Tag: 1938 Page 2 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 22, 1938.

“Sit easy,” said Jimmie Frise. “Sit easy.”

“Be more careful,” I retorted. “Don’t come up to an intersection at 40 miles an hour and then jam on the brakes like that. Ooze up to an intersection.”

“Heh, heh,” sneered Jimmie. “You broadcasting. Mr. Gregory Clark is now on the air to tell you how to drive.”

“All right, all right,” I countered. “I’m. only trying to help you. All I say is, be more rhythmic in your driving.”

“O. Kay,” said Jim, bitterly. “You whistle the tune and I’ll dance.”

“Jim,” I said, injured, “for weeks I’ve been thinking of speaking to you about the way you drive. I’ve put a lot of thought into it. I’ve studied you. Don’t imagine I am just one of these back-seat drivers that babbles automatically. I tell you. I have made a careful study and survey of the way you drive, keeping my mouth shut until I knew what I wanted to tell you.”

“Ah,” said Jim, letting in his clutch with a sharp angry rasp and tramping on the gas so that the back end of the car tried to go sooner than the front end, with a horrible rocking-horse effect, “ah, so all the time we’ve been driving together, I have been a sort of a frog on the laboratory table, eh? Watching me, eh? Research stuff, between so-called friends.”

“Calm yourself, Jim,” I counselled. “Driving a car is no longer an art, it is an instinct, like walking or breathing. We all walk differently, some of us walk well and some badly. But it isn’t an easy thing to change a man’s style of walking. You might almost as easily change his character. In fact, the way a man walks is usually a manifestation of his character, the same as his driving. Lazy men slouch along; purposeful men walk with a clean, smooth walk. Crafty men walk craftily, on their toes, like a cat. The same with driving.”

“So?” said Jim.

“If you had a sharp and clear-cut defect in your character, Jim,” I began, “you would expect me, as a friend, to mention it to you, wouldn’t you?”

“And you,” replied Jim, calmly, “would naturally expect me to return the favor?”

“Jim,” I stated firmly, “I have been informed by literally scores of people, including some of the most expert drivers, that I am a careful, smooth, efficient, driver.”

“I am not referring,” said Jim, “to your driving.”

“Let that go,” I suggested, after a pause. “But what I am trying to get at, if you will permit me, is that you drive a car as if it were a tractor or an army tank. You lack the delicate touch. You grab and stamp and jerk. Now, a modern car requires no such violence. It is a creature of delicate balance and control. It is, as nearly as mechanical science can design it, built to conform to your very nerves, limbs and brain.”

“What time is it?” interrupted Jim.

“Ten-twenty.” I informed him. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jim, “they say there is usually a lull in the conversation at 20 minutes after and 20 minutes to the hour.”

“It didn’t work this time,” I remarked. “As I was saying, the ideal of modern automotive engineers is to construct a car so perfectly that it will, in a sense, be actually part of the human mechanism; tied in, as it were, to our very flesh and nerves, so that, as lightly and instantly as our eyes or hands respond, so will our car.”

It’s a Natural Instinct

“That’s the way they’ve got this car,” declared Jim, giving her a little gas and lurching it wide and furiously past another smartly-travelling car.

“Now what,” I demanded fiercely, “in the name of goodness did you want to do that for? That car was going as fast as we want to go. In fact, you have had to put on a little speed the last minute or so to overtake it. Then you speed up to 45 to pass it. And now, look, you are back to 35. What’s the idea?”

“It is a natural instinct,” stated Jim, “to want to get ahead of the fellow ahead of you.”

“And I suppose,” I scoffed, “that it is also a natural instinct to slow down and get in his way, once you have passed him?”

“Aw, dry up.” said Jim.

“As a student of human affairs,” I declared, “I am trying to get to the bottom of these things having to do with driving. Our world is now almost 100 per cent motorized. It is time we began to think very earnestly about developing a code of morals and manners with regard to driving.”

“Aren’t laws enough?”, inquired Jim.

“No, laws are never enough,” I explained. “Laws are the last ditch. There are laws against murder. But what really prevents murder amongst us is an ancient and long-developed code of morals and manners.”

“You’re right,” breathed Jimmie. “It’s my manners that hold me back.”

We drew near another intersection, and I sat up to observe the phenomenon of Jimmie’s method of handling the situation. At 37 miles an hour, he charged the intersection, where the red light was on. Two cars were already ahead of him, halted.

At 37, Jim charged down, and then, three car lengths from the stop, he jammed on his brakes, half rising in his seat to give the pedal his full weight. The car staggered under the drag of the brakes. And just as Jim neared the stop, he suddenly decided not to get in behind the two cars ahead of him, but to swerve out and draw alongside of them, for a quicker getaway.

But as he swerved, another car from behind at the same instant tried to come into the open space Jim was swerving for. With a wild snort of horn and a screech of violently applied brakes, the other swung his car far out to the left, so escaping hitting Jim’s fenders.

“Well, the darn fool,” gasped Jim, angry and startled.

The newcomer ran down his window, stuck his head out and shouted outrageous and scandalous remarks at Jimmie.

Then the lights changed, and we all went merrily on our way.

“That fool,” said Jim, “mighty near smacked our fenders.”

“If you will permit me,” I stated, “as an unprejudiced and impartial observer, to say something…”

“The car behind,” cried Jim loudly, “according to law, is always responsible. If he had smacked us, he would have been legally to blame.”

So indignant was Jim, he made a terrible sound trying to shift into second gear at the next turn. It was a toothed, rasping screaming sound, such as demons make. This unsettled him and he tramped on the gas again, causing the car to stagger as from a blow. To correct this. Jim tramped the brakes with authority, creating further staggers; and then, to relieve his feelings, he pressed the heel of his hand on the horn, though there was nobody ahead of us.

“Jim,” I remonstrated.

“Aw,” rasped he, all flushed, “go to blazes. Let me drive.”

So I sit back and let him drive. We steamed resolutely to intersections, as usual, and braked suddenly to let a car cross ahead of us; or, with a sudden flood of gas, leaped ahead to nip past ahead of a crossing car. We came to a traffic jam at a crossing where we wanted to turn right, and just as we tried to work in on the right-hand lane, somebody else curved in ahead of us, blocking the right-hand turn, though all they wanted to do was go straight ahead, with the jump on the others rightfully ahead.

