Tag: 1933 Page 1 of 6

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 9, 1933.

“How,” asked Jimmie Frise over the telephone the other evening, “do you like oysters?”

“Love them,” I replied.

“Come on over!” cried Jimmie. “Some- body has sent me a whole barrel of oysters from the maritimes.”

“In their shells?” I asked, excitedly.

“How else would they send them?” retorted Jimmie.

“Well,” I explained, “you see those jugs of naked oysters out in front of the grocery stores.”

“These are in the shells,” said Jimmie. “Come on over. I’ve selected about forty of the best ones and I’ve got them in the sink.”

“It’s only an hour since dinner,” I said, “but I’ll come over.”

There was Jim in his kitchen. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. And with a small brush he was scrubbing the shells of a sink full of the loveliest great big oysters you ever saw. Through the open back kitchen door I could see a huge barrel, foretelling feasts for nights, to come.

“Grab that other nail brush,” cried Jim, “take off your coat and lend a hand here. We’ve got to scrub them nice and clean under the tap first. And then we’ll open them up and we’ll each have a platter of twenty oysters in the ice box. How’s that?”

“Twenty is my lucky number in oysters,” I said, removing my coat.

With the cold tap running merrily and Jim and I scrubbing the coarse, rugged shells of the oysters, our appetites began to stir, even though it was only a little after eight o’clock.

“I wonder,” said Jim, “who the intrepid hero was who first ate an oyster?”

“It was likely one of our cave-men ancestors,” I said, “because eating oysters is as old as the hills. They find heaps of oyster shells in the ruins of ancient cities, and even in the caves in which primitive man dwelt.”

“Maybe,” said Jimmie, holding up and polishing a particularly huge oyster, “it was eating oysters that started man on the upward climb from the half gorilla to what we are to-day.”

“Perhaps we ought to feed oysters to those of us that are still gorillas,” I suggested.

Oysters Not Prepossessing

“Still,” said Jim, speculatively, “I’d like to know how the very first man came to eat an oyster, because, until you get to know an oyster, it isn’t a very prepossessing creature. You don’t feel drawn toward an oyster at first sight as you do toward a roast partridge.”

“I reckon,” I said, as I scrubbed a nice fat-shelled one, “that some poor starving cave man, or maybe it was a poor starved cave girl, was walking along the sea shore one day and she saw the sea birds digging the oysters out of the mud, when the tide was down, and dropping them from a height on to the rocks and then gobbling the cold, salty oysters when the shell broke. Probably, if it was a poor starved cave girl, she shuddered and closed her eyes as she gulped down the first one. Then, opening her eyes in astonishment and joy, she dashed down to the beach and grabbed huge armfuls of oysters, and rushed back to the rocky shore and cracked them open and guzzled them down. I bet one thing, and that is that the first person ever to eat an oyster probably holds the world’s record for the number eaten at one sitting.”

“I bet she was a nice girl,” mused Jimmie.

And when she returned to the cave,” I went on, “all swollen up with oysters, and beginning to look more beautiful already, everybody, caveman and cavewoman, began wondering at the marvellous improvement in her. Day by day, as she continued to eat her new-found food, she grew lovelier, her chin got bigger, the coarse hair all over her began to moult off, and inside of a year, she was walking upright all the time. Hardly ever walking on all fours.”

“The beginning,” said Jim, scrubbing away.

“And then the secret was out, and the whole cave colony started eating oysters, crying ‘oy, oy,’ hence the name oysters,” I recounted. “And this tribe became so strong and powerful that they conquered all the surrounding tribes. Of course, this is ages ago, Jimmie. Long before history began. But each tribe they conquered, they introduced to oysters, and so began the rise of man from a mere meat-eating beast to an oyster-eating epicure.”

“Let’s,” said Jimmie, “scrub up a few more. You could eat thirty, couldn’t you?”

“Make it the even three dozen,” I suggested.

So Jimmie went out to the barrel and dug out another heap of oysters for the sink.

“It’s a long cry,” said Jim, as we started in scrubbing the new lot, “from the cave-men sitting in the tidal mud guzzling oysters to shipping a barrel of oysters a thousand miles, in a refrigerator car, to the descendants of the cave-men standing beside fresh running water out of a tap, in a modern kitchen.”

“Lit with electricity,” I said.

“And with a mechanical ice box to chill them,” said Jim. “But isn’t it funny how few new things to eat we have discovered? I guess our ancestors were great explorers in the realm of food, even if they didn’t discover North America until just lately.”

“With my delicate stomach,” I said, “I shudder to think of some of the things my ancestors must have eaten.”

“Or tried to eat,” added Jim.

It was now nine o’clock.

“Well,” said Jim, gazing fondly at the huge pile of beautifully scoured oysters heaped on the drain board beside the sink, “let’s open them.”

“Where’s your oyster knife?” I asked.

“I’ve no oyster knife,” said Jim. “I got a couple of screw drivers. They’ll do.”

He produced two screw drivers, a short one and a long one, from the pantry drawer. And he laid out two large platters on the kitchen table.

“No cheating now,” said Jim. “Take them as they come, large and small. And we’ll each fill our own platter.”

I picked up a chubby one. I looked for a good place to insert the screw driver. But an oyster is a very deceitful creature. Instead of having one clear-cut crack down its side, it has itself concealed with a half a dozen or more cracks, each one of which looks like the right one.

I shoved. Scraped. Tried here. Tried there.

“H’m,” said Jimmie. I looked at him, and he was standing over under the kitchen. light, narrowly examining his oyster.

“They’re awfully tight, aren’t they?” he said.

“It’s a trick,” I explained. “Once you find the hinge, it’s nothing to open them. I’ve seen a good oyster bartender open a dozen in two minutes. Just like that.”

“Have you ever opened any yourself?” asked Jimmie.

“I seem to have,” I said, “but I can’t recall.”

