Tag: 1932 Page 1 of 5
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 24, 1932.
“Jimmie,” I said to the artist, “we go around having goofy adventures. But we never do anybody good. We ought to do good. We ought to perform some deed of kindness.”
“The next issue is the Christmas issue,” said Jim Frise. “Couldn’t we think up some kindly thing to do and write about that?”
I bet you,” I said, “there isn’t a house in this city, no, not a house in this country, maybe in all the world, these days, that is not in need of some kindly act. Rich house, poor house.”
“We could go,” said Jim, “to any house in any street and we could knock on the door and say to the person that comes to the door, ‘Mister, is there anything we can do for you?’ And there would be something, some trouble, some need.”
“Let’s do that,” I cried.
“I like the country better,” said Jim. “We have all our adventures in the city. Let’s go down to the Union station to-day at noon. Let’s just walk down into the station and see what train is leaving next. We’ll get on that train without buying tickets.”
“This is good,” said I.
“And when the conductor comes along,” went on Jimmie, “we will ask him what stations he’s got. And he will name the stations. And the one we like the sound of best, that isn’t too far away from Toronto, we’ll buy tickets for.”
“Swell,” said I.
“Then we’ll get off at that station and hire a cutter1,” said Jim. “I haven’t had a cutter ride for fifteen years. And in the cutter we will drive out into the country. And then we’ll call at a farmhouse, any old farmhouse. And we will go up to the door and ask them if there is anything we can do for them.”
“It’ll fill in an afternoon,” said I.
So we went down to the Union station and in the big waiting-room there was only one gate open. It was the train for Aston, Palmerston, Durham, leaving in three minutes.
We rushed up to the gate and told the gateman we would get our tickets on board as we had very important business and daren’t miss the train.
We got into the smoking end of a car and when the conductor came along we asked him what stations he had about thirty or forty miles out.
He recited them, Georgetown, Moorefield, Alma, Ethel, Maryvale, Elmwood, and the one we liked the best was Maryvale.
“Maryvale!” said Jimmie. “That’s the place.”
We took singles to Maryvale and settled down to a nice debate on Mr. Bennett2 and the tariff with the other ten gentlemen in the smoking compartment.
“Maryvale,” droned the brakeman, just about the time we had solved the problems of Canada. And Jim and I were the only customers for a little station, three brick houses, seven frame houses, one store, one gas pump and a church, which was Maryvale, with not a living soul in sight, nestling in the snow of a gray and pleasant afternoon.
The station agent told us we could rent a cutter and a young man to drive it for us at the frame house next to the store.
“Eddie is his name,” said the agent.
“Anything We Can Do For You?”
Through the snow we walked to the store, while the three brick houses, the seven frame houses and the church looked politely at us, with never a human soul in sight, but soft smoke coming from all the chimneys.
Eddie was a silent young man in a ragged coon coat, who quickly hitched up a tall brown horse to an old cutter.
“Where do you wish to go?” asked Eddie.
“Out this road a piece,” said Jimmie, pointing to a snowy road that led over a hill between snake fences and cedar trees. We piled in beside Eddie, under horsey blankets, and away we went, with a jerk and a jolt, while the sleigh-bells jangled and we had all the white wide world to ourselves.
Eddie leaned out the driving side, silently.
“How far should we go?” I asked Jim.
“Let’s go a couple of miles before we start looking,” replied Jim. “Isn’t this swell?”
It was swell. We saw farmhouses and clustered barns in the valleys. Black and white collies ran out at us. Going between two walls of cedar trees we saw a rabbit skip across the road. Jangle, jangle went the sleigh-bells in the quiet and the clean air went right down into us.
Up a slow hill the horse plodded and the sleigh jerked and slewed. Out on a lonely hilltop we came. We approached a gray brick farmhouse with scalloped wooden trimmings on its gables and along its eaves.
Its buildings were burdened with snow. There were no tracks into its lane. Its doors were closed. Its blinds down. No animals stood steaming in its barnyards.
“Who lives there?” asked Jim, suddenly.
“Robinsons,” said Eddie.
“Robertson or Robinson?” asked Jim.
“I don’t know, everybody calls it Robinson,” said Eddie.
“Turn in here,” said Jim.
No windows moved as we jangled up the lane. No doors opened as we pulled up in the door yard.
“Wait for us,” said Jim to Eddie. And we stepped out into the snow.
We rapped on the back door. After a long moment the door opened.
An elderly man looked out at us, in his shirt-sleeves. He was in his sock feet and he held a newspaper in his hand. His face was lined, tired, and a film of silver stubble covered his chin and cheeks.
“Mr. Robinson?” asked Jim.
“Yes.”
“Could we speak to you a minute?”
The old man opened the door wider and let us pass into his kitchen. It smelled of sour milk. Of warmth, of sweetness and age and comfort.
Mr. Robinson shut the door, laid down his newspaper and stood while we stood.
“Well?” said he.
“Mr. Robinson,” said I, “is there anything we can do for you?”
He looked at us steadily. He looked at me and then he looked at Jim.
“How do you mean?” he asked, uncertainly.
“We’re from Toronto,” I explained. “We came out here to ask you if there was any thing we could do for you?”
There Was Something After All
He stared heavily at us.
“Do you know my brother in Toronto? Have you come from him?”
