Tag: 1930 Page 1 of 3
Pigskin, cigar clamped in his teeth, had regained the puck and was rushing away, looking for a new place to shoot it.
By Gregory Clark, November 15, 1930.
“I have to shoot a bear,” I said to Merrill. And that was the end of Merrill and me.
“I will go apple picking with you,” said Merrill. I will go judging cattle and hogs. But never again will I go hunting or camping with you.”
“But, Merrill,” I protested, “journalism isn’t like that. Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do or die. We have been ordered to get a bear hunting story to relieve the tedium of eternal deer hunting and moose hunting stories.”
“I am engaged,” said Merrill, “in writing radio dramas for some of the largest corporations of this northern or wider half of the continent. And they have hinted that some of the enterprises I have been engaged in with you are hardly in keeping with the je ne sais quoi of a dramatist of the air. I think you had better get a new partner.1“
“Partners are hard to get,” said I. “First Charles Vining and now you.”
“Get Jimmie Frise or Lou Marsh,” said Merrill. “Or Frederick Griffin or Bob Reade.”
“I tried them long ago,” said I, “and when we set forth on an adventure it always ended up at the coca cola fountain.”
“Well,” said Merrill, “coca cola for me, though I am not writing their scenarios.”
And it was at that moment that Pigskin Peters walked into the office.
“There you are,” said Merrill, and quietly slipped away.
Pigskin looked in the pink. He had a nice new whoopee overcoat2 on and his shoes were shined. His face glowed with ruddy health.
“Where’s Jimmie?” asked Pigskin.
“Are there any races on?” I asked.
“No.”
“Well, then, I guess he’s duck hunting,” said I. “How’s the old burg, Pigskin?”
“Same as ever. Say,” said Pigskin, “if I can’t find Jimmie will you do something for me?”
“What?”‘
“Take me up to the Arena and introduce me to Conny Smythe3,” said Pigskin, with a most embarrassed look.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m going into pro hockey,” said Pigskin, clearing his throat. “I’m taking it up.”
“Why, I never knew you were a hockey player, Pigskin.”
“I ain’t,” said Pigskin. “But I’m going to be.”
“Well, er,” said l, “usually, you know, Pigskin, you put in a good deal of time as an amateur before you go into pro. As a matter of fact, it takes years to make a pro hockey player.”
“Will you introduce me to Conny Smythe?” said Pigskin, briefly.
“Sure I will! But I was just telling you.”
“I been in training,” said Pigskin. “Everybody down home says I would make a pro hockey player. Lots of pros are over thirty years old.
“Well, we’ll have to step along, Pigskin, if we are going to see Conny at noon.”
“l Practiced Skating All Summer”
So I took Pigskin up Yonge St. to the Arena4 and in the dim echoing emptiness we found Conny, standing as usual with his hat on the back of his head, hands in pockets, quietly watching his boys swooping about on the ice and banging pucks with hollow booms against the boards.
“Conny, I’d like to introduce Mr. Peters,” said l.
“Glad to know you.” said Conny.
“Pigskin Peters,” said I.
“You don’t say!” cried Conny, giving Pigskin another handshake. “l know a lot about you.”
“It can’t be proved,” said Pigskin.
We all laughed.
“I wanted to see you, Mr. Smythe,” said Pigskin, doggedly, “about getting taken on by the Maple Leafs.”
When Conny doesn’t know what to say, he just grins and looks interested.
“You play much hockey, Mr. Peters?” asked Conny.
“I been in training all summer,” said Pigskin, avoiding the question. “All the boys down home say I got the makings of a real pro hockey player. We had a fellow come through last winter. He was a scout for one of the big New York clubs, and he tried to sign me on then.”
“Well,” said Conny. “H’m.”
Pigskin unbuttoned his whoopee coat and let his chest stick out. It was about the size of a good big pickle barrel. His neck is about a twenty.
“Have you done much skating?” asked Conny.
“I practiced all summer,” said Pigskin. “From June on.”
“Have you got artificial ice down in Birdseye Centre?” Conny asked with interest.
“No,” said Pigskin. “It was roller skating I was doing. I used to get up as early as four or five o’clock all summer and go out to the main highway and practice on the pavement. None of the speed cops could catch me.”
Conny looked embarrassed. He didn’t want to offend either Pigskin or me.
“Well, there’s no harm, Mr. Peters,” said he. “in putting on pair of skates and letting as what you’ve got. Harry,” he called to one of the boys hanging around, “get Mr. Peters a pair of skates.”
So Pigskin went back to the dressing room.
“What the heck!” said Conny, looking at me out of his rather steely blue eyes.
“I couldn’t help it,” I apologized. “Jim Frise couldn’t found, so Pigskin put it up to me straight to introduce him.”
“Roller skates!” snorted Conny, turning to watch his boys again.
In a few minutes Pigskin wobbled out of the dressing room wearing his usual sweater and Christy hat5 and supporting himself on a hockey stick.
“They kind of pinch,” he said as he came to us and passed through the gate on to the ice. Pigskin took a short slide and slipped and fell flat on his back. As he scrambled up, Happy Day, the captain, skated over to us and looked inquiringly at Conny.
“All right,” said Conny. He winked at Happy. “Shoot him a couple.”
Happy skated back and passed the word amongst the boys.
Poor Pigskin, leaning heavily on his stick, made a couple of desperate efforts to get out into centre ice, but the skates seemed bedevilled. Down he went, two, three, four times, and each time he fell he became madder. The boys on the ice came and flashed around him with the puck, like swallows around a balloon, but Pigskin was too busy.
“What’s This – The Newest Rules?”
Finally standing up and propelling himself with the stick, he came to the ringside where Conny and I were standing.
“These boots pinch,” said Pigskin. “The skates is too slippery.”
“Some other time,” said Conny. “Call on me some day when I’m not so busy.”
“Just a minute,” said Pigskin, pushing past us and staggering heavily out the corridor to the dressing room.
“What’s the big idea,” said Conny to me.
“Gee, Conny, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t know he couldn’t even skate.”
Conny seemed not to want to discuss the matter at all and turned to watch his players.
I stood waiting for Pigskin to get the skates off and rejoin me.
There came a rumbling sound, out from the dressing room. Up the alley behind us came Pigskin – on roller skates.
“Hey!” said Conny, blocking the little gate in the boards that lets the players onto the ice.
“Just a minute,” cried Pigskin, pushing at the gate. “Lemme out for just a minute. I wanta show you…”
And out he burst on to the ice, while Conny slammed the gate.
Strange sights have been seen in that Arena, from wrestling bouts to ice carnivals. But the performance that Pigskin put on was the supreme best.
No tumbling or fumbling now. All we saw was a red and white streak circle the Ice topped with an old Christy hat. A blur of red and white, in front of which brandished a hockey stick.
Nothing was said. King Clancy6 who was just performing a nice job at clearing the puck from the net, stopped and stared. The rest of the boys desisted in their practice and stood watching that weird blur, a sort of flying cloud or spectre that went around the rink with a humming sound coming from it.
