Tag: 1936 Page 1 of 5

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 2, 1936.

“A ha,” cried Jimmie Frise, “new neighbors.”

He pointed up street, where a massive van was just backing before a vacant house.

“That house,” I commented, “hasn’t been vacant very long. I wonder what they’ll be like?”

“Probably,” said Jim, “they’ll have a large and vicious dog that will take six months to decide who he can lick along this block.”

“Probably they’ll have about six sniffly kids,” I said, “all prone to whooping cough and mumps. We’ve been pretty lucky in this block for some years. I guess this is the end.”

“On the other hand,” said Jim, “it might be a rich widow. Or maybe an elderly childless couple.”

“At that,” I submitted, “it might be some fellow we’d grow very fond of around here. Maybe the kind of man who would raise choice roses and always want to be giving rose bushes to his neighbors.”

“By jove,” said Jim, “he might be the kind of fellow who keeps a lawn roller and one of those lawn-edging machines with a wheel on it.”

“I’d rather be optimistic about them, whoever they are,” I agreed. “Because a neighborhood needs new neighbors every now and then. A neighborhood kind of gets tired of itself, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes the most sensational things,” mused Jim, “happen as the result of a stranger moving into a community. The most incredible things. Lovers may change. Death may move in with that new neighbor.”

“Brrr, Jim,” I said.

“In this new family,” declaimed Jim, “may be a beautiful young girl who may be your future daughter-in-law. By such chances as this are romances born to our midst. On the other hand, who knows but this stranger may be a man of destiny, a man of ideas, who, as the months go by and he gets to know us all, may alter the lives of every one of us. Give us new and powerful ideas. Take us into partnership in some fabulous gold mine. It is just that way that fortune comes to us.”

“Jim,” I said, “let’s stroll up street and see what kind of furniture they’ve got. Get an idea of what they amount to.”

“Maybe this stranger,” said Jim, “is a villain. Maybe at this moment, while only the moving van stands there before a vacant door, maybe already tragedy and disaster have come to this street. Maybe he will be a robber of widows and orphans. Maybe he will run off with somebody’s wife.”

“Let’s go and take a casual look at their furniture,” I suggested anxiously. “If I don’t like the look of their stuff I’ll take darn good care not to let this bird chum up to me.”

Jim got slowly to his feet, so heavy were his ideas.

“The moving in of a new neighbor,” said Jim, “is a momentous occasion. Is it any wonder, on moving day, that all the curtains of the world are stirring as curious ladies stand within studying each item of the new arrival’s belongings?

“It’s no idle curiosity,” I said, restraining Jim with my hand, so that he would stroll more slowly.

New Neighbors’ Furniture

“I think it is the right of everybody,” declared Jim, “to express some interest in new neighbors. Not only in self-defence. But in order to offer a friendly and neighborly hand, if need be.”

The van men were already, with that modern speed and efficiency moving men have developed, laying articles off the huge van. They spread burlap out on the lawn, and as Jim and I slowly approached they set down an entire dining-room suite. It was of oak, massive and simple in design. It was decidedly impressive.

“I see no scuffs and footmarks on the legs of the chairs,” I said in a low voice to Jim; “from which I deduce that there are no young children in this family.”

As we walked past the van we glanced in.

“Mmm,” said Jim, “very nice, very nice.”

“Jim,” I said eagerly, “I think I am going to like our new neighbors. Did you notice the quality of that walnut bed? It was genuine colonial or I’m a Dutchman.”

We strolled up to the corner, paused a moment, and then started to stroll slowly back.

“Take it slow,” I warned. “There is no harm in two gentlemen walking up and down their own street.”

“See what’s coming,” hissed Jim. “A gun cabinet, isn’t it?”

It was a gun cabinet. In hand-rubbed walnut, a tall, commodious cabinet with plate glass front and racks covered with red baize inside to support guns.

“Jim, I’m going to call on this new neighbor,” I cried, “very soon and get a sketch of that gun cabinet. That’s what I’ve wanted for years.”

“Look” said Jim, as we drew nearer, “a real old walnut cupboard. Say, these new folks have taste.”

The moving men were delicately lifting the huge old-fashioned cupboard, tall and massive, plain as a pail, charming as only old things can be. Jim and I halted to admire it.

“Easy, boys,” grunted the boss moving man. “This is one of the pieces the dame was so excited about.”

They eased it to the pavement.

“I never saw a more beautiful walnut cupboard,” said Jim. “Not a curlicue, not an ornament or a scroll on it. Every line of it is beautiful. Boy, I wonder where that came from?”

The moving men hoisted it.