“Your unconscious memory, from your cave men ancestors,” said Jim, laying his oyster down and coming over to watch me. I laid the oyster down on the drain board, pressed with all my weight on one hand, while I gouged with the screw driver.

“Try the other side,” suggested Jim.

I turned it over and tried the other side.

The screw driver slipped and I gave myself a nasty gouge on the hand I was pressing with.

“Ouch!”

Jim got the iodine and some gauze upstairs and bandaged my left hand.

“I’ll get the hang of it,” said Jimmie, taking my place at the drain board.

He took a fresh oyster. It had a more innocent look than the first one. Jim studied it. He placed the screw driver against the most vulnerable point. He shoved. He twisted. He wiggled and jabbed.

“Ouch,” said Jimmie. He had cut himself. So I bandaged him.

“What we need,” I said, “is an oyster knife.”

So Jim went to the hall and telephoned half a dozen neighbors, but none of them had an oyster knife.

Jim came back and with the screw driver, he chipped off the edge of a new oyster, a still more childish and smooth-faced one. And then he peered along the chipped edges. But there was no sign of any relaxation.

It was now nine-twenty o’clock.

“If we are going to have an oyster supper,” said Jimmie, “we ought to get busy and open some of these.”

“It was your suggestion,” I reminded him.

Bending down and jamming the oyster firmly against the corner of the wall and the drain board, Jim inserted the screw driver, and slowly, relentlessly, he shoved and twisted the blade of the tool at the place in the oyster shell where there is a kind of hollow.

“Nnnhhh!” he grunted.

The screw driver slipped. Jim’s hand slammed up against the corner, with the oyster and screw driver hopelessly mixed up in the collision. And there was another hunk of skin off his one good hand.

“Bandage me,” said Jim. “Now I’m out of action!”

So while Jim stood by with two bandaged hands, I, with my remaining hand, decided to approach the problem with intellect rather than with physical force.

I sorted through the pile of oysters, seventy-two of them, all scrubbed and ready for the feast, until I found one that seemed the silliest, goofiest, Oliver Hardy¹ sort of an oyster in the whole heap.

Placing it in the corner of the drain board, with its back to the wall, I crept the screw driver into its hinge, and with a slow, prying pressure, I suddenly got a slight squirt of juice out of the edge.

“Hurray!” I shouted.

Another pry and twist.

And there, in its pearly glory, lay the, oyster, open and above board.

We beamed on it. We held it under the light. We smelled it. Boy, how cool and lovely it smelt!

“Let’s eat it right now,” said Jim, “to give us courage!”

“How could we both eat one oyster?” I exclaimed, scornfully.

“You take that round fat bit,” said Jim, “and I’ll take the ears, or whatever that crinkly part is.”

“Nothing doing,” I stated. “I eat an oyster whole. You won’t catch me dissecting any oyster. I’ve got the hang of it now, and in no time I’ll have the platters filled.”

But I was sanguine. I had to pass up three more before I got another one open. And after I got it laid bare, five more defied me before the accident happened.

It was very brief and simple. My hand slipped. And there was I with my right hand cut, too. And Jimmie was bandaging it, after a dash of iodine.

“Now,” said Jim, “where do we go? We’re both out of action.”

Because, really, you can’t open oysters with your hands wrapped up like a hobo’s feet in winter. “Let’s eat these two to start with, anyway.”

So Jim ate one and I the other, with careful and delicate applications of lemon juice, salt, pepper and ketchup.

“Mmmmm,” we said. Glurp. Plop. The oysters were ours.

We both tried to continue the opening, with our bandaged hands, but somehow we were too clumsy.

The Original Way

“I tell you,” cried Jimmie. “Let us resort to the ancient and original way of opening them. The way our cavemen ancestors, the discoverers of oysters, did!”

“How’s that?” “With a hammer!” said Jim. “They used rocks. But we’ve got hammers. Don’t tell me there isn’t some advance in civilization.”

So Jim got a hammer and a big heavy monkey wrench.

We laid the oysters on the drain board. But that only made big ugly nicks in the wood, and he was afraid his wife might complain.

“In the cave days,” explained Jim, “what a wife thought didn’t matter.”

He went outside and brought in two bricks, which we washed thoroughly, and then, squatting down on the kitchen floor, like the men of old must have done along the tidal shores, Jim and I proceeded to open oysters. It is not, I might say, the correct way. After hitting the oyster eight or ten times too lightly, you hit it one awful smash too hard, and there you have oyster squashed all over the brick, with broken shell imbedded in it.

After half an hour’s pounding, which caused neighbor’s dogs to howl and no doubt a lot of the neighbors to come and peer out their back windows, Jim had five oysters that were recognizable as such, and I had four. Of course, they weren’t on the half shell. We had to pick up the remains as best we could and carry them to the tap and wash off the brick dust and pick out the shell fragments. And then we put them in a tumbler. So to all intents. and purposes, we had those naked oysters such as you see in front of the grocery stores.

Anyway, such as it was, we held our oyster supper, after putting the rest of the seventy-two back in the barrel.

They went pretty good, too, although there was a mild flavor of iodine, and some slight trouble with shell splinters, and if there is any trick trickier than holding an oyster in your mouth while you feel around for a shell splinter with a bandaged hand, I don’t know it.

“This proves one thing,” said Jimmie, as we sat back from the feast. “And that is, we aren’t the men our ancestors were.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Every man to his trade. All we’ve got to do is go and take a few lessons from some chef.”

“From what I’ve seen of the art of opening oysters,” said Jim, “I imagine it is a life’s work. Maybe they have high-paid officials in the restaurants. Oyster openers. With fancy costumes. Maybe oyster opening is one of those family secrets, handed down from father to son.”

“It’s quite an art,” I said, imagining I felt a sharp stab inside of me from a splinter I had not detected.

“The problem is,” said Jim, “what am I going to do with all that barrel full of oysters?”

“You’ve got a lot of friends,” I reminded him. “They would just love a couple of dozen oysters, fresh from the sea.”

“I guess that’s the solution²,” said Jimmie.