Pigskin did a couple of pirouettes, a la winter carnival. He jumped into the air and whirled into a figure eight. Happy Day7, who was standing staring, with the puck on the end of his stick, was suddenly pounced on and the puck was gone. Pigskin had it, and on his roller skates, had dissolved into another mist of speed, ahead of which the puck hissed on the ice.
“Get it!” roared Conny.
The Maple Leafs carne to life and all started after Pigskin. Cotton raced into a corner after him, but when Cotton hit the boards in that corner, Pigskin was already steaming around the opposite corner.
The Arena wan now filled with shouts, from the players, from Conny and I believe from me. For with nine or ten Maple Leafs all after him, Pigskin was doing a kind of roller skating that had never been seen on land or sea. From centre ice, he suddenly, crouching down, made a shot at the north end net, and the whole net collapsed. Whereupon the team rushed in to get the puck, but Pigskin, whose knowledge of hockey appears to be confused with rugby or prize fighting, slammed his weight right into the midst of them, and when the puck came back down the ice, it was on Pigskin’s stick. And again he began to fade from sight, so fast was he going.
Happy Day skated over to us and said to Conny:
“What is this? The newest rules or something?”
“Get it!” said Conny.
Up to the other net rushed Pigskin and made another terrific shot, and the puck went right through the net and smashed the board behind.
“Here, here!” shouted Conny. “Don’t wreck the place!”
Pigskin Melts the Ice
King Clancy hooked the puck out of the broken boards and shot it out to midice, where Pigskin grabbed it, colliding with two other players who skidded on their backs. Hard pressed by the seven remaining players, Pigskin shot the puck against the boards for a rebound and a whole section of the fence fell over.
“Hay, hay!” shouted Conny, opening the gate and rushing on to the ice. “Hay, hay!”
But Pigskin, cigar clamped in his teeth, had regained the puck and was rushing away, looking for a new place to shoot it.
“Get off the ice,” yelled Conny to his boys.
“Give him the ice and when he gets tired, we can go on practicing.”
The Maple Leafs skated over the boards and sat, breathing heavily on the fence.
“Get him out of here!” said Canny to me.
“Pigskin!” I hollered. “PIGSKIN!”
But I was too late. He lifted the puck in a terrific shot, it rose like a bullet, up, up and sailed in what seemed like a long black streak through the air to the rafters, where it struck one of the solid steel beams. And struck so hard that is melted and stuck there, a sort of black pudding dangling from the steel.
Pigskin slowed down in centre ice, patted the ice with his stick and said:
“Toss us out another one.”
The Arena was very still.
“Pigskin,” said I, softly.
“Huh?”
“Come here! Mr. Smythe wants to talk to you.”
As Pigskin slid over to us, we all noticed at the same time that the Arena ice was melting. A steam was rising off it and it was just beginning to run.
Conny held out his hand. Pigskin shook it in a proud but embarrassed way.
“What do you think of me?” he said.
“Wonderful,” said Conny. “But I’m filled up for this year.”
“Couldn’t you lay nobody off and give me a chance?” asked Pigskin, crestfallen.
“They are all on contracts,” said Conny. “Or I’d do it in a minute.”
“Come on, Pigskin,” I said, “let’s get going. I’ve got an appointment at the office.”
“I think I’ll stick around here for a while,” said Pigskin, “and watch the practice.”
“There won’t be any more practice to-day,” said Conny. “The ice is melted.”
And sure enough, the whole surface of the Arena was honeycombed, especially where Pigskin had been skating.
He shook hands with all the players and with his whoopee coat on again, I walked him down Yonge St.
“Too bad, Pigskin,” I said.
“Well, I only did it to please my friends,” said Pigskin. “I didn’t want to get taken on anyway.”
“No?”
“No. I want to play with the Birdseye Centre Rovers this winter, and it was them that said I was too good for them and told me to try to turn pro.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. And they’ll be glad to hear I didn’t get on the Maple Leafs.”
“I’m sure they will,” I said.
“Well, so long,” said Pigskin.
“So long.”
And he headed briskly down Bay St. for the Union station.
Editor’s Notes: This is an odd one, as it is pre-Greg and Jim, but with a fictional character from Birdseye Center as if he is real? It is interesting that he does mention the other people he had “adventures” with (Charles Vining, Merrill Denison, Jimmie Frise, Lou Marsh, Frederick Griffin and Robert Reade). The regular Greg-Jim stories would debut in 1932.
- This is true. Merrill Denison’s playwriting career really started taking off after he left Canada for New York in 1929. He would still produce stories every now and then for the Star Weekly from New York (and illustrated by Jimmie). ↩︎
- A Whoopee coat was a style of coat popularized by Eddie Cantor in the 1928 Broadway play Whoopee! which was also made into a 1930 movie. It seems to be describing any brightly coloured coat with eye-catching patterns. ↩︎
- Conn Smythe was the principal owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL from 1927 to 1961. ↩︎
- This would be the Mutual Street Arena. In 1962, it was converted into a curling club and roller skating rink known as The Terrace. It was demolished in 1989. Maple Leaf Gardens would be built in 1931. ↩︎
- This would be his regular bowler hat. Christy’s is a hatmaker. ↩︎
- King Clancy was a player for the Toronto Maple Leafs at the time. He retired in 1937, later being a referee, a coach, and a team executive until his death in 1986. ↩︎
- “Happy” Day was also a player at the time. ↩︎
By Robert Reade, October 18, 1930.
“Let’s go fishing,” said Jim. “It’s the last day for muskies.”
“Muskies,” I protested, “should at this time of year be as extinct as dinosaurs or side elastic boots. These are the duck days, not the fish days. Seasons, like drinks, should never be mixed.”
“I’m not mixing them,” said Jim, reaching for his hat and turning a half-finished sketch to the wall. “The legal season for muskies does not expire until sunset. I haven’t had a muskie all summer and I know this is my lucky day.”
When Jim feels his luck is in the whole Hamilton Tiger line1 couldn’t stop him from testing it. By this time he had affixed a sign to his door, “Back in half an hour,” and was down the hall and in the elevator. I tagged after him, still remonstrating though I knew it was hopeless.
“You’re the world’s greatest last-minute optimist,” I jeered. “Always on the last race of the last day of racing you have an over-powering hunch that you are going to pick the winner. And then you have sift ashes all winter to economize on the coal. I’ve got a hunch that your muskie hunch is just another one of your self-deceptions. Muskies, I am told, can only be caught by experts and I’ve never heard of you as a fishing expert.”
“I’ll put it over the experts to-day,” said Jim defiantly. “This morning a fellow paid me back $10 I lent him two years ago at Dufferin Park. I tell you this is my lucky day.”
As we walked down Bay St. to his garage people stared at me. I was hanging on to his arm, gesticulating and urging him to forget this muskie madness. They thought I was panhandling him, telling a hard-luck tale with outstretched palm.
“Jim,” I pleaded, “if you won’t listen to me at least think of your public. You are famous as a Nimrod, not as an Izak Walton or a Gregory Clark. Your public have been taught to expect from you ducks in their season and rabbits in their season. Here it is a month since the duck shooting started and you haven’t yet fired a shot. Your admirers can’t understand what has gone wrong and are blaming me for failing to tell them about the phenomenal slaughter you must have made on opening day.”