“No, we don’t know your brother and we don’t know you. We are just two men from Toronto, who decided to come out somewhere in the country and drive out to some house and ask if there was anything we could do.”
The old man did not ask us to sit down. He continued to stare at us, with long pauses between his words.
“Has that boy in the cutter been talking to you?” he demanded.
“Eddie?” said Jim. “No, we never saw Eddie before and we just picked him up at the village to take us for a drive. He hasn’t said ten words to us.”
“You don’t know my brother in Toronto? You never heard of me? And you come out here to see if you can help me? You must be crazy men.”
“No,” said Jim. “You see it’s nearly Christmas, and we thought we ought to be doing something for somebody.”
“I should think you would find plenty to do in the city,” said Mr. Robinson.
“Sure,” said Jim. “Every house in the city could find something to do. But we thought it would be a good idea to just go out anywhere in the country and drive along until we came to some place and then drop in, kind of, and ask if there was anything we could do. It was just an idea. We had an idea that everybody in the world needs somebody to do something for them. I guess we were wrong.”
“I guess you were,” said the old man. “Well, if you don’t mind, I was reading the paper.”
And he walked over to the kitchen door. and opened it. Jim and I walked out.
“Good-day, Mr. Robinson.”
“Good-day.”
We got outside.
“Well,” said Jim.
The kitchen door opened.
“Just a minute, gentlemen,” said the old man. He nodded his head for us to come back.
“Come back in for just a moment,” said Mr. Robinson.
We walked back and he shut the door, slowly, while he bent his head in thought.
“You aren’t police, are you?” asked Mr. Robinson.
“No, indeed,” said I. “Far from it.”
Mr. Robinson stood very still before us, watching us steadily.
“Do you know my daughter?” he asked, in a strange voice.
“No, sir,” we replied.
After looking at us until his old eyes began to waver in a curious fashion he said: “Please sit down, gentlemen.”
There were rocking-chairs in this kitchen, with heavy wool afghans on the backs.
“My wife,” said Mr. Robinson, sitting on the edge of his chair and leaning on the kitchen table, “is asleep upstairs. Would you mind if we talk low? My daughter,” and he tapped with his curved, coarse, old hand on the table pathetically, looking at it as he talked, “my daughter has been away for four months. She went to my brother’s in Toronto, because I sent her away. She was in trouble.”
“Help Us To Find Her”
Jimmie and I heard the clock ticking on the shelf, and we both looked at it. It was easier to look there than at the old man, beating his curved, calloused, old hand on the table.
“So she went to my brother’s, but she did not stay there. She has not been there for six weeks. They don’t know where she is. Nobody knows where she is. I thought maybe you had come about her?”
“No,” said Jim. One of us had to say something.
“My wife,” said Mr. Robinson, “isn’t well. This has been very hard on her. She just sits around. We don’t go to church any more. We don’t go to the village. We just sit here, you see.”
“Do you want your daughter back?” I asked.
“I sent her away and I think I was right,” said the old man. “It was the proper thing to do. My wife is not well. She sits all day staring before her, and while I ordered her not to write I know she has got no answers now for six weeks. My daughter has left my brother’s. We don’t know where she is.”
“There is a poem, Mr. Robinson,” I said. “It goes-
‘If I were damned of body and soul
I know whose love would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine!’
“And it’s a strange thing, Mr. Robinson, they never write any poems like that about fathers.”
“Please,” suddenly burst out the old man, putting his two heavy hands over his face, “please help us to find her! Just to find her!”
Jimmie and I got up very hastily and put our hands on the old man while Jim made faces at me for quoting poetry.
“We’ll find her,” we both said, and the other door creaked and in walked the loveliest old lady you ever beheld in your life, a little, narrow, old lady with a gray dress and the bent shoulders they get on the farms. Her eyes were wide and terrified, when she saw two strange men standing over her husband at the table.
“We’ll find her!” said Jimmie loudly, nodding at the dear old lady with a crooked smile and patting Mr. Robinson violently on the back.
Mr. Robinson had to stand up, so as to provide some place for the old lady to rest her head. We stood over toward the door, while the old lady trembled against the chest of the old man, who mumbled things down into her white hair and pawed her with his rough old hands.
He finally set her down in the chair and we all three went outside. He gave us his daughter’s name, which doesn’t matter since the name Robinson is only an invented name anyway. We took down, like regular newspapermen, the brother’s address and all particulars as to age, weight, color of hair, eyes, how clothed. The sleigh-bells jangled expectantly. Eddie got out and spread the blankets for us, and with much silent handshaking and head-wagging and sniffly smiles and pats on the back we climbed into the cutter and drove in a queer silence, as deep as Eddie’s, back to Maryvale, which isn’t the name of the place at all.
There was a train at five-twenty-eight. We had only thirty minutes to walk up and down the frosty platform until it came, while Jim kept exclaiming, “Well, well, well,” and I continued to blow my nose.
We did not go into the smoking compartment. There were too many nosey strangers there. We sat on the green plush seats and put our heads close together and planned. It is not every day that men can make a joke like this.
“Everybody in the world,” said Jimmie, as we came into the lights of the city, “everybody, rich and poor, has something they would like to tell us. I bet you that old man would have sat there forever and let his wife die before he would soften his heart enough to take her in his arms.”