“In New York,” muttered Jim,” they’d skin that guy alive for blocking that right-hand lane.”

A moment later, we came to another jam, with which we wanted to proceed straight ahead; but, seeing the right-hand lane open, we sneaked into it to save time. And immediately, a car came in behind us and tooted indignantly.

“Aw, dry up,” said Jim.

We got in straight ahead lanes, and were held up while somebody in front wanted to turn left. We ran up alongside of cars only to have them force us outward because they wanted to pass a parked car. We backed and filled. We started and stopped. We crawled and crept. And it was all done with gritted teeth, and gritted gears, and brakes grabbed and steering wheel wrenched and engine raced.

“Say something,” challenged Jim, through his teeth sideways.

“We’ll have to develop a code,” I stated, “of traffic morals and manners. And we will have to start teaching it in the first book of the public schools. It is far more important. than many of the things they teach in the public schools now. It doesn’t matter how bad people’s table manners are. That is a private affair. But driving is a public affair. And public manners have to be brought under control.”

“It’s human nature,” said Jim, “to fight and compete.”

“It’s time,” I countered, “that we realized that human nature is animal nature, and we’re all like hogs at the trough.”

“You’re a radical,” declared Jimmie.

“I’m worse than that,” I admitted. “I’m a cannibal. I eat pork.”

With which pleasant thought, we worked our way out of the down-town congestion and proceeded westward out on a fine open highway, and came at length to a well-known V intersection in these parts, one of those V intersections which the police, with their usual skill, have guarded with two large yellow signs, inscribed with the word “Caution.”

I saw the truck as soon as Jimmie did. All I did was draw in my breath and press my two feet on the sloping floor boards.

It was a massive truck, with, that authority in its manner that those season box holders at the hockey games have. It was, in fact, a sort of Big Business of a truck. It had speed, weight, power.

Coming up to the V intersection, both Jimmie and the truck were travelling about the same rate of speed, slackening only slightly in honor of the large yellow signs.

To me, it was a sort of drama. The truck started to slacken, and so did Jim. I could see the big truck begin to respond to that expert tap, tap on the brakes which such great drivers as Sir Malcolm Campbell recommend, at the same time that Jimmie, while I held my breath, tap, tapped at his brakes, alert, watchful, calculating.

It was a sort of after-you-my-dear-Alphonse business. The truck started to take the crossing at the same instant Jimmie did, and as Jim braked, so did the truck. Then they both started again at the same instant, and then both braked. It was, in fact, silly.

“What the…” said Jim, impatiently, and tramped on the gas with a will.

And at the exact same instant, the truck driver, no doubt also muttering “what the…” tramped on his gas.

And the result, which I had sensed from the start, was inevitable. With a brief, sickening grunt the two of us, the giant truck and our car, slammed noses.

But such was the nature of things, the great, massive truck and the light family car, that while the truck got nothing more than a slight corrugated dinge in its front fender, our poor front end collapsed like a worm tin.

We all piled out. Jim, with tight lips, was refraining from saying anything until he got his ideas co-ordinated.

But the truck driver was a spectacle.

He seemed weak with fright. For such a measly bump as he got, he seemed to be excessively disturbed. With a great moan, he came around and leaned on the fender of his truck.

“Oh, oh,” he cried brokenly. “What a terrible thing to happen.”

“You truck drivers,” began Jim, tensely, “with all the weight you’ve got, should realize … look at my car!”

“Oh, me,” cried the truck driver, piteously, “gentlemen, you don’t understand. My poor little wife. My two little kiddies”

“What’s that?” cried Jim sternly.

“Oh, ho, ho,” wept the big fellow, bending down, to look at the trifling dent in his fender, as if to see a wound in his child’s leg. “O the pity.”

“What’s the matter,” shouted Jim, “look at this mess.”

And he pointed dramatically at his own mushed front end. Our car had the expression of a bulldog, so flattened was its countenance.

“Ah, yes,” said the big truck driver as he glanced briefly at our car. “Yes, gents, that’s all very well. It means little to you, that damage. For a few paltry dollars, you can have it fixed, or maybe your insurance company will do it for nothing.”

“It was nobody’s fault,” declared Jim. “We both did it.”

“That’s the pity of it,” said the truck driver, wiping his brow. “Oh, what a thing to bring home to-night to my little wife and children. Here I was within two weeks of getting the bonus.”

“The bonus?” we chorused.

“The bonus,” said the driver, with a catch in his voice. “My employers pay a bonus of $50 a year to every driver who goes through the year without a scratch. I’ve driven 50 weeks of the year… and now this happens. Now this!”

And he leaned back and looked as if he could not believe his senses at the two trifling nicks in his fender. Our poor old wreck yawned and grimaced before us in vain.

“The law is…” began Jimmie.

“Yes, the law,” said the driver sadly. “And the insurance. If you report it to the insurance, they take it up with my employers. And I’m sunk… even if I could afford to have this dent fixed up on the quiet.”

And he paused, speechless, beyond leaning back to look around the engine of his truck at a couple of cars loudly complaining about being held up in traffic by us. He merely moved his mouth and scowled at them, but you could read his lips. The cars quit complaining and backed up and went around us.

“Well,” said Jim, surveying the front of our car, “after all, I suppose there is only a few dollars of damage done here.”

“How much have you got on you?” I inquired of Jim quietly.

“Four,” muttered Jim, “four-sixty.”

“I can lend you three,” I murmured.

So we made up $7.50 and handed it to the truck driver, who could scarcely believe his eyes.

“Why,” he stammered. “I’ll be able… I’ll be able to have it mended up here a piece … maybe I can … maybe they’ll never find out!”

“Forget it,” said Jim. “Forget it, my boy.”

And we waved him on his way, and bent up our front left fender so it wouldn’t scrape on the tire, and started the engine and sure enough it went, almost as good as ever, but with perhaps a slight quiver.

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, as he turned her head back down-town to take us to the garage where we get these thing fixed up now and then, “as a matter of fact, do you know what caused that collision?”

I had several reasons and was selecting one when he went on:

“Manners,” he said. “Manners. If both the truck and I had simply barged ahead as usual at that intersection, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“That’s right,” I assured him. “Blame me.”

Editor’s Notes: While reading this story, all I could think is that they had no seatbelts back then.

Sir Malcolm Campbell was a contemporary British racer.