Hereupon Jim made, a confession. “I forgot to tell you I was out on opening day. I slipped down to Turtle lake marsh and I missed plenty.”
“Jim,” said I sadly, “the man who holds out on his biographer is as foolish as the man who holds out on his lawyer. What difference would it make to me if you did miss? You are forgetting that the pen is mightier than the pump gun. And you have kept me from making all the unlucky duck hunters, and that means most of them, feel happy. When I tell them about your big bags it restores their faith that there are still ducks in the world. But I can’t do that with the muskies. I can’t credit you with more than two, the legal limit. And the experts won’t believe you caught two.”
“I’m going to catch ’em,” said Jim.
“You’re going to waste a perfect day for duck hunting,” said I.
“We can talk about that as we run along,” said he. “Jump in. We’ve got 110 miles to go.”
I noticed on the back seat a pump gun and a bag of decoys alongside the casting rod in its canvas case.
I was greatly pleased at this evidence of his affinity, which I had begun to suspect.
“Aha,” said I, “you’ve just been having a little joke with me.”
“No,” said he, stepping on the gas, “when I said muskies I meant muskies. But that’s no reason if we see some ducks in the dusk coming home why we shouldn’t go after them.”
The Experts Dispute Violently
It certainly was his lucky day. As he sped down the Montreal road he just missed six chickens and two pigs and slowed down in time to give a motor-cop a life-like imitation of a tortoise.
After we had turned north to the Kawartha district we skirted Rice lake. From the rice beds with contented quacks a flock of spoon-bills splashed along the surface of the water.
“Look, Jim,” I cried.
His foot shot automatically to the brake. His right arm shot over his seat in the direction of the pump gun. We almost skidded into the ditch.
But it was only for a second that he was. tempted to abandon his hunch.
He turned his wheel to the skid, gave her gas and with his exhaust drowned out the siren quackings.
“No,” said he firmly, “it’s lunge to-day. I dreamed last night I hooked a big muskie and played him for an hour. When I got him in he weighed 35 pounds and I had hooked him by the tail. I was lucky even in my dream.”
With no further duck temptations we reached our destination. At the water’s edge the fishing fleet was ready to loose the painter. On the dock were several experts wise in casting lore and even wiser in muskie lore. I could give their names, but as later I must give their scores I shall refrain. Suffice to say they were men high up in the casting world, men who can throw a plug into a plughat at one hundred feet or flick the ashes off your cigarette at fifty.
They stood in a circle uttering words of muskie wisdom, while around them clustered the lesser throng eager to catch the crumbs that fell from their tablets of memory. I, who until that day had thought that a plug is an electrical contrivance you stick into a slot in a wall, stood humbly on the outer edge, but I noticed that even Jim was abashed in the presence of fishing greatness.
The experts disputed about plugs.
“The only thing that can do the trick,” said one very dogmatically, “is a red and white jointed pikie.2“
“Not bad,” admitted another expert, “but my choice is a pearl bassoreno.”
“You’re both wrong,” said the third champion caster. “The swimming mouse is the hot stuff. I caught a fifteen-pounder with it last week end after I had tried both the jointed pikie and the mouse without results.”
“All of you are wrong,” a fourth bait heaver burst in. “The only thing they’ll rise to on this lake is a silver and bronze minnow.” They disputed violently about baits, but they were unanimous on one thing. That was the autumnal habits of the muskallonge.
While the others solemnly wagged their heads in agreement the smallest but the most vocal of the experts said, “It is utterly no use at this time of year to cast in deep water. That’s all right in July, but it’s no good in October. Right now they’re in close, right up against the shore, with their nose in between two stones and their backs almost out of the water. You’ve got to cast about three inches from the water line.”
“About four inches I should say,” interrupted one of the other experts.
“Have it your own way,” said the man who had the floor, “but in my opinion three inches is nearer the facts.”
“You’ve got to throw your plug,” he went on, “between the muskie’s nose and the shore. If you land it around his tail he’ll just give a swirl and that will be all there’ll be to it. But if you get it right in front of his nose he’ll go for it like a cat for catnip.”
The Fella With Duck Eyes
I had a brilliant idea which I felt it to be my duty to impart to the company regardless of the fact that I had no professional standing. I lowered my voice so that I could not be heard by the Indian guides, each standing patiently by his canoe waiting for the end of the age-long preliminaries of talk which I understand are inevitable whenever experts foregather.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “times are hard and we should do all we can to lower the high cost of fishing. I have a scheme by which we can dispense with these guides, who will cost us $5 a day plus their food. Why go out in canoes at all? Since the fish are close in shore why not walk along the shore and drop the plug into their mouths close at hand from behind the shelter of a bush? It seems to me that three inches is a very small margin to work on and that we, or at least I, will get better results operating from a close range.”
The experts were so speechless with indignation that they could do nothing but glare at me. Even Jim, who is indulgent of all the follies of his fellow-beings and slow to reproach, cast at me an irritated look and said, “Sh-“
I subsided, but I felt a little hurt that my obviously sound idea should be so unanimously rejected. I was to learn before the day was out that to the true bait caster the casting is everything and the fish nothing. They could be just as happy at home in the backyard with a bird’s bath as their target.
It also seemed to me that they go fishing just to get together and exchange reminiscences, a thing they could do much more comfortably and cheaply at home.
The experts began to compare notes on the fish they had caught in times past, in some cases ten years past. They told each other how much the fish had weighed, how many times they had leaped and how high, and also how long it had taken to reel them in. It looked as if the whole day would be spent in anecdote, when one of them said, “Hey, fellows, let’s do a little fishing,” and the embarkation commenced.
While the theorists were in session Jim who, to give him credit, is a practical fisherman had strolled off to a rock to make some practice casts. The Indian selected for us had a name suited for a water voyage. It was Noah.
As one by one the canoes rounded a rocky point and disappeared Noah said to me, “Where’s your friend, the fella with the duck eyes?”
I have heard that men in time look like what they eat. Great heavens, thought I, has Jim I come to look like what he shoots at!
“He might have dove’s eyes,” I said to Noah, “but he hasn’t got duck eyes.”
“Oh yes, he has,” said Noah, pointing to the bag of decoys in the boat. “There’s the duck eyes.”
The puzzle was explained. Noah pronounced “decoys” “duck eyes.”
I told Jim the jest and added a warning, “Lay off the lunge or to the duck eyes you’ll add a muskie nose.”
“It’s my lucky day,” said Jim for the hundredth time.
When we were ten yards from the dock I thought I would try my first cast. I flexed my arm back to my shoulder and gave the gentle flick of my wrist which I had been instructed was all that was necessary.
I felt resistance. I gave a tug. I felt more resistance. Then the marvellous glow came over me which I had been told would come over me when I had hooked my first muskalonge.
“It’s not your lucky day; it’s my lucky day,” I shouted to Jim, reeling my line in furiously until the steel pole bent in two. “I’ve got a muskie with my first cast.”
“Let out your line,” yelled Jim.
“Not a chance,” I retorted. “He might get away.”
“Stop reeling,” screamed Jim again. “You’ve hooked Noah.”
