Category: Greg-Jim Story Page 1 of 31

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 30, 1935.

“Life,” said Jimmie Frise, “is getting safer every year, anyway.”

“I disagree,” I announced.

“Not,” said Jim, “in the mere matter of accidents on highways and in factories. What I mean, in the larger sense. Every year the chances of persecution, tyranny and oppression grow slimmer.”

“I disagree,” I declared.

“Bullies,” stated Jim, “in government, in business, in the community, in the family used to be on every hand. Tyrants who made miserable the lives of all who were dependent on them. To-day the bully is all but eliminated.”

“Bosh,” said I.

“Take the family first,” said Jim. “Until just recently, within the last twenty-five years, a young man had to run away to sea in order to escape from a tyrannical father. To-day the boy can go and get a job in a brokerage house and make more money than his old man. Not only does this freedom affect young men. It applies to young women also. In former times a young girl could not run away to sea. But to-day she can run down to the department store and get a job and go live with a girl chum in an apartment.”

“Jobs are so easy to get,” I sneered.

“I am speaking in broad principles,” admonished Jim. “The detail may be a little confused. But you must admit the modern parent dare not be a bully.”

“And how does this apply,” I inquired, “to foremen and managers and so forth?”

“A great change has come over the world in the past few years,” explained Jim, “so that public opinion to-day is intolerant of tyranny. Trades unionism in the past 40 years has practically put an end to the bully in the shop. Every business executive knows that his business will be affected if the opinion goes abroad that he is a hard or brutal taskmaster. The minute a man begins to set himself up as a boss, the whole world turns against him.”

“In Germany, for example,” I scoffed, “and Italy.”

“You little know,” said Jim, “what former bullies those two men, Hitler and Mussolini, have supplanted. Until they came along, those countries had a dictator in every village, in every town, hereditary, pompous, vicious bullies. Counts and dukes and all sorts of things, and a girl dared not be pretty in any village and no young man dared walk the earth proudly, the way God intended young men to walk, for fear of those perfumed bullies riding by in barouches¹ or on horseback.”

“You’ve been reading novels by lady authors,” I accused.

“Throughout the world,” sang Jim, passionately, “there is now a vast court of public opinion to safeguard us plain citizens from the tyranny of our would-be masters. Since the dawn of time, the mass of mankind have been the victims of every bully that came along. Our entire social system was based on bullies. Bullies national and bullies local. The struggle for freedom has been nothing more or less than the slow and painful elimination of bullies.”

“You are very clever,” I pointed out, “at putting things into a nutshell. But you know what eats nuts.”

“I Could Frame You”

“Less than a hundred years ago,” claimed Jim, “you and I could be framed by anybody. Do you realize the press gang could have come along and snapped us up on the street and carried us off to war?”

“There was no press gang in the last war,” I argued, “yet we were snapped up.”

“A hundred years back,” insisted Jim, “if the local squire or the neighborhood bully took a dislike to us, for any reason, they could have planted a few dead rabbits in our back shed and then deported us to Australia as poachers?”

“I can quote you cases not a year old,” I countered, “where innocent men have been railroaded.”

“You don’t follow me it all,” cried Jim. I “What I am getting is the safety, the security of the average citizen to-day as compared with only a hundred years ago. We generally think of our improved condition in terms of street cars and highways, modern plumbing and radio and that sort of thing. The greatest thing in the history of the past hundred years is the growth of a solid public opinion that safeguards us from the greed, jealousy, malice and hate of those who set themselves up as masters.”

“I could frame you,” I declared, “in five minutes. I could set you on the spot so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. I could have you in danger of your life, by golly…”

“Heh, heh, heh,” said Jimmie.

And we drove on. We were heading for Kingston, where, in the bays of the St. Lawrence along that still romantic shore, some late fall ducks lingered in the land of their birth before perilously launching themselves across the border toward the Gulf of Mexico, and 8,000,000 American gunners en route.

And Jim and I, as guests of a newspaperman of our autumnal acquaintance, were to urge these wildfowl on their way with a few belated bangs of a shotgun.

I felt my nose running, for it was a chilly day. I drew forth my hankie. And when I removed it, the white hankie was dabbed with gleaming scarlet.

“Hang it,” I muttered. “Another nose bleed.”

“I never knew anybody,” said Jim, “with such a flimsy grip on his blood as you.”

“And shooting, too,” I complained. “Every shot, my nose will start to bleed.”

“Put something cold down the back of your neck,” advised Jim, who was driving.

So I slid a chilly bottle opener down my neck, and continued to dab, until my handkerchief was pretty well incarnadined with my vital fluid.

“Jim,” I said, “this reminds me, we forgot to telephone Tom about the rain slicker for me. That’s important. I won’t go out without a slicker. Let’s stop at the next gas station along the way and see if they have a phone. And if they have, phone Tom to be sure to get a slicker, size forty, for me and put it in his bag. For sure. I nearly died last fall.”

“O.K.,” said Jim.

I gave my nose a tweak. And was promptly rewarded with a fresh flow of blood. I reached for a fresh hankie to catch the spurt.

“Here’s a station,” said Jim.

Ahead off the highway, a lonely but brightly painted gas emporium stood on the bleak road. No signs of life showed, but by the number of pumps and the breadth of the gravel, we surmised the proprietor would be a sufficiently enterprising man to have a telephone.

As we slowed to enter, I climbed over into the back.

“It’s started again,” I explained to Jim. “I’ve got to get a fresh hankie out of my bag.”

Jim drove in and stopped in front of the pump and got out.

“Coming in?” he asked.

“No,” said I, bending low.

I knew he would send somebody out to look at the radiator and oil. That’s the kind of car he has.

The instant I heard his feet crunch away, I hastily tied the blood-stained handkerchief around my face, snatched a handful of dust and grit off the floor of the car and smeared it, with blood, all over my forehead and ears, and rumpled my hair. Quickly shifting a dunnage bag and a valise, I crawled on to the floor, drew the bags on top of me and lay still.

In a moment I heard the gas station door open and a man with a merry whistle approached the car.

I groaned.

I moaned terribly.

I heard the man’s feet halt on the gravel.

“Help, help,” I groaned, muffled. “For mercy’s sake, help.”

I could see the man’s head as he peered white-faced in the car window.

“In heaven’s name,” I groaned, “save me, save me.”

He opened the car door.

“Hello, there,” he said weakly.

“Quick,” I gasped. “They are kidnapping me. Quick, help me up.”

I struggled and got the dunnage bag off me and raised my blood-stained face from the floor. The man instantly slammed the door. I heard Jim’s voice as he came out the gas station:

“There’ll be a telephone there?”

“Oh, sure,” replied a jolly voice. “I cut my phone off at the end of the tourist season, see? But they’ll have a phone at the corners. All winter.”

“Help, help,” I shouted.

Jim ran to the car. I heard him open the door, but I also heard other footsteps crunching rapidly on the gravel, a mutter of quick voices, and then, to my joy, I heard a loud grunt from Jim, a lot of slithering on the gravel, heavy breathing, gasps and thuds.

“Hey,” yelled Jim.

The car door opened, and the pale-faced man, with a big fat man with curly hair stared in. Then they seized me and dragged me from the car.

“Thank heavens,” I cried. “Oh, thank heavens.”

Then they bounded back on Jim who was just slowly staggering to his feet.

“Don’t let him shoot,” I screamed.

The two garage men wound themselves around Jim, heaved savagely and all three went violently to the earth.

“What the…” bellowed Jim, but gravel cut off his words.

And there they struggled and sprawled, while they went all over him for a gun.

“Tie him up,” I warned.

And the pale man whipped off his belt and strapped Jim’s arms above the elbow behind his back.

“Quick,” I cried. “There will be another carload of them along any minute. Run this car around the back.”

The pale man jumped in Jim’s car and in a second, had skidded it out of sight behind the gas station. While I, with a large woollen sock I got from my bag, gagged Jim.

“So he can’t yell at them as they pass?” I explained to the fat man who held Jim in a grizzly bear embrace. “Let’s take him inside.”

We led Jimmie inside the station, where it was cosy. Jim’s eyes glared at me, over the gray sock, with an expression of utter amazement.

“Sit down, you,” I snarled.

“What is this,” gasped the fat man, running his hand through his curly hair.

“It’s a kidnapping, that’s what it is,” I said. “This man is part of a gang of desperate American crooks. I fell foul of them in a little matter that doesn’t interest you, see? So they just took me for a ride.”

“But… but…” spluttered the fat man, “this has nothing to do with me? What if they find out I…?”

His eyes bulged with horror.

“We’ll Bump Him Off”

“Say,” he said, “the less I get mixed up in this the better? Let me go and get the police.”

The pale man had entered.

“Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’re mixed up in some damn thing or other. Gangsters.”

And his shaking hand indicated both Jim and me.

“Listen, buddy.” I said in a tough voice. “There is only one way you can handle this. Any minute, another car is coming by here. They may or may not stop. The toughest gang in America is in that car, see?”

“Oh, oh, ohh,” said the fat man looking angrily at his pale assistant who had been the means of bringing this disaster upon an innocent gas station on a lonely Ontario highway.

“Listen, buddy, just listen,” I snarled “Only one way. If you let this guy go, see, you’re finished. Even if you hand him over to the cops, you’re finished, see? There is only one way out of this mess for you?”

“Wha…wha…wha…?” asked the fat man.

I indicated Jim and drew my finger across my neck.

“We’ll take him out into the bushes back here,” I said slowly, “bump him off and bury him where nobody will ever find him. I beat it, see? Over the border. It’s the last you ever hear of it.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” wailed the fat man.

The pale man just slipped lower and lower down the wall he was leaning against, and after looking with horror at me, slowly closed his eyes.

“You can’t take it, huh?” I sneered. “Well, if you leave this guy loose, you’re as good as dead right now, both of you. You interfered in a snatch, see?”

The fat man began to shake.

“Then, here’s the next best thing,” I snarled. “Help me get this guy back into his car. Tie him up, tight, see? We’ll bury him under the baggage. Then when the other car passes, I’ll drive off and attend to the job myself down the road apiece. But if either of you ever opens your mouth about this, it’ll be just too bad. Just tooooo bad, see?”

I stood up and watched, guardedly out of the window. A car came rushing along whizzed by with three innocent citizens sitting in it.

“There they go,” I hissed, leaping back from the window.

Jim was sitting, exhausted and gagged, but his eyes burned with a baleful light at me.

“Now, boys,” I said, briskly, “let’s get this guy into the car. Stand up, you!”

