art of concealment, of camouflage. Duck hunters knew all about camouflage a hundred years ago, while the armies of the world were still marching into battle over open fields in bright scarlet and blue uniforms.”
So we felt our consciences easy as we toiled in the fading sunlight of a soft and lovely day, far too nice for the ducks. We laid planks for a footing. We drove boughs of cedar and balsam deep into the mud of the boggy point which was one of our favorite shooting spots. We wove rushes and grass in amongst the boughs, and Jimmie, being an artist, fastened tufts of marsh grass in the camouflage most artistically, so that our beautiful new hide was a wonder to behold.
“The probs,” said Jim, “are cold and north-west breezes for tomorrow. I can feel the change of weather coming, can’t you?”
“I bet the wind will spring up in the night,” I replied, “and tomorrow will be a classic duck shooter’s day.”
Back at the farmhouse, we spent the traditional duck shooters’ evening, sitting around the kitchen stove with the farmer and his wife talking about everything but duck shooting, Jimmie and I explaining all about the war and how it came about and how it will end. And we went upstairs to bed in the slope ceilinged room at 9.30, so as to be up before the break of day to set out our decoys by our beautiful new duck blind.
And it was before the break of day we were waked by the farmer and went down in our rubber boots and oilskins to a lamplit breakfast of country bacon, fried potatoes and pie, and so out under frosty stars to find the night waning with a sting in it, and a light breeze blowing fog wraiths, and a smell of ducks in the air.
Into the punt we crept, stumbling amid the decoys, and across the bay we rowed to the shadowy outline of our favorite point and our lovely new hide.
Furtive sounds came to our ears, as other hunters took their stands in the darkness. We knew the moment well. For a half hour, these faint sounds would come, faint knocks and thuds, as decoys are tossed out, as oars are shipped, as punts are rammed into the reeds. Then would follow a little time of deathly and breathless stillness until the first faint pallor of day began to creep. Then would come the whistling wings, the swift, rushing flight, the wheeling of half-seen objects in the air, and then the bang-bang of the, guns, faint, far and near.
It is a lovely hour, better even than the firing into the set-winged ducks, the startled, leaping ducks.
As we neared our precious blind, I thought I saw ducks already scattered about the point.
“Psst,” I said to Jimmie, who was sitting in the stern.
He was leaning forward peering into the murk.
“It’s decoys,” he hissed. “Somebody must be in our hide.”
“Aw, no,” I groaned.
Getting a Surprise
I took a few powerful strokes, but we were, indeed, too late. As the prow of the punt rammed the weeds, out of the hide, our precious, artistic, hand-made hide, rose two shadowy figures.
“Buzz off,” said a low voice at us.
“You’re in our blind,” said Jim.
“So what?” said one of the large looming figures.
“We built it less than 10 hours ago,” I said, low and harsh.
“So what?” repeated the stranger. “We’re in it, so what?”
“You will kindly get out of it,” said Jim firmly.
“Since when,” asked the low voice, “have points of land on wild lakes in the public domain become private property?”
“We built the hide,” I retorted. That lays claim to the point for us.”
“Under what law?” inquired the stranger levelly. “Come on, buzz off. The birds will be flying in a minute.”
“Under the law of sportsmanship,” I declared. “We’ve been shooting on this point for 15 years.”
“Then under the law of sportsmanship,” inquired the stranger politely, “don’t you think it’s about time you let somebody else have a chance?”
“Listen,” said Jim, resolutely, “we came here and built that hide last night. Now you guys get out of it. Come on. Get the heck out of our hide.”
“If you guys don’t get out of here,” said a second voice, a loud, strong, businesslike voice, “we’ll chase you out of here. Come on, stop bothering us.”
When dawn. comes, it comes fast. We could now make out more clearly the shapes of the two interlopers. And they were rather large, young, powerful looking individuals, they held their guns in the crook of their arms and they seemed to be swelling up slightly with a slow anger.
“We ask you, once more,” grated Jim menacingly, “will you get out of our hide?”
“The answer is,” said the tallest, “no.”
Jim sat down angrily and pushed back with his paddle. With angry oars, I jabbed the chilly water and started to back away from the point. At a distance of 20 yards, I relaxed my furious rowing and said to Jim:
“Now what do we do?”
“I tell you what we’ll do,” declared Jim, grimly. “We’ll stay right here and row round and round, so that not a darn duck will come near these birds. And if they want to know what we’re doing, we’ll tell them we are looking for a place to build a hide.”
“Why Didn’t You Say So?”
“Okay,” I agreed grimly. So, in the lightening dawn, I proceeded to row noisily around in the neighborhood of the point.
In about three minutes, a voice hailed us.
“If you birds don’t get out of there,” he called, “we are liable to mistake you for ducks. Accidents will happen to guys that row around in punts after the ducks start flying.”
“Now that’s too much,” shouted Jim, rising to his feet in the stern. “Row in there. I’m going to demand to see the licenses of these birds. I’m going to take down the numbers of their license buttons3 and, by golly, I’m going to tell the game warden that they threatened us.”
I rowed in.
“I’ve got witnesses,” declared Jim hotly. “There’s plenty of others in this bog heard you threaten us. I’m going to report you, and I want to see your license buttons.”
“Okay, buddy,” replied the voices. “Come right in. The sooner we get rid of you, the sooner we may see a duck.”
We rammed the punt right in alongside. It was light enough now for us to see their faces. They were handsome kids. Big, ruddy country looking boys. The nearest one opened his canvas coat and showed us the red hunting license button on the lapel.
But underneath the coat, the unmistakable drab gleam of khaki showed, and the trim, snug collar of a military uniform.
“Hello,” said Jim, lamely, “soldiers?”
“So what?” said the same amiable voice.
“Are you both soldiers?” demanded Jim. The other boy peeled back his hunting coat collar and grinned up at us.
“Well, ah, aw, well,” said Jim, speaking for both of us. “How do you get duck shooting when you’re soldiers?”
“We got the week-end leave,” said the one standing, “to get maybe the last duck shooting we’re going to get in a long time.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” cried Jim heartily. “What the Sam Hill, why, doggone it, why, what the…”
“You’re mighty welcome to our hide, boys,” I said, seeing Jimmie had run out of things to say.
“Look,” said the one sitting, “we didn’t want to pinch anybody’s blind. But we haven’t much time, and we just grabbed the first point we came to. They’re all free, after all. We didn’t realize what a swell blind this is, until now… the light…”
But I had shoved the punt free and was already handling the oars.
“Listen, boys,” said Jim, “it’s a pleasure to build a blind for you. It’s a pleasure. Any time you can get off, just let know…”
So we rowed away, and we rowed all around the bay and out past the big islands, and around points, past a lot of other blinds where indignant gunners demanded what the heck we were trying to do, and we scared up all the ducks we could see, and we chased them so that they would fly over the blind on the point, the best little duck blind we had ever built in our lives.
Editor’s Notes:
This story came out only a few weeks after Canada declared war on Germany. ↩︎
Though it seems inexplicable now, starting in September, most of the Royal Air Force’s operations consisted of airborne leaflet dropping rather than bombs. ↩︎
We were betting each other how long we could hold our breath.
“I bet you a thousand dollar bill…” began Charles.
“There’s no such thing as a thousand dollar bill,” I said.
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“There is, too.”
“I bet you a thousand dollar bill there isn’t,” I said.
And in this way was born the singular notion to make a story out of a thousand dollar bill1.
For there are such things as $1,000 bills. Charles phoned one of his bankers, and I lost the bet.