“After You, My Dear Alphonse,” is an expression that comes from a comic strip Alphonse and Gaston, by Frank Opper.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 31, 1938.

Have you ever thought of driving in a sleigh to see your friends on New Year’s Day? Greg and Jim tried to get one – and look what happened!

“It seems a pity,” sighed Jimmie Frise, “that all the old-fashioned things have to be junked.”

“When I was a little boy,” I recollected, “I used to be so proud of my home as compared with my grandmother’s home. Mine was bright and vivid, the furniture was light yellow maple and oak; but Grandma’s was full of dark, dull old simple stuff called walnut.”

“Did you have a brass table in your home?” inquired Jim.

“At the parlor window,” I cried. “A brass table with curved legs and a kind of sickly greenish-yellow marble square top with a doily on it. The parlor was full of brightness. A huge red plush rocking chair, Tall buff colored urns and pitchers. One of the biggest pictures in the parlor had a beautiful snow-white frame. And another picture had a red plush frame.”

“I remember,” said Jim. “Ours was the same.”

“But Grandma’s house,” I recalled, “was so plain, so severe. Everything was walnut. It was almost bleak in her house. Every room with just a few things in it, not packed full, like ours. I used to feel sorry for Grandma living in that dim, quiet house. When she died, and all her furniture had to be divided up amongst her children, we had to take some of it, a couple of chests of drawers, a sideboard, some chairs and a tall bookcase. We hid them up in the attic.”

“Then what?” demanded Jim, knowing what was coming.

“Well,” I said, “this just goes to show what happened to old-fashioned things. One day, they suddenly threw out all the maple and the light oak and the red plush chairs, and they brought Grandma’s stuff down out of the attic. Reverently, almost. They had furniture men in to polish and shine and repair knobs. Every single item of Grandma’s simple, glorious old walnut was carried tenderly down. from the attic and we did our best to remember how it used to be placed. We tried to recapture again the severe simplicity of Grandma’s living room. We all got fighting over Grandma’s stuff, 20 years after she was gone. We tried to wheedle, buy or steal from one another the lovely colonial walnut that had been in the family a hundred years. It kicked out all the maple, oak and brass as easily as a snowplow flings aside the snow. If an old-fashioned thing has merit, Jimmie, it can never be permanently thrown away. It comes back down out of the attic.”

“I was thinking,” said Jim, “about the way we used to celebrate New Year’s Day. The way our parents and grandparents did it. You must admit that there is an old fashion that has gone with the wind.”

“I guess it has,” I submitted sadly. “It was a day of visiting.”

“We didn’t sleep in, on New Year’s Day,” declared Jim. “We got up early and got dressed in our best clothes. There was a great dinner to be prepared, but that was only incidental. The great thing was to watch out the window and see the visitors coming.”

“In sleighs,” I recalled, “with sleigh bells.”

When They Went Calling

“All the friends and relatives called,” said Jim, “and from 10 a.m. to nearly 1 p.m., there was a steady stream of visitors. The world was divided into two groups. Those who had small children stayed home New Year’s morning, to receive. And those without children as well as the elderly, did the visiting. Then, in the afternoon, after the great New Year’s banquet, your parents dressed you all up and got the cutter out and went calling in the afternoon on the middle-aged, the childless and so forth.”

“That’s absolutely right,” I agreed. “We had an old Uncle Edward. I can see him yet. He was a big old man with a mane of white hair and side whiskers down around his ears, and he wore an otter fur cap, a black greatcoat with an otter collar and frog buttons of braid across the front. He used to arrive every New Year’s morning about 11 o’clock. He came in a cutter, drawn by two horses with bells.

“He used to hire the cutter, and the coachman, in a big round bearskin hat, would leap down off the front of the cutter, which was all shining patent leather, throw back the buffalo robe, and Uncle Edward would step grandly down, with his gold-headed cane, and walk with lovely dignity up the walk and into our house. We children were shooed into the kitchen and we would peep in to see Uncle Edward sitting there, in the parlor, his hands on the gold head of the cane, talking to my father and mother and any aunts who were visiting us. He would have a glass of port wine and a piece of Christmas cake. He would stay about 15 minutes, then, with kisses all round and strong cries of Happy New Year, he would march out to his cutter, be tucked in by the coachman, and then drive jingling gloriously down the street on his round of all his friends and relatives.”

“Boy,” said Jim, mistily, “wouldn’t it be swell to rent a cutter, with two horses, and sleigh bells, and go calling on all our relatives and friends, New Year’s morning?”

“If we had snow,” I pointed out, “it would be all gone by New Year’s. Toronto has lost many old-fashioned things, but even a big snowfall is gone in a day, in this slush country.”

“I wonder if we could find a cutter in Toronto now?” asked Jimmie. “Just in case. Suppose New Year’s morning is a glorious white, sparkling day. Can you imagine anything dearer to the heart than going visiting our friends, for old times’ sake, in a cutter?”

“Jim, it’s a vain hope,” I submitted.

“Nothing is vain, if you go after it,” cried Jim, getting up and studying the phone book. “Liveries, liveries.”

But there were no liveries in the back of the phone book. And the only horses referred to were horse transport. There were slicing machines and slip covers, but no sleighs. Jim finally telephoned a friend of his who is a school teacher and he gave us the name of a man who owned sleighs for sleighing parties in the winter. We called him on the phone and he said he only had two big sleighs for school sleighing parties.

“Are there no cutters left in Toronto?” Jim asked him.

“No,” said this old-timer, “and no gas street lamps, either.”

Looking For a Cutter

“They have any number of sleighs and cutters in Montreal,” Jim accused.

“Ah, yes,” said the old-timer, “but this is Toronto. We’re up to date.”

“Yeah, up to date,” sneered Jim.

“I tell you,” said the old livery man, “there used to be a fellow I knew in off Yonge street, who had a few relics left, and one of them, if I recollect, was a cutter. He used to keep it all smeared with vaseline to preserve the patent leather.”

“That’s it, that’s it,” cried Jim.

“I haven’t seen him for five or ten years,” said the old-timer, to whom time was a little vague. “But I’ll be glad to describe how you get to where he used to be. It’s up a lane. You go in off Yonge…”

And when Jimmie hung up, he had explicit directions how to locate an ancient livery man who might have preserved, amongst his outmoded souvenirs, a cutter, a great black patent leather cutter, with sweeping fenders and spacious upholstered body, and a high seat for the cabby to sit on while he skitched at his prancing pair, loud with bells.