And then I felt a hard bump in the middle of my back.

“Hands up,” said a sharp voice.

“Hey,” I exclaimed, but raising my arms. It was the pale man. He had a shotgun against my back.

“Let’s,” he cried in a quavering voice “let’s take them both back in the bushes, Bill. We don’t want to get mixed up with gangs, either side.”

“Well,” said the fat man, eyeing us eagerly.

“Just a couple of dirty crooks,” cried the pale one, “it won’t make any difference. And nobody will know but us two. Come on.”

“Just a minute, please,” I stated.

“Shut up,” yelped the pale man, giving me a dig in the back with the shotgun.

“Now, listen, Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’ve got to have an understanding about this. You’re pretty darn gabby. Remember that incident about Norah? How do I know I can trust you if we bump these two guys off? I admit it is the safest thing to do. But how do I know you won’t get drunk and blab?”

“I’ll do the shooting myself,” quavered Eddie. “Then I won’t dare, see? But let’s get out of this jam, and get out of it fast.”

So you see I had to tell them.

I had to explain it was all a little joke, and begged them to unmuffle Jimmie, so he could explain, too.

At first, Jimmie was inclined to borrow Eddie’s shotgun, but when he got quiet, and I was allowed to make a speech explaining about how Jimmie had said the world was safe for democracy, we all had a nice laugh together, and we bought eight gallons of gas and a quart of oil, and everything was hunky dooley.

“But,” said Jim, as we drove away, “I see your point.”

“So do I,” I admitted.

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Editor’s Note:

1. A barouche is a large, open, four-wheeled carriage, both heavy and luxurious, drawn by two horses.  ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 25, 1933.

“Sometimes,” said Jimmie Frise, “I think you are a Communist.”

“Far from it,” I said. “I’m a Naturalist. It’s a new party, and I’m the president of it and all the members.”

“What does it stand for?” asked Jim.

“Well, we want everything divided up in such a way that nobody can get too much, and everybody can have some. But we don’t want any changes in men.”

“How do you mean no changes in men?”

“All the other reform parties,” I said, “want everything changed, but most of all they want to change men. The Communists want all mankind to destroy their private ambitions so that there is no ambition but the State’s. The Socialists want all men to be born with the idea that nothing matters but the welfare of society. The less advanced reformers offer us all kinds of good things, but also want men to be good, too. They want men to be like geometrical designs. Workers, spiritual, pious, modernized, mechanized, without any bad habits. Just doomed to a strictly sanitary, safe, sensible, eight-hour day, organized, tame, the kind of life you can see in the advertisements in a United States children’s magazine.”

“I hope you are not scoffing at modern life,” said Jimmie.

“Mercy, no!” I said. “But us Naturalists want the changes without changing men. We have the funny idea that you can’t change men anyway. Reorganize business and industry so as to put a sane limit on the wolfish-impulse of some of us, just the way you would put a collar and leash on the larger and lively dogs. But don’t muzzle all the pooches in all creation.”

“That’s a good line,” said Jim. “Why don’t you go into politics?”

“I will consult the party,” I said. “But we Naturalists don’t believe in politics. We want all men to be Grits and Tories and all kinds of radicals, and have a good time. We want them to be natural. The Naturalist party plans to give the world all the benefits the Tories, Grits and Communists offer, without demanding any change in themselves whatsoever. They can still be greedy and selfish, mean and lousy, happy and lazy, hard-working and ambitious, dull and stupid, and we’ll guarantee that no harm can come to them. We assert the right of all men to be natural. To establish that right, we are going to topple over all tyrants who prevent men from eating, because eating is the most natural thing on earth.”

Reforming the Other Fellow

“Excuse me,” said Jim, “but how will you handle the sincere reformers?”

“It is natural for some men,” I said, “to want to reform their fellow-men.”

“Correct,” said Jim.

“And it is natural for other men to want to be reformed.”

“Exactly,” said Jim.

“So we’ll let them amuse each other,” I said. “What we Naturalists deny is the right of anybody to reform us if we don’t want to be reformed.”

“How about murderers?” asked Jim. “They naturally want to murder.”

“And the rest of us naturally want to hang them, so that’s all right.”

“I see,” said Jim.

“We can get a lot of improvements,” I said, “without trying to improve men. That’s where we are all stuck to-day. All our schemes fall down because we won’t let nature alone. It’s like cows. Over a couple of centuries, we have made a lot of improvement in cows. We are getting a lot of milk from them and a lot more beef. But you start trying to tinker with the intelligence of cows and see where you get.”

Jim and I were sitting, during this brilliant conversation, on the window sill of a store over on Parliament St. This is a habit Jim and I have brought to the big city with us from the small village where we were born and raised.¹ Every village has large numbers of wide window sills on its stores for the public to sit on. But in the whole of Toronto, Jimmie and I have found only two. And when we are feeling a little depressed, we always go and sit on one or the other of these store window sills. If you know of any others, we would be glad to add them to our list of good sitting places.

As we reached this point in our conversation, a well-dressed man walked rapidly past us, down Parliament St. He had a derby hat and a gray coat and gloves. He walked with a purposeful stride.

“How far would you get,” asked Jim, quietly, “with that guy with all this Naturalist stuff?”

“He’s perfectly happy,” I said. “Leave him alone.”

“What would you say he was?” asked Jim, as the tall, tidy figure swung down the street from us, full of vim, heading resolutely for some place, with purpose written all over him.

“I’d say he was a young executive in a trust company,” I suggested.

“Or an insurance man,” said Jim. “Let’s follow him and see where he goes.”

We rose off the window sill and started down Parliament St. after the stranger.

“This is interesting,” I exclaimed, as we lengthened our pace to keep him in sight. “Following a busy man and seeing what impels him on his way.”

Down Parliament to Queen we marched, and he turned along Queen, on the north side, looking neither to the right nor the left, but striding with the air of a man walking for his health’s sake, and with a definite program in his mind.

Past homely little stores, factories, warehouse, and we came to Sherbourne, which he crossed, still on the north side. A few doors along was a cigar store with a great variety of English tobacco in the window, and our man halted abruptly, and stood so long looking in the window that Jim and I had to walk back and forward the distance between two hydro poles before he suddenly turned and marched westward again on Queen, looking neither to the right nor the left.

Suddenly he veered and crossed the road. We followed. He stopped in front of a shoe repair shop in which there was only a few laces, a couple of new knives with curled blades and some spools of heavy linen for sewing shoes.

For three whole minutes he stood looking at these objects.

On again he marched, past Church St., past a great big store full of bicycles and motorcycles and wrenches and headlamps, where I would love to have dallied a moment, but right past Victoria he strode, and then crossed at Yonge to the north side and into a store he disappeared.

“What the dickens is he?” I asked.

Jim led me on and we saw him vanish down the basement stairs of the store. It was no trick to follow him down there, because he slowly wandered up one aisle and down the other, his gloved hands behind him, looking with intense interest at compartments full of screws and nails, hooks for screen doors, files, hinges. Plates, breadboards, trowels for picking up slices of pie. Paper lamp shades. Rolls of wire.

With slow, intense interest, he walked completely around the basement, looking at every single bin, and stopping to stare at many of them.

Then with resolution written all over him, he made for the stairs, and threaded his way rapidly out of that store and entered another nearby.

“This has got me beat,” I said.

But Jimmie just grinned and led me after him.

Straight through this second store, past the shirts, the sweaters, the hats, through the motor accessories and the sporting goods, out past the cameras and the perfumes, he strode, and suddenly he stopped at the soap. The soap is a whole section. Slowly, pace by pace, hands clasped behind him, he walked, head forward, carefully studying every foot of soap. He paused at some scented and warped cakes. He paused again at a pile of bars of castile like a log chimney. He went right around. the section, taking all of five minutes to examine each item.

“He’s off!” hissed Jim.

The End of the Chase

And away we galloped, in his wake, as he made his way rapidly and resolutely toward the doors.

And now he marched into still another store. Past the tobacco, past the stationery and the diaries, past the aisle circles where the pretty girls sell stockings and beads, right past the love birds, clean through the bulbs of hyacinth and tulip, down past the umbrellas and walking sticks, through the books. with never a glance to the glittering piles of literature, he advanced, and stopped in front of the elevators.

We caught up with him. We stopped for the elevator too.

It arrived. We got in. We rose to the second floor.

Out he stopped, smartly. We followed.

Past towels and tablecloths, linens and sheets he sped, and suddenly halted in the midst of the blankets. With the same head-thrust-forward air of fascination, he walked slowly amidst the blankets, looking long at the soft white ones, halting reverently before the colored and striped ones, spending so long amidst the motor rugs that a clerk came forward. But he merely shook his head.

Then, like a war horse, up came his head and he marched for the down escalator which we took behind him. Past the shirts and the underwear he made for the door. We followed him.

“Probably,” I said, “his wife was talking about getting some new blankets.”

“And soap,” said Jim.

“The chase will soon be over,” I said, “for he’ll likely duck into one of these skyscrapers.”

“And we’ll follow him,” said Jim. “I’ll bet he is an advertising man.”

“Or a broker,” I said.

“We’ll follow him right to his desk,” said Jim. “He’s got me excited.”

But on down Bay he led us, past the tall buildings one after another.

“Heading for the broker belt,” hissed Jim. He turned into a restaurant.

“Aw,” I said.

On his heels we followed.

As he came into the restaurant, there were half a dozen bright-looking young fellows gathered about the whiffle board.²

The whiffle board is a children’s game. which is played by shooting marbles up a sloping board and seeing what holes they drop into. The holes are numbered from ten to three hundred.

“Hello, boys,” cried our man gaily.

“Hello, George!” cried the gang.

The young executive took off his gloves and put them in his pocket.

He unbuttoned his overcoat. Tilted his derby back on his head.

And then, with a smile of pleasure all over his long, clever, happy face, he stepped up to the whiffleboard and joined the group around it.

Hurrying Nowhere

Jim and I went over and sat down and ordered coffee.

“So what?” said Jim.

“Hurrying nowhere,” I said.

“They look like a nice bunch of lads,” said Jim. “Let’s go up and join them and find out what that man does. I hate to quit now.”

“No,” I said. “I’d rather not know what he does now.”

“Why not?”

“Because he fits so perfectly into the Naturalist theory,” I said. “I bet you if you could follow every man for one day of his life, you would discover the most astonishing things. The tiny things he is interested in. The hours he spends in idleness, or what appears to be idleness to other eyes. The small childishness of our day, and how resolute and purposeful we are about it!”