Jim and I continued, after a quick glance around at the articles on the lawn, to stroll past, while the men grunted and stumbled with short paces towards the house with the huge cupboard.

“Whoever they are,” said Jim, “they’re somebody.”

Down street a little way we turned about and strolled back. The men had the beautiful cupboard to the front door and were clustered at the door, darting anxiously this way and that, the way moving men do when they are stuck. Loud voices shouted brief orders. The figures moved briskly, taking fresh holds of the huge cupboard.

“Let’s give them a hand,” I suggested. So Jim and I hurried up the walk and stood to.

“Here, boys,” said Jim. “A couple of neighbors to the rescue.”

“Lift from the bottom,” called a breathless voice, “while I lower her over.”

We seized hold and lifted tenderly. It was lovely to lay hands on that satiny old wood. Its deep patina, its gloss, modest but like a layer of richness over the glorious old brown wood, was a balm to the eyes as we leaned down close to it, almost pressing our cheeks against it.

“Eeeeaaaasy,” said the voice. And in a moment, with four heavy steps forward, we had the lovely cupboard in the front hall of the vacant house.

“Thanks, gents,” said the boss, amiably. “I’m much obliged to you.”

“Just a neighborly act,” I said.

“Call us if you need us again,” assured Jim.

But we both had time to take a quick look around the empty house, noting the fine mantel and fireplace, the elegant though restrained decoration of the living-room.

Thus Jim and I walked pleasantly, back and forth in the bright afternoon, while the huge van continued to pour forth its treasures. There were walnut bookcases and decidedly custom-built bedroom suites. There was a perfectly magnificent chesterfield, with two matching easy chairs, upholstered in wine red. There were cases and cases of books and pictures, all carefully covered with burlap.

“I’d like to get a squint,” I said, “at those books. You can tell more of a man by the books he keeps than by anything else.”

“Unless it’s his pictures,” said Jim. “I’d like to see his pictures.”

At this moment the boss of the moving men came to the door of the house.

“Gents,” he called, “if you don’t mind?”

We hurried up the walk eagerly.

“That big chesterfield,” said the boss. “The dame wanted it up in the sunroom at the back of the first floor up. I wonder …”

“Certainly, certainly,” we assured heartily.

They had the chesterfield half-way up the stairs to the turn, and there they were stuck.

“I don’t see how it will go up,” said the boss, anxiously. “She said she measured it and it would go up easy. I wish that dame was here.”

“Patience does it,” said Jim. “It’s astonishing the things you can bend around a stairway.”

We all took hold and we wiggled it this way and that, lifted, turned, twisted, shoved.

“That dame,” sighed the boss moving man, heavily. “You might say all women are bad when it comes to moving. But this one is the worst I ever saw. And where is she?”

“You’d think people with stuff like this,” I said, as we all rested to have a cigarette on the stairway, “would be on hand to see it arrive.”

“Why,” cried the boss, angrily, “she said she would be here ahead of us. She drove away in her car ahead of us. Women like her give me a pain in the neck.”

“Maybe she had a flat tire,” I suggested.

“I wish she had,” said the boss. “For one thing, she spent about a month arranging this move. She’s been down to the warehouse at least six times in the past two weeks. She looked me and my boys over, as if we was candidates for the church or something. Our moral character. And did you ever, boys, hear anybody like her when we was loading this stuff?”

“Never, boss,” chorused his three helpers.

“And now, when we’re stuck, where is she?” demanded the boss.

Keeping Their Tempers

“It’ll go up,” I assured them.

And we took a new grip on the chesterfield and hoisted. And turned over. And turned up on end. And turned upside down. And grunted and sweated and kept our tempers nicely, the way moving men do.

And at last Jim, on a particularly strong shove, had the left rear leg of the chesterfield come off in his hand.

“My, my,” we all said. And then the chesterfield went up as slick as a whistle. When we got it back in the big sunroom Jim said:

“I’ll fix this leg on some way, boys, while you are getting the stuff in.”

“Okay,” said the boss; “I don’t mind if you’re here when she arrives. She may take it from a neighbor when she wouldn’t from us.”

We worked on the chesterfield as the boys slowly and patiently carried up beds and springs and dressers and chests of drawers. Chests of drawers that would make your mouth water. Walnut and colonial, with the genuine look.

And while Jim struggled with the leg of the chesterfield I started arranging bookcases and tables that the men laid down in the big sunroom.

I unrolled a rug. I set the writing table along by the window. From one of the crates of books I took a few armfuls and placed them artistically in the shelves of the bookcase. The former tenant of the house had left picture nails in the walls and, more because they were unsightly than that I wanted to see the pictures, I undid one of the boxes and took out some pictures.