So I got out my hankie again.
The finding of Maryvale Robinson, if you like that for a name, was very simple to two great sleuths like Jim and me. By doing the wrong thing you always come out right. That is one of the best rules to follow.
The Mystery of Life
We called, straight from the station, at the brother’s house.
He looked like a derby hat edition of his old brother in the country.
“No,” he said, suspiciously and narrowly, through the barely opened door of his narrow little house in the mean little street to which people are glad to move from the white and silent country; “no, she was here, but she left. She just took her suitcase and walked out one night. My wife was very kind to her, too. Very kind. But she just packed her suitcase and waltzed off.”
“Did she have any friends in the city?” we asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Robinson’s brother.
So Jim and I went down the street. “She’d look for a job,” said Jim. “She had no money. So what employment agencies are open at night? We’ll get the car and make the rounds of the employment agencies.”
The first employment agency had no record of a Maryvale Robinson. The next two were closed. The next one was open and the hard, cold woman at the desk said she had no Maryvale Robinson, but she had lots of Robertsons and Robinsons, but none by the name of Maryvale.
“She was a young girl,” said Jim, “with lovely blue eyes and a sort of gold-colored hair.”
Which was pure imagination.
“And she had on a brown coat and a brown hat and was carrying a suitcase.”
“A black suitcase?” inquired the hard cold woman.
“Yes, a black suitcase,” said Jim, which was a lie, because we had not been told what kind of a suitcase it was. But Jim said afterwards that he had a hunch.
“I have a girl like that,” said the hard, cold woman, “but she gave another name. We have not got her a situation yet, but I loaned her ten dollars on account. I will give you her address and you can see if it is she.”
We took the address and started.
“If an old alligator like that would lend a girl with a false name ten dollars,” said Jim, “that will be the girl we are looking for. This is all part of the mystery of life.”
We called at a tall, dark house. We waited in a dim front hall. Down the stairs came a little, white scared girl, holding the bannister.
“Are you Maryvale Robinson?” we asked.
“Yes, that is, no,” said she, and the story is over.
All but the way we found there was no train, so we piled Maryvale and her suitcase in the car and drove down and got the old alligator at the employment agency to come with us, just for the adventure of it, for she was a friend of Maryvale’s
When we got to the village of Maryvale late in the night, amid the white snow and the cedar trees shadowy along the snake fences, the old alligator who was in the back seat with the little girl suggested that we stop and telephone out to the farm.
“No,” said Jim. “I have a better idea.”
So we got Eddie to hitch up the cutter and the four of us piled into it, with Maryvale’s suitcase, and we let Jimmie, the old farmer, do the driving.
And when the sleigh-bells came jangling, jangling over the hill to the high country where the gray brick house is with the scalloped trimmings on the gables, we saw, as Jimmie knew we should see, a light spring up, late as it was, in the windows of the lonely house.
And as we turned into the lane we saw the light come downstairs, and when the cutter turned and stopped in the door yard the kitchen door flew open and an old man came staggering blindly out of the dark, feeling with his arms, hungrily…
As we drove back to the village for the car, in the bitter midnight, Jim said, “I guess you see a lot of this sort of thing?”
“I have no use for girls of that sort,” replied the old alligator in her coldest voice.
“Neither have I,” said I.
But Jim held his hands very primly with the reins.
And the old alligator and I rested our hands very delicately on our laps.
For all our hands were blessed with tears.
Editor’s Notes:
- A cutter is are a type of sleigh. Generally, sleighs accommodated larger groups, while cutters were sufficient for two people. ↩︎
- R. B. Bennett was Prime Minister of Canada at the time. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, November 26, 1932.
We have got some inside information, a scoop in fact, to the effect that the Ontario government and the Hon. Mr. Challies in particular are sick and tired of the shooting question and have decided to do with the sportsmen what they have done with the motorist.
They are going to make him pass an examination.
A shooting license, like a driving license, will have to be earned as well as bought.
The way things are now Ontario is a fairly law-abiding community for ten and a half months of the year. Then all of a sudden, in October, about forty thousand men get a touch of frost on their pumpkins, or something, and they snatch up their weapons and go skirmishing in all directions.
They have a few days after partridges and pheasants, during which chickens, ducks, pet dogs, cows, horses and hired men are shot in large numbers.
During the deer season, when high-power rifles loaded with dum-dum bullets are fired off all over the summer resort regions by some thirty thousand hunters, other hunters, horses, cows and porcupines are amongst the trophies. Roofs are punctured, boats are sunk, countless bottles are burst to splinters, tin cans scuppered and out-houses perforated.
Our information is to the effect that the government is going to put an end to all this. It is going to educate the sportsmen.
Night school classes are to be organized all over the province, unless our information is wrong, and every man who hopes to take out a shooting license next season will have to win a certificate from school before he can be issued a permit to shoot.
The schools are to be run on the well-known kindergarten system, with pictures being the secret of the method.
“This Is A Cow” will be inscribed on a large lithograph of a cow. Sheep, horses, chickens of all plain and fancy breeds will have to be memorized. A suggestion has already been offered the government that a well-known German song, sung by ‘Varsity students for half a century, might be employed. “Ist Das Nicht Ein Schnitzelbonk?” is the name of the song. The teacher, using a pointer, sings:
“Is this not a mooley cow?”