“I can see it,” said Jim, tenderly. “Follow every man from the time he gets up until he goes to bed, and you don’t meet up much with his beliefs or politics. There isn’t much pattern to his day, although there may be a pattern to his life.”

“Just a natural man,” I said.

One of the young men at the whiffle board walked over toward us. He had left his hat hanging on the coat hook beside our table. As he reached up for it he smiled at us and called me by name, although I did not recognize him.

“Oh,” I said quietly, at this fortunate circumstance, “we were wondering about that man there with the gray coat. The one who came in just a couple of minutes ago.”

“Yes? said the young man.

“Er – what business is he in?” I asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact, he isn’t in any business,” said the young man, leaning down confidentially. “He has been out of work for over a year.”

“Oh, dear.”

“In fact, he is nearly crazy over it,” went on the young man.

“Mm-mm,” said Jim and I.

The young chap nodded and left us. “How about enlisting him in the Naturalist party?” asked Jim.

“All the time we were following him,” I said aimlessly.

“Anyway, how about letting me join your party?” said Jimmie.

“Nope,” I said sadly, “it’s a one-man party.”

Which shows you that there is a lot of thinking going on in various places, but not much action.

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Editor’s Notes: This is one of their earlier stories, and it feels like they were still trying to work out the formula.

1. This makes the point that this was an earlier story. Greg would not imply that he was from a small town later. This was a fabrication too. ↩︎
2. Whiffle Boards were the precursors to the pinball machine. This seems to be early in their development as the linked article indicates that they were only invented 2 years previously in 1931. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 9, 1946.

“It’s your duty,” declared Jimmie Frise.

“Awfff!” I scoffed.

“Look,” said Jim. “The meeting isn’t five blocks from where we sit here in your home.”

“Aw, Jim,” I pleaded, “what’s got into you? Who wants to go to a public meeting?”

“It’s a meeting,” advanced Jim, “of the Community Betterment League. Are you not interested in the betterment of your community?”

“Awff,” I protested. “Jim, I’ve had a busy day. Here it is a swell night to just sit in front of the grate fire, listening to those apple wood logs crackling. And you want me to go out and sit in a crowded public hall and listen to a lot of windbags…”

“It won’t be crowded,” said Jim gently. “There’ll only be a handful of people out. The whole district feels the way you do, Greg. They’ll all stay home, like you, and snooze in front of their grate fires.”

“Well, what’s the matter with the community?” I demanded indignantly. “Isn’t it one of the best run communities in the world? Are there better public health services than we’ve got? Better schools? Better street cars? Better pavements?”

“There’s been a lot of crime…” ventured Jim.

“Is there a better police force in the world than we’ve got?” I lashed.

“There’s quite a lot of poverty,” mused Jim. “Off the main traffic avenues, down the side streets where guys like you and me never have to go. …there’s quite a bit of hardship, loneliness, neglect, trouble, distress…”

“Aw, we’ve got the most enlightened social services in the country,” I asserted. “Jim, leave the community alone. Leave the community in the competent hands that so far have given us so little to complain of.”

“Complain of?” murmured Jim. “Then why do you suppose the Community Betterment League has called a meeting tonight in this district? Why have they hired a hall and organized a program of special speakers?”

“My boy,” I explained, “there are some people in this world whose hobby is playing with public meetings the same as some people have a hobby of fishing or collecting old books or doing work with fret saws.”

“You’re,” suddenly sizzled Jimmie, “no citizen!”

“I,” I retorted aghast, “I… look here, Jim! I’ve been in two wars. I’ve always paid my taxes… maybe a little late… I… uh…!”

Jim just leaned back and watched me be astonished.

“A citizen,” he said quietly after a moment, “should take an interest in the affairs of his city. Or his town. Or his township. To be a citizen, it is not enough to be a successful business man. It isn’t enough to be a hard-working man, who obeys all the laws, pays his taxes, keeps his premises clean.”

“What more… ?” I tried to interrupt indignantly.

Not to Be Bandied About

“To be a good citizen,” went on Jim calmly, it isn’t enough to be a successful man. In the newspapers, it says, ‘Prominent Citizen Dies,’ but when you examine the facts, you find that some greedy cunning old guy has devoted his entire life and energies to building up a large business, employing hundreds of people, erecting a magnificent factory, but in his whole life, he never attended a political meeting.”

“Well, heh, heh,” I scoffed. “I should hope not! Imagine a successful business man going and sitting at the ordinary political meeting, with a lot of local wind-bags seizing the opportunity to sound off. Why, a business man would risk his health attending one of those stupid meetings. He might get so angry, sitting listening to all the drivel, that he’d have a heart attack. Maybe a thrombosis….”

“Okay,” said Jim. “Then don’t let him aspire to the title of citizen. Don’t let him imagine he is a citizen. He’s nothing more or less than a prominent business man. And in the newspapers, it should merely say, ‘Prominent Business Man Dies.’ This word citizen is too noble a title to be bandied about.”

“I suppose,” I sneered, “that, you would call those wind-bags who DO take the floor at public meetings, you’d call them citizens, would you?”

“Most certainly,” said Jim. “The least of them, the poorest of them, is a better citizen than the clever, wealthy, successful man who ignores his duty to take his common share of public affairs.”

“Now, look here, Mr. Frise,” I declared, “who do you suppose runs this country? Who do you suppose takes a REAL interest in the public affairs of the country? Is it those insignificant wind-bags you hear spouting at public meetings? Or is it the men of affairs, the men of substance, the business men, yes, the PROMINENT business men, who, behind the scenes, and at caucuses and private meetings, GET THE REAL JOB DONE!”

“Do you insinuate,” asked Jim coolly, “that this country is not run according to democratic principles? Do you suggest that we are not controlled by representative government?”

“Aw, Jim,” I pleaded, “you don’t for one minute suppose that our big, wealthy citizens just sit back and let the country be run by the kind of people who attend public meetings? My dear man, the real government of the country is in the hands of the men smart enough, wealthy enough to get their way in politics the same as they get their way in their own factories or businesses.”

“They get together,” supposed Jim, “in private board rooms? They don’t HAVE to attend public meetings?”

“Exactly,” I pointed out.

“Then,” said Jim smoothly, “you are content to leave the world in the hands of the powerful few? The same powerful few who lately put the whole world, and all its humble, teeming millions, through the most savage torture in all recorded history? You are content…”

“Hold on,” I protested. “We went to war as a whole people. We weren’t driven into it. It was by overwhelming public consent that we decided we couldn’t come under the dominion of Hitler…”

“And I suppose,” posed Jim, “that it was by overwhelming popular consent that we allowed Hitler to rise to power? Those few, those crafty few, that band of brothers whom we left to run our world for us, weren’t responsible for the rise of Hitler, eh?”

“We had nothing to do with that,” I stated flatly. “The thing just grew. It grew without us noticing it. We were busy with our own private affairs, all through 1939, 1936, 1938…”

“Yeah, and leaving the world to our betters, to the gentlemen in the board rooms,” struck Jimmie. “Do you remember 1938? Do you not recollect there were little meetings, little ill- attended meeting all over this country, all over every country, trying to rouse us to what was coming? Don’t you remember that?”

“I… uh,” I argued.

“No, you don’t remember,” accused Jim. “Because you were too busy sitting at home before the grate fire, listening to the apple wood logs crackling.”

“I… uh,” I pointed out.

“It won’t do,” cried Jimmie, suddenly standing up. “The world right now is in too perilous a state for anybody to stay at home.”

“But what has a meeting of the Community Betterment League,” I groaned, “got to do with the state of the world?”

“Maybe very little,” agreed Jim, “but it’s a public meeting. And by golly, we’re going! In fact, we’re going to ALL public meetings from now on.”

I just sat there. Imagine going to ALL public meetings!

A Lesson Learned

“If the past 20 years has taught us, the common people of the world, one lesson,” went on Jim loudly, “it is that we can’t trust the world in the hands of self-appointed leaders. We’ve got self-appointed leaders in this country just the way Germany had with Hitler. Rich guys, ambitious guys, smooth, get-together guys! Maybe they don’t use gangster organizations on us – yet! But unless we’re a lot more stupid than I think, unless we are really as stupid as these self-appointed guys think, we’re going to protect ourselves from them, we’re going to start taking an interest in our own LIVES…

“Aw, Jim,” I sighed, “there’s a lethargy in the common man.”

“Not lethargy,” corrected Jim. “Inertia. That’s different. A lot different. With inertia, all you’ve got to do is start it moving!”

“Inertia,” I pondered. “I don’t know, Jim. If you put together all the reasons people don’t go out to public meetings, they’d add up to something more than mere inertia. They don’t want the even tenor of their ways upset. They want to go to the movie. They want to sit at home. They want to go out and call on friends. Or they want to have friends in. All the reasons are little reasons. But they add up.”

“Yeh, they add up,” said Jimmie. “We are like on a ship. We’ve all retired to the comfort of our cabins. The ship plunges through the night. We are at the mercy of the captain and the crew.”

“Okay,” I submitted, “but at least, on a ship, the captain and the crew are selected and appointed according to laws and rules so strict and severe that there is little chance of them running us on the rocks. We don’t let the guy who just WANTS to be captain run the ship.”

“Aw,” smiled Jim, “then you will come to the meeting?”

“I’ll,” I said grudgingly, “come to the meeting.”

And we put on our coats and hats, it being just a little before 8 p.m., to walk the five blocks over to the public hall where the meeting was being held.

It was a fine, crisp night. And we enjoyed the walk. About three blocks down, we noticed that Rusty, Jim’s so-called Irish water spaniel, was with us. It isn’t Irish, and it hates water. But it loves masculine company, especially at night, in the open air, when something seems afoot.

“Hey, go on home, you,” I commanded.

“Aw, he can sit outside the hall,” objected Jim. “He’ll be all right.”

“Dogs aren’t invited to public meetings, Jim,” I protested.

“He’ll go back home when we go in the hall,” assured Jim.

And at the corner, just as Rusty rounded a hedge, there was a sudden scuffle, and a large Nazi dog, a large totalitarian, Fascist dog that had apparently been lying in wait behind the hedge, pounced out on Rusty and you never heard such a riot on a quiet residential street.

The dog’s owner came around the corner – he may have been on his way to the meeting too, for all I know – and taking a hasty glance to see whether his dog was on top or underneath, shouted out, “Hey, Bonzo, not so rough!”

He was a big, burly guy, like his dog.

But Jim and I were both running full tilt, for Rusty was decidedly the under dog.

“Rough!” I yelled, as I took a flying kick at the strange mutt. “That hyena?”