“It’s a sentimental journey,” said Jim, starting to clear up his desk. So, New Year’s week being a kind of dithery week anyway, we quit for the day and headed up Yonge street. Yonge street, in only a few years, has surrendered many of its antique features. Up around College St., where there used to be, until quite recently, a lot of odd little byways, and lanes, the Parliament buildings, the automotive industry and the hospitals have encroached and expanded. We followed our directions very carefully, but found, in the narrow lane to which we were directed, only the back of a big white garage.

Wandering back and forth amidst these streets that in their time had livery stables every other building, we found at last a lane that certainly appeared to lead to the past. It was dilapidated and awry. Its old board fences staggered, and there were boxes and bins of rubbish. Tracks of horses showed in the slush, and we felt that however forbidding the lane appeared, up here, if anywhere, we might find an old man treasuring an ancient cutter.

We walked rather cautiously up the lane and followed around two turns, each more uninviting than the last.

On turning a sudden corner, we came upon five men, seedy, shabby and obviously under the influence. They had a small fire built of sticks and rubbish and over it were melting a can of something, which they poured into a handkerchief and strained into a dirty bottle.

“Hi-ya,” said the first of the tramps to see us.

The others leaped up and stared at us like startled goats.

“Hi-ya,” they all said.

“Canned heat,” said Jimmie, to me. “What a bunch of cutthroats.”

“Do you men,” I asked, in the better class manner one uses with bums on their own ground, “know of an old livery stable in here?”

One of the five, with purple face and bloodshot eyes, swayed and staggered over and took me unwillingly by the lapel.

“How about two bits, Mack,” he asked thickly. “Two bits, I ain’t had a bite to eat since yesterday.”

“Get away,” I said, trying to detach my coat collar.

“Tell It to the Sergeant”

A couple of the others, impressed with the possibilities, staggered up and one took Jim by the arm and the other took me.

“Come on, Mack,” they said, “join little party. Hi-ya, boys. Little party. Contribute two bits, as all.”

I struggled but Jim gave me a smiling wink, not to resist. The better part of valor, with drunks, is certainly not dignity.

We had just reached the neighborhood of the small bonfire, when from behind us we felt, rather than heard, a crunching and thudding of feet, and around the bend came three policemen, in their greatcoats and fur caps.

The hoboes, with an alacrity that was astonishing, began running in all directions at once, like hens in a barnyard; but since the lane was a dead end, it was only a matter of a moment before the policemen had all five of them by the scruff, as little children are captured by a big brother.

And we were included.

“Stand over there,” said the oldest of the policemen, and he was only a lad.

“Pardon me,” said Jim, “we’re not in this.”

“Oh, you’re not, are you?” said the cop.

And he signalled us to stand back against the fence.

“We certainly are not,” I interrupted hotly.

“A canned heat party,” said the policeman, more to his pals than to us, “sure gathers a queer assortment.”

“Listen,” I said, firmly, “we just happened to come around that bend two minutes ago. Just ahead of you.”

“Oho, is that so?” said the policeman. “And what were you doing promenading up and down a nice little lane like this?”

“We were looking for a livery stable,” I explained.

“A what?” said the policeman, and all the others listened.

“A livery stable,” I stated firmly. “We were looking for a livery stable to see if we could rent a cutter.”

“A cutter?” said the policeman. “What kind of a cutter?”

“A cutter,” I explained, “a sleigh, the kind you go driving…”

“Higher than a kite,” interrupted the policeman, and addressing his mates, he said: “That’s what canned heat does, see? Nutty. Right off the deep end.”

“I beg your pardon, my man,” said Jim, haughtily, “you are making a very serious mistake. I tell you, we were in here looking for a sleigh to rent.”

“Sure, sure,” said the constable, taking one of the bums in one hand, taking me by the shoulder and signalling his mates to gather up the rest, including Jim. “Sure, sure, Colonel. And is it the Queen of Sheba you are taking out for a nice sleigh ride?”

“Jim,” I shouted, “are we going to submit to this?”

“Look here,” said Jim, halting, but the policeman gave his sleeve a little twitch that nearly upended him.

“Tell it to the sergeant,” said all three.

So instead of a sleigh ride, we went for a ride in the policeman’s motor car, the five bums being held at a lamp post by the other two policemen while they telephoned for the black wagon.

“Speaking of old-fashioned things,” said Jim, as we raced through the streets, “it would have been kind of choice to get a ride in the Black Maria.”

With An Eye to the Past

At the police station, we found a young policeman sitting on the high stool behind the counter. Funny how much younger policemen get as you get older. You rarely see a policeman of your own age nowadays.

“What’s this for?” he asked our escort.

“Canned heat,” said our captor.

The young fellow looked us over with amazement.

“Boy,” he breathed, “you never can tell, can you?”

“Look here, sergeant,” I shouted firmly, “we are a couple of respectable citizens who were walking in a lane…”

“Tell all about the cutter you want,” interrupted our young man, “that you’re going to take the Queen of Sheba for a ride in.”

“I tell you,” I asserted loudly and angrily, “that we were in search of a cutter, a cutter is a sort of open carriage in the form of a sleigh. My friend and I were going to see if we could rent one for an old-fashioned New Year’s Day. Do you follow me?”

“Sure, sure,” said the young fellow behind the counter.

“When we were young,” I explained, dramatically, “all our elders used to make New Year’s the occasion of visiting far and wide amongst our friends and relatives, and they drove around in cutters, with sleigh bells…”

There came a loud bump from an inner room, and out walked a tall elderly sergeant in his black badges.

“What’s this, what’s this?” he inquired kindly. “What’s all this I hear about going visiting on New Year’s Day, with cutters…?”

“These are a couple of canned heat babies,” explained our captor, “we picked up in a lane along with a bunch of the regulars who are coming in the wagon.”

The sergeant studied us narrowly. He leaned down and smelt me. He smelt Jim.

“Gentlemen,” he said, politely, “step inside. Take a chair.”

We entered the private office.

“Now what is this?” he asked, tilting back.

So we explained to him that we were just a couple of old-fashioned birds with an eye to the past, who got the idea we would like to find a sleigh, a cutter, with two spanking horses and sleigh bells, and go through the streets of Toronto….