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Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on February 17, 1940 as “Sea Shells”.

1. Of the famous Laurel and Hardy duo. ↩︎
2. Or just buy an oyster knife… ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 24, 1933.

“Jimmie,” I said, “this Hitler business in Germany ought to teach us a lesson.”¹

“Which way?”

‘Well, you never can tell when people will get tired of things the way they are and suddenly turn everything upside down and the first thing you know somebody will be trying to make you and me drink castor oil because of our beliefs. Or they will invade our houses and squeeze our fingers in the door crack. Or beat us up.”

“Wouldn’t we be on the other side?” asked Jim.

“Oh, no, we’re capitalists,” I said. “We live by our wits.”

“What is the lesson?” asked Jim.

“The lesson Hitler teaches,” I said, “is that in times like this, every man ought to know the principles of self-defence. Every man ought to be able to take care of himself, quietly, neatly and efficiently.”

“I have two shotguns and one rifle,” said Jim.

“No, no!” I cried. “Guns are too noisy. And anyway, you would soon run out of shells. I am talking about boxing. The manly art.”

“At our age?” asked Jim scornfully.

“I’m not talking about making money at it,” I explained. “I am merely suggesting that we ought to take lessons in boxing, so as to know where to hit a guy so it hurts. Right now, if I got into an argument, all I would do would be clinch.”

Jim looked at me with one of those poker face expressions he assumes when he is having a funny idea.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a few boxing lessons,” he said. “With you.”

So we asked Lou Marsh² where we could. find a gentlemanly prize-fighter who would teach us the rudiments of fighting.

“What’s the matter?” asked Lou. “Is somebody’s brother laying for you?”.

“Oh no, just exercise,” we said. So Lou telephoned a fellow named Harry “Dirty Neck” Mulligan, who kept a small gymnasium in the cellar of his house on Berkeley St., and arranged for us to take our first lesson the next evening.

“Do we need to buy costumes?” we asked Lou.

“Oh, no. Just strip to your shorts,” said Lou.

Dirty Neck Mulligan was not a big, thick, short-necked man with a pug face, as we expected. He was a slim, foreign-looking young man with what appeared to be two glass eyes. Their expression never changed. He was pale and dead looking. He spoke with a cold in his head, and invited us down cellar.

“Gents,” he said, ‘to-night we will learn the position first. Just stand opposite each other, put your left foot forward balance easily on both feet, and now take this position with your arms.”

And he stood in the boxer’s pose, weaving and swaying with a curious snake-like rhythm. We imitated him.

“Youse Guys are Soft”

For ten minutes he explained positions, and lectured us on the broad general principles of defence.

“You must practise this position all week,” said Dirty Neck. “Get your waist muscles loosened up. Sway. Stretch. Get on your toes. Youse guys are pretty old, but I think I can make youse at least a couple of imitations.”

Jim and I practised shadow boxing at each other, but of course, not touching.

“Another thing,” said Dirty Neck, “youse guys have got to get used to being hurt and not minding. Just let me show youse a thing or two here.”

He squared off in front of Jimmie.

“Now,” said Dirty Neck, “see if you can stop me hitting you. It won’t hurt.”

Jim put up his guard. Dirty Neck just flicked out one hand, there was a loud slap and Jim fell back against the cellar wall with a look of astonishment on his face.

“Now, you,” said Dirty Neck, dancing in front of me.

“Easy, there,” I said, putting up my arms which seemed to have become as thin as soda straws as I waved them all over in front of me, wishing I had arms like a centipede. I didn’t see anything. I just felt a stinging slap on my jaw and I joined Jim against the cellar wall.

We got dressed. We paid Dirty Neck a dollar apiece³ and practically without a word, we went up and got in the car and drove away.

About six blocks off, Jim said:

“I didn’t see it.”

“It was his open hand,” I said.

“If he can teach us to do that,” said Jim, “and with our fist closed, we could knock a man six feet off the ground.”

“I never felt anything like it in my life,” I admitted. “It didn’t hurt. It just was sort of numb.”

“That’s it,” said Jim. “Numb.”

All week, Jim and I went turn about to each other’s cellar after dinner and in our underwear practised positions, shadow boxed and limbered up our waist line, and then we went back to Dirty Neck’s for our next lesson. He had a little fellow about my size there who looked as if he had been through a stone crusher at some time or other.

“Meet Mr. McGiverin,” said Dirty Neck. So McGiverin took me and Dirty Neck took Jimmie and with gloves on we boxed slow motion, each position being explained, each blow, each place to hit for, while at the same time, covering up with the other forearm.

“Youse guys,” said Dirty Neck, “are soft. Between now and the next lesson, you got to do some road work. Every night, you got to go down to Sunnyside and run a mile.”

The evening ended with McGiverin, with his mouth slightly open showing his broken teeth, batting me all over the cellar while Dirty Neck slapped Jimmie up against all the walls of the cellar and finally punching him, laughingly, into the coal bin.

“Just a little work-out,” explained Dirty Neck as he helped Jimmie to his feet, and as McGivvern sat me down on a box to stop the whirling.

Jim and I religiously got up at 6 a.m. all week and did a fast half hour walk. And after dinner, we went down and alarmed all the beachcombers at Sunnyside by running steadily from the Humber to the Exhibition Grounds.

The next lesson, Dirty Neck and McGiverin, whose first name was Boo, on account of the reception he used to get when he was in the fighting business, gave us another lesson and then faced Jim and me off to each other, they acting as seconds.

“He’s got the reach on me,” I protested.

“Work for the body,” said Boo. “If youse guys are learning the art of self-defence, you won’t always be matched with a guy your own weight, will youse?”

We admitted that. And squared off.

Jim spotted me several on the beezer, as they call the nose and I socked him several just where his ribs curve up to join on his chest.

Then, second round, Jim made one of those short, snappy punches straight out, and I happened to be wiping my nose with my mitt, the way the experts do, so this punch slid off sideways, hurt my eye severely and sort of snapped my head backwards. I was dazed for an instant, and then I got mad.