I always believe in kicking a dog fight apart. A good swift kick does less harm than another 10 seconds of fighting, I always say.

But I missed. Jim made a grab into the scuffle, and I whirled to come in for another dandy on the ribs of the top dog when the stranger got me by the coat collar and said, in a calm, authoritative voice, “Now, now, my little whiffet….”

I detest the word whiffet. I don’t mind half pint, shorty, or even squirt. But whiffet…!

I lunged.

The big fellow gave me a hearty shake, chuckling very reasonably.

Rules Suspended

Meantime the dog fight was going on with increased fury. Rusty had got in a little nip or two on the top dog’s more delicate anatomy, and its yowls, intermixed with its snarls, and Rusty’s protests of murder, were certainly creating a warlike mood.

Now, when a man much larger than you so far forgets the Marquis of Queensberry rules as to manhandle a smaller man, is the smaller man still bound by the Marquis of Queensberry rules?

I don’t know. I personally think not.

Should I have permitted myself to be held suspended there in space while a dog fight went on, and my friend’s dog, Rusty, was being savagely murdered?

I think not.

So, bracing my feet, I swung my elbow hard and deep into the large man’s exposed bay window. I felt my elbow sink a good foot.

The big fellow, with an astounding intake of breath, let limply go of me and fell smothering to the ground.

At which his dog let go of Rusty and ran yelping up the street into the night.

And out came a number of neighbors from several directions, in their shirt sleeves, to witness Jimmie and me attempting to erect the large stranger off the pavement.

“Who hit him?” demanded the first comers.

“He did,” said Jim briefly, indicating me at the head end of the gentleman still fighting for his wind.

From mouth to mouth the wonder flew, as they all got the large man up on his feet, and all eyes were on me.

“He… uh,” said Jim, to the assembled neighbors, “it was hardly…”

I think he was going to tell them just what I had done to the stranger.

Two of the neighbors led the large man unsteadily up the street.

“Best thing has happened around here for years,” whispered one of the gathering, delightedly pumping my hand. “He and his dog. They go out every night for a walk, looking for a dog fight….”

And everybody pumped my hand. My foul hand. They should have shaken my elbow.

I brushed away from them.

“Jim,” I said, “I’m winded, too upset to go to any meeting.”

“Same here,” said Jim shortly, whistling for Rusty.

And we walked home in silence.

“That was an awful jab you gave that poor guy,” said Jim, at last unable to keep to himself. “You might have burst his appendix.”

“I felt something burst,” I said, not without satisfaction.

“Are you proud of it?” demanded Jim grimly.

“Weeelll…” I said comfortably.

“Gosh,” ruminated Jim bitterly, “there we were, heading for a meeting of the Community Betterment League…..”

“It’s the way I told you, Jim,” I assured, taking his elbow and leading up my sidewalk toward my house and the grate fire of apple wood logs, “something absurd is always preventing a man from attending his public duty. A dog fight… or something.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 3, 1934.

“As servants of the people,” said Jimmie Frise, “we are not paying enough attention to the weightier problems of to-day.”

“I guess we haven’t got the equipment,” I agreed.

“We waste our time,” went on Jim, “making little unimportant experiments with pickling, furnace pipes, rabbit hunting and other minor domestic quarrels.”

“I would love,” I said, “to be a great authority.”

“It is easy to become a great authority,” stated Jimmie. “You just give up everything else, you forget about money, about your wife and family, you just concentrate yourself on one subject, like humming birds or radio tubes or something, and work sixteen hours a day at it and dream about it fitfully all night, year after year for thirty-five years. And then, when you are seventy-one years old and hump-backed and half blind and your family has all grown up and left you a quarter of a century ago, and you have no friends left, and you die, you get your picture in the papers and underneath it says, “The great authority on humming birds.””

“I don’t mean that kind of authority,” I hurried. “I mean a sort of authority that just comes by his knowledge instinctively, like poets – you know? – just born with an understanding of some of the mysteries of this life. I feel I have such an instinctive knowledge about the poor and oppressed. I sort of feel that, but for the grace of God and a little accident somewhere in my boyhood, I would have been a tramp myself.”

“I often feel that way,” mused Jim. “Sometimes I marvel that I have a house to live in.”

“Maybe everybody feels that way,” I suggested.

“I doubt it,” said Jim. “I think you and I have a deep sympathy with bums because we know, deep in our own hearts, that if it hadn’t been for some guidance we got as children or some friendly expectation we felt from our olders, we would have been hoboes.”

“And all the world to see,” I cried. “There is no reason to suppose that a hobo does not appreciate landscape as much as we do, and we have to pay big money and reserve expensive berths and staterooms to go abroad to look at mountains and the sea.”

“If we were hoboes,” went on Jim, “we could just climb aboard a freight train and dangle along through the lovely country and whenever we saw a beautiful lake or a lovely range of hills, all we have to do is jump off and stay there until our eyes and souls were filled. Maybe, by jove, maybe hoboes are artists at heart, poets and dreamers, who surrender all the world that they may saturate themselves in beauty!”

It Ought to Be Law

“Most artists I know,” I submitted, “look just one jump removed from hoboes.”

“Did you ever hear of the Sabbatical year?” asked Jim.

“I probably did as a child,” I guarded.”

“In ancient Biblical days,” says Jim, “every seventh year was a year of rest, like the seventh day. In the sabbatical year, nobody was allowed to work or till the earth. It was a year of rest. Some of the universities allow their professors a sabbatical year, and they go on holidays, with full pay, for the whole year!”

“I missed my calling,” said I.

“The old Hebrews were a wise bunch,” said Jimmie. “We make a big mistake when we aren’t fundamentalists. We should take Moses whole. We should have never surrendered the sabbatical year. Every seventh year, every man in this world ought to be allowed to turn hobo. Bankers, mechanics, newspapermen.”

“Where would you head for, Jimmie, if you turned hobo?”

“I’d head for California,” said Jim. “First, I would go to California and visit Tia Juana and then, at the right season, I would amble across to Kentucky and see the Derby and lie around on the blue grass for a month or two. Then, maybe, I’d stow away for England and see Ascot. Ireland, I’d like to see Ireland too, and spend a couple of months around one of those famous studs where they raise Irish hunters. But what about you? What would you do?”

“I’d start my sabbatical year,” I said, clearing my throat, “in May. I’d start via the Nipigon and then across to fish British Columbia, up to Alaska, finishing Alaska about August. Then I’d catch a boat for New Zealand, arriving there just as the brown and rainbow trout season opens about October first. I’d fish all around New Zealand until maybe February, and then stow away for the south of France, fishing through the Pyrenees and up and across into Devonshire by the first of April, then slowly, stream by stream, up to Scotland…”

“Wait a minute!” cried Jim. “Your sabbatical year is up!”

“Won’t you let me catch one salmon in Scotland?” I asked indignantly.

“You’ve got to be back in Toronto on May first,” stated Jim. “But it is a swell idea, that sabbatical year.”

“It ought to be law,” I declared.

“We ought,” said Jim, with that thoughtful, looking-away expression he wears when he is putting something over, “to just try a little of the hobo life, to see what it is really like. I mean, here we set ourselves up as the friends of the poor, but we don’t bark our shins grabbing freights. How about some day putting on some old clothes and going for a short trip on a freight?”

And that is how it came about that last Monday Jimmie and I sneaked off at lunch hour and went heme and put on our old hunting clothes and peak caps.

Grabbin’ a Freight

“Better take a few dollars each to get home on,” I suggested, as we admired ourselves in the mirror in Jim’s hall.

“Not on your life,” said Jim. “As artists, we must not only play the part of hoboes, we must be hoboes. Don’t let us take more than about 30 cents each, in dimes.”

“Suppose we get away off by Orillia or some place?” I inquired.

“Don’t be silly,” said Jim. “We aren’t going more than twenty miles. Freights always stop at sidings. We’ll go an hour or so one way, then hop off and catch another one coming into the city. Just to get a taste, not a bellyful.”

Jim had found out that one of the best places in the world to catch a freight is in the Mimico yards. There vast hundreds of acres of train tracks and sidings, thousands of empty box cars, long trains of loaded cars are assembled.

“We have to watch out for dicks,¹” said Jim, as we headed for the railway yards.

“O-kay, bo²,” said I, slouching.

With caps pulled over our eyes and shoulders tough and legs kind of bowed, which is any man’s way of feeling tough, we slunk through Mimico to Church St. and up to the subway. We were instantly in the core, the centre, the heart of railroadom. Turning in at the subway, we found ourselves in a vast region densely striped with hundreds of tracks and thousands of cars, with engines slowly puffing through, some drawing immense endless strings of cars, others steaming fussily about alone, and gauntletted railroad men, in overalls and peaked caps, leaning athletically out from cars and engines.

Hidden from us by strings of cars, engines puffed by us, and we heard the crunch of gravel under the feet of men which we could see by stooping down and looking under the cars. But they were railroad men’s feet. No bums did we see in the half hour we spent prowling up and down.

Two tracks away, we heard a string of cars shunt.

“Dere’s one haulin’ out, pardner,” hissed Jim. “Let’s scram on board, huh?”

We crawled underneath two strings of motionless freights and came out alongside the train that was still creaking from the shunt.

Three cars to our left, we saw an empty box car with its door ajar about two feet.

“Dere she is, buddy,” hissed Jim. “Lemme see how smart you are at grabbin’ a freight, huh?”

We scrunched low and made the dash.

Jim boosted me through the open door, and swung himself inside with professional smoothness.

“She’s headed west,” said Jim. “That means either Detroit or maybe Winnipeg. We’ll go as far as Brantford or Aurora.”

Cr-rash! shunted the train. You could hear it coming, but still it nearly knocked you off your feet.

“These freights are rough,” said I.

“You get used to it,” said Jim, walking to the door to peek.

“Nix!” he hissed. “Flat against the wall! Here comes a brakeman!”

We hugged the wall of the freight car as we heard footsteps crunching nearer on the gravel.

The footsteps stopped. We held our breath.

Then the brakeman reached up and with a grunt slammed the car door shut, and we heard a metallic clink and he threw home seme kind of a bolt or latch.

The footsteps died away.

“He locked us in!” I whinnied.

“Take it cool,” said Jim. “We’ll figure this out.”

“But we may not get out until we get to Vancouver,” I wailed, “or Des Moines!”

“We stop plenty of places,” soothed Jim. “All we have got to do is holler.”

“One brakeman and one engineer can’t hear us holler half a mile away,” I said loudly. “Let us holler now!”