“Pay now,” said Charles, “and I want the $1,000 in one bill.”
However, after some discussion, Charles agreed not to collect right away if I would get a $1,000 bill and take it out on to Yonge street and buy him a dollar neck-tie with it.
“I would just like to see you,” he said, “trying to buy something with a $1,000 bill.”
“Where would I get a $1,000 bill?” I demanded. “Who would trust me with it?”
The editor, standing nearby, said he would – out of the business office.
So we had the business office get us a $1,000 bill from the bank.
It was the plainest, ordinary little bill, about the size of a one dollar bill, perhaps a trifle longer and a trifle narrower, green on the face and orange on the back2. It had a picture of the queen on it3, and on either side of her majesty, the neat figures 1000. Arched overhead were the words, One Thousand Dollars.
“There are not many of them,” said the bank manager. “And few of them are ever in circulation. They are used mostly between banks There are also thousand and five thousand dollar ‘legals’, which look like a Bank of England note, and are used only between banks. But this little fellow here is negotiable, just like a dollar bill.”
I wrapped it in a dollar I happened to have in my pants pocket, and grasping it firmly with my left hand in my pocket I called for Charles and we went forth to try and spend it.
“The idea,” said the editor, as we departed, “is not entirely humorous. This will test Toronto’s urbanity. If a thousand dollars knocks them dizzy, it will show that Toronto is not as big as she looks. On the other hand, if it creates no stir along Yonge street, why, Toronto is growing up.”
Charles and I agreed that we would not risk the bill in a big jewelry store, because in all probability they would change it for us right off.
“You buy me a tie, that’s all I want. And it must be a dollar tie or a ninety-five cent tie.”
“Right-o,” says I, my hand perspiring with the clench I had on that flimsy bill in my pocket, for we were now in the midst of Yonge street traffic, and I was turning over in my mind the idea of calling one of the big policemen off traffic duty to follow us.
“We’ll Just Charge It”
Furthermore, as we turned north on Yonge street, I suddenly noticed what an awful criminal looking population Toronto has got. I never noticed it before. But all at once, every face I looked at had a grim, sinister expression on it, and each face was staring peculiarly at me!
I glanced at Charles, and, by George, there was a funny look even on his familiar face.
“Ahem!” said Charles. “What do you say, Greg, if we just jump a train for New York and have a celebration on that $1,000?”
“How long would it last?” I demanded.
“That’s a fact,” said Charles. “Let’s not do that. Well, here’s Dunfield’s. I like their ties.”
We walked in and stood beside the dollar tie rack. We had to wait a few minutes. Apparently the clerks thought by our looks that we didn’t have much money. Little did they know!
Finally a salesman walked over.
“We want a tie – a dollar tie – or have you any around ninety-five cents?” asked Charles.
So we selected a tie; a jolly dollar tie.
As the salesman slipped it into the envelope, I tossed the $1,000 bill on to the showcase.
The salesman glanced at it, halted in his tracks, examined it closer, without picking it up.
“Is this the smallest you’ve got?” he asked, never turning a hair.
“Yes, it is,” I said, feeling about in different pockets to see if by chance I might have a five hundred or a couple of hundred in my match pockets or small change pocket.
“I’m afraid,” said the salesman, “that as it is after banking hours…”
“Have you anything smaller, Charles?” I asked.
Charles patted his wallet pocket thoughtfully.
“No.” said he, “I’ve nothing smaller, I’m afraid.”
We looked at the salesman. He said: “Just a moment.”
He walked back to the cashier’s desk and talked quietly with another salesman. They both returned and handed us the bill, and the tie.
“We’ll just charge it to you,” he said, “and you can drop in and pay for it another time!”
Done! Stumped! Bluff called! Anybody that presents thousand dollar bills around Dunfield’s can have tick4. They can easily have a dollar tie on credit. In fact, take the whole store, and you’re welcome!
Charles and I didn’t know just what to do in the face of this friendly offer. But I, lying like the deuce, as a matter of fact, said:
“No thanks, old man. I don’t like to do that. I like to pay cash for everything.”
And, somewhat crestfallen, we went out into Yonge street.
The Gaze of Suspicion
Imrie’s were the next victims.
We selected a very nice tie, smart club stripe. It was slipped into its envelope. I laid the thousand dollar bill on the show case. The salesman picked it up calmly, turned to the cash register and said:
“One from a hundred.”
“One from a thousand!” I corrected, in an alarmed voice.
The salesman stopped, looked at the bill.
“By Jove,” he said, “I slipped one of those noughts, didn’t I? Well, I’m sorry. It’s after banking hours; I can’t change this. But here-“
He slapped a check book down on the show case.
“I’ll take your cheque.”
Stumped again!
It began to look as if a thousand dollar bill did not cut much ice after all amongst the merchants of Yonge street.
I said I had no bank account – that I carried my wealth about with me – I got out of Imrie’s with as much dignity as I could, and we made for Brass’s.
There we chose a black and white tie, at ninety-five cents.
The salesman took the bill in his hand. He turned red.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“It’s perfectly good,” I retorted.
“It looks all right,” said the salesman, turning it over and over and feeling it carefully.
“Feels all right. But I’m sorry; I can’t change it.”
He hung the tie back on the rack, and we I could feel upon our backs, as we walked out, the psychic impress of a gaze that was both suspicious and envious.
“Where now, Charles?”
“I think,” said Charles, “you should buy me a pot of tea.”
“Right-o.”
We went to a small but busy little tea shop and sat down and solemnly consumed a double pot of tea and three orders of cinnamon toast.
I signaled the girl. “Pay my check, please.”
And I handed her the thousand dollar bill. She never even looked at it. She picked it up casually with the slip and walked off to the cashier.
In a moment, the manager came back, all smiles:
“I’m frightfully sorry,” he said, beaming, “but you’ve caught me without… as a matter of fact, I’m most sorry, but I’ve not ten minutes ago returned from the bank. I can’t change this!”
He held the thousand dollar bill triumphantly in his hand, waved it, but maintained the air of a gentleman who was most frightfully embarrassed, socially, at being caught without any money.
“But we’ve drunk the tea and eaten the toast,” said Charles.
“Have you nothing smaller than this?”
I asked Charles if he had.
“No. I’ve not,” he retorted, “and, anyway, you invited me to tea.”
“Well, now, I’ll tell you, gentlemen,” said the manager, “it’s quite all right. You just pay this chit the next time you’re n!”
He was all for having us regular customers.
But in the end, Charles dug up the eighty cents and paid the bill, with loud protests that I had invited him to tea and might at least carry some decent sized money about with me.
Just Chicken Feed
As we left the tea room the girl who had waited on us passed us in the corridor with a pale and very much impressed little smile.
“Now where?”
“Eaton’s,” said Charles. “I feel we will meet our fate at Eaton’s.”
And as we walked north to Eaton’s, we looked at the crowd walking by. Somehow, the sinister criminal look about them that I had noticed at first had all gone. I noticed, instead, a sort of patient, harried look about them all. They seemed weary, tired. I felt a thousand dollars would do each one of them so much good.
And the humorous feel of that flimsy note in my pants pocket lost something.
“A lot of these girls,” I said to Charles, “work hard for a whole year for a thousand dollars.”
“And what,” said Charles, “would they do with it if you handed one of them that $1,000 in your pocket? Buy a fur coat.”
“Or maybe they wouldn’t believe it. Let’s try to give it away to someone!”
