Tag: 1932 Page 1 of 5

Easy Come

On October 18, 2025

***I started to count out my money when another salesman appeared around the end of the rack and stood looking at us with arms folded***

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 15, 1932.

“Jimmie,” I said to Jim Frise, “lend me a couple of dollars till Friday.”

“I’m sorry,” replied Jim, “but I’ve been buying so many bargains lately that I’m broke.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “what I wanted the two dollars¹ for was to buy a hat I saw. A swell hat for two dollars. Gosh, I’m scared to look in the windows these days.”

“Listen,” said Jim, “buy everything you can. Prices are going up. I looked at a mattress for twelve dollars on Monday and on Tuesday it was up to fourteen ninety-five.”

“Boy! Do you mean the depression is lifting?”

“It certainly is,” said Jim. “And it won’t be the bankers and business men who will see it first, either. It will be us artists and poets.”

“As usual,” said I. “Give me some examples.”

“Well,” said Jim, “my family is buying two kinds of tooth-paste again. And they are buying it when there is still at least three good squeezes of tooth-paste left in the old tube.”

“It’s those little things that start the avalanche,” said I.

“During the past eighteen months,” said Jim, “I have become so used to being bumped by the car behind that I don’t even look in the mirror. But, by golly, I haven’t been bumped into for a month. People are having their brakes fixed.”

“Yes?”

“My neighbor hasn’t borrowed my big lawn mower all summer for fear I would want to borrow his long-necked vacuum cleaner. Last week,” said Jim, “he came over and borrowed my lawn mower and I borrowed his vacuum cleaner!”

“People are loosening up,” said I. “What we ought to do, a couple of trained observers like us, is to go out and look for signs of the depression lifting.”

“That’s an idea,” said Jimmie.

So we quit work and went forth into the highways and byways.

We saw more new looking cars than old ones. The old ones were driven by people who six months ago couldn’t afford to drive them.

Between King and Adelaide, on the west wide of Bay, we counted forty-one cigarette butts and seven cigar butts. Not a snipe shooter² did we see all morning, and a year ago so busy were the snipers that a cigarette butt had hardly time to get cold before it was gone.

We saw a lot of old clothes on people, but they looked so comfortable.

From Wellington to Dundas we never met single panhandler.

And then we went into the stores. We went into a jewelry store and found twenty-one customers. We halted at the wrist-watch counter and waited. We bent over and looked eagerly at the watches. Still nobody paid any attention.

Then a gentleman walked up to us:

“May we serve you?” asked the gentleman.

“We were wondering…” began Jim.

“Mr. Perkins,” called the gentleman, with a wave of the hand. Mr. Perkins was at the next circle showing a lady about two hundred strings of beads. He nodded anxiously.

The gentleman said:

“Mr. Perkins will serve you in a moment.”

And then, turning from us, he sauntered down the aisle a few paces, halted and stood, with his hands behind his back, looking out at Yonge street.

“Isn’t that beautiful!” breathed Jimmie. “Just like 1928!”

“Last time I was in here,” said I, “I bought a string of pearls for a dollar and the managing director waited on me.”

“They’re Gettin’ Snooty Again”

Mr. Perkins hurried over to us.

“This Helluva watch at fifteen dollars,” said I; “I can get it elsewhere for thirteen-fifty.”

“That’s too bad for us,” smiled Mr. Perkins.

“Would you take thirteen-fifty?”

“The price is fifteen dollars,” said Mr. Perkins, edging away.

I stuck out my lower lip and shook my head, in the 1931 manner, and Mr. Perkins left us.

“My gosh,” gasped Jim. “The tide has turned!”

We walked through the big stores, and saw incredible bargains: blankets that used to cost fifteen dollars selling for six, suits of clothes selling for the price of a motor rug³, boots selling for the price of the roses we took our girls in 1927.

We came to a fur store.

“Furs,” said Jimmie. “Let’s go in here.”

We walked amongst aisles of fur, black, brown, grey, red, lovely, soft, glowing, lustrous.

“When hot times come again,” said Jim, “I’m going to have an otter collar on my motoring coat.”

“I’m going to have a whole coon coat,” said I, “regardless of public opinion.”

We looked about, but nobody was coming.

“Maybe,” said Jim, “they have forgotten what people come into stores for.”

Salesmen and saleswomen were trying furs on young blonde girls and large elderly ladies with that slow, confidential air fur dealers use.