“Hey,” roared Jimmie promptly. “HALP!”

“Halp, HALP!” I echoed, kicking the wall of the box car.

I will not embarrass you with a full stenographic record of the noises, yells and signals that we engaged in for the next ten minutes. Then we stopped because we were hoarse.

“She hasn’t started yet anyway,” said Jim.

“Maybe, Jim,” I said, as we sat on the floor, resting our lungs, “maybe this is one of those empty cars they store at Mimico until next summer.”

“It might be,” agreed Jim.

“Maybe nobody will come by,” I quavered, “and we will die of hunger and thirst. And maybe this car will not be used until they move the wheat next July.”

“Cut it out,” warned Jim.

“And we will be missing until next August,” I went on; “when they will find our desiccated and mummified bodies out in Weyburn, Sask.!”

The Free-Faring Life

“Stow it,” warned Jim.

“We have no identifications in these clothes,” I went on. “I’m going to spend what strength I have left now in carving my name on the wall of this box car, Jimmie, and if I am spared long enough, by the pangs of hunger and thirst, I will carve on the wall the details of our horrible experience. So people will know what became of us.”

An engine came puffing in the distance.

“Get ready,” cried Jim, leaping up in the dark. “Hoy, HOY, HAAALLLPPP!”

But the engine went thundering and hissing by.

“No use,” said I, sadly. “Let us save our strength and listen for footsteps. Surely some bum will come by.”

So we sat and listened. Occasionally, to break the monotony of conversation, we hallooed and yelled.

“It must be getting evening,” surmised Jimmie.

At about what must have been nine o’clock by the silence of the world, broken only by the thunder of passing trains, Jim suggested we take turns at having a little sleep. I slept first. But cinders are poor mattresses. I woke to find Jim snoring by my side.

“HAAALLLP!” I roared, but really to wake Jim.

“It must be getting towards morning.” Engines went by, trains, long, long trains, went by, going to Winnipeg, Vancouver and Des Moines.

“This,” said Jim, heavily, “might be one of those silk trains that make non-stop runs across the continent.”

“It is like being lost in the middle of the Sahara desert,” I said, hollowly. “Here, in the midst of a great freight yard, on the edge of a mighty city, we are lost as if we had flown in a rocket to the moon!”

We dozed again.

“Clink!”

We both sat up to face a foot-wide strip of God’s morning light streaming in and dazzling us. We made out the head of a man, a villainous, stubble-covered face peering at us with amazement.

“Hullo, said he. “Did I startle ye?”

Jim and I swallowed, poising for a spring.

“Kin I come in?” he asked, reaching up for a hoist.

“We’re getting out,” said Jim.

“All right,” said the hobo, “make it snappy. She’s just about to pull.”

Jim and I went through the narrow crack together. The tramp hoisted himself up and in.

“I hope yer not leavin’ on my account,” said he, looking down at us.

“No, no,” we assured him.

We hurried toward the Church St. subway.

“Ah,” cried Jim, as we hastened down toward the street cars in the fresh dawn, “the free-faring life of the hobo!”

But I was thinking about bacon and eggs and I didn’t want to be interrupted.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was reprinted in Silver Linings (1978).

1. Here Jimmie means Railroad police, who would look for hoboes to remove them from the trains. They could also get quite rough. ↩︎
2. “Bo” is short for hobo and is part of hobo slang to refer to each other. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 27, 1945.

“Lady Luck,” chuckled Jimmy Frise, “is sure smiling on me!”

“It’s about time,” I suggested.

“This is a real break,” said Jim, “with the coal shortage and all.”

“Coal? Ah,” I alerted.

“Yes, coal,” pursued Jim eagerly. “I was talking to my next door neighbor last night. Just casually chatting. And he says he is going to have to close up his house this winter as his firm is sending him to California.”

“You’re going to get his coal?” I exclaimed.

“No, it’s even better than that,” enthused Jim. “It so happens that he hasn’t laid in any coal at all for this winter, as he was expecting to have to go south for his firm.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“Well, sir,” tantalized Jim, “he tells me that one of his friends has installed a new oil burner. And this friend has two tons of coal in his cellar, left over from last winter. And he wants to get rid of it.”

“He should have no trouble,” I submitted.

“He offered it,” announced Jim sensationally, “to my next door neighbor for nothing. If – and here’s the catch – if my neighbor would arrange to transfer the coal from the other guy’s bin to my neighbor’s.”

“And he’s going south?” I caught on.

“So,” triumphed Jim, “my bin being full, and my neighbor’s empty, what more natural than that my neighbor accepts the offer, stores the two tons in his bin. And I get it!”

“Well, that is a break,” I agreed heartily. “It’ll be no trouble to shift a couple of bags every day or so across the side drive. And that’s all the distance it is.”

“I’ll have to carry it up my neighbor’s cellar stairs,” explained Jim, “and down mine. It’ll be a chore. But think of two tons of coal for nothing! Not a cent. And this year of all years, when coal is millions of tons short.”

“Some people,” I said, “have all the luck.”

“Little breaks like this,” sighed Jim happily, “make life worth while.”

“Isn’t your neighbor going to rent his house while he’s away?” I inquired.

“Not him,” asserted Jim. “He doesn’t want strangers wrecking his place. He’s got a swell little home. Beautiful furniture and lovely new drapes and all. His wife wouldn’t dream of renting it.”

“But there’s a housing shortage,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t seem right for a man to be away all winter and leave a house idle. A house that would shelter half a dozen people. Maybe a returned soldier and his family.”

“Aw, now, never mind the high moral tone,” scoffed Jim. “You’re just jealous of my luck. Would you rent your house if you were going to be away two or three months?”

“Well, of course, my house is full of old books,” I pointed out, “and fishing tackle and stuff. I could hardly have strangers living among all those fragile and perishable things…”

“Everybody, except people without any sentiment,” said Jim, “feels the same way about their homes.”

“It seems to me,” I said righteously, “that the National Housing Board ought to have some say in a matter of this kind. Nobody should be allowed, in times like these, to leave a house untenanted.”

An Ugly Thought

“I suppose,” said Jim, “you’re trying to blackmail half the coal out of me? Well, it’s too far to carry to your house. But it’s just across the alley from me.”

He rubbed his hands appreciatively.

“Who’s going to pay,” I inquired, “for transferring the coal from the other guy’s house to your neighbor’s?”

“Well, that’s just the point,” said Jim amiably. “We called up half a dozen coal dealers and asked them what it would cost, and they just hung up.”

“Hung up?” I questioned.

“Coal dealers,” explained Jim, “are nearly crazy trying to fill their orders now. And are they going to waste time transferring coal from one house to another, coal they have no interest in? Coal they didn’t sell?”

“Aaah,” I mused.

There’s the guy who has the coal,” outlined Jim, “who is installing a new oil burner. Not only does he not need the coal. It is in his way. He’s got to use the space of his coal bins for fuel storage tanks. He wants that coal out of there. Right away.”

“That’s why he will give it away,” I realized.

“Precisely,” said Jim. “And here’s my neighbor, with his bins empty. But he doesn’t need the coal. Because he’s going to be away all winter.”

“And you…” I concluded.

“I, in return for watching over my neighbor’s house,” announced Jim, “can have the coal stored in my next door neighbor’s bins. If.”

“If?” I followed.

“If I can arrange to transfer the coal,” said Jim.

I began to get uneasy.

“Surely there is some trucking company,” I said hastily, “that would undertake the job. After all, you can’t expect busy coal dealers to waste time handling coal they don’t sell. But there are any number of trucking companies that take on all sorts of jobs like this.”

“I’ve tried them,” said Jim. “I spent nearly all last night, with my neighbor, telephoning. I called big truckers and little truckers; I went all through the telephone book and the want ads. I tried little, foreign-sounding, one-truck outfits. I even telephoned some of the big social service organizations and asked them if they knew of any ex-soldiers in need of a one-day job.”

“How far is this guy’s house from you, the one with the new oil burner?” I inquired.

“Only four blocks,” cried Jim. “If I could. find some guy really looking for a job, he could do it with a wheelbarrow.”

“In about 50 trips,” I snorted. “Jim, it’s a nasty job, handling coal.”

“Aw, a truck could do it in one trip,” scorned Jim. “Two tons of coal? Just one trip.”

“Well, no matter how you manage it,” I admitted, “it won’t cost even half as much as two tons of coal. Whatever you pay, you’ll be in on the deal.”

“In Your Hands”

Jim studied me with a friendly and long look.

“Greg,” he said, “there is only one solution and it’s in your hands.”

“My hands!” I protested.

“Yes,” said Jim, tenderly. “You’ve got that little old open car…”

“It’s not so old,” I interrupted sharply, “that it can be used as a coal truck!”

“Aw, now, wait a minute,” soothed Jim. “I’ve thought it all out. I know you wouldn’t want to see me miss a lucky break like this. We’ve been partners too long for you to….”

“Jim,” I warned, “we’ve been partners all these years strictly because neither of us has tried to take advantage of the other.”

“Look,” said Jim, hitching his chair closer to me. “It is obvious you couldn’t carry bags of coal in a closed sedan.”

“You could,” I assured him. “And besides, your sedan is two years older than my touring.”

“Your little open job,” declared Jim, “is famous, and you admit it, for its carrying capacity.”

“True,” I admitted. “It has a record of six deer, three hounds, two hunters and their rifles and baggage.”

“There is nothing like a touring car,” announced Jim admiringly, “for carrying a load. It makes a joke of closed cars. Now, my idea was, I’ll supply the canvas tarpaulins…”

“I wouldn’t think of it, Jim,” I stated firmly.

“I’ll get two, or even three tarpaulins,” explained Jim, making little diagrams with his pencil, “that we can lines the car with. Then, I’ll borrow good, sound coal bags. All you’ve got to do is drive the car. We can make it in two or three trips….”

“Two tons of coal?” I shouted. “In my little touring? In two or three trips?”

“I’ll do all the carrying,” went on Jim hurriedly. “I’ll go down into that guy’s cellar, shovel the coal into the bags. Then I’ll give you a call on the telephone, see? You won’t have to do a thing but come and drive in his side drive. I’ll carry the bags up, very carefully. I won’t fill them too full. In fact, I’ll moisten them, so they won’t shed dust at all.”

“Nothing doing,” I said, getting up.

“Then,” pleaded Jim, “I’ll take the tarpaulins – I’ve got it all figured out, see? – and line your car with them. Line it completely, so that not so much as a single grain of coal dust can escape. Then I place the sacks of coal in, very carefully. On the floor.”