“Git mad!” hissed Boo, as I staggered back.

But I was already that way.

I crept at Jimmy and wove around him, watching for an opening. Jim had a queer grin on his face. It irritated me. I aimed at the grin and before it got there I felt something catch me low down and lift me in the air. Boo caught me, and when I got my breath back, I shouted:

“He kicked me!”

Dirty Neck just laughed.

“With a nice one to the body,” he sneered.

“Git mad!” hissed Boo, steadying me on my feet.

“How do you think I am?” I snarled.

I made a rush at Jim and swung for his body, to give him the same as he gave me. Jim landed two quick ones on my mush, and I was pushed back as if he had shoved me. Again Boo steadied me.

“Don’t swing,” he said.

I pulled myself together and crouched down. I circled around Jim, who was leaning back, his arms weaving.

I made a feint at his middle and was just drawing back to sock him, when everything stopped, darkness fell, I was swept softly and sweetly away on a sort of cushion, and the heavens were filled with bright stars and music seemed to fill the firmament.

When I came to, Jim and Dirty Neck and Boo were all kneeling around me, slapping me with wet towels.

“Ah,” I said.

“Sorry,” said Jim. “Gee, I’m sorry!”

“It’s all in the game,” said Dirty Neck.

“Sure, it’s all in the game,” I repeated, and it was quite a lot of trouble to smile. But I was a good fellow. I reassured Jimmie that it was quite all right and that next time I would put him to sleep.

When we got home, I had a black eye. and my wife was very angry with me. We had several engagements the next few nights and how could we keep them now? I stayed home from the office next day and my eye got green, my body felt as if I had been blown up by a shell, my head ached and I had all day to sit there and think about Jimmie.

That night I telephoned to Dirty Neck and asked him to get McGiverin to give me a ring. McGiverin called on the phone later and I explained the scheme to him.

“You get here about seven o’clock,” I said. “Jimmie will arrive about seven-thirty.”

I called Jim and asked him to come over and have a workout next evening. McGiverin arrived at seven and I took him down cellar and hid him in behind the furnace.

Jim came about eight-fifteen, which is the best seven-thirty he ever did in his life, and we sat around while he explained to me how sorry he was he knocked me out. A big fellow like him.

We boxed a little, friendly, and shadow-boxed and took it easy until it began to get dark.

“Jimmie, I said, “the great thing we are trying to do, after all, is not to learn prize-fighting, but to learn how to look after ourselves in case of trouble.”

“We’re learning,” said Jim.

“Well, here we are shadow-boxing and sparring. But just for fun,” I said. “let’s turn the lights out and have a tussle in the dark. You have got the advantage of me in size, but with the lights out we could see how far we’ve got in the business of taking care of ourselves.”

Be Sure Your Gang’s With You

To my delight, Jimmie agreed at once. He seemed eager for it.

“It’s just a little variety,” I explained, as I went out of the fruit cellar into the hall to turn off the switch. And to give McGiverin the signal.

I turned off the light and opened the furnace cellar door. McGiverin leaped out and I led him back into the pitch-dark fruit cellar. I proposed to wait at the door until McGiverin went in and found Jimmie and then I could lean up against the door and listen to the fun.

But as I reached the door I got a stinger right on the nose.

“Hey!” I cried. “Not so sudden, Jimmie. Wait until we both get in the room and I say ready, go.”

“Oh, all right,” said Jim, in the dark.

“Ready, go!” I called, leaping for the door.

I heard a couple of grunts and a thud, and then I felt an arm go around my neck in the dark and I was yanked right into the middle of the fruit cellar. I got down on my knees and started to crawl for the door again when two arms got me under the arms and hoisted me to my feet and I was sent staggering into the corner with a jolt on my chest. And all the while the room was fairly hissing with thuds, grunts, sniffs and the other music of the manly art.

“Hey!” I hissed, to give McGiverin the sign that he was busy with the wrong man.

And as I hissed a glove socked me right on my sore eye.

So I started to punch in all directions. Every punch hit something and every punch I got spun me the length of the cellar. I could hear thuds and gasps, I was pushed over, stepped on, punched, hoisted, and I realized something had gone terribly wrong.

In the midst of it all, as I tried to get my directions so as to reach the hall and turn on the light, I heard a creak and a groan and then an awful, long-drawn-out crash as the fruit shelf collapsed and about a hundred jars of pickles, fruit and preserves landed on the cellar floor.

I got to the hall. I snapped on the light.

And there was Jim amidst the crockery.

And there was Boo McGiverin sitting on the floor.

And there, standing in the middle of the room, his lean chest heaving, and his two glass eyes fixed on Boo McGiverin, stood Dirty Neck Mulligan.

“Dirty Neck!” I cried.

“You bum!” said Boo from the cellar floor.

We heard feet running upstairs, so I knew we would be in trouble in a few seconds.

“Grab your clothes,” I cried, leading for the cellar stairs.

We got out the alley and into Jim’s car. We drove around the corner and then parked under a street lamp. We still had our gloves on and four of us were half-dressed and panting and sniffing.

“Double crossed,” said I.

“I figured it out,” said Dirty Neck, proudly. “When you called up for McGiverin I telephoned Mr. Frise, and he and I figured what you were up to.”

“I didn’t think you would offer to fight in the dark,” said Jim. I thought you would accidentally break the light or have the power go off.”

“So Dirty Neck?”

“Dirty Neck was waiting at the top of the cellar stairs,” said Jim, “with instructions to come down the minute the light went out.

“Well,” I said, “my eye is closing again.”

“Sorry,” said McGiverin. “That was me that done that. When I found it was a pro beating on me I thought you had framed me.”

“The lesson of this,” said Jim, at the wheel, “is if Hitlerism ever gets going here make sure you got your gang with you.”