Sure enough I had. Right through the back of his sweater coat with all three of the gang of hooks. We had to return to the dock to cut him loose.
A Big League Fishing Contest
A friend of mine who once, only once, fished the Restigouche for salmon had a somewhat similar experience. His first cast caught the guide in the ear.
“He paddled straight back to the bank,” said my friend, “and though the hook came out of his ear without any trouble the lazy fellow wouldn’t work any more that day. I had to get another guide.”
Noah was made of more industrious stuff. He bent stolidly once more to the paddle, for Jim was in a state of panic because the rest of the fishing fleet was out of sight. It seems that every muskie fisherman likes to keep his rivals in view, so that if, by any chance, a fish is hooked he can paddle over quickly and drop a plug on the same spot. The theory, seldom borne out by facts, is that muskies, like misfortunes, never come singly.
It is also consoling to know that the other fellow is just as much out of luck as yourself. But it is maddening, if he is out of sight, to feel that while you yourself are making futile cast after cast he is filling his canoe with forty-pounders.
This was a big league fishing contest, as important in its way as world series baseball. Four of the champion bait casters of Toronto were with keen rivalry putting their theories into practice and Jim, in his confidence that this was his lucky day, had wagered on himself at odds against this high-class field. Naturally he was eager to know the score, but in that labyrinth of islands never once that afternoon did we catch sight of another boat.
I prepared to make another cast, but he said, “Just watch me for a while until you see how it’s done.”
We drew near shelving rocks that looked just the place for muskies to sleep on.
“Just watch me,” said he, “put the plug right in that crevice.”
“Don’t be more than three inches away,” I implored.
“Don’t worry,” said he. “It will be right on the water’s edge.”
His red and white pikies floated through the air like thistledown, but he was slow in putting on the brakes and it fell into a bush six feet from the water’s edge. He gave a tug, but it held as fast as my plug had in Noah’s coat.
“Jim!” I remonstrated, “you don’t need to teach me that bush league stuff. I can do it myself.”
Noah, with a stroke of his paddle, sent the canoe in shore and at that moment I noticed a slight whirlpool about three inches from the water’s edge.
“What was that?” I exclaimed.
“That,” groaned Jim, “was a muskie, just where my plug should have lit.”
Then he brightened up and said, “It’s, after all, something to get a swirl. Lots of fellows are not even lucky enough to get that.”
The whirlpool I had seen is what is known technically as a “swirl.” It is caused by the muskalonge making a complete revolution and flicking his tail in disgust at the inexpertness of the caster who can’t get his plug three inches of the shore. But when an angler makes a perfect cast the fish to show his admiration for such skill jumps right up in the air like a college cheer leader at a football game. That is what is known technically as a “rise.”
“Perhaps,” said Jim hopefully, “next time I’ll get a rise.”
So we went on from rocky ledge to rocky ledge. Jim’s plug caught in the bushes or bounced off the rocks or fell short, but he never hooked Noah as I did. Occasionally he made the perfect cast, but as it was followed by neither a swirl nor a rise it was clear that there was no lunge there, or else one too comatose to feel any emotion whether of praise or of blame.
Torn Between Two Improbabilities
So Jim began to get skeptical of the theory of the rocky shore and be willing to accept the heresy that, there are in October, as in mid-summer, muskies at the edge of the reed beds.
He appealed to Noah to support him in repudiating the experts and said, “Surely there might be a lunge in there, mightn’t there, Noah?”
And Noah, detecting the yearning in his voice, said, smiling, “Sure, muskie in there. I once catch him there.”
Jim cast in and caught a long water weed that came foaming to the boat like a sea serpent.
At the next weed bed he said in a discouraged tone, “There are no muskies there, are there, Noah?”
And the obliging Noah echoed him, “Sure, no muskies there.”
I began to see that Lo the poor Indian is the original “Yes” man.
Noah’s motto seemed to be that the customer is always right. If Jim said, “That island looks pretty good,” he paddled toward it.
If Jim said, “That rock don’t look bald enough. There’s a couple of blades of grass on it,” Noah paddled away from it.
Never once did he say, “Cast there” or “Don’t cast there.” Yet if he had displayed authority or dogmatic assurances we would have bowed humbly to his superior experience of these muskie infested waters.
A man I know once trolled for lake trout in Algonquin Park. His guide would say, “Do you see that pine tree there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you get opposite it drop in your line. And do you see that big rock about a hundred feet ahead of the pine tree?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you get to the rock you will have a fish.”
And it was so every time.
Why, I reflected, couldn’t Noah do something like that? A suspicion crossed my mind that Noah might have sold out to the enemy. Wherever there is wagering there is always a suspicion of such things in big league fishing. as in big league everything.
I wanted to communicate my suspicion to Jim, but one look at his bland cherubic face still radiating the glowing optimism of a belief in his luck told me he would entertain no bad suspicions.
And how could I tell that Noah would not yet lead us to the X that marked the spot? There was such heartiness in his assurance. “Yes. We get muskies. Plenty,” when Jim in momentary despair laid down his rod and picked up his gun.
He looked into the cloudless air. There wasn’t a duck in sight. I surveyed the horizon myself and neither saw nor heard any whirr of wings.
Seeing no chance of casting bird shot on the waters he once more cast his plug on the waters. At that moment six ducks coming out of the empty air like rabbits from a conjurer’s hat flew over us. Jim threw down the rod and picked up the gun, but it was too late.
The rest of the afternoon he was in the same state of uncertainty in which I have seen him at the races cruelly torn between two equally remote improbabilities.
Four Swirls and Two Rises
Lured on by Noah’s steady trickle of soothing syrup, “Yes, muskies. We get muskies,” again and again he cast his lure, now into the shadows and now into the sun, and whirled his reel until his wrist ached.
Through the golden autumn leaves the level sun the most artistic of all casters began to cast long shafts of golden light.
“Jim,” said I, “your pikie must look to a muskie like a gold fish and we haven’t the word of any expert that a muskalonge will take gold fish. Let’s quit fishing.”
Stubbornly he heaved his plug into another bush. Through a gap in the islands I saw I canoe flash by. And then another. The fleet was returning home. Each of the experts to doubt had his legal limit and another in his guide’s name and still another in his wife’s name.
“The jig’s up,” said I. “The last day of muskie fishing is as dead as a losing parimutuel ticket3. What’s the good of finishing lengths behind the field with the grandstand laughing at you?”
“All right,” said Jim sadly. “Let’s go. Dreams are the bunk.”
With short sharp jabs Noah made his ark
bound along like a power boat. The island danced by like fence posts on the highway. Rapidly we overhauled the fishing flotilla and entered the bay just as the first of the canoe were docking.
Jim’s first thought was of the scoreboard although it went without saying that he was beaten with all those experts against him.
“What luck?” he cried.
There was a chorus of answers.
“I had four swirls.”
“I had two rises.”
“I hooked into a big one, but he got away.”
“Any fish?” shouted Jim, shooting through the cloud of alibis right to the main point.
There was not one fish.
“I told you it was my lucky day,” he beamed exultantly. “I tied them.”