“Jim,” I cried, “look at this water color. Isn’t that a beauty?”

Jim got up off the floor and came and helped me hang pictures.

“We may not have these pictures in the right place,” said Jim, “but it is a neighborly thing to do to get them up somewhere anyway. They give such a homey look, don’t you think?”

Jim hung the pictures and I unloaded the book boxes and stacked the books in the bookcases. There were books on law and sets of novels, the works of Parkman; there were a large number of quite old editions of the poets, Longfellow and Wordsworth, and so forth.

“The new neighbor,” I said to Jim, “has a pretty nice taste in books. I think he is a lawyer.”

“A lawyer,” said Jim, busy with a large etching, “will be a nice addition to this street.”

I set vases in the window sills and spread an Indian rug over the writing desk.

“There,” said Jim, standing back. “How’s that?”

“Lovely, Jim,” I cried. “This is surely the must curious thing. A true, old-fashioned housewarming. Think of having neighbors that would come in and arrange your house for you.

“While we’re at it,” I said, “we might as well fix up another room. We may not get it the way she wants it, but it will be a great help to have the stuff laid out.”

So we went and did the bedroom next. This woman was certainly a good manager. With chalk she had marked every piece of furniture, every picture, every single item, large and small, with the position of the room it was to go in. This made it easy for Jim and me. We set up the bed. This is always an awful task. Sometimes it takes half an hour just to assemble the side boards to the ends with those dizzy bolts that don’t fit and everything.

We untied the mattress and laid on the springs, hung pictures, opened a case full of ornaments, doilies, objects of art, which left to Jimmie’s instinct to place artistically around on the dresser and tables.

The boss and his boys were still patiently climbing and descending, bearing their burdens. They looked in at us and smiled.

“A blame nice neighborly idea,” agreed the boss.

We had finished the master bedroom and were just in the act of surveying the other bedroom across the hall when we heard a harsh female voice screaming down at the front door. We listened.

“You fools,” said the voice, and meant it, “I’ve been hunting all over the city for you. What are you doing here? This isn’t the house! This isn’t the street! It’s only an hour until dark. Get that stuff back into the van!”

“Jim,” I whispered, “the back stairs.”

Jim led. Tip-toe.

As we went down the back stairs we heard a kind of war party coming up the front stairs. And the lady was still screaming.

“You stupid fools,” she yelled. “Why didn’t you look at the paper I gave you? Why didn’t I lead you by the noses first and show you the place? Would I live in a joint like this? You crazy, you, you, you.”

By which time Jim and I were going out the back door; and at that instant we heard a terrible shriek which sent us at a fast jack rabbit canter out the side drive and across the street.

So we went and sat in Jim’s parlor window, behind the curtains.

“How do you suppose the key those moving men had would fit the wrong house?” I trembled.

“When cock-eyed things like this happen,” groaned Jim, “the key always fits. Or maybe the boys had a skeleton key. They usually have.”

So we sat, long into the dusk, watching the boys carry out the stuff and pack it back into the van.

And the lady, whenever she appeared the door, looked both busy and angry.

And when dark fell the van rolled away.

“Mmmm, mmm,” said Jim. “No neighbors yet.”

---

Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on April 29, 1944 as “New Neighbors!”. Before I was aware of the repeats, I published this story before. It also appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 21, 1936.

“To-day,” said Jimmie Frise, “is the first day of Spring.”

“I remember one time,” I retorted, “that it snowed on May 17th.”

“In the Spring,” quoted Jimmie, emotionally, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

“But older men,” I said in prose, “think of gardening. Or fishing. Or golf.”

“To us who live in cities and towns,” said Jim, “Spring has really a very small meaning. It means, as you say, golf or planting a few seeds in a pathetic grubby little backyard. Spring wakes a feeble emotion in us city people. We are like people with no ear or sense of music sitting politely through a concert by a great symphony orchestra.”

“I don’t think city people are quite so soulless as you make out,” I objected.

“They are not soulless,” agreed Jim. “They are just underprivileged.”

“We city people,” I declared stoutly, “have finer and subtler sensibilities. We may not have the opportunities to observe the Spring, but we appreciate it more.”

“I wonder,” said Jim.

“Think of us anglers,” I cried. “How we are suffering, right now, counting the weeks to May the first.”

“May,” scoffed Jim. “By May the Spring is over.”

“Over!” I exclaimed.