 And they let me out at my side drive to go back and peek through the fruit cellar window.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. At the time of this article, Adolf Hitler had become German chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire, and the Enabling Act was enacted giving the Nazis absolute control. Obviously Greg and Jim had no idea what this would lead to. ↩︎
2. Lou Marsh was the Toronto Star’s Sports editor at the time. ↩︎
3. $1 in 1933 would be $23 in 2025. ↩︎

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

“Marlene Dietrich,” said Jim Frise, “has taken to wearing men’s clothes, hats, trousers, everything.”

“She looks lovely,” said I. “I saw her picture in The Star.”

“That’s the point,” said Jim. “She looks lovely. She dresses up like a man, but she only looks like a pretty woman dressed up in men’s clothes.”

“Well, what of it?” said I.

“If she dressed like a man and looked like a man there would be some point to her dressing funny. I don’t see,” said Jim, “that we should pay any attention to her when she still just looks like a woman.”

“You don’t understand human nature,” said I.

“Of course I do,” cried Jim. “If Marlene Dietrich dressed up like a man and looked like a man there would be some point in printing her picture all over the country.”

“Well, anyway, she couldn’t,” said I.

“I bet,” said Jim, “I could dress up like a woman and really look like one.”

“With a wig and a lot of powder and paint,” I admitted.

“No, no,” said Jim. “I mean I could just put on a woman’s clothes and one of those tin pot hats they wear and I could walk through the streets and everybody would think I was a woman.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Listen,” said Jim, “I bet you $5¹ we could both do it.”

Which is a double-edged kind of a bet!

I offered to be his gentleman friend if Jim would dress up and walk down Bay street with me. But Jim thinks we never get the full flavor out of an adventure unless we both take part in it.

Over on Queen street west Jim found a store where they had hundreds and hundreds of women’s second-hand coats and hats and dresses where the gentleman in charge would gladly rent us an outfit for an afternoon for $1 each and a deposit of $10.

So after lunch Jim and I crept off to Queen street west and in the back room of this strange and jumbled store changed into ladies’ clothes.

Jim selected a green cloth coat with fur collar, a small brown hat that pulled down well over his head, a kind of shapeless old Jersey dress of a color neither gray nor brown. I think the owner said it was booge. We decided to keep on our own underwear and socks.

“How about shoes?” I asked. “I wouldn’t try to walk in those high-heeled things.”

“Come on,” said Jim; “they would add to your height.”

“Do I Look Like a Lady?”

I chose an old fur coat, imitation seal, a red dress that was long enough to hide rather noisy socks, and a beautiful hat. It did not pull down over my head like a pillowslip on a pillow. It sat well up. It had plumes and flowers on it and was a little large, perhaps, for the present day pancake style. But it gave me a certain dignity.

The only shoes I could find that I felt safe in, with high heels, were a little shabby. In fact, when I stood in front of the mirror I looked a little like a cartoon in Punch of a lady from Limehouse².

“Now,” said the owner of the store, “gents, if there was only a public meeting for you to break up–“

“Do I look like a lady?” asked Jim.

“You certainly do,” said the owner. “All you need is some sort of handbag.” And he gave Jim a large parcel carrier of black oilcloth trimmed with red.

After a little practice walking up and down the store in the wobbly shoes and parading in front of the old mirror in the back room, Jim and I decided to go to the big department stores and do a little shopping.

Out on Queen street there were Chinese, Macedonians, cigarette-butt-picker-uppers, old men with beards, urchins, ladies of color³. But nobody paid us the compliment of a glance.

My feet were chilly and as I don’t wear garters I felt my socks slipping down a little on my underwear⁴, and I feared the dignified effect of the large hat and the seal coat was somewhat spoiled by a dowdy appearance at the extremity. The pavement was wet and the old shoes flip-flopped on the pavement. But old Jimmie was beautiful. He strolled along with little steps, pausing to look in the windows, and he never made the mistake even of looking at a cigar store window or a pet shop. He spent three minutes peering into a lingerie window.

“This is the first time,” said Jim, “I have ever had a real look in one of these windows.”

“I ought to step in and get a pair of garters,” I mumbled to him.

Farther along Queen, as we neared the department stores, a gentleman who was slightly brewed⁵ swayed over toward us. “Get out o’ me way!” he growled, hilariously.

Jim and I drew ourselves up the way ladies do and glared at him.

“You look like my wife,” said the gentleman, mildly astonished.

“Which of us?” asked Jim in a high voice.

“Are there two of you?” asked the gentleman.

“Can’t you see me?” I demanded in my own voice, which has still got the old army whisper in it, like a rip-saw.

And the gentleman, after a sudden stagger, hurried into a doorway on Queen street and hid.

A policeman stopped and looked sternly at us, so Jim and I walked on, a little unsteadily on account of the shoes, and headed for the stores.

We had a grand afternoon. We visited the basement and looked at all the things we had never had any reason to look at before, household utensils, kitchenware in red, blue and green, big wicker clothes baskets. Ladies’ wear, perfume, drapes, furnishings! China, fancy goods, my goodness! We priced everything. We got into dandy arguments with salesladies, especially the elderly ones.

We had an afternoon. We didn’t buy anything, but we saw and felt and fingered and patted more things in one afternoon than we had in a lifetime.

And about a quarter to five Jim said we ought to go and turn our clothes in at the store and get our deposit back.

We went out on to Queen street again, and we walked along in the dense crowd, our feet pretty weary, the big muscles on the backs of our legs aching, but there was life in the old gals yet.

There was a store with dresses in the window and a very pretty girl with gold hair looking out.

“Let’s go in and have a fight with her,” said Jim.

So, perhaps a little draggly looking, we stepped into the store.

As we closed the door the girl with the gold hair, with that perfectly cold look that women give to women and which men scarcely ever see, walked over to us and said:

“This way, please.”

She was an extremely good-looking girl. We followed her to the back of the store, into a dark and shabby hall, up a rickety old wooden stairs and along an upper hall. Jim and I click-clacked up after the pretty girl. We were a little wheezy.