He picked up his rod and made the last cast of summer. The experts on the dock, unfastening their reels and putting rods in cases, laughed at him.
“What are you doing?” they jeered. “There can’t be any muskies here.”
“I’m just fixing a back lash,” replied Jim flushing a little at their ridicule.
He reeled in his line and put the rod behind him in the bow, with the plug trailing in the water. Then resting his head disconsolately on his hands he leaned forward to me and said wearily, “You were right. We should have gone after the ducks.”
I glanced forward and saw that the plug had been drawn under water and was moving away rapidly. There was a little way on the canoe as it drifted in, but it was not sufficient to explain the movement of the plug.
“Look! Look!” I cried.
“It Sure is My Lucky Day”
Jim twisted around. By this time the steel rod was violently bent and if the butt had not caught under the thwart would have gone overboard.
He took one startled glance and grabbed the rod.
“A strike,” he shrieked. “I’ve got a strike.”
He could not have let out a wilder yell if he had sat down on an open bait box full of plugs.
“A strike, my eye,” sneered one of the experts. “You’ve got a log.”
“The poor boob think’s he’s got a strike,” shrilled another of them, the little one, an rolled over and over on the dock in a paroxysm4 of laughter with his plus-sixes bellying out like a balloon jib.
The line darted in zigzags through the water like a beheaded chicken. It was obvious that there was something monstrous and alive at the end of it.
“It ain’t a bass,” said Noah. “It’s a muskie.”
The laugh froze on the lips of the experts. They began to shriek instructions, contradicting one another in a wild rabble of exhortations.
“Give him line.”
“Reel him in.”
“Keep him down.”
“Make him jump.”
“Bring him to the boat.”
“Keep him away from the boat.”
Obediently Jim tried to satisfy them all at once. He reeled and unreeled. He put the point of his rod in the water. He took it out of the water. Perspiration dripped from his brow. There was a light of ecstasy in his eyes, furrows of pain in his face.
Canoes put out from the shore and surrounded him. He was like Bobby Jones5 putting between hedges of spectators. Others, with their view blocked from the shore, climbed the rocks and surveyed the thrilling scene like Byron’s Persian king on the rocky brow overlooking sea-girt Salamis6.
Jumping like a salmon, leaping like tarpon, the fish was gradually brought close to the boat. There sullenly at bay he spun around, creating the greatest of all swirls. Jim tugged and tugged, but he could not lift the leviathan.
“Bring the landing net,” one of the experts commanded.
“Fetch me the club,” shouted Noah, suddenly ceasing to be a yes-man and becoming a dominating personality.
Hastily another Indian paddled from shore with a softball bat.
The fish poked his snout above the water. Noah swung the bat and, returning my compliment of the plug in his back by nicking the lobe of my left ear, smote the lunge right on the nose.
The fish floated, dazed. Jim snatched it into the boat, where Noah gave it the coup de grace. And then we saw an astounding thing. The plug was not in its mouth, but square across its head from one eye to the other.
Holding it up Jim exclaimed joyously, “It sure is my lucky day. I think I win the fur-lined: underwear with all the trimmings.”
“It’s some fish,” said one expert. “It weighs all of twenty pounds.”
“Eighteen, I should say,” retorted another wiseacre Walton.
Even in at the death they displayed their ruling passion of disputation.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of those Pre-Greg-Jim stories (not by Greg). All sorts of writers would have their stories illustrated by Jim, and though I normally don’t reproduce them in full, I thought I would include this one since it includes Jim (and Greg – only referred to here at the “short” fishing expert. You can see him in the illustration too).
- This is referring to the football team, before the merger in 1950 with the Wildcats to form the Tiger-Cats. ↩︎
- All of these vintage fishing lures can be looked up as they come up for sale. I fear any links I might provide would soon disappear. ↩︎
- This is a type of betting ticket. ↩︎
- Paroxysm is “A sudden attack”. ↩︎
- Bobby Jones was a professional golfer. ↩︎
- From the poem, the Isles of Greece. ↩︎
“An eight” would refer to the car having an eight cylinder engine. At the time, more cars would have 4 or 6 cylinder engines, so having an eight meant that it was more powerful, and therefore more expensive.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Eileen Wedd, October 25, 1930.
“What makes the leaves fall off?” asked the five-year-old.
The two were staring up at the oak tree. With every sigh of wind, leaves drifted down.
“It’s God makes them fall,” said the elder.
“Why doesn’t God make them stick on?” demanded the small fellow with mild indignation. “They are prettier sticking on. It would be summer then, and we could wear gym shirts.”
“God makes the fall off,” said the elder, who, being nine, speaks with a fine note of scorn in making these explanations of life’s mysteries. “He makes them all fall off, and pretty soon the trees are bare naked. The way you are in the bath.”
“And you, too,” put in the small boy.
“I bath myself,” corrected the elder. There was a distinction. “Anyway, God makes the trees naked. He turns the grass brown, it rains and gets cold, and then comes the snow.”
“Sometimes He leaves it summer,” said the little one.
“Never!” said the elder. “It always comes winter. He never leaves it summer.”
“I remember when it was all the time summer,” began the lesser, about to give reminiscences.
“Haw!” snorted the big brother. “You’re only five. What do you know! God never leaves it summer. It just goes round and round, winter, summer, winter, summer. You’ll find that out.”
“If Dodo asked God to leave it summer, He would,” said Five.
“No, He wouldn’t.”
“For Dodo He would.”
“Dodo wouldn’t ask Him,” said Nine briefly.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“For fear He wouldn’t,” said Nine. “But you don’t know about things like this. All you do is see the leaves fall down. Then comes winter. Wait and see.”
“Well,” said the small chap, “why does God go round and round like that? Why doesn’t He make it summer for a long, long time, and then winter for a long, long time?”
“Because,” said the elder, patiently, “God is just like Daddy. God is a man only very, very old. He is far older than granddad. He is older even than the world. Now you see daddy every morning. What does he do? He gets up, he goes downstairs and turns on the heater. Then he comes up and shaves.”
“First he looks in at me,” said Five.
“All right, but listen. This is how God is. Daddy shaves, and he stands there in front of the mirrow, putting powder on his chin, and he brushes his hair over and over, and puts on a clean shirt and then he goes in to mother’s room and says, ‘How do I look?'”
“He says,” cried Five, “’How does the old man look?’”
“Sometimes he says that,” proceeded Nine. “But anyway, he looks all fresh and shiny and his hair is wet and curls on the front. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Nine, “he goes to work. And when he comes home, how does he look?”
“At me,” said Five.
“But how does he look? He isn’t shiny any more. His hair isn’t smooth. If he scrapes you, he has whiskers, even little ones. He doesn’t jump around. He just goes and sits down. Doesn’t he?”
“I sit on his knee,” said the small chap.
“Oh, you aren’t listening!” cries the elder impatiently. “Listen, will you? I am telling about God.”
“All right.”
“Well, God is the same way as daddy. Daddy has to shave all over again, every morning. He goes to work, and then he comes home all tired. God gets tired. He makes the world all beautiful and shining, with green leaves and grass and flowers.”
“And gym shirts,” said Five.