“If you try,” said Charles, “crippled as I am, I will bean you. You should realize by now that that $1,000 is real, and that it is mere chicken feed on Yonge street. Grab tight on it. Here’s Queen and Yonge.”
In Eaton’s we decided that it must be a girl we buy the tie from. So we hunted around, finding nothing but men clerks in the tie departments. But at last we came to the boys’ tie department, with girls behind the counter. And there, suspended on a rack was a gorgeous tie of scarlet and black stripes, the most gorgeous tie you would ever want to see, and it was marked boldly above it, “75 cents.”
“There’s the tie!” cried Charles. “And there’s the girl to sell it to us.”
She was amiable.
“That is a beautiful tie,” she agreed, passing it over to us. “You would be surprised who I sold a tie just like that to, last week!”
“Sold,” said Charles. “I must have this tie, even if I only use it to tie up love-letters and things in lavender.”
I laid the $1,000 bill softly on the counter.
The girl went ahead making the bill out, and then glanced at the note to see what denomination she would take the seventy-five cents out of.
“Oh!” said she.
She picked it up and studied it for a minute.
“I wouldn’t like to send that up,” she said. “Just wait a moment.”
And, taking the thousand dollar bill carelessly in her fingers so that it fluttered, she walked off, out of the circle, into the crowded aisle.
“Your Change! Thank You!”
Charles and I had the pleasure of seeing the salesgirl walking briskly off, we knew not whither, with that thousand dollar bill waving carelessly by her side as if it had been a dollar.
“Gone to see about it,” said Charles.
“I think maybe we should have gone with her,” said I.
“What,” said Charles, in a friendly way, “would the office do if you lost that bill? Would they take it out of you?”
“Hang it, Charles,” I expostulated, “don’t talk like that! I wonder where she’s gone?”
“She might lose it,” said Charles. “She might have it snatched out of her hand by some of these pickpockets.”
I went clammy all over.
And then, to my joy, appeared the young lady, coming briskly back. The time she was gone was less time than it would have taken for the tube to go up and come back with our change6.
She appeared smartly before us at the counter.
“Your change,” she said.
And she counted off nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents.
Handed us the tie.
“Thank you!” said the girl in the boys’ neckwear department.
No hesitation. No doubt. What happened was that she had simply carried the bill to the cashier’s office, one floor up, handed it in, asked for change, got it, and took her seventy-five cents out of it.
So there was the end of our thousand dollar bill. All I had left of it was nine one hundred dollar bills, four twenties, a ten, a five and two twos. And a quarter.
Funny how unromantic that roll looked. Just so much spondoolicks7.
“Well,” said Charles.
“It looks,” said I, “as if Toronto is growing up. It is nothing to them that plain ordinary fellows haul out thousand dollar bills.”
“The races are on,” said Charles. “And the stock market is booming as never before. Maybe the good times they talk about are really here8. And besides, we may look a little like gamblers.”
“There’s something flattering about the reception we got all along the line. It must be the ties I wear,” said I.
“Here,” said Charles, “you take this one. I’ll never use it. It’s more your style.”
“No, Charles,” I replied. “You keep it as s souvenir of this adventure. I’ll charge it up to expenses anyway.”
Editor’s Notes: This is one of the original “stunt” stories that was done in the late 1920s and early 1930s. If you think it is odd, just consider that this would not be out of place today as a Youtube video.
I started to count out my money when another salesman appeared around the end of the rack and stood looking at us with arms folded
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 15, 1932.
“Jimmie,” I said to Jim Frise, “lend me a couple of dollars till Friday.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Jim, “but I’ve been buying so many bargains lately that I’m broke.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “what I wanted the two dollars1 for was to buy a hat I saw. A swell hat for two dollars. Gosh, I’m scared to look in the windows these days.”
“Listen,” said Jim, “buy everything you can. Prices are going up. I looked at a mattress for twelve dollars on Monday and on Tuesday it was up to fourteen ninety-five.”
“Boy! Do you mean the depression is lifting?”
“It certainly is,” said Jim. “And it won’t be the bankers and business men who will see it first, either. It will be us artists and poets.”
“As usual,” said I. “Give me some examples.”
“Well,” said Jim, “my family is buying two kinds of tooth-paste again. And they are buying it when there is still at least three good squeezes of tooth-paste left in the old tube.”
“It’s those little things that start the avalanche,” said I.
“During the past eighteen months,” said Jim, “I have become so used to being bumped by the car behind that I don’t even look in the mirror. But, by golly, I haven’t been bumped into for a month. People are having their brakes fixed.”
“Yes?”
“My neighbor hasn’t borrowed my big lawn mower all summer for fear I would want to borrow his long-necked vacuum cleaner. Last week,” said Jim, “he came over and borrowed my lawn mower and I borrowed his vacuum cleaner!”
“People are loosening up,” said I. “What we ought to do, a couple of trained observers like us, is to go out and look for signs of the depression lifting.”
“That’s an idea,” said Jimmie.
So we quit work and went forth into the highways and byways.
We saw more new looking cars than old ones. The old ones were driven by people who six months ago couldn’t afford to drive them.
Between King and Adelaide, on the west wide of Bay, we counted forty-one cigarette butts and seven cigar butts. Not a snipe shooter2 did we see all morning, and a year ago so busy were the snipers that a cigarette butt had hardly time to get cold before it was gone.
We saw a lot of old clothes on people, but they looked so comfortable.
From Wellington to Dundas we never met single panhandler.
And then we went into the stores. We went into a jewelry store and found twenty-one customers. We halted at the wrist-watch counter and waited. We bent over and looked eagerly at the watches. Still nobody paid any attention.
Then a gentleman walked up to us:
“May we serve you?” asked the gentleman.
“We were wondering…” began Jim.
“Mr. Perkins,” called the gentleman, with a wave of the hand. Mr. Perkins was at the next circle showing a lady about two hundred strings of beads. He nodded anxiously.
The gentleman said:
“Mr. Perkins will serve you in a moment.”
And then, turning from us, he sauntered down the aisle a few paces, halted and stood, with his hands behind his back, looking out at Yonge street.
“Isn’t that beautiful!” breathed Jimmie. “Just like 1928!”
“Last time I was in here,” said I, “I bought a string of pearls for a dollar and the managing director waited on me.”
“They’re Gettin’ Snooty Again”
Mr. Perkins hurried over to us.
“This Helluva watch at fifteen dollars,” said I; “I can get it elsewhere for thirteen-fifty.”
“That’s too bad for us,” smiled Mr. Perkins.
“Would you take thirteen-fifty?”
“The price is fifteen dollars,” said Mr. Perkins, edging away.
I stuck out my lower lip and shook my head, in the 1931 manner, and Mr. Perkins left us.
“My gosh,” gasped Jim. “The tide has turned!”
We walked through the big stores, and saw incredible bargains: blankets that used to cost fifteen dollars selling for six, suits of clothes selling for the price of a motor rug3, boots selling for the price of the roses we took our girls in 1927.
We came to a fur store.
“Furs,” said Jimmie. “Let’s go in here.”
We walked amongst aisles of fur, black, brown, grey, red, lovely, soft, glowing, lustrous.
“When hot times come again,” said Jim, “I’m going to have an otter collar on my motoring coat.”
“I’m going to have a whole coon coat,” said I, “regardless of public opinion.”
We looked about, but nobody was coming.
“Maybe,” said Jim, “they have forgotten what people come into stores for.”
Salesmen and saleswomen were trying furs on young blonde girls and large elderly ladies with that slow, confidential air fur dealers use.