“Why, my dear sir,” cried the sergeant, “I’ve been thinking that very same thing for years. I’ve had the boys keeping a sharp eye out for any old cutter…

So we jumped up off our chairs and sat on the edge of his desk, and I told him about my old Uncle Edward and he told about an Uncle Tod he had back in Ireland, where they rarely had any snow, and Jimmie described what his old home town looked like on New Year’s Day back in the dear olden time, and the sergeant made a pact with us that whoever found the old sleigh first would tell the other, so that we could use it turn about, in the mornings and the afternoons, year in, year out, on New Year’s Days so long as we might live.

Editor’s Notes: A cutter is a type of horse drawn sleigh. They tend to be smaller than full sized slieghs.

“…skitched at his prancing pair”. Skitching means being pulled by a horse in this context.

Canned Heat is Sterno, a brand of jellied, denatured alcohol sold in a can and meant to be burned directly in its can. In the Depression (when this was written), hoboes would squeeze canned heat through a cloth to make cheap alcohol.

A Black Maria is a police van.

This story was repeated on December 31, 1943 as “What! No Cutters?”. It’s illustration is at the end.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 17, 1938.

“Here’s an invitation,” cried Jimmie Frise, “for you and me to act as judges at, a baby show.”

“Let’s accept,” I replied heartily. “Where is it at?”

“The Bloomville Fall Fair,” read Jimmie eagerly. “You know where Bloomville is?”

“I can’t just place it,” I said.

“It’s up near Stratford,” advised Jim. “‘They have a swell little fall fair there. We’d have no end of fun.”

“I kind of wish it was a city baby show,” I suggested. “I am more familiar with city babies than country babies.”

“Ho,” said Jim, “you’ve never seen babies unless you’ve seen country babies. And anyway, what’s the difference? We just pick the best baby, that’s all there is to it.”

“Don’t we have rules for judging?” I asked. “Isn’t judging baby show complicated, like judging horses or cattle?”

“Sure, it’s the same,” admitted Jim. “To be a judge of horses you have to know all about horses. But we’re fathers. What more is there to know about babies than we know?”

“Well, it’s some years,” I confessed, “since any of mine were babies.”

“Listen,” said Jimmie, “you never forget about babies.”

“Oh, yes you do,” I disagreed, “Every time I pick a baby up, and look down and see their eyelashes, I feel as if I had never seen a baby before. I used to be like that with my own. I’m like that yet. Somebody hands me a baby, and I take it and look down. And I always get the same strange, sinking sensation, a feeling as if I were suddenly alone on a mountain peak, a million miles from all the world, holding in my arms all the riches, all the precious riches, of the universe. It’s their eyelashes do that to me.”

“Come to Bloomville,” begged Jim, “and see some real country babies, big rolling fat babies, babies with creases and wrinkles of glowing flesh, babies pink and flushed and lovely with pure health.”

“It’s a terrible responsibility,” I pointed out. “Suppose we selected the wrong baby.”

“You can’t ever,” cried Jim, “select the wrong baby. At all baby shows, one baby stands out above all others.”

“But the other parents won’t feel that way,” I explained. “I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. And if there are 20 babies in a baby show, then you are absolutely bound to hurt the feelings of 19 women and 19 men.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Jim. “They all realize there can be only one winner before they enter the show.”

Other Parents are Blind

“Yes,” I replied, “and each one of them is perfectly confident that that one will be theirs. You are fooling with dynamite, my boy, when you start fooling with parenthood. It is one of the strangest things in the world, the absolute devotion of parents to their baby, no matter how funny it looks. Why, I remember neighbors we had when our baby was born. They had a great big swollen baby, it must have weighed about a hundred pounds. Ours was just a neat little tidy baby, about 10 pounds or so. But the way those neighbors condescended towards our baby. you would think babies were valued by weight.”

“I’ve been through that,” confessed Jim. “The people who lived next door to us, when one of ours was born, had a little wee bluish white sort of baby with thin fair hair and a thin little face. Ours was a bouncing dark baby. But all those people said, whenever we met, was – “my isn’t your baby awfully DARK?'”

“Well, that what I’m referring to,” I declared, “when I say it’s dynamite. I should think the judges of a baby show ought to be elderly or aged and infirm doctors. And they would judge the babies purely from the physiological standpoint.”

“We’ll have a doctor assisting us,” said Jim. “It says so, right here in the invitation.”

“I’m not very keen, Jim,” I regretted.

“Aw, come on,” pleaded Jim. “You have no idea the fun a fall fair is. We’ll be the guests of the directors. We’ll be shown all over the fair, the prize cattle and horses and hogs. The prize cakes and pies and bedspreads. We’ll be feted and dined.”

“H’m,” I reflected.

“Look,” cried Jimmie, “we’ll be the guests to dinner at some big country home. Such feeding. Beef AND pork. Probably sausages, maybe that big thick country sausage. Vegetables of every known kind. Home-made bread. Buns. Apple sauce. Pies of three kinds, big thick pies, baked real brown and shiney on top…”

“Just a minute, just a minute,” I interrupted. “I’ll go. I was intending to go anyway. All I was doing was discuss the affair from all sides. I’ll be only too happy to go.”

So Jimmie wrote and accepted the honor of being judges of the Bloomville Fall Fair Baby Show on behalf of both of us.

Bloomville is one of those old and enterprising villages of Ontario that are full of good humor and kindliness. Tradition, however homely, hangs thick about its faded red brick business section, half a block long, and its old weathered houses and cottages.

They treasure old jokes and gossip. Every house has a story about it, every store, every tree, almost. This was the house old Jeremy so-and-so lived in when he put the cat on the fire and set the log of wood out the back door. In that store, Sir Wilfrid Laurier wrote his speech about the title the queen had offered him. Against that maple tree, Mary somebody was thrown from the runaway buggy, Mary who would have been wife of a prime minister, if she had not died so young and beautiful.

Bunting and Banners

Bloomville was all decked out when Jimmie and I drove in and asked our way to the fair grounds. Bunting and flags and banners and general sense of big doings was everywhere. The street was angle parked to its complete capacity, and then double parked on top of that.

The fair grounds were just outside the village and there we presented ourselves, parking our car in a muddy field where an excited gentleman in an arm band handled traffic in the best King and Yonge St. manner, only more gestures.