And the sportsmen’s class, all in happy unison, sing back:
“Yes, that is a mooley cow.”
Chorus:
“Oh, you lovely,
Oh, you pretty,
Oh, you darling mooley cow!”
And so on, through the quadrupeds, fowls and other creatures that Ontario city and town hunters are not yet thoroughly familiar with.
War in Niagara Peninsula
This system has a great deal of merit in it. As it is now, pheasant shooting down in the Niagara peninsula is sadly in need of rousing music and song to make it real warfare. The platoons and battalions of pheasant shooters, as they march across the fields and vineyards, could sing these college songs, rousingly, as they advance to the attack. It would give a fine martial tone to the pheasant shooting which is all it lacks now. The captains of the shooting parties could watch out for domestic and agricultural animals, and whenever one is spied they could shout out:
“Is that not a Plymouth Rock?1“
“Yaw, dot iss a Plymouth Rock.”
Altogether:
“Oh, you lovely,
Oh, you fatty,
Oh, you sweety Plymouth Rock!”
And another innocent life would be spared.
On taking the full course of sportsmen’s night school the attentive pupil will be awarded a diploma, which indicates to an anxious rural population that the graduate is entitled to affix the initial. B.S. after his name, meaning Bachelor of Sport. He knows the main broad principles in distinguishing between a tame duck and a cock pheasant and between a Holstein cow and a deer. It would not take in Lou Marsh’s wambeazle2. That is a post-graduate course. Pupils will be trained to hold their fire whenever a wambeazle or other unspecified animal leaps out in front of them.
When Canada raised its army of 500,000 men it was supposed that this being a new and pioneer country the art of shooting would come readily to Canadians. But the fact
was that just as much time had to be spent patiently dinging the simple laws of marksmanship and care of arms into Canadians as into Cockneys from Bow Bells.
It took weeks to train any company of men to handle their rifles safely. Then it took weeks more to get them to hold their rifles in such a way as to hit the target if they could aim. Then they were taught aiming.
And when everything was finished about ten in a hundred could get into the bull.
However, despite this knowledge of the facts in regard to shooting, Canadian law allows anybody who has the price to buy any kind of gun or rifle he likes and to go gunning for any kind of game he can afford, from artificially planted and reared pheasants in the most densely populated agricultural district in Canada to wallowing after moose north of the Transcontinental.
The modern pump gun in the hands of an expert will fire five shots so fast that five ducks, travelling at the rate of seventy miles an hour, will be blasted down out of the air by powerfully driven loads of scattered shot reaching out sixty to seventy yards. The modern rifle, such as the .270 Winchester, is far more powerful than any army rifle, shoots an explosive bullet so fast that in travelling two hundred yards it rises only two inches above the line of sight. Twenty-five thousand deer hunters this season tried to scatter themselves far enough apart to escape any danger from these modern whizz-bangs. And they didn’t altogether succeed.
To Bring Gunners Under Control
So far the government has touched everything to control hunting but the hunter. It has banned dogs. It limits the number and kind of game that can be shot and the days on which shooting may be done. But it hasn’t said anything about who can shoot. You are tested to be a car driver. You are bonded to be a bank clerk. Educated to be a doctor. Examined to be an engineer. To take up an aeroplane and endanger only yourself you must go through a fearful rigmarole with two governments. But to take out a stick of dynamite in the shape of a modern gun or rifle all you need is the price. It took months to make soldiers even moderate marksmen.
But an army of deer hunters, most of whom never have their rifles out of their cases except on the one or two-week hunting trip, with soft muscles, jumpy nerves, buck fever, goose flesh and wet feet, are entrusted with the responsibility of slaying Ontario’s game neatly and humanely, as licensed experts with the gun. It can’t be done.
The whole thing is very complicated and grows no less complicated with every year’s increase in the number of shooters.
The situation respecting the shooting of pheasants and partridge in the agricultural districts of the province appears to be reaching an impasse.
One solution offered eight years ago and never recognized is this: that the government. oblige all bird shooters not only to have a government license but a permit signed by the owner of the land on which they are shooting. The license itself could be large enough to have on its reverse side a form of permit, with several spaces for signatures. If shooting on wild or crown land no permission would be required. But in the Niagara peninsula, before invading any private property – and there is no public property on which to shoot there – the gunners would have to obtain the signature of the owner. It would be trouble, of course. Plenty of land-owners, when faced with the request, would refuse. To-day hundreds of farmers and fruit growers would prefer to have no shouters banging about their lands, but are afraid to interfere for fear of being considered poor sports. Hundreds of others have posted their land who would be perfectly willing to permit shooters to kill a few pheasants if those shooters came in straightforward fashion and showed themselves and asked for permission – or paid for it!
Why should not the farmer be paid for the nuisance and the damage done to his land by the shooters or to his fruit crops by the pheasants? A farmer who charges for the privilege of fishing for trout in his brook is not a poor sport. He is simply taking steps to keep the mob off his place and also to make a little rightful money. It is true the pheasants were planted by the government. But it is doubtful if the farmer, on whose land the pheasant subsists, was consulted by the government. If the farmer likes pheasants on his land, the government certainly has no privilege to admit shooters on to private land. If the farmer does not like the pheasants on his land he should be privileged to do as he likes about it.