We stopped before a string of seal coats, looking at the price tags, but still nobody rushed at us and threw their arms around us.
“By golly, they are getting snooty again,” said Jim. “It’s the surest sign of all. I bet they even come late for work.”
Around the back of the hanging show case came a small dark man with a large nose.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he whispered, “lovely furs! Lovely prices!”
“This one’s not bad at $150,” said Jim, lifting the skirt of a dashing looking seal coat with a sort of flare to the skirt.
“Yes,” said the small man softly, “that’s a nice piece.”
He lifted it down and spread it out for us.
“I bet that was worth more than $150 a couple of years ago,” said I.
“Four hundred wouldn’t have bought it,” said the small man. “And at that, the price shown here is on time payments. I can let you have it for far less for cash.”
“How much?”
“Fifty dollars4,” whispered the little man dramatically.
“You’re fooling!” I exclaimed.
“Fifty dollars,” he repeated. “Cash.”
“But how can you do it?”
“Good times are coming,” explained the salesman. “Our idea is to keep our stock moving. Get the shops working again. Get the factories going. Sell at any old price. Fifty dollars for this swell piece!”
I looked at Jim. Jim looked at me. It was the chance of a lifetime. Any of our wives or children would look good in this lovely seal…
“I have a cheque,” said I. “I could scrape up the money by to-morrow.”
“Sorry, mister,” said the small man. “We have been gypped so often we never take cheques unless we know you.”
“I could identify myself,” said I.
“Have you got another coat like this at that price?” asked Jim.
“Sure,” said he, rummaging in the rack and producing another. “This one gees at sixty, cash.”
A saleslady came into view and drew near us.
“We’ll take a good look before we decide,” said the little man loudly, and we realized he was driving the saleslady away for fear she would try to horn in on the sale. She strolled on.
“Now, couldn’t you gentlemen,” said the small man, “go and get the cash and I will hold these till you come back?”
“Jim,” I said, “if the depression is lifting this is the chance of a lifetime to get the girls a real fur coat at a ridiculous price.”
“We’d better bring the girls down to-morrow,” said Jim.
“Sorry,” said the salesman, “but these prices end to-day. All prices go up to-morrow. I tell you what: take the coats and then exchange them if they don’t fit. That closes the deal and you get the same coat to-morrow at to-day’s price. We’re marking these up to $200 to-night!”
“Jimmie!” I said.
Some Wonderful Bargains
Another salesman came around the bend leading a couple of ladies. They picked up the coats we had been looking at. We heard the salesman describe them, quote $150, and one of the ladies tried one on. It looked great. But he never offered a cut in price. When he had gone on I said:
“He didn’t offer them any cut.”
“I gave him the wink,” said the salesman.
“I suppose you gents want these bargains.”
“Jim,” said I, “let’s take them.”
“Come on,” said Jim. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
So we went back to the office and after visiting several people and trying here and there and collecting a few small debts we scraped up fifty dollars apiece.
“I’ll beat him down,” said Jim. “I got good at that during the depression.”
When we came near the fur store we saw our salesman standing out in front with his hat on.
When he saw us coming he came to meet us.
“I was just going to run out for a cup of coffee,” he said, “but I didn’t want to miss you. We’ll go ahead now and I’ll have the coffee later.”
We went back to the rack, past all the busy groups of buyers and sellers, and the little dark man put his hat down on a chair. He lifted down the coats again.
“I’ll give you fifty for that other coat,” said Jim. “Sold,” said he, without argument. Good times are coming.
We took a last look and feel, weighing the luscious garments in our hands.
“While you are taking a look,” said the salesman, “I’ll just take your money and ring up the sales and we can box them up later.”
I started to count out my money when another salesman appeared around the end of the rack and stood looking at us with arms folded.
“Before we decide,” said our salesman, “I’d like you to look at one more rack of coats over there, some wonderful bargains.”
He led us around the rack and down an aisle of furs and stopped in front of an array of gray lamb.
The other salesman was interested and followed. He again stood watching us.
“Well, well,” said our salesman, “where did I see those?”
And he led us another chase.
The other salesman followed.
“Here,” I said to our man, “take my money before I lose it.”
“Mum-mum-mum!” he exclaimed.
The other salesman stepped forward.
“Are you three gentlemen buying something?”
“We two are,” said I. “This salesman is looking after us, thank you.”
But our salesman had done a funny thing. He had vanished. The second salesman vanished, too. We heard excited voices, feet running. Then the new salesman, accompanied by several other people, came back to us.
“He got away,” they said. “Did you pay him anything?”
We gave the details.
“Well,” said the real salesman, “all I can say is he had a good eye for character.”
Jim and I are used to flattery. We got out as soon as convenient and walked back to the office.
“Now,” said I, “we can pay the boys back the money we borrowed.”
“No,” said Jim, sticking his hand in his pocket, “with good times just around the corner we will be able to pay them easier next week than this. Or the week after. I tell you, it feels good to have $50 dollars in your pocket.”
“It sure does,” said I, feeling mine. “By George, doesn’t a little money in hand make the world look a different place?”
“And with such bargains,” said Jim, “it’s good to have a little money to invest.”
So we started looking in the windows.
We went looking for more bargainsMarch 16, 1940
Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 16, 1940 as “Easy Go” (without some of the Depression references, which made it sound odd).
A snipe shooter in this context would be someone who picks up cigarette or cigar butts that are discarded to get a few extra puffs out of them. This was to be expected with the poor in the Depression. ↩︎
A motor rug is likely a blanket that you would keep in your car, as heaters were not included, and passengers could use it to keep warm. This was especially true for open cars (no roof) that were still very common at the time. ↩︎
Sullenly at bay he spun around, creating the greatest of all swirls.
By Robert Reade, October 18, 1930.
“Let’s go fishing,” said Jim. “It’s the last day for muskies.”
“Muskies,” I protested, “should at this time of year be as extinct as dinosaurs or side elastic boots. These are the duck days, not the fish days. Seasons, like drinks, should never be mixed.”
“I’m not mixing them,” said Jim, reaching for his hat and turning a half-finished sketch to the wall. “The legal season for muskies does not expire until sunset. I haven’t had a muskie all summer and I know this is my lucky day.”
When Jim feels his luck is in the whole Hamilton Tiger line1 couldn’t stop him from testing it. By this time he had affixed a sign to his door, “Back in half an hour,” and was down the hall and in the elevator. I tagged after him, still remonstrating though I knew it was hopeless.
“You’re the world’s greatest last-minute optimist,” I jeered. “Always on the last race of the last day of racing you have an over-powering hunch that you are going to pick the winner. And then you have sift ashes all winter to economize on the coal. I’ve got a hunch that your muskie hunch is just another one of your self-deceptions. Muskies, I am told, can only be caught by experts and I’ve never heard of you as a fishing expert.”
“I’ll put it over the experts to-day,” said Jim defiantly. “This morning a fellow paid me back $10 I lent him two years ago at Dufferin Park. I tell you this is my lucky day.”
As we walked down Bay St. to his garage people stared at me. I was hanging on to his arm, gesticulating and urging him to forget this muskie madness. They thought I was panhandling him, telling a hard-luck tale with outstretched palm.
“Jim,” I pleaded, “if you won’t listen to me at least think of your public. You are famous as a Nimrod, not as an Izak Walton or a Gregory Clark. Your public have been taught to expect from you ducks in their season and rabbits in their season. Here it is a month since the duck shooting started and you haven’t yet fired a shot. Your admirers can’t understand what has gone wrong and are blaming me for failing to tell them about the phenomenal slaughter you must have made on opening day.”