“Don’t talk!” commands Nine sharply. “And the world is lovely and new, like daddy in the morning.”
“Does God shave?” asked Five.
Nine favors him with a long, grim stare. Five looks abashed.
“But after a while,” continues the elder, “the world gets all used, the grass is used, the trees are used, the flowers get tired and lean over. So God just lets everything go. He just lets the leaves fall off, the grass turn brown, the flowers die, and He lets the winter come, so that He can get up in the morning and start all over again.”
Five had not been entirely attentive. He was only half watching the oak leaves fall. But Nine was carried away by his own philosophy.
“Every day,” he mused, “daddy tries to make himself all new. But every day he comes back and he didn’t stay new. Every year God makes the world new, but it doesn’t stay. So He just lets it go and starts again the next morning.”
“When will it be morning?” asked Five.
“After the winter is gone.”
“And do we go to bed now until the morning?” asked Five.
“Yes, and miss Santa Claus?” demanded Nine with a knowing smile. “And miss hockey in the back yard, and sleigh riding out at Lambton, and snow men and forts?”
“We could do that,” said Five.
“While we sleep all winter?” cried Nine.
“We could be dreaming,” said Five.
Whereupon he abandoned his philosophic brother and dashed down from the steps to get another acorn that had fallen.
Editor’s Note: The nine year old is Murray Clark, while the five year old is Greg Clark Jr. Daughter Elizabeth had not been born yet.
By Gregory Clark, October 4, 1930.
Two brothers in the same unit was bad enough. But father and son! Let me tell that story.
Whenever a lieutenant was wanted to go back to the wagon lines to fetch up a new draft, I was always willing. It meant I lost the day’s sleep. It meant giving up the comfortable surety of the front line or support for a long walk down communications and over roads that might be strange to me and might have a little shelling, especially on the trip in with new men. But the officer who went out to get the draft of recruits had the pick of the men. And I had enough love of D company to desire the pick of the recruits for her.
And I picked them a funny way. I never heard of anybody picking men by their Adam’s apples. But that’s the way I did it. A man with a prominent Adam’s apple may not always be the bravest man, or the smartest. But he nearly always has one striking characteristic. And that is, when you say to bunch of fellows, “Let’s go and push that outhouse over,” or “Who’s game to come down to the divisional dump and snitch a case of rum to-night?” the first man to jump to you is the man with the biggest Adam’s apple in the bunch. I put this theory up to Lou Marsh1 one time, and he recalled that nearly every outstanding loose puck artist, practically all the most reckless plungers and tacklers in rugby, were men with Adam’s apples, as Lou put it, that were bigger than their chins.
So when I arrived at the wagon lines, and after I had paid the proper respects to the quartermaster, paymaster and transport officer, all round, both ways, I would order the new drafts paraded in full marching order. They usually had a conducting sergeant with them who was most likely one of our old n.c.o’s returning from hospital.
“Sergeant,” I would say, “have these men stand easy and undo their tunic collars, please.”
There they would stand, clutching their rifles between their knees, undoing their tunic collars and wondering what sort of a war they had arrived at, with pint-sized lieutenants with shaved heads asking them to undo their collars.
“Open them up!”
And down the parade I would go, falling out to the left all the boys with Adam’s apples that croaked up and down nervously as I walked past staring intently at them.
That would put all the Adam’s apples at the D Company end. For after the inspection, I would number them. Say they numbered to thirty-five. That made seventy men, front and your rank.
One to eight, A company,” I would say, “nine to seventeen, B company, eighteen to twenty-six, C company, and God bless you, twenty-seven to thirty-five, D company.”
And there, front and rear, from twenty-seven to thirty-five, I had the greatest collection of knee joints in the neck you ever could see.
That was how I got the Kinzies, father and son.
The elder Kinzie must have been over forty-five if he was a day. There he stood in the rank, such a heap of kit, khaki, bulging packsack and pendulous limbs as would send a drill sergeant crazy. He had a large untrimmed moustache hiding a small, weathered face. Gentle, timid eyes peeped at me questioningly as I came abreast of him. He was not much taller than I. His shoulders were thick and oversize. His hands were knuckly and awkward. He toed in a little, even when standing with feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees. Even if I hadn’t seen that great corded knot of an Adam’s apple projecting out of his open collar, I think I would have picked Kinzie for D company. For if ever I saw a backwoodsman, a guide, a real old settler from up north of Kingston or Belleville, it was Kinzie. I could almost smell the bacon frying over the campfire as I stood before him with his equipment on him like so many bundles. I must have paused a long moment in front of Kinzie, for I was lost to the war as my mind looked hungrily back to memories of little lakes and reed beds and big splashing bass.
Dad Kinzie and Babe Kinzie
“Fall out to the left,” said I huskily, and old Kinzie, with an anxious look in his eyes, which I did not understand at the moment, assembled with all his junk on him, down to the left.
For young Kinzie, his son, age about twenty, was standing as rear file to his old man. And not until I had inspected all the front rank and came down to the middle of the rear rank did I come to the boy. But they need not have worried about being separated. I did another long look in front of Babe Kinzie. Dad Kinzie and Babe Kinzie is what they came to be called in the company.
Young Kinzie was taller than his old man, and had that boyish, almost childish look that twenty year olds born and raised on a remote, backwoods clearing may wear. But he had the heavy shoulders, the long arms, the innocent blue eyes and leathery face of his old man. And he also wore his equipment and pack in that way which made me think he was portaging. And Adam’s apple! I hope my memory is bad and deceiving me over the years when I say it was, despite his youth, as big as a billiard ball.
“Fall out to the left,” said I to Babe Kinzie.
I think the leap of joy that came into his face when I ordered him to the left was only equaled behind my back, by the look in his old man’s face. For I heard a gruff exclamation behind me. And I turned around to see the boy trying to push in as rear file to his father, though it was not his place.
“Here,” said I. “Fall in to the left, I said.”
But the two faces, forty-five and twenty, turned appealingly to me.
“They’re father and son,” said the sergeant.
“Heaven help us,” said I. And right there I lost all interest in the inspection. For if you are superstitious about brothers, what could you help feeling about a father and son in the same company?
Before we went up the line, towards evening, I had a chat with the transport officer and tried to wrangle the elder Kinzie into some jobs around the lines. We sent for the old man, and asked him there in the tent:
“What do you know about horses?”
He thought a full five seconds, his questioning eyes looking from transport back to me.
“I’m afraid I don’t know nothing about horses, sir.”
“No good to me,” said Transport.
“What’s your trade?” I asked desperately. Do you know anything about blacksmithing? Tailoring?
“I been lumbering,” said old Kinzie, helpfully. But farming is my line. I got a small farm up in Frontenac county.”
“Kinzie,” said I, “I would like to get you a job here at the horse lines. How old are you?”
“Forty-one,” said the old liar, looking around at nobody.
“I hate this idea of you and your boy going up the line to the same company. How would you like me to assign your boy to some other company? Or maybe I could get the colonel to put him on as a battalion runner?”
The old man’s face and figure were pathetic. He seemed to go to pieces all in a dump.
“Please, sir,” he begged, “we got to be together, because he don’t know much, and it was me brought him here. I got to keep him by me, please, sir.”