“Have you no conception,” begged Jim, “of what Spring means to millions of your fellow Canadians? May, if you please! Why, by May the summer has come. All the lambs have been born. Most of the calves have arrived and the colts are on the pastures. The plows are long ago worn bright and dull. The seeds are springing. By what you call Spring, my poor fellow, summer lies o’er all the pleasant land.”

“Tut, tut, Jimmie,” I protested.

“To-day is the first day of Spring,” declared Jim. “And to-day, even though a blizzard should rage, a million farmers are at their doors sniffing the tide of life. The ditches are loud with a singing sound of water. The bright sun grasps the earth in its mighty hands and caresses and hugs it. The earth, the sweet earth, lifts its breast upward, and a fragrance you and I are unable to sense, much less know, rises from it in an incense ancient and eternal.”

“A kind of sour, mouldy smell?” I agreed.

“Haw, haw,” scorned Jimmie. “Sour and mouldy to your poor, fume-ruined city nose. But what makes the birds sing along the fence posts, this very day, is that sweet incense of resurrection. The south walls of the barns are bright with the sun, and the warmth flows inward and all the cattle are bawling to be out. The horses kick their stalls and cry. The mother sheep are hoarse with bleating.”

“I see it,” I confessed.

“In the barn the farmer,” said Jimmie. rapidly, “is laboring with his implements. mending harness, tightening up the bolts of share and counter. In the bright kitchen the wife is scouring pails and scalding out the separator.”

A Kind of Dizziness

“But there’s weather ahead,” I interjected.

“Yet in the shelter of the fences,” said Jim, “the grass is green, and the buds on the dogwood scrub are swollen, dark and sticky. In the woodlot, far at the back, there is a sense of unseen excitement, the branches wave sadly no more, like they do in winter wind, but like young ladies taking setting up exercises, gaily, eagerly, the branches wave…”

“Crows, like black rags, blowing on the wind,” I contributed.

“The lady in the kitchen,” said Jim, “busy with the pails, sees something touch her eye, like a little burning thing, out of the corner of her eyes she sees it. She stops, the pail held motionless, and looks out the window. stealthily, her eyes creeping, into the orchard. And there, a bluebird!”

“Aw, Jim,” I complained.

“So the lady walks over, slightly weak in the legs, and sits down in the rocking-chair with the old cushion on it,” sang Jimmie, “and starts gently to rock, and the smile on her face, the smile of remembering all her Springs and all the babies she has rocked in this same chair, and all the bluebirds and the sound of calves bawling and sheep calling and water in the eaves and men kicking mud from their boots at her door – the smile on her face flows right out that window, a prayer, a gift, a part of the Spring.”

I said nothing.

“Do you ever see that?” demanded Jim, sharply.

“I’m sorry,” I confessed.

“Then,” said Jim, “don’t ever try to pretend you know anything about the Spring just because you fish or play golf or stick seeds from ten-cent packets into your sour city dust plots.”

“I feel something though,” I said weakly. “I feel a kind of dizziness. Or a limpness. Couldn’t that be the Spring?”

“No doubt,” granted Jim, “a certain decayed remnant of the feeling of Spring still lingers in city and town men’s minds. But it is only a shabby tatter. A sort of thing like you see in a poodle dog when it turns round three or four times before lying down in its bed. Spreading a bed in imaginary grass, a faint memory out of the forgotten ages.”

“I like to read poetry in the Spring,” I declared.

“A sort of sulphur and molasses¹,” decreed Jim. “A Spring tonic.”

“I get a kind of religious feeling,” I insisted, “when I hear the first robin, at sundown, on a rooftop.”

“You would be practically dead if you didn’t feel that,” pronounced Jimmie. At certain times of the year Jimmie gets a terrible homesickness for the country where he was born and raised. Right now is one of those times. Another is when the great winds of autumn blow, with immense sounds, and the trees wheel and lash in the gales that do not rest at night, but cough and thunder in our chimneys. At such a time, Jimmie is restless and fey, and he buys things at stores and carries them home, hams and bags of potatoes, whole sacks of biscuits for his dogs, as if he were storing up against some strange and hopeless winter. But in the Spring he can’t work; he stands hours at his high windows, far in the tipmost top of The Star building, staring with face thrust forward at the dim fringes of the great gray city spread like an old carpet beneath. There he stood, trying to see the fields, the dark meadows, the green veils of winter wheat, beyond the vasty doormat…

“We could go for a walk?” I suggested.

The wind of Spring was blowing.

“We could go home,” muttered Jim, “and spend the afternoon putting away our winter coats in large pillow slips and stuff our goloshes and scarves and wool-lined gloves into boxes, for there is no use trying to work with that wind blowing.”

Which seemed to me a curious thought, since we were tight and sound behind strong windows, where no wind can even moan.