Hereupon Jim made, a confession. “I forgot to tell you I was out on opening day. I slipped down to Turtle lake marsh and I missed plenty.”
“Jim,” said I sadly, “the man who holds out on his biographer is as foolish as the man who holds out on his lawyer. What difference would it make to me if you did miss? You are forgetting that the pen is mightier than the pump gun. And you have kept me from making all the unlucky duck hunters, and that means most of them, feel happy. When I tell them about your big bags it restores their faith that there are still ducks in the world. But I can’t do that with the muskies. I can’t credit you with more than two, the legal limit. And the experts won’t believe you caught two.”
“I’m going to catch ’em,” said Jim.
“You’re going to waste a perfect day for duck hunting,” said I.
“We can talk about that as we run along,” said he. “Jump in. We’ve got 110 miles to go.”
I noticed on the back seat a pump gun and a bag of decoys alongside the casting rod in its canvas case.
I was greatly pleased at this evidence of his affinity, which I had begun to suspect.
“Aha,” said I, “you’ve just been having a little joke with me.”
“No,” said he, stepping on the gas, “when I said muskies I meant muskies. But that’s no reason if we see some ducks in the dusk coming home why we shouldn’t go after them.”
The Experts Dispute Violently
It certainly was his lucky day. As he sped down the Montreal road he just missed six chickens and two pigs and slowed down in time to give a motor-cop a life-like imitation of a tortoise.
After we had turned north to the Kawartha district we skirted Rice lake. From the rice beds with contented quacks a flock of spoon-bills splashed along the surface of the water.
“Look, Jim,” I cried.
His foot shot automatically to the brake. His right arm shot over his seat in the direction of the pump gun. We almost skidded into the ditch.
But it was only for a second that he was. tempted to abandon his hunch.
He turned his wheel to the skid, gave her gas and with his exhaust drowned out the siren quackings.
“No,” said he firmly, “it’s lunge to-day. I dreamed last night I hooked a big muskie and played him for an hour. When I got him in he weighed 35 pounds and I had hooked him by the tail. I was lucky even in my dream.”
With no further duck temptations we reached our destination. At the water’s edge the fishing fleet was ready to loose the painter. On the dock were several experts wise in casting lore and even wiser in muskie lore. I could give their names, but as later I must give their scores I shall refrain. Suffice to say they were men high up in the casting world, men who can throw a plug into a plughat at one hundred feet or flick the ashes off your cigarette at fifty.
They stood in a circle uttering words of muskie wisdom, while around them clustered the lesser throng eager to catch the crumbs that fell from their tablets of memory. I, who until that day had thought that a plug is an electrical contrivance you stick into a slot in a wall, stood humbly on the outer edge, but I noticed that even Jim was abashed in the presence of fishing greatness.
The experts disputed about plugs.
“The only thing that can do the trick,” said one very dogmatically, “is a red and white jointed pikie.2“
“Not bad,” admitted another expert, “but my choice is a pearl bassoreno.”
“You’re both wrong,” said the third champion caster. “The swimming mouse is the hot stuff. I caught a fifteen-pounder with it last week end after I had tried both the jointed pikie and the mouse without results.”
“All of you are wrong,” a fourth bait heaver burst in. “The only thing they’ll rise to on this lake is a silver and bronze minnow.” They disputed violently about baits, but they were unanimous on one thing. That was the autumnal habits of the muskallonge.
While the others solemnly wagged their heads in agreement the smallest but the most vocal of the experts said, “It is utterly no use at this time of year to cast in deep water. That’s all right in July, but it’s no good in October. Right now they’re in close, right up against the shore, with their nose in between two stones and their backs almost out of the water. You’ve got to cast about three inches from the water line.”
“About four inches I should say,” interrupted one of the other experts.
“Have it your own way,” said the man who had the floor, “but in my opinion three inches is nearer the facts.”
“You’ve got to throw your plug,” he went on, “between the muskie’s nose and the shore. If you land it around his tail he’ll just give a swirl and that will be all there’ll be to it. But if you get it right in front of his nose he’ll go for it like a cat for catnip.”
The Fella With Duck Eyes
I had a brilliant idea which I felt it to be my duty to impart to the company regardless of the fact that I had no professional standing. I lowered my voice so that I could not be heard by the Indian guides, each standing patiently by his canoe waiting for the end of the age-long preliminaries of talk which I understand are inevitable whenever experts foregather.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “times are hard and we should do all we can to lower the high cost of fishing. I have a scheme by which we can dispense with these guides, who will cost us $5 a day plus their food. Why go out in canoes at all? Since the fish are close in shore why not walk along the shore and drop the plug into their mouths close at hand from behind the shelter of a bush? It seems to me that three inches is a very small margin to work on and that we, or at least I, will get better results operating from a close range.”
The experts were so speechless with indignation that they could do nothing but glare at me. Even Jim, who is indulgent of all the follies of his fellow-beings and slow to reproach, cast at me an irritated look and said, “Sh-“
I subsided, but I felt a little hurt that my obviously sound idea should be so unanimously rejected. I was to learn before the day was out that to the true bait caster the casting is everything and the fish nothing. They could be just as happy at home in the backyard with a bird’s bath as their target.
It also seemed to me that they go fishing just to get together and exchange reminiscences, a thing they could do much more comfortably and cheaply at home.
The experts began to compare notes on the fish they had caught in times past, in some cases ten years past. They told each other how much the fish had weighed, how many times they had leaped and how high, and also how long it had taken to reel them in. It looked as if the whole day would be spent in anecdote, when one of them said, “Hey, fellows, let’s do a little fishing,” and the embarkation commenced.
While the theorists were in session Jim who, to give him credit, is a practical fisherman had strolled off to a rock to make some practice casts. The Indian selected for us had a name suited for a water voyage. It was Noah.
As one by one the canoes rounded a rocky point and disappeared Noah said to me, “Where’s your friend, the fella with the duck eyes?”
I have heard that men in time look like what they eat. Great heavens, thought I, has Jim I come to look like what he shoots at!
“He might have dove’s eyes,” I said to Noah, “but he hasn’t got duck eyes.”
“Oh yes, he has,” said Noah, pointing to the bag of decoys in the boat. “There’s the duck eyes.”
The puzzle was explained. Noah pronounced “decoys” “duck eyes.”
I told Jim the jest and added a warning, “Lay off the lunge or to the duck eyes you’ll add a muskie nose.”
“It’s my lucky day,” said Jim for the hundredth time.
When we were ten yards from the dock I thought I would try my first cast. I flexed my arm back to my shoulder and gave the gentle flick of my wrist which I had been instructed was all that was necessary.
I felt resistance. I gave a tug. I felt more resistance. Then the marvellous glow came over me which I had been told would come over me when I had hooked my first muskalonge.
“It’s not your lucky day; it’s my lucky day,” I shouted to Jim, reeling my line in furiously until the steel pole bent in two. “I’ve got a muskie with my first cast.”
“Let out your line,” yelled Jim.
“Not a chance,” I retorted. “He might get away.”
“Stop reeling,” screamed Jim again. “You’ve hooked Noah.”
Sure enough I had. Right through the back of his sweater coat with all three of the gang of hooks. We had to return to the dock to cut him loose.
A Big League Fishing Contest
A friend of mine who once, only once, fished the Restigouche for salmon had a somewhat similar experience. His first cast caught the guide in the ear.