“In there,” said she.

We stepped, not into a lovely fitting room, but into a dim and untidy small room filled with pails, brooms, mops, scrubbing brushes and smelling of strong soap.

Over a sort of sink a large, angry man was bending in his shirt-sleeves.

“Hurry up,” he yelled. “Hang your coats up and get busy.”

“What’s the idea?” asked Jim. And as he had been practising a high voice all afternoon he still used it. It was slightly cracked.

“Come on, get goin’; don’t you know four-thirty is the time you should get here?”

He whirled suddenly and took a fierce step toward us.

“Hey!” he roared. “Off with the coats!”

It was not a time to do anything hasty, so we took off our coats and hung them on nails on the wall.

I started to take off my hat, but Jim eyed me not to.

“Where are your aprons?” yelled the large, bleary man.

“We didn’t bring any,” squeaked Jim in his old lady voice.

“Didn’t bring none?” corrected the big man. “Here!”

And he yanked a couple of gray and terrible aprons off the wall and threw them at us.

“What a pair of birds you are!” howled the big man. “I’ll speak to Adams about this. Pick ’em up and come on.”

He led us down the dismal hall, we carrying pails and mops he had thrust at us, and went into the front store, where the girls were covering up the dresses with sheets and the girl with the gold hair was fixing her hair at a mirror.

“Start at the front and work back,” said the big man. “Get your hot water there.”

When a Lane Comes in Handy

Jim and I had not had a chance to converse, so I filled my pail and Jim crowded up behind.

“How far is this going?” I asked Jim under cover of the tap.

“I didn’t like to reveal ourselves as men to that bird,” said Jim. “You don’t know what he might have done. He might have flung us down those stairs. We’d have torn the clothes and lost our deposit.”

I stood aside to let Jim fill the pail.

“Are we going to scrub?”

“For a little while,” said Jim. “Then one of us can take sick and the other of us will have to see us home or something.”

We went back into the store, where the girls had finished covering up; the big man had disappeared and the girls were relaxing around the room on chairs to engage in a few minutes’ intimate conversation before departing for the night.

We rolled back the rug, set the chairs aside and started slathering up a good suds in our pails. Jim put his mop in the pail and the water went bloop all over the floor. We both dashed at it with our mops, but in the excitement I stepped backwards against my pail and upset it.

The girls screamed for the big man, who came running.

“Here,” roared the red-faced man. “Here. Hyah! Heeyah!”

And he treated us like no charlady⁶ should be treated.

But we got the water sopped up, not without getting our dresses wet and my large hat fell off into the pail and looked rather soggy. But just as we got organized and the girl with the gold hair was still standing staring at me, mostly at my feet and legs, there came from the back of the store, through the back entrance I suppose, two ladies looking a little flustered, carrying large shopping bags and looking as if they knew which end of a mop was for what.

“What is it?” demanded the purple man of them.

“We was engaged, sir,” said they.

“Who sent you?”

“Mr. Adams, sir.”

He whirled on us, glared, and Jim and I, walking sideways and wiping our hands on our pinnies⁷, hurried for the hallway, clattered up the stairs, got our coats and then went out the back way into a lane.

We found our way out, went along Richmond street, up York and back to the store where we had got outfitted. The owner charged us $2 each off our deposits for wetting the dresses and other injuries.

“We could have escaped that humiliation,” said I.

“But you couldn’t think of any way on the spur of the moment, could you?” asked Jim.

“So that’s what we looked like?” I mused.

“You did; not me,” said Jim.

“It was you went into the store first,” I retorted. “The girl with the gold hair decided about us when she saw you.”

“You owe me five bucks,” said Jim. “We looked like ladies.”

“I think you ought to wire Marlene some flowers with it,” said I.

“No,” said Jimmie, “I’ll wire her a hand-painted moustache cup⁸.”

---

Editor’s Notes: To explain this story, you have to understand that Marlene Dietrich was one of the biggest movie stars of the time. Starting in late January 1933, she was seen wearing men’s clothing including trousers.

Then she wore a tuxedo as seen in the article. Well, this caused quite the uproar! It was all the gossip columnists could talk about for a while.

Some people thought she was doing it for publicity, others thought she should not go out in public like that. Greg and Jim were commenting on all of this talk. She remained famous for sometimes wearing mannish clothing, most famously the tuxedo she wore as a nightclub singer in a movie to be released that November called Morocco.

1. $5 in 1933 would be $113 in 2025. ↩︎
2. I think at the time a Limehouse lady would be a term for a poor woman, perhaps even a prostitute. ↩︎
3. Yes, this sentence had to be cleaned up due to the language used at the time. ↩︎
4. Not sure what this means, but some men did wear garters to hold up their socks as the elasticity could not be that great depending on the material. ↩︎
5. “Brewed” meaning “drunk”. ↩︎
6. So “charwoman” was a common term to refer to a cleaning woman who was brought in for a job then left. They would use the term “maid” for someone who was live-in. This term was used up until the 1960s. ↩︎
7. Pinnie is slang for apron. ↩︎
8. A moustache cup is a drinking cup with a semicircular ledge inside. The ledge, called a moustache guard, allows the passage of liquids and serves as a guard to keep moustaches dry. ↩︎

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

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

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

“What does it stand for?” asked Jim.

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

“How do you mean no changes in men?”

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

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

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

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

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

Reforming the Other Fellow

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

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

“Correct,” said Jim.

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

“Exactly,” said Jim.

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

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

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

“I see,” said Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For three whole minutes he stood looking at these objects.

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

“What the dickens is he?” I asked.

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

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

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

“This has got me beat,” I said.

But Jimmie just grinned and led me after him.

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

“He’s off!” hissed Jim.

The End of the Chase

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

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

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

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

Out he stopped, smartly. We followed.

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

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

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

“And soap,” said Jim.

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

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

“Or a broker,” I said.

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

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

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

“Aw,” I said.