We stopped before a string of seal coats, looking at the price tags, but still nobody rushed at us and threw their arms around us.

“By golly, they are getting snooty again,” said Jim. “It’s the surest sign of all. I bet they even come late for work.”

Around the back of the hanging show case came a small dark man with a large nose.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he whispered, “lovely furs! Lovely prices!”

“This one’s not bad at $150,” said Jim, lifting the skirt of a dashing looking seal coat with a sort of flare to the skirt.

“Yes,” said the small man softly, “that’s a nice piece.”

He lifted it down and spread it out for us.

“I bet that was worth more than $150 a couple of years ago,” said I.

“Four hundred wouldn’t have bought it,” said the small man. “And at that, the price shown here is on time payments. I can let you have it for far less for cash.”

“How much?”

“Fifty dollars⁴,” whispered the little man dramatically.

“You’re fooling!” I exclaimed.

“Fifty dollars,” he repeated. “Cash.”

“But how can you do it?”

“Good times are coming,” explained the salesman. “Our idea is to keep our stock moving. Get the shops working again. Get the factories going. Sell at any old price. Fifty dollars for this swell piece!”

I looked at Jim. Jim looked at me. It was the chance of a lifetime. Any of our wives or children would look good in this lovely seal…

“I have a cheque,” said I. “I could scrape up the money by to-morrow.”

“Sorry, mister,” said the small man. “We have been gypped so often we never take cheques unless we know you.”

“I could identify myself,” said I.

“Have you got another coat like this at that price?” asked Jim.

“Sure,” said he, rummaging in the rack and producing another. “This one gees at sixty, cash.”

A saleslady came into view and drew near us.

“We’ll take a good look before we decide,” said the little man loudly, and we realized he was driving the saleslady away for fear she would try to horn in on the sale. She strolled on.

“Now, couldn’t you gentlemen,” said the small man, “go and get the cash and I will hold these till you come back?”

“Jim,” I said, “if the depression is lifting this is the chance of a lifetime to get the girls a real fur coat at a ridiculous price.”

“We’d better bring the girls down to-morrow,” said Jim.

“Sorry,” said the salesman, “but these prices end to-day. All prices go up to-morrow. I tell you what: take the coats and then exchange them if they don’t fit. That closes the deal and you get the same coat to-morrow at to-day’s price. We’re marking these up to $200 to-night!”

“Jimmie!” I said.

Some Wonderful Bargains

Another salesman came around the bend leading a couple of ladies. They picked up the coats we had been looking at. We heard the salesman describe them, quote $150, and one of the ladies tried one on. It looked great. But he never offered a cut in price. When he had gone on I said:

“He didn’t offer them any cut.”

“I gave him the wink,” said the salesman.

“I suppose you gents want these bargains.”

“Jim,” said I, “let’s take them.”

“Come on,” said Jim. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

So we went back to the office and after visiting several people and trying here and there and collecting a few small debts we scraped up fifty dollars apiece.

“I’ll beat him down,” said Jim. “I got good at that during the depression.”

When we came near the fur store we saw our salesman standing out in front with his hat on.

When he saw us coming he came to meet us.

“I was just going to run out for a cup of coffee,” he said, “but I didn’t want to miss you. We’ll go ahead now and I’ll have the coffee later.”

We went back to the rack, past all the busy groups of buyers and sellers, and the little dark man put his hat down on a chair. He lifted down the coats again.

“I’ll give you fifty for that other coat,” said Jim. “Sold,” said he, without argument. Good times are coming.

We took a last look and feel, weighing the luscious garments in our hands.

“While you are taking a look,” said the salesman, “I’ll just take your money and ring up the sales and we can box them up later.”

I started to count out my money when another salesman appeared around the end of the rack and stood looking at us with arms folded.

“Before we decide,” said our salesman, “I’d like you to look at one more rack of coats over there, some wonderful bargains.”

He led us around the rack and down an aisle of furs and stopped in front of an array of gray lamb.

The other salesman was interested and followed. He again stood watching us.

“Well, well,” said our salesman, “where did I see those?”

And he led us another chase.

The other salesman followed.

“Here,” I said to our man, “take my money before I lose it.”

“Mum-mum-mum!” he exclaimed.

The other salesman stepped forward.

“Are you three gentlemen buying something?”