Blowing in a Window

But down we went and walked to the car park, and men clutched their worn winter hats and girls leaned back against the gale, one arm stretched down to control their festive skirts. Dust and old papers. and all manner of unmentionable and unthinkable things blew in the breeze off the pavement, and we puckered our eyes and breathed carefully through our noses.

Out along the Lake Shore we drove, seeing the lake, all yellow with the silt of dying rivers, heaving and bucking in a kind of joy and slight anger.

Up through High Park we turned, merely to see the trees dancing, to see the brown hillsides facing the sun, to look, with a quiet triumph, at the cowering islands of fouled snow in the shadows.

Re-entering the residential streets again, we were in time to behold a comedy. A young man, just as we were about to pass him, had his fedora blown off. I sailed up against the wall of a large apartment house. It bumped along the wall, falling slightly, and came to an open window. It fell unsteadily on to the window sill and, to our joy and excitement, hovered there a moment and then, like a homing creature, right inside the window.

“Ho, ho,” laughed Jim and I, slowing the car and looking back at the young man. He was standing speechless and amazed, staring up at the window.

“Wait,” I cried; “let’s see what happens.”

But nothing happened. The young man stood awkwardly staring up at the window, but nobody came. He looked abashed all around him, as if for witness to the incredible incident and perhaps for suggestions. Then he started slowly to walk on.

“The silly fellow,” I said. “Back up, Jim. He isn’t even going to inquire.”

We backed, and encountered the young chap, all flushed looking, after he was well past the apartment house entrance.

“That was a funny one,” I hailed him. “Never saw that before.”

“It sure was funny,” agreed the young man shyly. He was one of those slow-speaking shy youths, with a strained expression in their eyes when you talk to them.

“Well,” I said, “aren’t you going to go in and ask for your hat?”

“No,” he said.

“A hat costs five bucks,” I pointed out. “And if I saw right it was a new hat.”

“Yes, just got it three weeks ago,” admitted the young man, anxiously beginning to move on.

“But hold on,” I laughed. “Don’t be shy. Look here, all you have to do is go in and ask for the janitor and point out to him which window.”

“I always leave my hat go,” said the young man, “when it blows in any window.”

He meant it. He was one of those drawling young men almost paralyzed with bashfulness. His face was apoplectic. His eyes were suddenly bloodshot with shyness. He tried to withdraw from the magnetic fastening of my gaze.

“My dear boy,” I said, opening the car door and stepping out, “don’t be absurd. If you lose your hat you go and get it. Come. I’ll go in with you. We’ll call the janitor.”

“This,” said Jim, getting out of the car, “too, ought to be good.”

So we entered the apartment house entrance and on the list of tenants I found the bell of the janitor and rang it summarily. We waited, smiling. The young man was now a fixed purple in color and he was perspiring in large loose beads. Speech had entirely deserted him. He had the expression in his eyes you see in the eyes of a young bull which has a ring in its nose for the first time and is being led about by it.

“I wouldn’t bother,” he said in a weak voice.

“You Home Wreckers!”

The janitor did not answer. I rang again. I stepped down a flight of marble steps and looked along a corridor. I called. I whistled.

“Oh, janitor,” I yodelled.

“Leave it go,” said the young man.

“Not at all,” I assured him heartily. And stepping out the entrance for a moment I fixed in my mind the location of the open window through which the hat had blown, and then walked up one flight, beckoning Jim and the young gentleman to follow me.

“I spotted the apartment,” said I. “It’s either the third or the fourth apartment along I should say.”

“Leave it go,” repeated the young man.

Apartments are so hushed. At least from the corridors they are hushed. A faint radio. A muffled step.

But from the third apartment, as we came abreast there rang loud and challenging voices. A man’s voice. And a lady’s voice.

“H’m,” said I, “a little Spring song going on in here.”

“Leave it go,” pleaded the young man, but Jimmie was holding his arm in a friendly and encouraging embrace.

I rapped smartly. And smartly a man appeared.

An angry-faced, glare-eyed man whose teeth were bared in the very midst of a snarl.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but is there a hat…”

“Hat,” shouted the angry man, leaning out the door and seeing the shy young man with Jimmie. “So you came back for your hat, huh?”

“This young man’s hat,” I began, pleasantly.

The gentleman in the doorway squared himself off and began making small circles with his clenched fists in front of his chest.

“You come back for your hat,” he yelled, “but you bring your gang with you.”

“My dear sir,” I said soothingly, “can a gentleman help it if the Spring breezes-“

“Ah,” screamed the gentleman, crouching, and spitting on his hands.