“It would hold about two,” I snorted. “It would take 20 trips.”

“I figure,” said Jim, “that we could do it in three or four trips. After all, what is two tons of coal?”

“Well, it seemed to be a lot,” I reminded him, “when you were feeling so lucky five minutes ago.”

“I mean,” said Jim, “it’s a lot in one sense. But it’s not much in another.”

“I don’t think it’s fair,” I announced, “to propose using my little car for a coal cart when you’ve got a car of your own.”

“But a closed car,” exclaimed Jimmie.

“You can line the inside of your closed car,” I insisted, “with tarpaulins. You can take the back seat out. You could get six bags of coal in it.”

“And smear all the upholstery!” cried Jim.

“How about mine?” I retorted.

“Yours is leather,” said Jim, “or imitation. If a little coal dust gets on that, I can wash it off. That’s the beauty of your car. It’s practical. It’s useful. It’s a real, sensible car.”

“Flattery won’t help,” I informed him.

“Aw,” begged Jim, “be a sport. All you’ve got to do is drive. Maybe three, maybe four short trips. I’ll do all the work, all the carrying.”

We Strike a Bargain

“Jim, I’ve been thinking,” I said. “What kind of coal is this two tons?”

“It’s blower coal¹,” said Jim.

“That filthy dust!” I snorted.

“There’s four bags of cannel coal,” put in Jim.

“Ah, cannel coal?” I said. “For grate fires?”

“The guy with the new oil burner,” explained Jim, “is installing gas grates in his fireplaces.”

“I think,” I proposed, “we can make a little bargain here, Jim. If I am let in on this bit of luck, I might be interested in the trucking job.”

“The cannel coal, you mean?” said Jim, a little crestfallen.

“Precisely,” I said. “I can do with four bags of cannel coal. You wouldn’t want to hog all the luck, would you, Jim?”

“Not at all, not at all,” agreed Jim. “Of course you take the cannel coal for your trouble. I should have thought of it in the first place.”

And next day being Saturday, Jim took me in and introduced me to his neighbor. One of those harassed executive types. Just the kind who are sent all over the country by big, soulless corporations.

“Without a thought of me,” he explained, as he glumly outlined his plans for the winter. “That’s the heck of these big international organizations. They just shove you around.”

He came with us over to his friend’s, who was installing the oil burner. In fact, when we got there the oil burner men were already at work on the old coal furnace, taking out the grates, relining the fire-box with new tile and unpacking all the motors and gadgets that go with oil burners.

Jim’s neighbor had already explained to his friend about putting the coal in his bins for Jim’s use.

“I don’t care who gets it or where it goes,” said the new oil-burner owner, “so long as it gets the heck out of here. And soon. I spent half of last week trying to sell it. You’d think with the coal shortage and all, there would be somebody glad to buy two tons of coal,”

“Not even your neighbors?” I inquired. “Who could carry it next door or a couple of doors away?”

“My neighbors,” he replied drily, “are the kind who filled their bins to bursting last summer.”

On the Job

“Well, it’s a great break for us,” I assured him. “I’m getting the cannel coal in return for the use of my open car as a truck.”

“The cannel coal?” exclaimed Jim’s neighbor. “Oh, you’re taking that, are you?”

“We figured that was a fair break,” explained Jim. “I get the blower coal and he gets the four bags of cannel.”

“Good, good,” said Jim’s neighbor. “A real idea. Well, boys, I’d like to stay and help with the job, but I’ve got…”

“My dear man,” protested Jim, “don’t think of it. You’re doing enough, lending me your cellar, putting me in touch with a break of luck like this.”

And he and the oil-burner enthusiast went upstairs, leaving Jim and me face to face with the binful of blower.

Jim had borrowed three coal sacks from neighbors and had two old ones of his own that, in palmier days², had delivered cannel coal to his house in tidy orders. You remember the days?

He also had two old brown dunnage bags, not very substantial now, with holes in them. But he had brought some newspaper to put inside to cover the holes.

With these for our containers, we proceeded to organize the job. True to his promise, Jim had obtained two big tarpaulins from among his wide circle of neighbors and acquaintances, and with these we lined my touring car to make a sort of large dustproof well or tank into which we could stow the coal sacks.

“We’ll move the cannel coal first,” I suggested, “and drop it off at my place.”

“Okay,” agreed Jim.

But when we looked for it, we found it in an outer bin, and at that very minute, one of the oil-burner workmen had placed a large, heavy crate full of motors, electric fuse boxes and other gadgets right on top of the cannel coal bin.

“I’ll have that open and distributed,” said the mechanic, “before you come for your second load. Leave it for now.”

So we proceeded with the blower coal, first filling all our five coal sacks and two dunnage bags, then carrying them up the cellar stairs to my waiting car.

Jim did the actual carrying while I came behind, supporting the bag with my shoulder. A bag of that soft, dusty blower coal is mighty heavy load. And more than that, it is a dirty load. We hadn’t carried two bags before we were already disappearing from view.

We got all seven bags into my car.

“At this rate,” I said, spitting coal, “It will take us about five or six trips.”

“We’ll see,” said Jim. “You can’t estimate a bin of coal by the eye.”

I drove the load carefully the four blocks to Jim’s side drive, and there we found Jim’s neighbor awaiting us to show us which cellar window to put the coal through.

“If you don’t mind, boys,” he said, “I’ve left the hose, so you can spray it as it goes in, to keep the dust down.”

“Okay,” said Jim. “Okay.”

Love’s Labor Lost

And as Jim carried each bag back, I would stand by, and as he lowered the bag and tilted it, I would turn the hose nozzle for the finest spray and let is sizzle in the cellar window.

It was a good idea, even though it moistened us and added to our murk.

On the second trip, I noticed the crate of motors was still on top of the cannel coal. “I’ll have it out of there by the next load,” said the mechanic.

On the third trip, the cannel coal was still unavailable.

“It will take only two more trips,” I explained to the mechanic.

“I’ll open the crate within 10 minutes,” he replied, his hands full of wrenches.

We made the whole job on the fifth trip, but it left no bags available, nor any room in my car for the cannel coal which was now available, the crate having been broken apart and the motors removed.

“I’ll come back for it,” I said thickly from behind a mask that now covered me like a fabric.

And as we arrived in the side drive and started carrying the last bags back to the bin window, a telegraph boy on a bicycle arrived and rang the neighbor’s bell.

He came out and greeted us heartily.

“This the last?” he inquired, as he opened the telegram.

“The last,” heaved Jim, hoisting a bag while I got the next one ready.

The neighbor, stood on his step staring at the telegram.

“Bad news?” I inquired.

“Awful!” he said. “This places most embarrassing position.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“How will I ever explain to Jimmie?” he said, looking at the wire helplessly.

I began to feel limp.

“The head office,” he read, “has changed program stop You will not be going California stop Acknowledge stop.”

“Not going,” I said hoarsely, “to California?”

He waved the telegram weakly.

Jim came from the back of the house with the empty sack.

“Jim,” said the neighbor brokenly. “Read this!”

Jim took the wire in his grimy hand and read it. Then read it again, his lips moving so as to take it in better.

“I’m so sorry, Jim,” said the neighbor.

“But…” said Jim… “well… but…”

“I’ll pay you,” said the neighbor eagerly, “I’ll pay you both for transferring the coal. I’ll pay you whatever you like, whatever is fair, whatever the usual charge is for…”

“How can you pay us?” I croaked. “Are we coal carriers?”

“Not at all,” said Jim, firmly. “It was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, a coincidence…”

“Do you mind,” I inquired bitterly, “if I take the cannel coal?”

“Certainly not, certainly not,” said the neighbor. “By all means. That will repay you for all your trouble. Your car…”

I looked at my poor little bow-legged car, still with its load of blower. What a filthy sight.

“Come on, Jim,” I said grimly.

And we hoisted the last five bags, with the neighbor now hastily helping, with his fingertips on the ears of the sacks, as we dumped them down his cellar window.

“I can’t tell you,” he kept repeating, “I can’t begin to tell you…”

“Skip it,” I assured him.

When the car was empty, I bade Jim good-afternoon and drove straight back for the cannel coal.

When I got down among the oil burner installation crew, the cannel coal bin was empty.

“Who took it?” I demanded smudgily.

“A guy took it,” said the head mechanic, “in three big ash cans.”

I went up and rapped on the kitchen door and the head of the house answered.

“The cannel coal?” I demanded.

“What of it?” he inquired.

“It’s gone,” I said.

“Who took it?” he inquired astonished.

“Don’t you know?” I grated.

“Me?” he said. “How do I know? I don’t care who gets it. So long as it…”

But I backed out, drove home, had a bath.

And even the bath water smelled fishy.

---

Editor’s Notes: For whatever reason, this story is longer than usual.

1. I’m not sure about the difference better types of coal and how they would be used in old coal furnaces. Cannel coal is mentioned as more expensive as it burned with a bright flame, was easily lit, and left virtually no ash, presumably compared to blower coal. ↩︎
2. “palmier days” means “back in the days of more prosperity”. ↩︎

“Bill Thomas,” announced Jimmie Frise, “has got the sciatica.”

“It’s little wonder,” I reflected, “the life he leads. From the time the ice goes out in the spring until the ice comes again in the fall, he’s out in that boat of his…”

“It’s about the boat,” interrupted Jim, “that I want to speak to you. How’d you like to help me put it away for the winter?”

“You mean,” I protested, “pull it up?”

“It’s a very simple matter,” assured Jim. “All we do is skid it up on some rollers, on to the beach…”

“Nothing,” I declared emphatically, “doing!”

“It’s a small thing to do,” pleaded Jimmie, “for a guy like Bill. The poor chap laid up cold with the sciatica…”

“A small thing!” I cried. “To haul a great big motor boat up on to a beach? Why, it’s work for a gang of 10 men!”

“Not at all,” soothed Jim. “The two of us can handle it easily. Bill has got all the equipment organized for us, All we do is to lay some two-by-six timbers on the beach and down a little way into the water. Then, we hitch a rope from the axle of the car…”

“What car?” I demanded loudly.

“Well, your car,” explained Jim, patiently. “As you know, mine’s laid up.”

“I see,” I said bitterly. “Somebody’s car has got to have the rear end of it torn out hauling a great big power boat out of the water.”

“Listen,” pleaded Jimmie. “Greg, it isn’t a great big power boat. It’s just a little old runabout, a little gasoline launch. It’s only 20 feet long; and with rollers under it, laid on those two-by-six scantlings, a car can haul it up on the beach as easy as if it were a wheelbarrow.”