But of all the rational means of bringing several thousand gunners under control the simplest seems to be the hundred per cent. posting of all land in the pheasant country and then the demand, by the government, not by the land-owners, that everyone who shoots on other than his own land, obtain a signed permit of the land-owner.
Twenty-five men in cars, working from telephones at strategic points, could put this law into effect in such fashion in one season that the present ruthless, reckless, rowdy and unsportsmanlike system – perfect for the local sportsmen who have the inside dope, just a panic for the outsiders – would be cured in one year.
Editor’s Notes:
- A Plymouth Rock is a type of chicken. ↩︎
- Lou Marsh was the sports editor for the Toronto Star at the time. The must of been some lore related to the “wambeazle” at the time that I’m not understanding. ↩︎
Mr. Ripley would refer to Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
These illustrations went with a story by Cyrus Leger about horse racing.
(I am publishing out of order today, April 9th, in honour of the birthday of Greg’s daughter, Elizabeth (Clark) Wakabayashi. She is the only one of Greg’s children still with us. Please enjoy this story about her).
By Gregory Clark, October 15, 1932.
When a string of male offsprings comes to bless a home without the interruption of a little girl, that home takes on a definite masculine character.
No matter how tastefully a bride and groom may have furnished their living room, by the time their union has been blessed with a series of boys, it has assumed a clubby air. Many of the more tasteful articles and objects d’art are gone forever. The chesterfield that was born pale smoke-blue now wears a slip-cover of sturdy leather brown. The original fine Persian rug is almost forgotten even by the bride, and in its place is a stout dullish floor covering that is without character, but which serves admirably as a setting for the quarrels and the drama of a tribe of arrogant small males.
The hopeless war waged against toys, roller skates, aside-flung wind-breakers, hockey sticks propped against the fireplace, has long ago been lost. By the time the oldest boy is eleven, no clothes closet designed by twentieth-century man could hope to contain the essentials of juvenile life. So the walnut hall table, the buffet, the kitchen drain-board all share the burden, and you are just as likely to find a motor truck in the flat-silver drawer as a pair of orange and black rugby stockings in the book case.
Then comes a girl.
At first, the fact seems a little preposterous.
“Was it mother took a girl or you?” asks the eleven-year-old. “Who chooses?”
“Well, sir,” says I, “you just take what God sends you.”
“But don’t you speak to God first? What is praying for?”
“Wait till you see her,” says I. “The dearest wee little thing. With dark hair like fine spun clouds of night on her head, and a little mouth, like a mouth seen at a great distance…”
But when the boys, all done up in their Sunday blue suits and wearing that slicked look which betrays the unaccustomed hand of the father, line up and march into the glowing hospital room to see their proud mother lying with her face sideways on the pillow, they are not much impressed with the new recruit.
The seven-year-old will not look at her at all, and the eleven-year-old, after one horrified glance, retires to the foot of the hospital bed and says:
“Does it sound like a cat?”
Mother says:
“You are mighty lucky little boys to have a sister.”
A Family Show-Down
So after depositing their gifts of flowers and clumsily kissing their mother’s hand, the boys depart leaving behind them no uncertain air of reproach.
For some time, several months in fact, the disturbing presence of the young lady is not felt. Indeed, with the feeding and bathing and sleeping and washing connected with the new arrival, the boy brigade achieves further freedom and wider powers than they had ever enjoyed. They can stay out later. They often get by with washing their own faces before school.
But the first hint of tyranny comes one day when the Princess is put out in her carriage on the front lawn.
“Take those shabby bicycles off the front walk,” commands mother. “And pick up that board you’ve got there. Take them around to the back!”
And the Princess, sitting up, has a lovely tidy stage on which to shed the beauty of her presence. In about a week the boys come to me in deputation.
“Dad, we can’t play in front at all!” they complain. “We have to stay in the back all the time. Why can’t they put HER in the back sometimes?” The next step in the emasculization of the house has to do with dress and appearance. Mother can be seen at all hours of the day brushing or stroking the Princess’ hair, which is clouding out into curls. The Princess is old enough to have pretty little dresses. She wears two and sometimes three a day.
“Mother plays with her all the time just as if she was a doll,” complains the eleven-year-old. “Dressing her and undressing her. And carrying her around.”
“You boys look terrible!” mother begins saying. “I’ll have to be getting you some clothes.”
And both boys slink from the room.
“I don’t want any more blue suits!” yelps seven-year-old from the staircase, “as long as I live!”
But the fact is, mother is slowly growing feminine again, under the inspiration of her daughter. She has an ally. Her sense of the fitness of things is being restored. We had made a man of mother but it was a victory by force of numbers.
“Some ladies,” said Mother, “are coming to see Elizabeth this afternoon. I want you two boys, when you come home from school, to come in by the side door quietly, go upstairs, wash and put on your blue suits and then come down and be introduced.”
They saw a strange lady being admitted at the front door, which reminded them of the side door and the fateful instruction about being introduced. So the two of them hid behind the garage until nearly six o’clock. That night we had a family show-down.