A woman’s voice from within said reproachfully:

“Joe-werge! I was resting. I didn’t even see the hat.”

“Hah.” said the gentleman. “I come home unexpectedly. I find your hat square in the middle of the chesterfield. So what?”

“Sir,” I said calmly, “his hat blew in. This is the first day of Spring. The equinoctial gales. The wind.”

“What a story, what a story,” the poor gentleman sobbed, for now, in addition to crouching down and circling his fists menacingly in the doorway, he had suddenly been stricken with the injustice of it all. “I know my own strength, or I’d beat the whey out of all three of you. You sneaks. You home wreckers.”

“Leave it go,” said the shy young man, backing away from Jimmie.

“May we have the hat?” I demanded firmly, but preparing to retreat.

With a final heartbreak, the gentleman wheeled, dashed furiously into the room, thudded furiously back and, making a drop kick, he booted the hat savagely into the corridor and slammed the door. I picked the hat up, bulged it back to shape, put a nice tidy dent in it and following the youth, handed it him.

“What a mess,” strangled this young man, as I went down the stairs beside him.

“At least, I got your hat,” I pointed out, a little huffed at his ingratitude.

“Imagine a stranger’s hat blowing into a happy home,” moaned the young fellow.

“It is the Spring.” I said. “March gales.”

The young man jammed his hat on and fled down the street.

“In the Spring,” quoted Jimmie, as we got into the car, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

“And,” I added, “suspicion.”

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on April 1, 1944 as “Spring Song“.

1. Old wives’ tales indicated that sulphur & molasses, drank by children in early spring, provided a needed thickening of the blood, thinned down by winter. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 22, 1936.

“Roger Babson says,” said Jimmie Frise, “that in twenty years, half the population of America will be living in automobile trailers.”

“Think of that,” I said.

“Right now,” went on Jim, “hundreds of thousands of people know no other home than their cabin trailer. They come north. in summer. They go south in winter. It is the life of Riley.”

“Cramped quarters, though,” I suggested.

“What is the modern home,” demanded Jim, “but a place to sleep? A cabin trailer is as good as a ten-roomed mansion. Millions are living in apartments not much bigger than a cabin trailer. As a matter of fact, the cabin trailer is the logical conclusion towards which we have been marching for years.”

“First we were nomads,” I said, “then we moved into caves. Then we built cities. Then we fortified them and put walls around them. Now we are becoming nomads again.”

“That’s it exactly,” said Jim. “Nomads. From dust we came – unto dust we return. Fifty years ago, the home was the foundation of society. The bigger the home, the bigger you were in society. Fifteen, twenty-roomed mansions all over the world; even in Toronto. Now they use them for auction sale houses, or office buildings.”

“They had larger families then,” I pointed out.

“Somewhere about thirty years ago,” said Jim, “something serious happened to the humane scheme. We began to stop having families. We began building apartment houses. Bungalows. Then the motor car came along. And then the trailer. In another twenty years, real estate won’t be worth fifty cents. To own a house will classify you with the old order of things. In fact, houses will be so cheap, you can own houses all over the place, in various cities, in the north, south, east and west; just to store stuff in.”

“How about gardens?” I asked.

“We can have an annex trailing behind the trailer,” said Jim, “with a portable garden in it. The world will consist not of cities but of highways. Vast cities now flourishing will be torn down to make parking areas. If we want to do business with a man, we don’t telephone him. We just move over next door to him. Neighbors, like. And when the business is complete, move on.”

“How will we keep track of one another?” I asked.

“That will be one of the chief charms,” said Jim. “We won’t be able to keep track of one another. That’s what has made us all so sick of the world the way it is. We are all so kept track of.”

“But suppose I want my shoes repaired?” I begged.

“What will you want shoes for?” asked Jim. “You don’t have to walk any place. But suppose you did want your shoes repaired. You just sit on the steps of your cabin trailer until you see a cabin go by with ‘Shoemaker’ printed on it. You hail him. He stops. Backs in beside you. Repairs your shoes. And away he goes.”

To Be Free and Mobile

“How about milk? And bread?” I demanded.

“We have the thing backwards now,” said Jim, “with us nailed down to a house for the convenience of the milkman. In the new order of things, the milkman will have his dairy in a central location, and we drive around for the milk.”

“Ah,” I cried, “so something will be fixed?”

“Certainly,” said Jim. “But not the people. The people will be free. Heavenly free. But the services will be nailed down. We are now the slaves of the system. We will make the system our slave.”

“But,” I said, “suppose the milkman wants to be a nomad, too?”

“Then he can’t be a milkman,” explained Jimmie.