The please sir from this old bushwhacker was as incongruous as a song from a porcupine.
“All right,” said I.
But it wasn’t all right with me, and because the thing stuck out in my mind as little things did in those days with nothing much to think of, I made sure the two Kinzies came to my platoon when we got up to the company.
“Rifles Aren’t for Shooting With”
I told the n.c.o.’s about them and instructed that the Kinzies were not to be detailed to any jobs such as patrols or wiring without consulting me.
“You’ve got so many pets in this platoon now,” complained old Tommie Depper, the senior sergeant, “that I can’t get a ration party together without consulting teacher.”
“Sergeant!” said I, severely.
“Hell,” said Tommie, “excuse me, is this a parade?”
I am afraid D company was almost as bad, as far as discipline was concerned, as the colonel said it was.
So the Kinzies, along with six or seven other new men, were scattered through the platoon and did their first eerie night in the trenches, amid the stealth, the silence and the moonlight.
There was a company conference next morning in D company dugout, after breakfast, and the officers and sergeants sat chewing the fat until nearly eight o’clock. And at that late hour, with the sun up in the sky, when all good soldiers save a couple of gas sentries per platoon, should have been down underground asleep, I came up for a listen at the skylarks and maybe the sight of a rabbit or a partridge.
And to my right, nearby, I heard a shot crash out.
Now who in blazes would be firing his rifle on a peaceful morning like this? It was an outrage. Nothing could upset a company officer more than to hear a vagrant rifle shot bang out on a nice quiet sector, day or night. It was unheard of!
Around the traverses I charged, my indignation rising.
And in a bay all by themselves, huddled down on the firestep2 in excited conversation, were Dad and Babe Kinzie. And in the old man’s hands, a guilty-looking rifle.
A very guilty looking rifle. I may say I never saw, even in Buckingham Palace yard, a Lee Enfield that looked as smart, as oilily gleaming, as babied and cared for as the rifle that was clutched in Dad Kinzie’s hand.
“Who the devil fired that shot?” I demanded.
“I did,” said Kinzie, standing up very surprised.
“Well, hang it all, Kinzie, you ought to know better than go shooting off around here like a boy scout! Rifles aren’t for shooting with,” I said, “they’re a drill weapon. Any shooting around here will be done by the snipers, and they’re pets of the colonel. No common company bum is allowed to play with his rifle except at the ranges back in rest. What were you shooting at? Rabbit or partridge?”
“A German,” said old Kinzie.
“And got him,” said Babe Kinzie proudly. “Right on the nose.”
“Do you mean to say you two rookies had your heads sticking up over that parapet!” I yelled.
And anxiously, the two showed me the parapet, all decorated up with rubbish, through which was gouged a narrow tunnel or ditch which gave a view of the further German support trenches but screened from the German front line.
“It won’t do,” said I firmly. “You will get a Mauser bullet right through your bean if you start monkeying with things like this. A nice, bronze Spitzer bullet from some Heinie sniper’s rifle with telescope sights on it.”
They were abashed.
“I rigged up this hole before dawn,” said the old man, ruefully, “just so’s I could see that spot about a hundred and sixty yards back. The boys told me they was some kind of a shovel dump or something there and they often seen Germans’ heads at that place.”
A Little Sniping on Our Own
“How do you know you got him?” I asked the younger Kinzie.
“You got to prove you ain’t got him when Dad shoots,” said the boy.
“Is that so?” said I. “Well, until you men are appointed to the select company of snipers on battalion headquarters, you’ve got to curb your shooting. Now get off to the dugout and get your sleep.”
And very meekly the Kinzies trailed their long arms around the traverse and off to bed underground.
Before the tour was over, I got used to the Kinzies. They even did a wiring party out in front one night. This test of fate I watched with nervous breath. And nothing happened. They did as smart a job as any of the older men on the party. They seemed to be able to see in the dark.
“Good men, those Kinzies,” said Tommie Depper. “I bet they come from somewhere near Windsor.”
Depper came from Windsor.
Out of the line, resting, we did some musketry practice, and I said to Dad Kinzie:
“Now let’s see what you can do with your pretty rifle?”
He made a string of ten bulls at the rickety hundred-yard target.
“That’s shooting,” said I, really impressed (I suppose you know what army shooting was like?)
“Pah,” said the old man.
We had no longer ranges. But with my permission, old Kinzie was allowed to fire one shot at the white-washed mud wall of a broken cow stable against a hill all of six hundred yards away. Old Kinzie said it was a little over four hundred yards. I thought it would have been good shooting to hit the wall. Dad Kinzie asked me if I could see a narrow plank bordering one edge of the wall. I couldn’t.
He knelt. He aimed snugly. He fired. With Depper and the Kinzie boy, we walked across the fields to the ruined stable. There in a six inch plank bordering the white wall was a neat round hole.
“How often can you do that?” I asked.
In reply, he fired four more shots from back in the same place, and the five holes in the plank, when we walked forward, were easily covered by my cap.
I told the colonel about it. But the sniping section was full. We went back up the line, in by Merincourt. One afternoon, I saw some sort of small hawk soaring low above the field where most of the larks sprang from. I sent for Dad Kinzie. Dad allowed it was a tough shot. We edged along on to C company’s front. The hawk poised an instant as it made a turn. It was perhaps eighty yards off. Dad Kinzie’s pointed bullet flipped the hawk, a wrecked bunch of feathers four feet in the air.
“A little low on the side,” said he.
That was about the time Dad Kinzie and I began to chum around.
“Why can’t the boy shoot?” I asked the old man one day.
“He can shoot good as I could at his age. But,” said Dad Kinzie, “it takes about twenty years to get real good. Your rifle kind of grows out of you in that time like your finger or your eyesight. It’s like part of you.”
I could well believe it.
We did a little sniping on our own. Especially when the company was in close support trenches. We would lie out in the turnips or hide in old ruins. The boy was always along with us, because he could see movement where certainly I couldn’t, and often the old man couldn’t.
We got meat too. From the support trench north of the electric power station at Avion, we could look down into Lens. We saw a party of what were likely officers moving discreetly in amongst the ruins all of six hundred yards away. Really six hundred, estimated by old Kinzie. When he fired, one of the four Germans lay on the ground. Old Kinzie waited. One of the others ran out from behind a wall and knelt by the down one. Kinzie hit him, though he staggered out of sight.
In one afternoon, in one place, just east of Avion, where the railway embankment passed through our lines, we got three, about half an hour apart. It must have been one of those places men like to stand and gaze on, like mountain sheep.
Another day, Babe Kinzie spotted a German chopping. You could see the axe head rise and fall. Now and again you could catch a glimpse of the German.
“I wish I had my binoculars,” I said. Old Kinzie would not let me bring glasses. He said the flash of field glasses would scare deer and they would scare Germans, too.
So Kinzie got the chopper too.
Late one afternoon, with the sun behind us streaming down on the German lines, Babe Kinzie saw something that he took to be a pump handle sticking up in the German support trench. He finally made his Dad see it, and the old man laid his rifle on the mark, very delicately aiming it and then securing it in position with sticks, stones and string.