“He paddled straight back to the bank,” said my friend, “and though the hook came out of his ear without any trouble the lazy fellow wouldn’t work any more that day. I had to get another guide.”
Noah was made of more industrious stuff. He bent stolidly once more to the paddle, for Jim was in a state of panic because the rest of the fishing fleet was out of sight. It seems that every muskie fisherman likes to keep his rivals in view, so that if, by any chance, a fish is hooked he can paddle over quickly and drop a plug on the same spot. The theory, seldom borne out by facts, is that muskies, like misfortunes, never come singly.
It is also consoling to know that the other fellow is just as much out of luck as yourself. But it is maddening, if he is out of sight, to feel that while you yourself are making futile cast after cast he is filling his canoe with forty-pounders.
This was a big league fishing contest, as important in its way as world series baseball. Four of the champion bait casters of Toronto were with keen rivalry putting their theories into practice and Jim, in his confidence that this was his lucky day, had wagered on himself at odds against this high-class field. Naturally he was eager to know the score, but in that labyrinth of islands never once that afternoon did we catch sight of another boat.
I prepared to make another cast, but he said, “Just watch me for a while until you see how it’s done.”
We drew near shelving rocks that looked just the place for muskies to sleep on.
“Just watch me,” said he, “put the plug right in that crevice.”
“Don’t be more than three inches away,” I implored.
“Don’t worry,” said he. “It will be right on the water’s edge.”
His red and white pikies floated through the air like thistledown, but he was slow in putting on the brakes and it fell into a bush six feet from the water’s edge. He gave a tug, but it held as fast as my plug had in Noah’s coat.
“Jim!” I remonstrated, “you don’t need to teach me that bush league stuff. I can do it myself.”
Noah, with a stroke of his paddle, sent the canoe in shore and at that moment I noticed a slight whirlpool about three inches from the water’s edge.
“What was that?” I exclaimed.
“That,” groaned Jim, “was a muskie, just where my plug should have lit.”
Then he brightened up and said, “It’s, after all, something to get a swirl. Lots of fellows are not even lucky enough to get that.”
The whirlpool I had seen is what is known technically as a “swirl.” It is caused by the muskalonge making a complete revolution and flicking his tail in disgust at the inexpertness of the caster who can’t get his plug three inches of the shore. But when an angler makes a perfect cast the fish to show his admiration for such skill jumps right up in the air like a college cheer leader at a football game. That is what is known technically as a “rise.”
“Perhaps,” said Jim hopefully, “next time I’ll get a rise.”
So we went on from rocky ledge to rocky ledge. Jim’s plug caught in the bushes or bounced off the rocks or fell short, but he never hooked Noah as I did. Occasionally he made the perfect cast, but as it was followed by neither a swirl nor a rise it was clear that there was no lunge there, or else one too comatose to feel any emotion whether of praise or of blame.
Torn Between Two Improbabilities
So Jim began to get skeptical of the theory of the rocky shore and be willing to accept the heresy that, there are in October, as in mid-summer, muskies at the edge of the reed beds.
He appealed to Noah to support him in repudiating the experts and said, “Surely there might be a lunge in there, mightn’t there, Noah?”
And Noah, detecting the yearning in his voice, said, smiling, “Sure, muskie in there. I once catch him there.”
Jim cast in and caught a long water weed that came foaming to the boat like a sea serpent.
At the next weed bed he said in a discouraged tone, “There are no muskies there, are there, Noah?”
And the obliging Noah echoed him, “Sure, no muskies there.”
I began to see that Lo the poor Indian is the original “Yes” man.
Noah’s motto seemed to be that the customer is always right. If Jim said, “That island looks pretty good,” he paddled toward it.
If Jim said, “That rock don’t look bald enough. There’s a couple of blades of grass on it,” Noah paddled away from it.
Never once did he say, “Cast there” or “Don’t cast there.” Yet if he had displayed authority or dogmatic assurances we would have bowed humbly to his superior experience of these muskie infested waters.
A man I know once trolled for lake trout in Algonquin Park. His guide would say, “Do you see that pine tree there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you get opposite it drop in your line. And do you see that big rock about a hundred feet ahead of the pine tree?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you get to the rock you will have a fish.”
And it was so every time.
Why, I reflected, couldn’t Noah do something like that? A suspicion crossed my mind that Noah might have sold out to the enemy. Wherever there is wagering there is always a suspicion of such things in big league fishing. as in big league everything.
I wanted to communicate my suspicion to Jim, but one look at his bland cherubic face still radiating the glowing optimism of a belief in his luck told me he would entertain no bad suspicions.
And how could I tell that Noah would not yet lead us to the X that marked the spot? There was such heartiness in his assurance. “Yes. We get muskies. Plenty,” when Jim in momentary despair laid down his rod and picked up his gun.
He looked into the cloudless air. There wasn’t a duck in sight. I surveyed the horizon myself and neither saw nor heard any whirr of wings.
Seeing no chance of casting bird shot on the waters he once more cast his plug on the waters. At that moment six ducks coming out of the empty air like rabbits from a conjurer’s hat flew over us. Jim threw down the rod and picked up the gun, but it was too late.
The rest of the afternoon he was in the same state of uncertainty in which I have seen him at the races cruelly torn between two equally remote improbabilities.
Four Swirls and Two Rises
Lured on by Noah’s steady trickle of soothing syrup, “Yes, muskies. We get muskies,” again and again he cast his lure, now into the shadows and now into the sun, and whirled his reel until his wrist ached.
Through the golden autumn leaves the level sun the most artistic of all casters began to cast long shafts of golden light.
“Jim,” said I, “your pikie must look to a muskie like a gold fish and we haven’t the word of any expert that a muskalonge will take gold fish. Let’s quit fishing.”
Stubbornly he heaved his plug into another bush. Through a gap in the islands I saw I canoe flash by. And then another. The fleet was returning home. Each of the experts to doubt had his legal limit and another in his guide’s name and still another in his wife’s name.
“The jig’s up,” said I. “The last day of muskie fishing is as dead as a losing parimutuel ticket3. What’s the good of finishing lengths behind the field with the grandstand laughing at you?”
“All right,” said Jim sadly. “Let’s go. Dreams are the bunk.”
With short sharp jabs Noah made his ark
bound along like a power boat. The island danced by like fence posts on the highway. Rapidly we overhauled the fishing flotilla and entered the bay just as the first of the canoe were docking.
Jim’s first thought was of the scoreboard although it went without saying that he was beaten with all those experts against him.
“What luck?” he cried.
There was a chorus of answers.
“I had four swirls.”
“I had two rises.”
“I hooked into a big one, but he got away.”
“Any fish?” shouted Jim, shooting through the cloud of alibis right to the main point.
There was not one fish.
“I told you it was my lucky day,” he beamed exultantly. “I tied them.”
He picked up his rod and made the last cast of summer. The experts on the dock, unfastening their reels and putting rods in cases, laughed at him.
“What are you doing?” they jeered. “There can’t be any muskies here.”
“I’m just fixing a back lash,” replied Jim flushing a little at their ridicule.
He reeled in his line and put the rod behind him in the bow, with the plug trailing in the water. Then resting his head disconsolately on his hands he leaned forward to me and said wearily, “You were right. We should have gone after the ducks.”
I glanced forward and saw that the plug had been drawn under water and was moving away rapidly. There was a little way on the canoe as it drifted in, but it was not sufficient to explain the movement of the plug.
“Look! Look!” I cried.
“It Sure is My Lucky Day”
Jim twisted around. By this time the steel rod was violently bent and if the butt had not caught under the thwart would have gone overboard.