On his heels we followed.

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

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

“Hello, boys,” cried our man gaily.

“Hello, George!” cried the gang.

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

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

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

Hurrying Nowhere

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

“So what?” said Jim.

“Hurrying nowhere,” I said.

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

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

“Why not?”

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

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

“Just a natural man,” I said.

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

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

“Yes? said the young man.

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

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

“Oh, dear.”

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

“Mm-mm,” said Jim and I.

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

“Well then,” I said.

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

“What could we offer?” I asked scornfully.

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

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

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

“And,” I said.

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

“It sounds simple,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, boy,” I breathed.

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

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

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

“How?” I asked weakly.

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

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

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

“Jimmie!” I cried, shocked.

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

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

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

“How will you launch it?” I asked.

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

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

“Ontario then,” said Jim.

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

“Toronto then,” said Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

“You wait.”

Launching the Frise Plan

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

“I saw him before supper,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spreading Like Wildfire

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

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

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

There were heart-felt murmurs of approbatjon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where’s your family?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

“What do we need, Molly?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I delivered him to his studio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I remember that,” I said.

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

“Impossible,” I said.

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

“So?”

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

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

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

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

---

Editor’s Notes:

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

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 9, 1933.

“I see,” said Jimmie Frise, “that roller skating has ousted dancing at the amusement parks.”

“Ousted it, eh?” said I.

“It’s cooler than dancing, in the summer,” said Jimmie. “You just glide around and get a lovely breeze. Whereas dancing is kind of stuffy for hot weather. Do you dance?”

“No, Jimmie,” I said. “I have never learned to dance. When I was young I was always terrified that if I got up and took hold of a girl I would suddenly hug her. I’m like that. Sudden, you know. And nowadays, when it is quite all right to hug them, I’m too old.”

“Don’t you barn dance?” asked Jimmie.

“I’ve tried barn dancing,” I admitted, “but I always get paired with one of those great big healthy country girls, and instead of me whirling her off her feet, she whirls me off my feet. And you don’t know how sensitive we little people are about our feet being off the ground. Why, the only reason I work so hard and make money is to have a motor car. I’ve got to have a motor car, because my pride suffers so in a street car. Don’t tell anybody, but when I am sitting in a street car, my feet hang six inches off the ground. It’s terribly humiliating.”

“Well, sir,” said Jimmie. “I’d have thought you would be a very nice dancer.”

“No,” I said sadly. “I’m too emotional.”

“But you could roller skate,” said Jim. “I suggest we go down some evening and try a whirl at roller skating. You wouldn’t dare hug a girl on roller skates. It’s too risky. And you could pick a nice little wisp of a city girl.”

“That’s the trouble,” I said. “I have no taste for these wispy little city girls. The kind of girls I like are great big healthy country girls. I’d like to roller skate with a lovely big country girl. She could whirl me around all she likes on roller skates.”

“Let’s go down some night,” said Jimmie.

“How about our wives?” I suggested. “Would they mind?”

“Certainly not,” said Jim. “They know we do these things as part of our professional duty. Finding out what the other half of the world is doing, and recording it.”

“Well, in that case,” I said.

So that hot night, we drove down to the beach and walked over to the roller-skating casino¹.

Slow, wavey music was lilting out of the big round casino, and as we paid our way in, we saw a wonderful throng of young people, swinging gracefully and smoothly about the big circular hardwood floor.

“That looks cool²,” said Jim.

We were shown into a booth where a man handed us out roller skates. We sat down on the bench and fastened them on. Now, the roller skates I remember must have been a cheaper kind. They did not have such a greased lightning action as these new model ones. They must have ball bearings and a lot of grease on them.

“Oops,” said Jimmie, standing up and taking short, careful steps. He quivered all over, but not from excitement. Just from keeping his balance.

I got up and, without even trying, I rolled easily over to Jimmie. As we took each other’s arm, we sat down heavily. A young gentleman assisted us up to our feet.

“May I help you?” he asked. Such a nice boy.

“If you don’t mind,” I said. “Just help us over to that railing.”

We stood still and he shoved us over to the railing, where we took a good hold.

“My goodness,” said Jimmie, “how they have speeded up these roller skates.”

“They are awful quick on the get-away,” I said. “Free wheeling, sort of.”

We clung to the railing and watched the solid mass of skaters whirling by in long, lazy strides, to the music.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we might come down some morning, when there is nobody here, and do a little practising.”

“Never take your hand from the plow,” said Jim, “once you have set to it.”

“Well, you start,” said I. “I’ll wait and see how you do it.”

“We’ll go hand in hand,” said Jim.

A little unsteadily, we edged along the railing and got near the entrance to the floor. The nearer we got to the surging, sweeping throng, the more terrifying it became.

“Jimmie.” I exclaimed, “we should never get out there. It’s ridiculous.”

“Once we are in the whirl, we will just be pushed along,” said he. “Come on.”

Holding hands, we stepped on to the floor and let her roll. We rolled about ten feet with all the skaters weaving gracefully wide of us. Then a couple bunted Jimmie slightly, as he took one of those staggery steps you take on roller skates, which whirled him about facing me. We clutched. Fell. And about twenty people piled on top of us, like a rugby scrimmage.

The same kind young man who picked us up before came and unscrambled us. He was some sort of an attendant.

“If you gentlemen can’t skate—” he said.

“Oh, we can skate,” said Jimmie, clinging to a pillar in the centre of the floor. “It just takes a few minutes for it to come back to us.”

Staggering and Stumbling

Hand in hand, we staggered and stumbled into the swing again, and got around once very nicely, without anybody being upset, even us, before the music stopped.

“Let’s practise now for a minute while everybody is off the floor,” said Jimmie. So we went around once again, hand in hand, with everybody very interested in us. They were laughing at Jimmie, his long legs looked so funny taking such little short steps. I just stood still, and Jim slid me along with him. Occasionally, my right foot would start to go another direction, but with a little effort, I could get it steered back in the right direction before it was too late.