“We two are,” said I. “This salesman is looking after us, thank you.”

But our salesman had done a funny thing. He had vanished. The second salesman vanished, too. We heard excited voices, feet running. Then the new salesman, accompanied by several other people, came back to us.

“He got away,” they said. “Did you pay him anything?”

We gave the details.

“Well,” said the real salesman, “all I can say is he had a good eye for character.”

Jim and I are used to flattery. We got out as soon as convenient and walked back to the office.

“Now,” said I, “we can pay the boys back the money we borrowed.”

“No,” said Jim, sticking his hand in his pocket, “with good times just around the corner we will be able to pay them easier next week than this. Or the week after. I tell you, it feels good to have $50 dollars in your pocket.”

“It sure does,” said I, feeling mine. “By George, doesn’t a little money in hand make the world look a different place?”

“And with such bargains,” said Jim, “it’s good to have a little money to invest.”

So we started looking in the windows.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 16, 1940 as “Easy Go” (without some of the Depression references, which made it sound odd).

$2 in 1932 would be $44.50 in 2025. ↩︎
A snipe shooter in this context would be someone who picks up cigarette or cigar butts that are discarded to get a few extra puffs out of them. This was to be expected with the poor in the Depression. ↩︎
A motor rug is likely a blanket that you would keep in your car, as heaters were not included, and passengers could use it to keep warm. This was especially true for open cars (no roof) that were still very common at the time. ↩︎
$50 in 1932 would be $1,115 in 2025. ↩︎

The Rate Payers Hold Their Annual Picnic Over at Turtle Lake

by admin

On September 2, 2025

In Birdseye Center, Comic

A Rate Payers association is another name for a neighbourhood association that advocates for local issues. The Sea Flea is a small homemade motor boat popularized in Muskoka at this time.

A Day With Nature

by admin

On August 21, 2025

In Illustration, Miscellaneous

This illustration by Jim went with a story by John Herries McCulloch.

Night Life

by admin

On May 1, 2025

In Miscellaneous, Other Story

***Out came Griff bearing a full tray. The man was close on his heels.***

By Gregory Clark, May 7, 1932.

Although he loves Toronto for its pure drinking water, its fine schools, its beautiful department stores so close together that you can easily walk across the road from one to the other to compare the prices, every time the eminent Griffin comes home from a trip to New York, he is pretty hard to get along with for a week or so.

“The trouble with Toronto,” says he the ether day, “is it has no night life.”

“I never phoned you after ten o’clock at night,” said I, “that you weren’t in bed already.”

“Granted,” said Griff, “but what is the virtue in in going to bed in Toronto when there nothing else to do? Now, in New York, you get a wonderful sensation by going to bed at ten o’clock. You feel you are making a noble choice.”

“Oh, Toronto has its night life,” said I.

“Pah,” said Griff. “A couple of frowsy beaverboard dance halls out in the suburbs. Half a dozen soda fountains. A few all-night restaurants with the police standing looking through the plate glass windows.”

“I could show you something,” said I.

“What could you show me?”

“Oh, I could show you a few things,” said I. “Toronto isn’t so straight-laced as you think. There’s a quiet little night life going on in this town that would open your eyes.”

“What do you mean?” asked Griffin. “The monthly meeting of the Stamp Collectors’ Club? The Roller Canary Society? The Ward Four Conservative Club?”

“Just because you are a stay-at-home except when you go to New York,” said I, “is no reason for supposing that this town is dead. Now, a real man about town–“

“Sez you,” says Griff.

“Step out with me some night,” I retorted, a little angrily, I fear. “That is, if you’re not too sleepy.”

“How about to-night?” Griffin said quietly, with a level glare.

“I shall pick you up at ten o’clock,” said I. “Dress, dinner coat.”

“Right,” said Griff.

I realize now that we both called each other’s bluff and we should have known better. But the older the friends, the worse jams they get into.

During the afternoon I did a little quiet telephoning to some of my youthful acquaintances, and told them I had some friends up from New York that I would like to show about. Did they know of any high spots where we might go slumming? They didn’t. It was pretty late in the season. Most of the new places that opened up in November had failed by now and were in the receivers’ hands as usual. Hinky Dink’s out on the Kingston Road had been closed up on account of cockroaches or something, and the Live Oyster, out on the Hamilton Highway, had been taken over as a fruit market.