The fair manager himself, Mr. Peterkin, happened to be handy when we presented our invitation at the entrance gate and he took us in hand and introduced us to about 40 people in two minutes.

“The baby show begins,” he said, “at 3 p.m., Instead of 2 p.m., as indicated in the program, so just make yourselves at home, and I’ve delegated a couple of the committee to show you about.”

So two gentlemen cowboyed us out of the throng and we started at one end and went around the grand circle. We visited the orchard produce and the grains and roots. We inspected the stalls of the massive horses and the growling bulls and the forlorn cows. We inhaled the indescribable pungent aroma of pigs and looked down, upon vast living barrels of pork, with glistening hairs all over them, a thing I hadn’t known about pigs heretofore. I always thought they were nude.

In the official enclosure of the ring, we sat and watched judging of black and white cattle, while trotting races went on furiously at the same time. Jim watched the trotters while I studied carefully the process of judging the cattle. But it was beyond me. They shifted the cows around they walked them, they stood and felt them and stood, staring intently at them. But it was all beyond me, for while looked like the best cow to me never got a ribbon. The cow I liked best had a kind face.

But before we knew it, Mr. Peterkin, with his official buttons and ribbons, was signalling us furiously, and we went out of the enclosure and walked with increasing self-consciousness along a crowded way to an open marquee where the baby judging was to be done. The baby show had attracted a very large crowd, there being a special pressure of grandmothers by the looks of things; grandmothers who looked over their spectacles at Jimmie and me with critical but kindly curiosity.

We were given badges with “judge” beautifully inscribed, and were introduced to Dr. Calhoon, the local doctor, who was the third and official judge with us.

The Show’s On

“Three o’clock,” shouted Mr. Peterkin loudly, although it was 20 minutes past three to be exact. “The entries in the baby show will kindly come forward and sit on these chairs.”

Which also was hardly correct, because the entries were already sitting on the chairs and had been for some time, by the sound of things.

The babies who were not crying or yelling were softly protesting and squirming and kicking. There were 13 babies in the contest, 18 months being the top range and six months the lowest.

There were fat babies and thin babies, blond babies and dark babies, babies with tempers and babies like lambs, lively babies and babies with no more life in them than a 12-cent bag of flour. The doctor then briefly outlined the basis of judging to Jimmie and me.

“Healthy appearance,” he said, “good looks, cleanliness, absence of physical defects, with especial attention to rickets, shape of the head and fontanelle openings.”

“What on earth is that?” I asked.

“The little soft spots between the parietal bones of an infant’s head,” explained Dr. Calhoon.

“Oh, yes,” I recollected. “If you watch them, you can see them softly beating. You look after them, doctor, Jimmie can look after healthy appearance, and that leaves the general good looks to me. How’s that?”

“We’ll all collaborate,” smiled the doctor.

He stepped forward amidst a sudden hush, even the babies catching their breaths.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Dr. Calhoon, “will you kindly strip the babies to the minimum.”

Which is a dandy new word for diapers.

Stripped to the Minimum

With trembling hands, the mothers bent and proceeded to strip the babies of their finery, which was handed to the perspiring and agitated fathers. The race was on. But nobody was running. The battle was pitched. But nobody could fight.

“Come,” advised the doctor, “we’ll walk along and inspect them from left to right.”

So on the heels of Dr. Calhoon, we proceeded to the end of the row of chairs and started with baby No. 1. Amid an excited buzz from the throng outside the open face of the marquee and amidst yells and howls and irritated cries of the babies, we took baby No. 1 in our grip and gave him the works. Dr. Calhoon held them like specimens, turning them around in his hands, upside down and crossways, as if they were pullets dressed for the oven.

Jim was a little less professional. He held the baby out at arm’s length, smiled beautifully at it, and examined it front and back for general healthy appearance.

But I took the baby in my arms and drew instantly loud and appreciative murmurs from all the grandmothers outside. So I adopted this method throughout.

Baby No. 1 was a scared baby. The doctor’s treatment so astonished it that it did not protest. But one look at Jim’s fierce smile caused it to pull its mouth down. So that by the time I took it in my arms it was just one howling writhing fighting ball of extraordinary muscle. I must confess I never felt a city baby so muscular.

But how can you appraise the good looks of a baby that is in a conniption fit?

Baby No. 2 was already roaring before even the doctor picked it up. Baby No. 3 was asleep and passed from hand to hand with nothing more than drowsy little grunts. How can you assess the good looks of a baby whose eyes you cannot see?

It was the same along the row until we came to baby No. 8, and I realized the truth of Jimmie’s remark that at all baby shows, one baby stands out like a rose amongst daisies.

Baby No. 8 was a cherub, a seraph, a little chubby, blond-haired beauty. He had curly hair and blue eyes and a look of lions in his face. In fact, he looked so much like my own children, when they were this age that I was quite carried away. Indeed, when Dr. Calhoon picked him up and started the usual professional business of twisting and turning the beautiful child around like a pullet, I felt a sharp indignation. Could not Dr. Calhoon see, without shilly-shallying, that this was the winner?

It was so obvious. However, Jim took baby No. 8 and held him off at arms length, admiring him, while the little fellow chuckled and gurgled at him.

Love At First Sight

When I got him, he just held out his arms, and it was a case of love at first sight. I did a little jig with him, at which there was a loud murmur from all the grandmothers and I caught several bleak stares from some of the fathers and mothers on the platform.

The rest of the babies were just the usual run. Jim made quite a fuss over one little chap, a tall, long, solemn baby, dark, with bushy sort of unruly hair sticking up off his head.

“By George,” whispered Jim, as he handed me this solemn child, “if this one isn’t the living image of my kids at that age. Look him over will you? I think I’ll plump for him.”

“Jim,” I said indignantly, “do you mean to admit that your personal, your family affections are going to influence your decision in this thing?”

“No, no,” corrected Jim. “But look at him. Isn’t he the sweetest thing.”

But I couldn’t see it. In fact, after a couple of careful looks at this one, my eyes chanced to catch the eye of baby No. 8, back on his mother’s knee. And I will be jiggered if that little beauty didn’t wink both eyes at me.

“Now,” called Dr. Calhoon, after we had finished the row, “will you all stand up and pass us please?”