“We are going to have a little system around here,” says mother. “You boys have had this house all to yourselves for more than ten years. Now we are going to divide it. The downstairs living room, dining room, front lawn are Elizabeth’s and mine. The den, your bedrooms and the back yard are for you men. No more playthings, hockey sticks, wagons, funny-papers downstairs here. If I find any of those things around, outside of the den and your bedrooms or the back yard, I’ll take them and give them to the gardener for his little boy.”
Over the Favor of a Lady
We men hang our heads, realizing that mother is a lady again.
It takes nearly a month for the full realization of the division in our house to sink in. But it works. Eleven-year-old has his bike locked up in the fruit cellar for three days for leaving it in front when Elizabeth was sunning in her carriage. Seven-year-old missed entirely The Star Weekly colored comics of the date of Sunday, May 29th.
And every week Elizabeth has a new dress, and her curls cloud more richly, and her very presence seems to work miracles in her surroundings, so that battered chairs glow and shine and the dining room has flowers on the table, new draw-curtains appear as if by magic, a spickness and spanness seems to blossom wherever Elizabeth goes.
Then, a month ago, she learned to walk.
“I taught her!” shouted eleven-year-old. “It was to me she first walked when Mother let go of her!”
“It was me taught her,” snarled seven-year-old. “I’ve been walking in front of her every day, showing her how. I said ‘lookit,’ and then she did it!”
“Let’s take her for a walk out on the street,” cried Eleven.
“Go and put your blue suits on, then,” said Mother.
And they raced upstairs.
Winks went round the living room.
From walking to riding piggie-back, from going on a long hike to the foot of the garden to pick the last ragged asters to exploring all the low-down cupboards and pantry closets has been a swift ascent, in which two ill-assorted boys have fought, even to drawing blood, over the favor of a lady.
And she had to have creeping overalls.
“She can have those old sailor pants of mine,” said seven-year-old, “when she’s big enough. And my old wind-breaker.”
Mother had a funny look on her face. Then Elizabeth learned to climb the stairs.
The turn of the tide came last Sunday. “Where is Elizabeth?” cried Mother suddenly, conscious of the silence.
“Upstairs,” said Eleven, in passing, “having some fun!”
And great thumps above proved it.
Editor’s Note: This story also appeared in So What? (1937).
By Gregory Clark, February 20, 1932.
The city of Buffalo wishes the Canadian dollar were back at par.1
I stepped up to the news-stand in Buffalo’s finest hotel and picked up a newspaper.
I held out to the clerk a Canadian nickel. “I’m sorry,” said he, hastily, for they are very quick in Buffalo at feeling a coin, “I can’t take this.”
Take three cents out of it, instead of two,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t that look after the exchange?”
“You can’t compute exchange on a nickel,” said he.
So I produced a Canadian dollar. He took it.
First he deducted 17 cents exchange. That was at the rate at the moment. Then he. took two cents for the Times.
And he handed me back 81 cents, U. S.
Which, as change from a dollar in a deal involving a 2-cent newspaper, brings home the exchange problem nice and clearly.
My expression, however, as I stared down at those very high class coins in my palm was not any more pained than the news-stand clerk’s.
“Gees, it’s tough!” said he.
And like everybody else in Buffalo, he meant it. They really are pained by the situation. It is a nuisance every way you or they look at it. Buffalo has plenty of factories and therefore she can feel bad, the way hundreds of manufacturing cities and towns in the States feel bad, over the loss of millions of dollars worth of juicy orders for spring goods from Canada. But as $1,000 Canadian worth only about $800, Canadians can’t see that a $4 hat is worth $5. So while Canadians are patiently waiting for their dollar to rise – and doing a lot of buying at home meanwhile – the Americans are wishing the Canadian dollar would stand up and come walking across the border in millions again in the good old-fashioned way.
But Buffalo has a lot of private grief ever the Canadian dollar that is not shared by the rest of the U. S.
First of all, that all year round parade of amateur Canadian smugglers, of whom there are only about 9,000,000 in the Dominion, has sadly dwindled in the past few months. Every day in the week, including Sunday, there was a procession across all the bridges from Canada of people who think that goods are cheaper and more stylish in Buffalo. Or maybe it is just that they want to buy something in a foreign country to show the gals back home. Or possibly they think they can smuggle a pair of stockings in the hip pocket.
Buffalo has practically lost all that amateur smuggler trade.
“We made a special study of this exchange thing,” said Mr. A. T. Gerstner of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, introducing me to Mr. Percy Fahnstock, the financial editor of the Buffalo Times, with whom he was sadly communing when I called at the chamber. “And we couldn’t make head or tail of it. We had a special committee of selected intellects follow the exchange question as far as they could go. But when it ended in a swamp they came back to us with their tails dragging. In the meantime American industries are suffering for the want of Canadian orders. Every storekeeper and taxi driver in the city has to check up every morning on to-day’s exchange rate. There is bad feeling. We feel very sorry about it, because we like Canadian dollars just as much as you like American dollars. It’s too bad.”
And in the meantime, while the incoming traffic over the Peace bridge has fallen to a trickle, the outgoing traffic of Buffalonians in quest of Canadian goods at the Fort Erie liquor store shows no signs whatever of diminishing.
Buffalo Learns Arithmetic
“The funny part of it is,” said the financial editor, “that those Canadian liquor stores don’t know anything about this exchange thing. A bottle costs $3.75, Canadian. So we put down $3.10, American, which is the equivalent of $3.75, Canadian; but the clerks say they haven’t heard about that.