“Oh, well, it will be just the same as it is now,” I protested, “somebody is always the goat.”

“But a few goats,” said Jim, “are better than a hundred million goats.”

“It looks to me,” I assured him, “as if we were gradually slipping back into the past. We are becoming nomads again. In due time, as the thing progresses, we will be right back where we started – in the cave.”

“It would take a brave man,” declared Jim, “to say that the world is better to-day than it was. My feeling is that we are all, the whole human race, just taking a tumble to the fact that we have been gypped. That civilization, as they call it, has been a hoax, an imposition, and we are getting rid of it. For five or six thousand years, we have been patiently submitting to this idea that we should all settle down and begin to die before we have ever lived. As soon as we can walk, we are snatched up and sent to school to learn all the rules of settling down and being a slave. All through our youth, we are drilled and trained in the art of going nowhere and settling down. The great idea in life, it seems, is to be not seen and not heard. The absolute ideal of civilization is to go through life as if you had never lived.”

“By the way,” I cut in, “how would the kids go to school in this caravan civilization you are expecting?”

“I doubt if there will be any kids,” said Jim. “But if there are, there won’t be any schools. Anyway, what would there be to learn? We won’t need to know anything, in the days to come, except to count the change whenever we buy gas. And anybody can teach a kid to count.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like much of a civilization,” I stated.

“Who says it has to be?” demanded Jim.

“But my dear fellow,” I exclaimed angrily, “where are we heading? What is our goal?”

“We will head,” said Jim, “wherever we please; our goal will be any place in the world. We can stay still or we can move, just whichever we feel like, at the moment. We will be free, compact, mobile; instead of nailed down, enslaved, burdened, chained. Everything we acquire these days is another nail, fastening us to the earth. In the days to come, when we live in cabin trailers, we won’t have room to acquire anything. Life will be reduced to the essentials.”

“And those essentials?” I asked.

“Bed, frying pan and the pursuit of happiness,” pronounced Jimmie in the American manner.

Harbinger of the New Age

“Personally,” I said, “I have never owned a trailer. Not even one of the baggage-carrying kind.”

“We ought to join the parade,” said Jim. “We ought to own a trailer. How ridiculous for us to load our cars like baggage trucks whenever we go for a trip, when all we have to do, to be perfectly comfortable and roomy, is to hitch a trailer on the back and load our baggage on it. Thousands do. But we, in our stuffy, old-fashioned way, load up our cars with baggage and bird cages and clumsy boxes of provisions, until we have to sit on our edges for a hundred miles.”

“If we were getting a trailer,” I said, “we might as well get the real thing. A cabin. It would dispose of this business of hotels, and cottages, and camps. Think of being able to have a little house on wheels and go wherever we please, for as long as we please. For instance, we might want to go to the Lake of Bays. In order to go there, we have to do one of three things: rent a cottage, reserve a room at a hotel, or go on speculation to find a camp site where somebody, will let us camp.”

“Property,” said Jim. “All of it.”

“Whereas, with a cabin trailer,” I pointed out, “we just go home and throw into it a few things we need. Then dangle along. And when we see the place we like, pull off the side of the road, and there we are.”

“A cabin trailer,” said Jim, “costs a bit of money. But you can get a good ordinary trailer second-hand for very little. In fact, there are places you can rent them for fifty cents a day. Now, I do not propose to be left amongst the minority, when this big change comes. I want to join the caravan at the start. I like to be in the forefront of these new things. I will gladly split with you the price of a good trailer, and we can do our first experiments right away.”

“How about this week-end?” I asked. “Let’s put your punt and my tent and a few bags of duffle aboard an open trailer and just go. Anywhere. And see what it feels like. No plans. No nothing. Just mooch.”

“I know a trailer I can get for $15,” said Jim.

“Buy it,” said I.

And Thursday Jim drove proudly into my side drive towing behind him the harbinger of the new age.

It was a very simple and dignified vehicle. Two-wheeled, with springs; painted, substantial; it was a trailer for trailing loads. Jim demonstrated the patent attachment for coupling the trailer to the back of any car. You dropped a bolt down, and then stuck a safety bolt through the bottom – secure, snug.

“Where will we keep it overnight?” I asked.

“I hoped you would keep it here,” said Jim, looking around my drive and garden.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t keep it in the side drive,” I said, “and it wouldn’t go through the gate into the yard, and anyway it would cut up the lawn.”

“I have no room in my place,” said Jim. The kids all around would be hauling it about.”

Joining the Parade

We pondered the problem. Finally Jim suggested we store it overnight at the garage a few blocks away where we got our gas and odds and ends.