So the mothers, supported by the fathers, paraded past us, one by one, while we took final and sometimes extra-final looks at the babies, seeing them in various angles and lights.

“Number 8,” I whispered to Jimmie.

“Not that one,” protested Jim sharply in a whisper. “What’s it got?”

“Jimmie,” I groaned, “it’s got everything. Watch.”

I went over to baby No. 8 and held out my arms.

“Aw-baw, da-da,” said No. 8, holding out his chubby arms and coming fearlessly to me.

Then I held him to Jimmie. Baby No. 8, with perfect manners, reached out his arms and went to Jimmie like a lamb.

He put his arms around Jimmie’s neck and squeezed.

Jim’s face, around the baby, was a picture of decision.

“This one,” he said, with great authority.

“I concur,” said Dr. Calhoon.

And at dinner that night, at Mr. Peterkin’s fine big home, we had roast beef, AND pork, with cracklings; large country sausage, squash, stewed tomatoes, little boiled potatoes, green apple pie, pumpkin pie, gooseberry pie, open face; cantaloupes, with Devonshire cream, and tea.

Editor’s Note: Pullets are young hens, less than a year old. A seraph is a type of angel. Cracklings are fried pork skins, similar to pork rinds.

This story seems a little anti-climatic as nothing odd happens in the end.

“No more fooling,” said Jimmie Frise; “you’ve got to come down with me this week-end to visit Uncle Jake and Aunt Minnie on the farm.”

“What crop are they gathering this week?” I inquired bitterly.

“I picked this week specially,” said Jim, “because there are no crops. The hay is in. The farm is at rest for a little while now. You will see the farm at its best. The cattle fat and clean. The fields bright and heavy.”

“Three times,” I stated firmly. “I have visited the farm with you. Once there was threshing. Once there was haying. And the third time Uncle Jake had the lumbago.”

“That was in my mind,” said Jim apologetically. “My idea in going down this week is that there is nothing whatever doing on the farm. I haven’t heard from Uncle Jake since Christmas. That means he is in good health. The only time he writes is when he is in pain. It relieves him to write a letter when he has something wrong with him.”

“I’ve never visited a farm in summer,” I confessed. “In summer we’re always summer resorting. We visit farms in autumn, when they are forlorn.”

“Exactly,” said Jim. “More than three-quarters of the people of the world live on farms. The whole basis of human civilization is the farm, not the shop or the factory or the town. I think we owe it to ourselves, as seekers after the truth, however silly it turns out to be in the end, to know something about farms other than what we can see jazzing along highways at fifty miles an hour.”

“You’re quite right,” I agreed.

“Sometimes,” said Jim a little wistfully, “I sort of half regret having left the farm to become a cartoonist. There is a false glamor to town and city life. It doesn’t pay, in the end. You run away from the farm to escape manual labor, driving horses, handling forks, steering plows. You imagine it is a far better thing to be a mechanic in a factory, standing beside a machine. Or sitting on a stool in an office. You see a city’s street cars, its pavements, its lights and conveniences, its gaiety, its endless activity. And what do you give away in exchange?”

“I don’t like getting up at 5 am,” I pointed out.

“Pah,” said Jim bitterly. “It isn’t that. It is the peace and freedom you lose. It is the quiet and the gentleness. The patience and the kindly waiting. You plow, you plant and you tend and watch. All things come home. The wheat ripens in due season. The calves are born to the very day. Morning comes and night drops down. It is a life of order and beauty, and it is ordered not by the will of man but by the serene and eternal laws of nature. We are a long step nearer to Heaven on the farm; and in cities it’s a long, long step the other way.”

Chicken and Rhubarb Pie

“When a city man comes into my office to see me,” I confided, “he sits down on the edge of the chair and is half risen to go all in the same movement. But when a friend from the farm comes in, he enters slowly, waiting to see the impression of pleasure and delight on my face, reflecting his own. He looks about to see where to hang his hat. He selects a chair and draws it forward to a pleasant and comfortable position. He relaxes. He is there for an hour. And I, who love him, must sit, all strangely and uneasily relaxed, wondering how I can tell him I must hurry, that work is pressing, that I am a squirrel in a cage and must run, run, run round and round. I dare not relax. In cities it is fatal, it is terrible, it is painful, physically painful, to relax.”

“How,” demanded Jim, “can we ever solve the troubles of the world while the human race is so divided into two races? Two species as distinct as hawks and chickens? Three-quarters of the human race look upon life from the sweet reality of the farm. The other quarter, the deadly, scheming, clever, achieving quarter, look upon life from the dread artificiality of the city?”

“The way it is going now,” I suggested, “we are slowly starving a pretty big percentage of people out of the cities. Unemployed. If we keep up the present tendencies the number of people in cities is going to grow less and less until presently the control, the direction of human affairs, will pass out of the hands of lawyers and promoters and get back into the hands of the majority, the people on the farms.”

“Uncle Jake,” said Jim, “will be glad to see us. Aunt Minnie will give us a rousing welcome and fly to the kitchen to get some of those famous rhubarb pies of hers into the oven and a chicken on.”

“Fried chicken?” I offered.

“Roast chicken,” cried Jim, “boiled chicken, fried chicken, young chicken fried American style, chicken fricassee, chicken hash. The times I’ve been at Uncle Jake’s and Aunt Minnie’s I eat chicken till I bust, yet I never tire of it. Nobody knows how many ways there are of doing chicken until he has visited a farm in July.”

“Cold roast chicken,” I gloated.

“Chicken jellied,” said Jim, “with thick green lettuce, not the pale kind, but the rich dark green kind with a tang.”

“Will we leave Friday night or Saturday morning?” I asked.

And in due time we were headed out the highways for Uncle Jake’s, amidst the city-fleeing throng of week-enders.

“Just look at them,” cried Jimmie, as the cars filed away ahead of us and honked their horns wildly to pass us from the long stream behind, “rushing away from the city for just a few hours’ taste of what they might have forever on the farm.”

“Don’t they look silly,” I agreed.

“I picked up an Englishman,” related Jimmie, “on the Lake Shore road the other morning. Do you know how he spends his week-ends? There are some of these dinky tourist camps right on the outskirts of Toronto. They are meant to accommodate tourists coming to or passing through Toronto, in lieu of hotels. This Englishman, on Saturday afternoons, goes out to one of these suburban tourist camps, hires a cabin for Saturday and Sunday nights, $1 a night, and gets into his bathing suit.”