“‘Over on the American side, maybe,’ says the vendor, ‘but over here $3.75, anybody’s money.’ And there you are.”
“But you could change your money into Canadian before you get there,” I suggested.
“Yes,” said the financial editor, “but nobody thinks of it in time. And, anyway, it’s a nuisance changing it.”
“You should know something about a nuisance!” I exclaimed. “I bought a pair of silk stockings to-day for my wife in one of your big stores. They cost $1.65. When I handed the girl a Canadian $5 bill she asked me if I wanted exchange on the whole $5 bill or just on the sale. I said just on the sale.
“So she gave me back, with my parcel, three Canadian $1 bills and three cents. I asked her how she figured that.
“‘Well’, says she, ‘exchange to-day is 16 cents, isn’t it? On $2 that makes the exchange 32 cents. So $1.65 for the stockings, plus 32 cents exchange, is $1.97. Isn’t that right?’
“‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but all I am buying is the stockings. You should take,’ says I (working it out with a pencil on the paper the stockings were wrapped in), ’16 per cent. of $1.65, which is only 26 point 4 cents. Say 26. And that makes $1.91 and gives me back 9 cents instead of 3.’
“By this time three other sales girls and a department manager were hovering around. The girl was mixed up, but she raised her eyes to the ceiling, bit my pencil with her teeth and figured it out. They are well trained in arithmetic by now in Buffalo.
“Suddenly she saw it! ‘Yes,’ she cried,’ but I would have to give you back your 9 cents change in Canadian money.’
“‘Then,’ said I, ‘do you mean to say that 3 cents American is as good as 9 cents Canadian?’
“And at that the manager stepped forward and said, ‘Excuse me, mister, but if you will come up to the office we will get the accountant to go over this with you.’ But I beat it. I took the 3 cents American, be- cause I wanted to buy another newspaper and I didn’t want to spend 19 cents out of my Canadian dollar to get one.”
The Chamber of Commerce man listened to my story.
“‘Well,’ said one, “there were five Americans in that mix-up and only one Canadian. You see how it adds up.”
Yes, Buffalo is very distressed, but very patient.
The hotel I stayed at is so good-natured about the exchange question that they take our Canadian money at par.
When I paid my room bill they took $4 Canadian. I got a $4 room for $3.32. At dinner, when I offered Canadian money to the waiter, he said:
“If you sign the cheque and charge it to your room you will get the meal at par, but if I go and get it changed at the desk they will take exchange out of it.”
So I charged it.
But I had my experience with a waiter all the same.
I am one of those plain country fellows that is friendly with waiters. This one I made great friends with. By the time lunch was over he figured I was just as nice as any waiter even. We talked about the meal, Germany, German food, German beer, how long he had been with this hotel and canaries.
But with a craftiness this good Dutchman of a waiter would never dream me capable of, I carefully schemed my lunch to cost exactly 80 cents!
Exchange that day was 17 cents.
When the table was cleared and the finger-bowl dibbled, my good fat friend laid down the cheque – 80 cents.
He figured, happy man, that a nice friendly customer could not do less than lay down a dollar bill and leave him the change.
But I laid down a Canadian one-dollar bill!
And then, in the mirror on the wall beside me, I watched the waiter’s face.
Computing is the New Sport
Slowly he reached out a dazed hand and picked up the cheque and the dollar. Slowly he turned and walked away. He walked with bent head. You could see by the slow way he walked over to the cashier that he was doing arithmetics.
My dollar was worth 83 cents over at that desk.
With a shamed look he walked slowly back to me, with bowed head, looking with distended eyes at a spectacle he had perhaps never before seen in all his years in that handsome and noble dining room.
It was 3 cents.
On a silver tray.
Speechless, he laid the offensive objects before me.
I looked at them.
Then I looked up at him.
Slowly he shrugged his shoulder, up, out.
So I dipped down and laid beside the three U. S. coppers a Canadian nickel and a Canadian dime.
And when I looked back from the dining room door at him he was standing with a pencil and a piece of paper translating his tip into terms he could understand.
Computing is the great Buffalo sport these days. It is like cross word puzzles.
I spent the evening at a movie. Admission was 65 cents and on the glass of the ticket booth was a card reading, “Canadian exchange to-day 17.”
I handed the girl a Canadian $1. She handed me promptly back 18 cents.
She was a pretty girl and I supposed therefore dumb.
“Just a minute,” said I, spreading out my change on my palm. “But how do you figure 17 per cent. of 65 cents?”
As quick as a flash she replied:
“I changed your dollar into American money, 83 cents, and then deducted the price of admission, 65 cents. Change, 18 cents.”
I was shoved from behind in the line-up or I might have attempted a feeble argument. But even the pretty girls in Buffalo can do arithmetic. I guess it is the practice they get.
The next adventure was in a taxicab.
I drove forty cents worth and then handed the driver two Canadian quarters.
“Hey,” he said; “that’s Canadian money!”
“It certainly is,” said I. “Note the King’s head on it. His name is George.”
“That’s only 40 cents, just the same,” said the driver, with a pleasant smile. “We count 20 cents for two bits, just to make it handy.”
“Well,” I retorted, “how much do I owe you?”