“I think boat owners,” I enunciated, “should attend to the job of putting their boats away themselves.”

“I’ve just told you,” riled Jimmie, “the poor guy has got the sciatica. His knees are all swollen up. He can hardly walk.”

“And how did he get the sciatica?” I persisted. “All through this same silly boat! He puts it in the water the minute the ice goes out. He rushes down to the waterfront every afternoon, the minute his office closes, and spends his time fiddling and pottering around that boat. Many a night he sleeps right on the boat instead of going home to bed like a Christian. Every week-end he goes on ridiculous cruises, a few miles east or a few miles west, bouncing and bumping over the waves.”

“You and I,” reminded Jim kindly, “have been on many a nice little cruise with Bill.”

“Not for six or seven years,” I countered. “I have no use for boats, except to sit in for fishing. I can’t see any sport in sitting in a boat, going no place, just for the pleasure of going!”

“Every man to his taste,” said Jim. “Lots of people have no use for fishing. Okay, you have no use for boating. But you must admit Bill gets a great deal of pleasure and joy out of his boat.”

“Also,” I pointed out, “the sciatica. Just at the time he has to go to the trouble of putting his boat away for the winter.”

“Well, maybe I can get somebody else,” sighed Jim wearily.

“Oh, I’ll do it,” I subsided. “But I think this is one of the occasions on which I am entitled to squawk a little bit.”

“You’ll probably enjoy yourself,” assured Jimmie. “Boats are a lot of fun.”

“Boats,” I retorted, “are clumsy, damp, cold, heavy, lifeless. They smell.”

“Boats,” corrected Jim, “have a longer association with mankind than any other vehicle or maybe any other tool. Ages before the first crude wheel was invented, men were travelling up and down the rivers of the world, and along the shores of the world, in boats. The first man who ever tried to escape from his tribe jumped on a floating log and travelled downstream to freedom and adventure. The waterways of the world were the first highways of the world. Thousands of years before, the first roads were built, commerce had been established by boats, even if they were only crude. dugouts, and rafts.”

“They served their purpose,” I admitted, “like the spinning wheel, until something better was devised.”

“I’m trying,” explained Jim, “to show you that boats are involved in the very nature of humanity. Since they were the only means of travel, exploration, adventure and commerce for countless centuries, they appealed to men of masculine and adventurous character. To this day, boats have a powerful fascination for manly men.”

“Oh, is that so?” I scoffed.

“Down through the ages,” pursued Jim, “has been handed this love of boats, from generation to generation. And Canadians, more than any other race on earth, should love boats. Because they have the Atlantic on one side of them, the Pacific on another, the Arctic ocean on the third side. And, for more than half the width of Canada, they have the Great Lakes as their fourth sea-girt boundary.”

“Well,” I said, “speaking for myself and the great majority of Canadians, I like to puddle around on a few rivers and some inside channels and plenty of small summer resort lakes. But as for the ocean or the wide open Great Lakes, they’re all very well to cool the air for me, and to supply a little commercial fish…”

“You’re right,” cut in Jim curiously. “There is something mighty funny about the attitude of the average Canadian toward the sea and the Great Lakes. By all odds we should be a maritime people, with love of the wide seas and boundless lakes very strong in our make up. But, except for a few small yacht clubs scattered along our waterfronts, and a couple of dowdy old excursion steamers plying a tenuous trade here and there, the Canadian attitude toward the great waters that surround us amounts almost to – fear!”

“That’s natural,” I submitted. “Big water is uncomfortable. And dangerous.”

“We come of a maritime race, the British,” reflected Jim.

“Maritime my eye!” I exclaimed. “There’s another of those myths! The British have been marooned on a small island for centuries. For centuries, the only way they could get off the island was in boats. For centuries they’ve been getting off the island as fast as boat could carry them. Generation by generation, the young Britons went to sea in order to escape from the sea. For one that remained at sea, hundreds escaped to far lands, deep lands, where you couldn’t even smell the sea: and there they stayed! The far-flung British empire was founded by Britishers escaping from the island and looking for dry land: the dryer the better – Canada, India, Australia, Africa – good inland land from which you can’t see the sea…”

“You are tampering,” interrupted Jim, “with a noble tradition.”

“The noblest service boats have rendered humanity,” I summed up, “is to have carried men to parts of the earth where boats aren’t necessary.”

“Poor old Bill Thomas,” smiled Jimmie. “I’m glad can’t hear these sentiments and him trusting you to haul his beloved boat out…”

My old car, as Jim pointed out, has new tires. And these, he explained, would bite into the sand and gravel when it came to the actual traction necessary to drag the boat up on to the beach.

We drove down to the waterfront area where Bill keeps his boat moored out to a mooring buoy. It is a 20 foot launch with a small plywood cabin over the forward part. It isn’t quite a cabin cruiser, though you can sleep in it.

Bill had left, at a small boathouse nearby, some 12 foot scantlings of two-by-six, and half a dozen large rollers, like oversize tent poles. These, with a length heavy rope, were to be used in very simply hauling the boat ashore.

“I don’t see Bill’s boat,” I exclaimed as we drove out on to the shingle of the beach.

“There she is, the black one,” pointed Jim.

“I thought she was white,” I apologized.

“Bill painted her black two years ago,” said Jim.

With a canvas tarpaulin buttoned over her after end the little boat swung, among a dozen other assorted sail and engined craft, at her mooring buoy.

We carried the two-by-six planks from the boathouse down to the beach. The heavy rope I carried to the car and made an end fast to my axle. From the boathouse, Jim carried eight heavy billets of wood which, he explained, were to prop the launch in an upright position on the sand when we got her beached.

“We leave her,” he explained, “resting on the rollers and planks. But securely propped on both sides, so as to prevent her becoming what they call ‘hogged.’ That sagging at the bow and stern.”

“I’ll do the hauling,” I replied. “You do the propping. I’ll leave all the nautical stuff to you.”

We laid tracks, as it were, of the two-by-six scantlings. On them, at handy intervals, we laid the rollers which Jimmie, as I hauled, would lay under the keel, as she rolled. Last of all, we laid a couple of the two-by-sixes down the sloping beach right into the water.

Jim borrowed a small skiff from the old boy who minded the boathouse, and rowed out and released the launch from the mooring buoy. He towed the launch in while I, with my boots and socks off and my pants rolled up, waited on shore to waggle the two submerged planks neatly under the prow of the incoming launch.

“Neatly done,” admitted Jim, as he shoved the launch’s nose my way. I waded into the chilly lake water and drew the nose of the craft in between the two planks.

Jim beached the skiff and, removing his boots and socks and rolling up his pants, came-with the first roller, which he shoved and wedged down under the launch’s nose, against the planks.

“Heave-ho, my hearty,” he commanded. “Now pass me the end of the line, and when I give you the signal – get your car in low gear and gently haul.”

I paid the line away from my axle down to Jim, and he made it fast to the bow of the launch, passing it rough the two little metal rope guides on each side of the bow.

“Okay, now,” he called. “Take it easy and steady. As you haul, I’ve got to nip along and tuck these rollers under her keel.”

I started the engine, let her into low and, watching at the rear-view mirror, eased up the clutch. My tires bit into the sand and shingle. I felt the strain take hold. I felt the car edge forward and in the mirror I saw the nose of the launch rise slightly as she started to crawl ashore on top of the rollers.

“Slow!” rang Jim’s voice.

And I could see him nimbly jumping and ducking, as he grabbed up the rollers and laid them, one after the other, under the nose of the boat, as it slowly progressed up the beach.

We got it up the four lengths of two-by-six. Then Jim decreed that we ought to pull it still farther up. As he went back and got the two-by-sixes we had passed and laid fresh track. And on these, with the rollers, we succeeded in dragging the launch a good 60 feet from shore, well above the winter storm and ice line, and safe and snug against tempest, gale and blizzard.

While I undid the rope, Jim set the heavy billets up, as props, all around the bow and stern of the launch, to hold her steady and to bear some of the weight of the upper structure that otherwise would fall in the bilges and keel.

When all was snug and shipshape, a man in a yachting cap and turtleneck sweater came striding from the direction of the old boathouse, and he roared:

“What is the name of blazes are you characters up to?”

Jim looked him up and down.

“We’re pulling out Bill Thomas’s boat,” he stated.

“That isn’t Bill Thomas’s boat,” roared the mariner.

“That’s MY boat! And I want it this afternoon. I want it NOW!”

“Well, uh, how,” inquired Jim, weakly, “how do you pull a boat BACK into the water?”

He showed us.

He went and got block and tackle. And he got another yachtsman to come and drop a heavy anchor well out in the water, to fasten one end of the tackle to.

And with my poor little car shaking and trembling and scraping on the other end of the block and tackle, we rolled the launch back down the two-by-sixes, with Jim very nimbly slipping the rollers under the stern.

By which time it was getting dusk.

So tomorrow, or maybe the day after, at any rate, the next nice day we have, we will come down again and haul Bill Thomas’s launch out.

It’s a WHITE one. He repainted it this year.

We’ll come, that is, providing I don’t get the sciatica. For I feel slight twinges of something at the moment.

Warning: This story uses a derogatory term in describing a maid. It is being left in as it is not being used in a hurtful manner.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 30, 1933.

“This country,” said Jimmie Frise, “needs a Brain Trust.¹“

“Well then,” I said.

“I’m ready to offer myself any time, if you are,” went on Jimmie.

“What could we offer?” I asked scornfully.

“We could offer them everything,” said Jim. “Our brains have practically never been used. The trouble these days is worn-out brains. The people running the world are exhausted.”

“What would be your program, Mr. Frise?” I asked, just like Mr. Knowles interviewing the Duke of Pawtucket.

“My program,” said Jimmie, “would be to order all the unemployed to go back to work where they worked last. On Monday morning next, every living man would report at his last place of employment.”

“And,” I said.

“And the employers would be obliged by law, under pain of death, to take those men back to work.”

“It sounds simple,” I said.

“And everybody who didn’t report back to work, would be shot at sunrise,” said Jim.

“You have a Bloodthirsty brain,” I said. “But how would you pay all these extra workers?”

“That is a problem I wouldn’t have to work out until the Friday following,” said Jim. “The main thing is to get everybody back to work.”

“What good would that be?” I asked. “They tell me the trouble with the world is that we are producing too much. If you put everybody to work, you’d flood the world with goods inside a month and then we’d all be out.”

“My plan,” said Jimmie, “which will be known to posterity as the Frise Plan, or F. P. for short, is not to have a few people working too much, the way it is now, but to have everybody working too little.”