By six o’clock, I was in rather a sweat, and I had several of my younger brothers over for supper to draw me maps and charts.

“There’s a place over the other side of Hamilton,” said one of the young ones.

“Have you been there?” I demanded of the flaming youth.

“No, but I’ve heard about it,” said he. “I think it’s near Grimsby.”

“Isn’t there anything around town?” I begged. “How about Jarvis St.? There used to be some funny joints on Jarvis when I was at Varsity.¹“

“There have been big changes since the nineties²,” said the youngest one.

“Very well,” said I. “I can see you are merely deceiving me. I shall find out for myself.”

Heading For the Hot Spots

And I confess that when I picked Griffin up at ten o’clock, I had no information whatever to guide me in showing my doubting Thomas the night life of the tenth biggest city in America.

Griffin was obviously a little excited, although he tried to hide it.

“Well,” said he, settling himself back in the car, “if we had left it until August you might have taken me out to a lively corn roast out on Scarboro Heights. Or a month or so earlier, we might have gone skiing up at the Summit Golf Club.”

“Sit tight, boy,” said I, “it is early yet, but I’ll be showing you something shortly. Just for old-time’s sake, I am going to take you down into what we called the Ward a few years ago. I am going to drop in at Frascati’s. Did you ever hear of Frascati’s?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, sir, there was a joint! We students all frequented it, in the old days. I hear it is still going. Spaghetti, ravioli, insalata, anti-pasto, not to mention the odd bottle of Chianti and certain red wines–“

Griffin sat forward respectfully and began to help me to drive.

“Where is this place?” he asked.

“I’ll show you. Right in the Ward, almost beneath Big Ben.”

We wiggled around the Ward and I stopped in front of Frascati’s. Or where Frascati’s used to be. Just an old corner store, with shuttered windows, a homely restaurant. But it had a side door.

Except for a few children playing about at such an hour, the Ward was deserted. No light showed in Frascati’s. I approached the side door of my past, and after feeling in vain for a bell or knocker, I rapped with my knuckles.

A young man in shirt sleeves answered.

“Excuse me,” I said, “is this Frascati’s?”

“Whose?” said he.

“Is this Frascati’s, the restaurant?”

“You got the wrong number,” said the boy.

“This is Mrs. Frankenstein’s boarding house.”

Griffin cleared his throat back of me.

“Didn’t this used to be Frascati’s Italian restaurant?” I asked rather wistfully.

The boy turned and yelled:

“Oh, maw!”

“Yes,” answered a distant voice.

“Did this used to be Frascati’s restaurant?” yelled the boy.

“Yes,” called the faint voice, within.

“Yes,” said the boy, politely, to us in our dinner jackets at the door. “This used to be it.”

“Thank you,” said I.

The boy closed the door.

So we went back and got in the car.

“Now where?” asked Griff.

“That was just a cast in the direction of the past,” I assured him brightly. “Now we will head out for the night clubs, road houses and dance halls. You will not find the elite there. You will find the youth of the time, the gilded youth, the incandescent youth, and all that sort of thing. Later, as the evening ripens, I shall take you to the hot spots, where society diverts itself.”

“Yes,” said Griff, “this used to be it.”

I drove down to the lake front and out the highway. Past gas stations, tire depots, shoe repair shops, all brightly lighted, we drove, watching eagerly. The fruit stores were the gayest. We passed through Mimico and New Toronto. At Long Branch I got out and went into a cigar store.

“Are there any dance halls or road houses out this way?” I asked the sporty looking gent who was reading the Running Horse behind the counter.

“Up the side roads,” said he. “Up the side roads. I don’t know where they are exactly, but I’ve seen some suspicious looking characters driving up the side roads. Try some of the side roads.”

A Mysterious-Looking House

I selected a paved side road, and we drove into darker Ontario. The pavement ended and the mud began, and nothing in the nature of a road house appeared. We came to Dundas St. and turned back toward the city.

“What’s that?” asked Griffin suddenly. Sure enough, hidden back amongst the bushes was mysterious looking house with dim lights, and several cars parked on the drive.

I turned in. We dismounted and with beating hearts approached the front door.

“A sign said, “Chicken dinners.”

“I’m not hungry yet,” said Griffin. “That sign is just a blind,” said I. “Chicken dinners, haw!”

In answer to the bell, a middle-aged lady in a pretty blue uniform and white apron opened and ushered us in.