“I have to charge a dollar a night,” explained our old friend the garage man, “or my place would be full of these things and nothing else.”

Next day, we called and picked her up and proceeded to load up for the journey. We piled in bags and tent and blanket rolls and tent pegs: Jim added more bags and quilts, and boxes of supplies; and still there was lots of room. Too much room. Everything slid around in the trailer. So we added a few things we didn’t intend to take, such as back rests for the boat, cushions, grass rugs, and anything else we could find around the house to take up space.

“Aha,” cried Jim. “The complete caravaneers. The citizens of the future, foot-loose and free.”

And putting a few of the delicate items such as fishing rods in the car, we manoeuvred out of Jim’s drive, backwards, and set forth upon our journey.

It is a little difficult to back up these trailers. It is also a little tricky rounding corners and taking curves. This one we got had a habit of weaving from side to side whenever we turned a curve. But as Jim pointed out, what could we expect for $15?

Inside of ten miles, however, just nicely outside the city, we were exclaiming that we wouldn’t even know we had a trailer attached, so smooth and free did we run.

For the first hour or so, we both had the five-minute habit of turning and looking back to see if our trailer was coming with us. The sense of pride in a trailer must come from the same source as the feeling a small boy has when he gets his first pants with pockets. It is a sort of all-here feeling; a complete, self-contained feeling. Our nomad ancestors felt that way when on the wide deserts, with all their worldly goods aboard a camel or two.

But presently the novelty wears off, and we cruised along, talking about where we would go, and not caring.

“When evening comes on,” said Jim, “we will start looking for a spot to stop.”

Mile after mile, we sailed along. And certainly, you would never imagine we had a trailer on at all. In fact, we no longer felt the trailer waggling on the curves. It was as if it had got into its stride.

Another car snored past us, pulling a trailer so like ours, both Jim and I cried out: “You’d think it was ours, boat, bags and all.”

“Funny how people all do the same things,” said Jim. “Even to roping on a boat with the same knots.”

A Dreadful Thought

We put another thirty miles behind. We pulled into a gas station for gas and both got out and watched the lady fill her up. Please, reader, observe this. We both got out. Both stood watching the gas station lady fill our tank in the rear of the car with gas.

We paid. Got back in. Drove about four miles up the road when suddenly I felt a curious prickling sensation in the back of my neck. I slanted my gaze around to Jim, at the wheel, and saw on Jim’s face a curious look of horror. He took his foot off the gas. He swivelled his gaze around to me.

“Did you,” he swallowed, “notice whether the trailer was on, back at that gas station?”

“Jim,” I gasped, “the same dreadful thought just struck me this instant. It was NOT on.”

We stopped the car on the road shoulder. Both very reluctantly got out and raised our eyes to the rear of the car.

The trailer was gone.

“It was gone,” said Jim, “back there at the gas station when we stopped for gas. And we didn’t notice it was gone.”

“Jim,” I cried, “that must have been our trailer that passed us, the one we said was exactly like ours.”

“Quick,” said Jim, “after them.”

And at full speed, we raced north on the highway, watching at every village and every gas station for our trailer, in case they had left it to be located.

But though we drove at breakneck pace until dark, we neither overtook the finder of our trailer nor did we see it at any stopping place.

“Either somebody is trying to find us,” said Jim darkly, “or else they are not trying to find us.”

“What,” I asked, “is the status of a trailer left ditched on the roadside? Is it finders keepers?”

So Jim and I located a hotel and had to borrow pyjamas, razor and so forth from the proprietor. And we walked about until midnight, in the village, watching traffic. And we saw many trailers, both cabin and baggage. We slept badly and woke early and continued our journey northward, watching at every camping place and along the shores of every lake, but saw no trace of our trailer, until we had to turn around and head back for home, sans trailer, sans tent, sans bags and blankets and everything.

“In the new era,” I said to Jim, “they will have to invent some better form of attachment for trailers or life will be very precarious indeed.”

Jim reached into his pocket.

“I wasn’t going to mention it,” he said, “but I forgot to put this in.”

It was the small safety bolt for securing the trailer to the car.

“I’ll put up the reward,” assured Jim. And the reward is $10.

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Editor’s Notes: Roger Babson was an American entrepreneur, economist, and business theorist. He was a popular lecturer on business and financial trends.

“The life of Riley” means “living a luxurious or carefree existence.” The expression comes from a popular song of the 1880s, “Is That Mr. Reilly?”, in which the title character describes what he would do if he suddenly became wealthy.

50 cents in 1936 would be $10.75 in 2023. $15 is $323. $10 is $215.