“That’s right,” said the driver, “forty cents.”
He didn’t want to let me get away with the idea that I was tipping him.
And I didn’t. This is why.
Outside the hotel, after nightfall, where the wind howls and whoops off Lake Erie around corners that must surely be the windiest in a windy land, I was held up by a panhandler.
“How about a cuppa coffee?” mumbled this member of a free and equal nation where even the panhandlers don’t know how to be beggarly.
“Aren’t you participating in the President’s Relief Fund2?” I asked, rejoicing in this chance to take a dig at the people who think my nickels aren’t worth taking.
“Huh?” said the startled bum.
“It’s presidential year,” I assured him. “Things ought to be booming now.”
“Well, they ain’t,” said the bum. “I was over to the American Legion for a suit of underwear and they was fresh out of them.”
I went over to a lighted window and drew forth my change. I selected the brightest Canadian quarter I could find.
“Here,” said I.
He looked down at it eagerly. Then a look of disappointment. And he half-handed it back to me. But I was looking as dignified as possible, with my stomach out and a kind of three rousing British cheers and a tiger sort of look. At least that’s what it felt like from the inside. You never know what these things look like from the outside.
“Well?” I demanded.
“You haven’t a – you wouldn’t happen to have a -” he said, holding the quarter out, but gripping its edge firmly.
“No,” said I, “they’re too expensive.”
“Well,” said he, taking another half-warm, half-cold look at the shining King’s head, “thanks very much anyway.”
And while I stood resenting that “anyway” right down to my boot heels the bum faded into the night.
I suppose he was at the Ar-gawn!3
Embarrassing a Customs Man
The only person I really gypped in Buffalo, outside of the telephone company, whose telephone booths take Canadian dimes as readily as American, was the little cigarette girl at the hotel, who walks around the dining rooms and corridors carrying a tray of cigarettes. I can’t smoke those American cigarettes. They taste to me as if the cigarette industry was trying to help out the American farmer.
But I beckoned the girl and took a package of those well-known cigarettes that are basted, sunburned and fricasseed.
And I handed her a Canadian quarter. Her highly burnished fingers at once detected the fraud.
“I can’t take this!” said she. “It’s on’y worth tway-unty say-unts!”
“Well,” said I, “here’s a Canadian nickel. That makes it even, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” said she and went innocently on her way.
But I had done her wrong.
The exchange rate that day, broadcast by the banks throughout the city of Buffalo, was 17 per cent., and 17 per cent. of 30 cents is 5 point 1 cents. So I had really only given. her 24 point 9 cents for a 25-cent package of cigarettes.
I felt bad for a little while. But later I gave the smokes away to a bellboy who had a very bad cough, so I figured I was even with my conscience.
It remained for Canada, however, to do the job to a royal and ancient finish.
I had a pair of stockings, $1.65, and a little baby girl’s padded pink kimono, $2.95, with me when I drove back over to the Canadian side.
The customs man asked if I had anything to declare, so out of my hip pocket where I had so carefully hidden them I drew the stockings and out of the inner lining of the car cushion I drew the kimono.
“Yes, sir,” said I to the shocked and embarrassed customs man.
And what do you think that arithmetician did?
First he added the two bills together, to $4.60.
Then he added the exchange, 17 per cent., to bring the amount I had spent to Canadian money, total $5.38.
And then he proceeded to figure the duty on that amount.
“Don’t you birds allow a man to bring home a couple of little gifts like this?” I demanded in a hurt tone. “That pink thing is for a dear little girl that would be just heart broken if I didn’t bring her home something. And anyway, after being gypped all over Buffalo, now you go adding what I was gypped on to what you are going to collect. Gee, you birds are trying to run yourselves out of a job. Pretty soon there won’t be any Canadians crossing over the border and then you will have to go back to the gas station.”
I think my act of pulling those two items of contraband out of their hiding places really softened this hard guy’s heart.
“Are they gifts?” he asked, with tears in his voice.
“One for my wife and the other for my dear little daughter, who would just -“
“Away you go!” commanded the customs man. Anyway, it was a pretty cold day to do figuring with a little stump of pencil with numb fingers.
Maybe you thought when I started this story that I was going to explain in some sort of Queen and Yonge street way the mystery of exchange. But that isn’t the idea. It is just a day in Buffalo, with the little things that happen to a Canadian’s pride and an American’s patience.
And while the lords of finance stir their mystic witches’ cauldron – out of which the lords of finance doubtless take something nice and juicy – the Yanks and the Canucks break about even.
Anyway, next summer when the little American shinplasters start rolling into these parts once more, let’s be good sports.
Let’s accept them at par.
Editor’s Notes:
- Economics was complicated during the Great Depression, as politicians tried all sorts of solutions. A History of the Canadian Dollar, indicates some of the challenges. The Canada-U.S. exchange rate was basically at par for years (except for briefly after World War 1), so having to deal with exchange rates was something new. ↩︎
- This was one of President Herbert Hoover’s attempts at relief in 1931. ↩︎
- This is a slang term for Argonne, a reference to the Meuse–Argonne offensive at the end of World War 1. Unemployed former soldiers were a symbol of the times, so Greg is implying that he was a veteran. ↩︎
This is a semi-recurring gag that I just don’t get.