In the deserted hall was a hatrack with a straw hat and a raincoat on it.

No sound of revelry greeted us.

“Is there any dancing or anything?” I inquired.

“Oh, no, sir no dancing ‘ere. Just dinners.”

“Are there many here to-night?”

“No, sir, not at the moment, sir; but we I did ‘ave the loveliest bride and groom for tea.”

“The cars parked outside?”

“Ah, they belongs to the market gardeners who ‘ave the farm back of us ‘ere, sir. They live in that little shanty back there, sir.”

“Well, my friend and I were looking for a little excitement, and we thought there might be music and dancing. Do you know of any place along here where there might be dancing?”

“No, sir, unless there was some sort of do in the Community ‘All, sir; that’s at the second crossing further east.”

Griffin was pleasantly silent as we got back into the car and drove on to the highway. There was quite a procession of cars.

“There’s Toronto’s idea of night life,” said Griff. “Driving out the Dundas Highway³ and so to bed.”

“The hour is just approaching,” said I. “We’ll now head out the Kingston Highway⁴. I know of a spot or two out there.”

“Crumpets,” said Griff, “will be served at midnight, the witching hour.”

Across Bloor, out the Danforth, across that happy miles and miles of busy, easy, small city, with its Italian fruit stores, its flower stores, furniture, red cigar stores, with its throngs of late people, all busy going home from nowhere, we drove. You get a tremendous sense of Toronto if you drive, at 11 p.m., from the Humber to Scarboro, across the great Bloor-Danforth artery.

It was midnight when we struck the nose of the car out past the lonely seminaries on the remote fields.

The stores became fewer. The gas stations grew dingier. We were abroad.

“Let’s go to Whitby,” said Griff. “They have one fine institution there⁵. It ought to accommodate both of us, especially you.”

“I am just putting in time,” said I, “driving around looking for these road houses. You can understand, surely, that in Toronto, the road houses do not flaunt themselves. They take some finding.”

“True for you.”

Suddenly we rounded a curve, and there, gleaming with crafty lights, lay some sort of establishment. And out in front of it were parked at least a hundred cars.

“Ahhhhh!” said I, slowing, and wheeling into the mass of cars.

“Ruin My Place, Would You?”

As we turned our engine off we heard the strains of an orchestra and rowdy voices singing.

“Heh, heh!” I cried, slapping Griff on the back. “How’s this!”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Griff, cautiously. “I don’t like the sound of that singing. It sounds like Rotary to me.”

We walked up the lane that led toward the roadhouse.

A large man in his shirt sleeves, a huge, angry, towsel-headed man, was standing near the front door, watching us eagerly. I undid my overcoat and threw it back to show the boiled shirt to indicate that we were gentlemen in search of diversion.

“Yah!” howled the huge man, leaping toward us. “Where the — have you been!”

And seizing me with one hand and Griff with the other, he propelled us violently toward the side of the house and along a dark drive.

“What’s this, what’s this!” said Griffin, attempting to struggle.

“Arrrhhh!” snarled the big brute. “Ruin my place, would you! You’ll get it for this! I ought to beat you up.”

Griff says now that he thought discretion was the better part of night life, and that is why he did not battle the big guy. I have no excuses. I found out long ago that when two hundred pounds takes hold of one hundred, arbitration is the better course.

With rude violence, the big man shoved us, taken entirely off our guard, down the side drive to a door. The door was burst open and we found ourselves thrust unceremoniously into a huge steamy room, filled with the reek of cooking.

It was a kitchen. Half a dozen excited and bedraggled and perspiring men and women were struggling about it, some at stoves, some at tables. There was an air of frenzy about the room, frenzy in a fog of steam.

Aggrieved faces stared at Griff and me.

“Off with them coats!” commanded the big man violently. “Snap into it!”

He yanked my overcoat off and pitched my hat into a corner.

I had time to whisper to Griff, who was beginning to look Irish:

“This is a swell joint! They must do this to give you a thrill.”

Then the big man charged down on me and thrust about thirty plates, all in a heavy pile, into my arms.

“Get in there,” said he, “and get busy.”

He gave me a shove through a pair of swinging doors, and I found myself in a large room, where a hundred men, wreathed in tobacco smoke, were sitting at tables singing. An orchestra on a platform was playing. The tune was “School Days.”

My appearance was greeted with scattered cheers.