The music started, and the floor filled up with the jam, and we went around five times before the band stopped again. We did much better. I took several steps all on my own, and except for once, when my right, or outer leg, got too far away for me to pull it back, everything went fine. It was Jim who saved me. He steered me for the side lines, and just as I was about to sit down with my right leg pointing to Niagara Falls, Ont., and my left toward Orillia, I came slam up against the railing.

Just behind the railing, a very large girl, whom I at once recognized as a lovely big country girl, was resting on her elbows. And as I came zooming in, all spread wide, she reached forward and caught me by the collar and held me steady until I got my balance.

“Whoa, boy!” she said, cheerfully.

As we proceeded on our way, Jimmie whispered:

“Now, there’s the girl for you. Two hundred pounds, if she’s an ounce. I bet she can skate like a truck.”

“She said ‘whoa boy’ to me,” I said.

“Well, that’s a sort of introduction,” said Jimmie, who was perspiring a little. “The next round, you had better get her to take you around.”

“Am I a burden to you?” I demanded. “Do you think I am doing nothing but hold on to you?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Jim. “Only I think that big girl could whirl you around better and, anyway, it would look nicer than seeing two grizzled old birds like us holding hands round and round.”

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll manage by myself.”

When the band ended, Jim went over and spoke to two girls who sing in the choir, and one of them said she would be very glad indeed to skate with Mr. Frise.

Between bands, you go out back of the railing, and I slithered and staggered around the curve until I came to where the big girl was still leaning splendidly on the railing. She happened to see me approaching and she turned around and smiled at me.

“Well, well,” she said. “And how’s it going?”

“Suddenly, thank you,” I said, taking hold of the railing. “I don’t seem to get the hang of this business.”

“It isn’t a hang,” she said. “It’s a glide. Look: you can’t fall if you tried.”

And she took a quick whirl on her skates and the whole two hundred pounds of her spun around gracefully.

“Marvellous,” I said. “Are you from the country?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I like country people,” I said. “They are sort of secure and safe.”

“Where’s your tall friend?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s found a couple of girls from the choir who will help him around,” I said.

“Well, in that case,” said the big girl, “maybe I might have the pleasure of steering you around this next band.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” I cried. “Would you really?”

“Certainly,” said the big girl, so strong, so secure.

Long, Sweeping Curves

The band started almost at once, and the big girl, whose name I never got, unfortunately, because I would like her relations in the country to know about this, took me by the elbow and slid me along the railing and out on to the floor. Before I knew where I was, I was moving around that big circle in long, sweeping curves, the other people, the walls, the pillars, were all a blur, it was like flying, floating, diving. I saw skaters ahead, and, just as I held my breath for the crash, we swooped sideways past them. Boy, was I whirling! And all in step with the music, too.”

“There’s your gentleman friend,” said a voice somewhere above me.

But all I saw of Jimmie was a grayish blur.

We swooped in toward the middle. We swept out toward the edge. I could feel the skates heating under my feet.

“How are you coming?” asked the voice on high.

“Great,” I said.

“All right, we’ll put a little pep into it, then,” said the big girl, as she took a firmer grip of my arm.

Jimmie said afterwards that it was the most wonderful spectacle he ever saw. The band forgot to quit. Two by two, the other skaters got out of the way and fled to the sides or else got right out of the casino.

“You were not only standing straight out,” said Jimmie, when I recovered consciousness. “Some of the time, your feet were actually pointing up about fifteen degrees.”

All I recall was a sensation like being on the dip the dips³. Which, of course, I never went on but the once, some years ago. I could hear the big girl breathing. She had me by the wrist, and sometimes by the elbow. All was a blur. We went around and around, the music getting faster and faster. I shut my eyes.

“Wheeeeee!” cried the big girl. “Atta boy!”

“Pardon me,” I said, with my eyes shut.

“You’re the kind of partner I like,” panted the big girl, off there in the blur and hum. “Whooop!”

That was one of the times I must have been sticking up in the air. I heard cheers, yells, and thunderous applause, but I did not bow. I just kept my eyes shut, and took a hold of the big girl’s sleeve with my other hand.

“Are you engaged for the next band?” panted the big girl. “May I have you for the next band?”

I pretended to be asleep.

I could tell by the sound that all the skaters were off the floor, but the band kept tooting away and the applause mounted.

Suddenly there was an awful crash. What happened was that Jimmie, feeling responsible for me, and thinking I was being made a fool of in public, simply slid out on to the floor and tripped the big girl deliberately. Jimmie, on his hands and knees, slid me along the floor to the exit, and when I came to I was in the little lobby, with my skates off.

“Where is she?” I asked Jimmie.

“Waiting inside for you,” said Jim.

“Oh, please!” I begged.

“It’s all right,” said Jim. “I said I’d bring you back as soon as we brought you to, but we’re sneaking out this back door right now.”

We sneaked. There was a big crowd outside, waiting to see the next performance through the lattice work. But Jim led me through safely, and we got to the car without any embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” said Jim.

“I’ll never live it down,” I said. “I am ruined!”

“Nobody could recognize you,” said Jimmie. “Not even me. You were just a blur.

“Small men,” I said, “should never at tempt dancing, skating or any other of the paired social activities. They should be the strong, silent type that is contemptuous of trifling things like dancing.”

“And anyway,” said Jim, “small men should stick to small girls.”

“You can’t control your taste,” I submitted.

“Yes, but you don’t have to let your taste break your neck,” retorted Jimmie.

So we decided not to take up roller skating.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. In this case, “casino” goes by the definition of “a building or room used for social amusements”. ↩︎
2. In another change of slang, Jimmie just means it looks like a way of keeping cool. “Cool” as slang wasn’t used until later in the 1930s by jazz musicians and it took longer after that for use in the general public. ↩︎
3. “Dip the Dips” was the name of several early roller coasters. Apparently there was one at Hanlan’s Point in Toronto starting in 1908. ↩︎