“Oh, boy,” I breathed.

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmie, warming up, “under the Frise Plan, it will be a break of the by-laws not to work. But it will be a criminal offence to work too hard. What the world is yearning for is the happy man.”

“It’s revolutionary, Jim,” I exclaimed.

“It’s common sense,” retorted Jimmie. “The mass of mankind is a nice, stupid, easy going class of people like you and me. But we are imposed upon by a small group of clever, hard-working, ambitious and high-minded people. They set us a pace nobody can follow. The thing to do is to eliminate those clever, hard-working people.”

“How?” I asked weakly.

“By jailing them,” said Jim, “unless they can control themselves, and just be average.”

“You are, reversing the principles that have prevailed since the dawn of history,” I protested.

“It’s time they were reversed,” said Jim. “Mankind is sick and tired of trying to keep up with the smart boys. It’s time we called a halt and put the smart boys where they belong. I don’t mind a smart fellow like a Henry Ford or a John D. Rockefeller being as smart as he likes so long as he doesn’t try to improve the human race. That’s where all the damage comes in. Under the Frise Plan, all inventors will be chloroformed.”

“Jimmie!” I cried, shocked.

“Yes, sir,” said Jim, “I’m going to launch it. The Frise Plan. Everybody working. Nobody working hard. And jail for the man that produces too much.”

“You can’t defeat human nature,” I argued.

“Human nature is defeated,” cried Jimmie. “That’s the trouble. Human nature is lazy, easy-going, happy and unselfish, and it has all but been destroyed by a little gang of bullies who have led mankind into the Sahara desert following a few shining banners of ideals. Look at us. Today only a few selected workers are left in action. Just the smartest, keenest, foxiest, greediest. The rest of us are strewn along the desert where we fell. The Frise Plan, my boy, will elevate human nature to its true grandeur. Death to all reformers! Down with progress! Let’s stand still and rest for a change. We’ve had a century of progress. Now for a century of rest.”

“How will you launch it?” I asked.

“We’ll offer our services to Ottawa,” said Jim.

“I think Canada as a whole is much too broad a field,” I protested. “The greatest movements in history all had a modest and local beginning.”

“Ontario then,” said Jim.

“Much too large,” I said. “And it is lousy with parties.”

“Toronto then,” said Jim.

“I suggest you try it out in your home first. If you can pass yourself off as a Brain Trust in your own home, you can pass yourself off anywhere.”

“Will you come in on this with me?” asked Jimmie. “It will be the makings of you. Your name will go down to posterity as Frise’s right-hand man.”

“Sure, I’ll come in with you,” I said, “only I don’t want to steal any of your glory. You start it. I’ll stand by for the first day or so. How will you start?”

“I’ll go around to-night and explain the Frise Plan to all the local business men – Mr. Robertson the butcher, and all three grocery stores, the two drug stores, and so on. I’ll just get their co-operation in a small way, by having them take back any helpers they have laid off. And explain how they have all got to slow down and work less, as each man rejoins their organization.”

“I don’t think you will get much sympathy at first,” I suggested.

“You wait.”

Launching the Frise Plan

About eight o’clock, Mr. Robertson, the butcher, called me on the telephone. “Have ye seen Maister Frise lately?” asked Mr. Robertson.

“I saw him before supper,” I said.

“Did he look well to ye?” asked Mr. Robertson. “He wasna actin’ a bit daft?”

“He seemed all right to me, Mr. Robertson.”

“Weel, he’s just walked oot o’ here to see the plumber across the way, and I’m thinkin’ puir Maister Frise has gone fooey,” said Mr. Robertson.

“I’ll come right over and see you,” I said.

Mr. Robertson quoted word for word the Frise Plan. Mr. Frise had stood right there, in the butcher shop, and had said thus and so.

“What do you think of the scheme?” I asked.

“I think the mon’s daft,” said Mr. Robertson. “Clean daft.”

I argued for the Frise Plan as well as I could, and then Mr. Robertson and I had a bright idea.

It took a little working out. We had to telephone several of Jimmie’s friends, and we had to do a lot of work in the city directory to get the names we wanted.

But by ten p.m. we had the Frise Plan in operation. We got in touch by telephone with the last three Frise housemaids, all of whom were free to go back to work. I knew two of Jimmie’s former gardeners or grass cutters, and I got them. They would report at 8 a.m. The plumber, the painter and decorator, the roof repair man with three helpers, the man that white-washes cellars, all were located and all promised to be on hand sharp at 8 the next morning. The hardest to find were the cooks. Cooks are seldom out of a job. But it so happened that two former cooks were available, one a colored lady and the other an Irish lady, to whom we explained the Frise Plan and who thought it was beautiful beyond words.

Jimmie was late getting home from visiting all the business men of our district, so that his family were all in bed and he had no opportunity to explain the Frise Plan to them.

I was parked in front of Jim’s house by a quarter to 8 the next morning, when the Irish cook, with two large telescope valises, arrived. There was a commotion in which I could see Jimmie taking a noble part, and during which the roofing crew with their truck and trailer arrived, and the crew swarmed on to the lawn with their ladders, rolls, ropes and pails.

One gardener, two maids, the white-washer of cellars, and the other cook arrived in a heap and some took the front steps and others manoeuvred around the side entrance to the back door.

The plumber with two assistants was blocking the side drive with his truck when the painter and decorator arrived with his stepladders and planks.

Spreading Like Wildfire

I drove down a couple of houses to make room for the gathering clans.

On the steps I could see Jimmie making a speech and I assumed he was explaining the Frise Plan to the former workers of the Frise establishment. So I got out of the car and joined the multitude.

“Fellow citizens,” Jimmie was saying. “I exhort you not to work too hard. But let all of us work just a little bit, so as to allow room for our fellow man.”

There were heart-felt murmurs of approbatjon.

And then the throng surged into the house, with bags, ladders, planks, pails.

“Well, Jimmie, she’s launched,” I said. Jim was flushed with excitement.

“I had no idea it would take on so swiftly,” he cried, dragging me into the house by the elbow. “I just spoke to about a dozen people last night. But it must have spread like wildfire. It must be all over town. Look at these people. They’ve all heard of it, and have come back to work.”

“You don’t need any plumbing done, do you?”

“No,” said Jim, “I had it all overhauled in the summer.”

“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” I pointed out, seeing the Irish lady and the colored lady both marching ready and resolute toward the kitchen.

“We will all do a little,” said Jim. “There is work for all.”

“How about coming to work yourself,” I asked. “It’s 8.30.”

“This is so sudden,” said Jimmie. “I think I’ll stick around a while until the family gets used to it.”

The plumber was banging in the basement, the painters were erecting their ladders and spreading their canvases, the roof repair men were scaling the outside of the house, three gardeners were peeling off their sweater coats to start digging. Two of them were arguing loudly over the lawn mower. A tremendous clatter of pans was coming from the kitchen. Maids were already punching cushions and shaking drapes and curtains, the way maids do.

“Where’s your family?” I asked.

“Hidden themselves in the attic,” said Jim. “They always do when my ideas start working.”

“How long are you going to keep all these people here?” I inquired.

“I’ll figure that out,” said Jim. “Each step in a problem you take as you come to it. The main thing is, the Frise Plan is under way.”

“Mr. Frise,” said the Irish lady, appearing at the kitchen door, “if we’re feedin’ all this mob, you’d better get some groceries.”

“What do we need, Molly?”

“Tin loaves av bread, five pounds av butter, say a tin-pound roast av bafe, about a crate av eggs, a couple sides av bacon.”

“And,” said the colored lady, appearing alongside Molly, “a bag of corn meal, and a ham for boiling, and some pork chops and some young chickens for fryin’, Mist’ Frise, you remember I’se good at fryin’ chickens.”

“We can leave the orders in as we go by,” I said to Jimmie. “We’ve got to go to work.”

“I shouldn’t leave,” said Jim. “Who’s going to tell them what to do?”

“Under the Frise Plan,” I said, “you’d think they wouldn’t need to have anybody to tell them what to do. It’s twenty to nine. Let’s get going or we’ll have the editor on our necks.”

As Jimmie’s car was entirely walled in by trunks and trailers, I drove him down. He was in a daze. He kept watching for signs of the Frise Plan in action as we drove through the streets. In every store, around every corner, he could see evidences of a great and renewed activity, Prophets and leaders of new movements are like that.

“The world,” said Jimmie, “has been waiting for this! Did you ever see such beautiful activity?”

We were bowling along Bloor St., and there was the usual bustle of fruit stores laying forth their brilliant wares, merchants sweeping the pavement, boys getting out their bicycles, delivery trucks getting ready for the day. Nine o’clock is always a happy hour on a business street. But to Jimmie all this was new, he had never seen it before.

I delivered him to his studio.

At ten-thirty, he telephoned me in my room to ask if he could borrow my car.

At 2 p.m. I borrowed the editor’s car and drove home.

All sign of life had vanished around Jim’s house. There were ruts on the lawns, windows were open, and a general air of something having recently happened pervaded the scene.

“Jimmie,” I called anxiously in the front door.

“Is that you?” came a hollow voice from somewhere within.

“What has happened?” I cried, entering boldly.

“It was a matter of wages,” said Jim, appearing from under the chesterfield. “They had nothing to do after about ten o’clock, so they got sitting around the house, so I am told, arguing about the Frise Plan and asking who was going to pay them. And how much. They would not wait until Friday. And I distinctly told them that I would not have that part of the plan solved until Friday.”

“I remember that,” I said.

“By the time I got home,” went on Jimmie, blowing his nose violently, “they had it figured out that I would have to work twenty-one days a week, night and day, without sleep or time off for lunch, to earn enough to pay them their wages.”

“Impossible,” I said.

“In fact,” said Jimmie, “Molly, the Irish cook, had it figured out that there would have to be three of me to make it a going concern. Naturally, Molly being a cook, she knows my income.”

“So?”

“So I paid them all off,” said Jim. “It took one and a half week’s salary.”

“It was a good plan,” I said indignantly. “All it needed was a larger application.”

“Well,” said Jim, “that’s what I thought in the first place, but now we’ll wait. We’ll wait until Canada is all of one mind. Until the Maritimes and the West and B.C. and Quebec all agree with Ontario that a national plan is needed. Then I’ll produce the Frise Plan.”

Which, of course, gives Jim and me plenty of time.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. A Brain Trust was a term that originally described a group of close advisers to a political candidate. The term is most associated with the group of advisers of Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidential administration.  ↩︎