He took one startled glance and grabbed the rod.
“A strike,” he shrieked. “I’ve got a strike.”
He could not have let out a wilder yell if he had sat down on an open bait box full of plugs.
“A strike, my eye,” sneered one of the experts. “You’ve got a log.”
“The poor boob think’s he’s got a strike,” shrilled another of them, the little one, an rolled over and over on the dock in a paroxysm4 of laughter with his plus-sixes bellying out like a balloon jib.
The line darted in zigzags through the water like a beheaded chicken. It was obvious that there was something monstrous and alive at the end of it.
“It ain’t a bass,” said Noah. “It’s a muskie.”
The laugh froze on the lips of the experts. They began to shriek instructions, contradicting one another in a wild rabble of exhortations.
“Give him line.”
“Reel him in.”
“Keep him down.”
“Make him jump.”
“Bring him to the boat.”
“Keep him away from the boat.”
Obediently Jim tried to satisfy them all at once. He reeled and unreeled. He put the point of his rod in the water. He took it out of the water. Perspiration dripped from his brow. There was a light of ecstasy in his eyes, furrows of pain in his face.
Canoes put out from the shore and surrounded him. He was like Bobby Jones5 putting between hedges of spectators. Others, with their view blocked from the shore, climbed the rocks and surveyed the thrilling scene like Byron’s Persian king on the rocky brow overlooking sea-girt Salamis6.
Jumping like a salmon, leaping like tarpon, the fish was gradually brought close to the boat. There sullenly at bay he spun around, creating the greatest of all swirls. Jim tugged and tugged, but he could not lift the leviathan.
“Bring the landing net,” one of the experts commanded.
“Fetch me the club,” shouted Noah, suddenly ceasing to be a yes-man and becoming a dominating personality.
Hastily another Indian paddled from shore with a softball bat.
The fish poked his snout above the water. Noah swung the bat and, returning my compliment of the plug in his back by nicking the lobe of my left ear, smote the lunge right on the nose.
The fish floated, dazed. Jim snatched it into the boat, where Noah gave it the coup de grace. And then we saw an astounding thing. The plug was not in its mouth, but square across its head from one eye to the other.
Holding it up Jim exclaimed joyously, “It sure is my lucky day. I think I win the fur-lined: underwear with all the trimmings.”
“It’s some fish,” said one expert. “It weighs all of twenty pounds.”
“Eighteen, I should say,” retorted another wiseacre Walton.
Even in at the death they displayed their ruling passion of disputation.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of those Pre-Greg-Jim stories (not by Greg). All sorts of writers would have their stories illustrated by Jim, and though I normally don’t reproduce them in full, I thought I would include this one since it includes Jim (and Greg – only referred to here at the “short” fishing expert. You can see him in the illustration too).
This is referring to the football team, before the merger in 1950 with the Wildcats to form the Tiger-Cats. ↩︎
All of these vintage fishing lures can be looked up as they come up for sale. I fear any links I might provide would soon disappear. ↩︎
“Where are you boys from?” asked the town constable.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 13, 1934.
“This is the fourth time in a row,” declared Jimmie Frise as we drove along the dreary back country road in the dusk, “that we have come home with no rabbits,””
“Our wives will become suspicious,” I agreed. “It looks fishy.”
“We don’t want any family interference in our rabbit hunting,” stated Jim, “with the season just starting nicely, so I have thought up a way out of it.”
“What is it?”
“We will drop into one of these farms,” said Jimmie, “and each get some chickens.”
“Great stuff,” I applauded.
“Live chickens,” said Jim. “You have that dog kennel in your yard and I have a sort of wired-off play area in mine. We will each take home half a dozen chickens, fatten them up and the local butcher will kill them for us when and as we need them.”
“Jimmie,” I cried, “you are a genius. You understand women. Half a dozen choice chickens, fresh from the farm, will warm their hearts more than a sackful of dead rabbits.”
“You watch,” said Jim, “for a sign on any of these farms we are passing that says anything about chickens for sale.”
And away up there on the top end of Peel and Halton counties, over whose bleak pastures we had been pursuing the jackrabbit in vain all day, we came down a bumpety little sideroad to a desolate-looking farmhouse, at the entrance to the lane of which our car headlights picked up the sign: “Chickens for Sale.”
The farmer led us out to the chicken-house and there we waked about fifty chickens on their perches, and the farmer, with his lantern, went along the rows of fluttering and squawking hens and selected three pair each for us at a dollar a pair.
“If you gents,” he said, “will take one more pair at a dollar I’ll throw in a pair for nothing.”
“Sold,” cried Jimmie.
So the farmer spent all of ten minutes picking out the pair he would throw in. By their legs, he carried them out to our car.
“Have you no crate?” he asked.
“No,” said Jim. “I thought we would just curtain off the back of the car with my lap robe and our leather coats over the windows. They would settle down and go to sleep on the back seat all right, don’t you think?”
The farmer more or less agreed and, having no pins, he got us some small nails, and we hung the lap robe across behind our front seat, and curtained the windows with the coats we rabbit hunters all carry too many of, and after each handing the farmer $41 we drove out on our way home.
“Good-looking fowls,” said Jim, as we got back on to the bumpety road. “Nice and plump.”
“That Buff Orpington2 I got, especially,” I said. “Did you notice it? The farmer said it was under a year and a perfect roaster.”
Wonderful Prospect
“Boy,” said Jimmie, “we have got four or five meals of lovely roast chicken right behind us here. I like two chickens to a meal. That makes four drum sticks, four upper parts of the leg, four wings, four breasts and about five slices to a breast, making twenty slices.”
“Jimmie, you make me weak with hunger.”
“And those are good big chickens,” went on Jimmie, intent on steering down the ragged road, “so there can be about a solid quart of dressing stuffed into them. And at this time of year apple jelly is nice with chicken. And turnips, with plenty of pepper. And the gravy! With giblets chopped up in it.”
“I feel faint,” I begged.
The smell of chickens roasting,” said Jim, rounding a turn and heading at last for the main highway. “We each have five pairs of chickens. That means at least five dinners, or if you are a sort of meany ten dinners in the next couple of weeks.”
“I like that bit they call the oyster,” I said. “You find it on the side of the bird, just under the leg.”
“Don’t advertise that bit,” warned Jimmie. “That’s a bit I always have myself, and I am terrified of my family learning about it.”
“I like wings, too,” I suggested.
“I like wings cold,” said Jim. “Supper the day after, we will eat the two cold carcases, on which the wings have been left intact. With cold dressing, fried potatoes, you know, the smooth round kind of fried potatoes, brown on only one side.”
“Aw, Jimmie, shut up!” I beseeched.
The casual clucking and fluttering behind us as the chickens adjusted themselves to their surroundings in the darkness of their curtained-off chamber had almost died away. We came to the main gravel highway that leads southeast to join the greater cement highways to Toronto. We had gone only a mile or two on it when we saw ahead the lights of a village. As we came through the village, which consists of a store, a garage and a church, we saw a crowd of cars parked around the church and its basement was gleaming with lights.
“Hooray!” yelled Jimmie suddenly.
In the night, across the front of the church entrance, was strung a banner on which was printed, to be seen dimly in the night, the words:
“A fowl supper,” roared Jimmie, slewing the car into the gravel in front of the church. “Let’s go!”
“Aren’t we going to get home late?” I asked.