A Gorgeous Outburst of Pyrotechnics
About eleven o’clock that night, we went out in the turnips and without the aid of any light, Dad Kinzie fired. It was not a pump handle but some kind of a rack or store of German skyrockets and signal flares. Whether Dad’s bullet hit a friction lighter or exploded something else in the store, there was the most gorgeous outburst of pyrotechnics back there in the German supports that I ever saw that side of the Toronto exhibition. It lasted all of ten minutes and the riot caused the German artillery to open up. Ours replied. And as we lay in the turnips, we snorted with guilty laughter until our diaphragms hurt us.
But all wars come to an end. And all those days spent in fun around sun-bathed trenches with not a thing in the world to worry about come to an end too. For about every six months, the higher command thinks up a battle. It is like being at Varsity and then exams come along.
So came Amiens. After the winter of licking Passchendaele’s scars, and a happy spring and summer spent around Vimy listening to the ominous thunder to the south and the north, or out in distant rear areas training for open warfare, the lucky Canadian corps prepared in stealth and rather breathlessly for the great Hundred Days.
The Kinzies withdrew from my immediate life and became two chessmen in the backdrop of the company against which we officers, as in the days of our earliest training, began to strut once again in the guise of officers and gentlemen rather than as section foremen in the trenches. I felt easy about the Kinzies. Fate was kind to them. My superstitions were lulled. Father and son could team together, even in that unearthly sphere where Fate seemed more a humorist at heart than a vengeful fury.
They had no chums. They chummed together. Always together on the line of march. Always eating out of the same mess-tin, sharing their blankets, their heads peering side by side whenever you paid a night visit to the billets. I was sorry our days and nights together were ended. It had been like a touch of the Rideaus again.
At Amiens we did not go over the first day. Close on the heels of our division, we advanced three incredible miles up the Roy road, the sounds of triumph just over every rise. What a gay, reckless day that August 8 was!
We slept under our tarpaulins that night, like Napoleon’s soldiers or Caesar’s. I thought of Waterloo, as I walked about the misty field, amongst the bivvies3, at dusk, asking them how they liked open warfare. The Kinzies were as usual under the same bivvy, all dry and comfortable, as woodsmen and trappers should be. I planned, the next rest, to have the Kinzies demonstrate to the company just how to make a comfortable shelter out of a bit of canvas.
“There’ll be moving targets to-morrow, Kinzie,” I said to them. “Like deer across the open.”
“I’m all oiled up and ready,” said the old man. “But this is my first battle.”
“It’s my first, this kind,” said I. “I hope I get stage fright out here in these open fields.”
“I suppose I can keep the boy by me?”
“Nothing to prevent it,” said I.
“If anything happens to me,” said Dad Kinzie “I don’t suppose the boy could come with me?”
“Oh, no. But nothing will happen, Kinzie.”
“Yes, but something might, and I was wondering if I got wounded maybe the boy could be a stretcher bearer and come down with me.”
“Nobody is allowed to fall out to help a wounded comrade, and that’s so of even father and son, I’m afraid.”
“Well,” said Kinzie, “I’d hate to go out wounded and leave this boy here alone. I’d rather him get wounded and me stay, though that would be bad enough.”
“Greatest Shot I Ever Knew”
“I guess the boy knows enough to look after himself, Dad,” said I. “But you don’t plan things so far ahead.”
“I plan everything ahead,” said Kinzie, with a worried air.
Well, turn in boys, and ready for dawn.”
And dawn saw us on the march, like olden wars, up roads in column of fours, and the sun came up and found us marching steadily eastward, while ahead of us the sounds of victory grew louder, and we passed field guns in the open meadows firing like in the picture books. An incredible sight. Few of us had ever seen a cannon. All we knew, in three years, was the sound of their shells.
And thus, before noon, on that brilliant August day, across fields of waving grain, we suddenly found ourselves in front and the attack to carry on, like a tide.
As we emerged out of Quesnel, where, the Six Bits4 had made their glorious dash, a storm of shellfire met us. But across the green fields, we saw the little gray buglike figures retreating before us.
More shells howled amongst us and kicked up their fountains.
“Old Kinzie’s got it!” suddenly shouted my batman5.
And there, limp on the ground, a few yards lay old Kinzie, while the shell dust settled on him.
“Where’s the boy?” I cried.
“Ahead there! He hasn’t noticed the old man,” said the batman.
And Babe Kinzie, along with the rest of the section, was doubling forward waist deep in the grain, all eyes to the front, wild with the excitement of his first show: and what a show!
I let them go. I walked across to Old Kinzie. He flopped over on his back as I approached, and I hurried to kneel by him.
“My leg, my leg,” he murmured, as I got his head up.
The shell had flung a heavy splinter into the thick of his calf and torn it badly.
He blinked at me. The stunning concussion of the shell was leaving him.
“The boy!” he gasped, as he realized he was missing. “Where’s the kid?”
“He’s gone on,” said I. “He’ll be all right now. I’ll take good care of him.”
“Where is he?” cried Dad Kinzie, struggling to kneel up on that bloody leg.
“There here he goes, just to the left of that shed,” said I. “Now lie down and I’ll send one of the stretcher bearers.”
He was still sitting when I ran ahead.
A few yards out, I met Courtney, one of the stretcher men, working on a chap in the wheat.
“As soon as you can, look after old Kinzie back there by the brick wall.”
“Yes sir.”
I had not taken more than six steps when I heard a rifle shot behind me. Turning, I beheld old Kinzie just lowering his rifle from his shoulder. He was kneeling.
“What the devil!” I shouted. “Can’t you quit even with a leg-off?”
“Got him!” shouted old Kinzie, and dropped out of my sight.
Then I overtook the boys, weaving through the grain. And just beyond the little shed, I found two or three of the boys bending over young Kinzie who was sitting on the ground among wry faces.
“Where’s he hit?”
“In the leg, sir. He was just lifting his leg over this picket, here, when he got this. But,” said the lance corporal, “by gosh, he got it from behind. I swear he did. Look.”
“Nonsense,” said I, but the wound unquestionably entered from the side of his leg that would have been to the rear as he got over the picket.
“Get him back there to Courtney, near the brick wall,” said I. “One of you lend him your shoulder that far and then get right back here.”
And we got young Kinzie to his feet, arm around the other’s shoulder, I looked back and there knelt old Dad Kinzie, beckoning excitedly to his boy.
“Good-by, Babe,” said I. “And tell your Dad for me that he is the greatest shot I ever knew. He didn’t even touch the bone.”
That was the afternoon he had tea in the rear at Folies.
Editor’s Notes:
- Lou Marsh was an athlete, and later sports reporter and editor at the Toronto Star. ↩︎
- A firestep is a step dug into the front side of a trench allowing soldiers to stand on it in order to fire over the parapet. ↩︎
- Bivvies is short for Bivouac, which can describe any improvised shelter that is usually of a temporary nature. ↩︎
- “Six Bits” was the nickname of the 75th Battalion (Mississauga), CEF. ↩︎
- A batman was a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant. This practice diminished greatly by World War 2, and was later phased out. ↩︎