I grinned sheepishly at my fellow-revellers, and then a hoarse voice hissed in my ears:

“Lay them plates out!”

And obediently, starting at the nearest table, I began putting the plates down while the other guests, all heedless, roared the chorus of “Dear old golden rule days.”

As I worked along, I saw that except for the orchestra, I was the only person in a dinner coat.

Nobody paid the slightest attention, and then the door opened again, and in came Griffin, with a huge armful of plates. He stopped and looked at me, stared dazedly around the room, and with the big man at his ear, followed suit with me and began laying plates down.

Just a Natural Mistake

I tried to get over near Griff when I had run out of plates, but the big man, now wearing a black coat, glared threateningly at me and beckoned me toward the swinging doors.

“Look here,” I said to him as I passed, “what’s the big–“

He gave me a shove through the doors.

Just inside, a large dumb woman was standing with a huge tray covered with plates of soup. She held it out to me. I tried to go around her but she blocked my path with the tray.

“I couldn’t carry that,” I said apologetically.

“Take it,” she growled.

I took it. She held the swing doors open, and as I went out, Griff came in, and he said:

“What is this?”

“Just a minute,” I grunted, staggering out with the tray. The guests were now singing, “Pack All Your Troubles.”

I laid the soup down, plate by plate. It is really very simple. Your thumb gets soupy, but it isn’t at all difficult. In no time, I had cleared my tray. I dashed for the swing doors to get Griff privately. But out he came as I went in, bearing a full tray. The big man was close on his heels. He had a stove shaker in his hand.

Four trips with the soup, and then Griff and I coincided in the kitchen and I chased over to him.

“This is horrible,” said I.

“Hyaaah!” snarled the big man.

“Just a minute,” said Griff, resting his hand lightly and athletically on the back of a kitchen chair. “What’s the big idea?”

“Get in there and clear the soup plates,” shouted the big man.

“I tell you we will not!”

“I’ll….”

Griff swung the chair slightly.

“The Okay Employment Agency!” snarled the big man, lowering at us. “I don’t believe either of you lifted a tray before in your lives.”

“We are not waiters,” said Griff. “We are two citizens out to… well, we are two citizens.”

“What are you wearing them clothes for?” asked the big man, surveying our dinner coats contemptuously. “Anyway, you started the job. Now you’ve got to finish it.”

At that moment, the kitchen door opened and there stood two draggled gentlemen, above whose overcoat lapels peeped the black and white of servitude of celebration.

The big man charged at them. Griff and I picked up our coats and hats from the corner where they lay in a heap.

As we struggled into ours, the two newcomers were being helped rather strenuously out of theirs.

“Let’s get an apology from this big guy,” I said to Griff.

“He ain’t the apologizing kind,” said Griff. “Are you?”

“Gents,” said the big man, whirling on us, “my mistake. I ordered two waiters for ten o’clock to-night for this meeting of the Queen St. Old Boys’ Reunion, and when I seen you coming up the drive in the dark, why I… Why didn’t you tell me you wasn’t the waiters?”

Griffin, standing in that large steamy kitchen, drew himself up haughtily and looked the big man from toe to head. Then the two of us stalked from the kitchen. Out into the lane. Down to the car. I started her. We drove on to the highway. And then we started to laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” shouted Griffin.

“I’m laughing at us.” I gasped.

“Well,” said Griff, “I’m laughing at you. Night life!”

And he kept on laughing until I let him out at his house in North Toronto.

***Griff was still laughing when I let him out at his house in North Toronto.***

Editor’s Notes: This is another “proto-Greg-Jim Story, with Frederick Griffin as the partner.

Varsity is the University of Toronto. ↩︎
The 1890s when Greg was a student. ↩︎
Before highways were given route numbers, they referred to by the major cities they connected. The Dundas Highway would be Ontario Highway 5 now. ↩︎
The Kingston Highway, or Kingston Road was a part of the historic Ontario Highway 2 that was the principal route from Toronto to points east until Highway 401 was constructed. ↩︎
Here he is referring to the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, then known as the Ontario Hospital for the Insane. ↩︎

Streamlined!

by admin

On March 11, 2025

In Birdseye Center, Comic

Something for Christmas

by admin

On December 21, 2024

In Greg-Jim Story

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. ↩︎

Is This a Cow?

by admin

On November 21, 2024

In Miscellaneous, News Article

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. ↩︎