“Listen, you’ve never been to a fowl supper. Come on in. Only 35 cents and all the chicken and duck you can eat. Maybe turkey. With pies and coffee and thick country bread and butter and pickles-“
We ran the car in alongside the others. Nobody was in sight, which suggested the supper was in full swing. We left the car and walked up to the steps of the church basement, where we met two ladies, who took our 35 cents each and smilingly directed us in, where a great buzz and bustle of sound and talk and an odor of good things to eat drew us like a magnet.
A Little Bit Late
The basement was jammed with men and women and ladies were waiting at the long tables set on trestles. Steaming coffee pots were passing, and a gentleman, whom we learned afterwards was one of the elders, saw us and beckoned us in and sat us down at the far end of the room amongst a group of shy young men in their Sunday clothes who were looking very red in the face and shiny and about to burst. They were eating pie in immense bites.
“We’re late,” whispered Jimmie as we sat down and smiled around at everybody.
“I don’t want any pie,” I said. “All I want is chicken and plenty of it.”
“Duck for me,” said Jimmie.
A large lady leaned over us.
“Boys,” she said, “which will you have – cold ham or cold pork?”
“Chicken,” said I.
“Duck,” said Jimmie.
“The fowl is all gone,” said the lady, beaming. “You’ve come late. But we have some lovely cold pork. I cooked it myself.”
Jimmie and I looked around at that long table full of young men and a few young ladies, and we noticed that even the young ladies had a shiny and stretched look. They dropped their eyes when we looked accusingly about.
“At a fowl supper,” said the lady with the coffee pot, “you have to be on time. I guess you boys are from the city, eh?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll have ham.”
The elder who had seated us came along and helped console us. The minister worked his way down between the tables and shook hands with us and told us how sorry he was the fowl was all done, but he looked as if he had done pretty well himself.
By this time the majority had got through their pie, some of them two or three kinds, apple, mince and berry, and a few were rising and going to the exit of the basement for a breath of air and a stretch or else gathering in groups to chat about the things people chat about in church basements.
The ham came and it was a great helping, half a dozen rich cuts, the way a tired carver carves ham, half the width of the ham, thick at one edge and fading off at the other. I also had mashed potatoes, stewed corn and pickled beets. Jim had the same, only he took pork. The corn was cold, the potatoes were just warm, and I glared at Jimmie.
“Fowl supper,” said I.
“We must go to one some time,” said Jim, spearing a big forkful.
As we ate, the diners mostly rose and about the time the coffee pot was brought by the motherly lady, who kept passing Jim the pickles, the conserve, the bread, the butter and everything she could reach, I happened to glance over toward the door and I caught about six of the men, mostly of them youngish, standing staring coldly at us. They did not look away when surprised in this act.
“Apparently,” I said to Jim, “they don’t even like us to have any of their ham.”
Jim looked at the door.
“Um,” said he, looking away.
By unseen signals and eye glasses I noticed that everybody in the basement was gradually vanishing out the exit and through the door came the sounds of muttered excitement.
Two very large young men came in awkwardly and sat down on chairs as if guarding the door. We ate our pie and the motherly lady left us alone in the basement.
“What is this?” asked Jim.
“I don’t like the look of things,” I assured him.
The excitement increased and through the crowd in the exit pushed an elderly man wearing a policeman’s cap. A dozen of the men and one or two thin ladies followed him. He walked over and stood across the table from us.
“Where are you boys from?” asked the town constable.
“Toronto,” we said, politely enough.
“Is that your car outside, license No. L1170?”
“It is,” we said.
“Where did you get the chickens you have hidden in the back of it?” asked the constable.
“We bought them,” said Jimmie, a light dawning on him. “Ah, I see. You thought we were chicken thieves? Ha, ha.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” said I.
“You will be glad to give us the name of the party you bought them from?” asked the constable, as the ring of men and the two thin ladies gathered closer around us.
“It was a farmer,” said Jim. “Let’s see. It was up in the north end of the county. Let’s see, we came down by … let’s see. Look here, we have been rabbit hunting. I can’t just say where we were when we bought those birds.”
“It was dark,” I put in.
“Ah, you can’t just say,” said the constable softly, nodding his head. He got out a notebook and began to take notes.
“Just a minute,” said Jimmie, rising to his feet. “Do you mean to insinuate that you think those chickens are stolen?”
The elder pushed forward.
“Boys,” he said, “there has been a lot of chicken stealing going on in this neighborhood.”
“Well, I assure you,” I said, “we got them from a farmer and paid him a dollar a pair for them.”
“That settles it,” cried the constable. “A dollar a pair they say they paid for a lot of old hens like those.”
“Several of the congregation,” said the elder, “think they identify some of their own chickens. Now that Buff Orpington in there, Mrs. Sampson thinks it is her old pet hen, Chicky.”
“I’ve had that hen seven years,” cried Mrs. Sampson loudly. She was one of the thin ladies. But already the crowd was slowly and soft-footedly flowing back through the entrance into the basement and listening with averted faces to the conversation.
“This is False Arrest”
“I don’t like this at all,” declared Jimmie loudly. “I am a respectable citizen. I buy some hens from a farmer…”
“Why had you them concealed behind rugs and coats?” asked the constable slyly, like a lawyer.
“Why did some nosey person go peeking behind those rugs and coats?” roared Jimmie.
Mrs. Sampson turned very red.
“I warn you gentlemen,” said Jim, softly, tapping the table with his finger, “if I am accused by you, without any evidence whatsoever, of chicken stealing, I shall sue this municipality for ten thousand dollars. I am a respectable man. This is a false arrest.”
Three of the older men, including the elder, turned pale and hurried back to a corner, where they held a consultation.
“I warn you, too,” I said loudly. “My reputation is worth ten thousand dollars. This will go hard with you taxpayers.”
“Tell us where you got the chickens,” demanded the constable, somewhat disturbed by the turn of events.
“You identify some of the birds,” retorted Jim. “Then arrest me if you dare.”
“We got the lanterns,” said a man from back in the crowd.
Escorted closely by several husky young farmers, we walked through the crowd and out into the night. The crowd swarmed after us. Up to the car the constable led us. The lanterns flooded their light over the scene.
The constable carefully opened our car door.
He opened it wider.
He flung it wide.
“They’re gone!” he yelled.
Our chickens were gone.
There was a moment of shocked silence.
“Who opened my car door?” demanded Jim. “Whoever opened my car door first is guilty of trespass, theft, breaking and entering! Did you open my car door, constable? If so, where’s your warrant?”
“And where are my chickens?” I asked.
But in the confusion the constable and the lantern bearers and Mrs. Sampson were all swept apart from us, and in the dark Jim and I continued to shout about our stolen chickens and what we would do about it.
But nobody paid any attention. Cars were driving off with loud exhausts, lights were going on. The elder tried to engage us, but his wife drew him aside.
“Aw,” said Jim, turning on his own lights.
“Anyway, it might take us a week, Jimmie,” I said, “to locate that farm back in the north end of the county.”
“Let’s get out of this,” said Jim, as if I had suggested the fowl supper.
So while Jim drove away I tore down the curtains of rugs and coats, and rearranged the rabbit guns and rubber boots.
Hoo boy. The jingoism of the newspapers in the First World War can be a little hard to take. The dehumanizing of the enemy (Germany, and in particular, the Kaiser) was something else. You would think that he was the devil himself from the editorials, comics, and news stories. So this appeared very early in the war before the horrors were well known. People wrote the most eye-rolling, cringe-inducing poems about the noble struggle against the Hun and it was published in a full page in the Star Weekly, illustrated by Jim at the masthead.