“I can see him,” I admitted, “tall and knobby.”

The Gipsy in Human Nature

“And there he is, ten minutes outside of the city,” continued Jim, “in the green country, with a beach nearby, with people in holiday mood all around him. He bathes in the sun and the lake. He has the camp owner bring him tea and toast Sunday morning, while he lies in bed in the little cubby. He has a swell time for about $2.50, counting car tickets. And he wants to know why people have to rush off a hundred miles for a week-end?”

“Not a tourist camp, Jim,” I begged. “Don’t suggest that we forego a lovely week-end visit to the Muskoka Lakes in favor of a visit to a tourist camp.”

“They say they’re not half bad,” submitted Jim.

“My dear man.” I protested, “ridiculous as all these cars look, streaming in all directions madly from the city at this hour, they look far less ridiculous than people going 10 miles from a comfortable bed to cramp themselves into a tourist cubby.”

“Think it over,” advised Jim. “This tourist cabin business is on the increase. This whole trailer cabin idea is growing by leaps and bounds. We are just seeing the beginning of it now. In winter, all over the southern part of the states, there are whole cities of trailers and tourist cabins. Mark my words, in the summer, we are going to see whole cities of them up here.”

“It isn’t human nature,” I informed him, “to live in a shack. Human nature craves property, space, room.”

“Wrong,” cried Jimmie. “Like so many other ideas about human nature, that one is utterly wrong. Human nature is tired of property, tired of possessions that anchor them down. Men are discovering that to be anchored to a house is like being anchored to a mountain.”

“Jim, that’s heresy,” I stated, “What would real estate men and trust companies say to that?”

“You can’t change human nature,” insisted Jim. “You can twist it out of shape for a century or two, maybe, but it works itself back to normal in time. And I tell you the natural man likes a shanty, a shack, a cubby, a cave, one room, just enough to keep him warm and dry and space to store his hunting tools. That is the natural man, not this queer jackdaw, this collector of trinkets and baubles that is supposed to be the normal man today.”

“You’re subversive, Jim,” I warned him.

“We must try one of those tourist camps some time,” said Jim.

“Not me,” I assured him. “Not me. With people jammed in all around you, people you don’t know, never saw before and never will see again, yet your most intimate neighbors for a night. And kids yelling and snores from both sides shaking the flimsy walls. No, sirree! And early birds on their way at daybreak and people coming in late stumbling and banging against your cabin at three a.m. No, sirree!”

“I’d like to have a try at it,” repeated Jimmie, and we both craned our necks to look at a handsome array of brand new tourist cabins at a road corner as we sailed along. There were merry groups of people amidst the aisles of the cabins, and cars half unloaded and children romping and women doing washing and hanging clothes on tiny lines.

“It’s the gipsy in human nature coming out,” said Jim.

“Ah,” I cried, pointing to a farm all lush and green, the white farm house bowered with bending trees, aloof, serene. “But look at that. There’s the real thing.”

“Plus chicken,” admitted Jim. “Plus chicken hash on toast.”

“Cold roast chicken,” I corrected, “broken apart by hand. Not sliced. Just broken into gobbets.”

“Mmmmmm,” we harmonized. I pushed down a little on the gas and joined with the endless streams of those escaping from Nineveh and Tyre, nor ever looking back.

And in a couple of hours of this stewing and grinding, we left the beaten path and took the second-class road that led to Uncle Jake’s. It was still a beaten path, however, for few and far between are the roads nowadays that are not beaten.

“Hurray,” we yelled when we topped the last hill and saw ahead the cluster of elms and maples that are the symbol of the peace and plenty amidst which Uncle Jake resides.

“There’s somebody there,” exclaimed Jim. “See the cars in the lane.”

“Maybe he’s holding a sale of stock,” I offered.

“There’s nobody to be married,” muttered Jim. “I hope it isn’t a funeral.”

Startling Changes

And with every yard we grew nearer to Uncle Jake’s lane, the more anxious we felt. Because there was certainly something going on at Uncle Jake’s. We could see cars parked not only in the lane but around the house.

“Good heavens,” shouted Jim, so suddenly that I took my foot off the gas and coasted. “Tourist camp.”

And now we could see the back of the house behind which was a bright array. A vivid and bright avenue of little tourist shacks, amidst which a quiet population moved in the supper time light.

“Are you sure it’s Uncle Jake’s place?” I enquired.

“Did I never spend my happy boyhood here?” said Jim brokenly.

As we turned in the lane, we could see Uncle Jake politely and ceremoniously waving us onward, a true greeter.

“Oh, ho, ho,” cried Jim, tragically.

I drove slowly in. Children romped and leaped, a man with a banjo played whanging tunes, folks were at supper and Aunt Minnie greeted us in a great swither of excitement and joy.

“Chicken dinner, 50 cents,” said a sign on the gate as we rolled funereally through.

“Welcome, strangers,” cried Uncle Jake, stepping on the running board. “You’re just in the nick of time. Only one cabin left. And a dandy at that. Turn left.”

We turned left and drove along the turf.

“Here you are,” said Uncle Jake swinging athletically off and waving a hand at just another of the gaudy little shanties.

“Uncle Jake,” said Jim, “my friend here is troubled with hay fever and asthma. He isn’t allowed to sleep in cabins. How about that room I used to be in, when I was a kid? The one with the sloping ceiling and the big red flowers on the wallpaper?”

“Aw, Jimmie,” said Uncle Jake, “that’s let. We’ve got some semi-permanent guests up in that room.”

“There’s nothing but these?” asked Jim earnestly, as a nephew to an uncle.

“Why, what’s the matter with these?” cried Uncle Jake. “A dollar a night? Paid in advance? A dry, well-built, cosy little kumfy kabin like this?”

“How about it?” asked Jim turning to me.

“Where else would we go?” I retorted grimly.

We got out and Uncle Jake helped us with our stuff.

“I hate to charge you boys,” said he, confidentially when we got inside. It was hot and smelt of new wood. “I hate to charge my own kinfolks, but you see how it is. I’m in business. I got to get my income from the investment. Now, if you had come during the week, I might have let you off. But the week-end is my busy time…”

“It’s all right,” said Jim, “what’s a dollar between relatives?”

“Well, it’s quite exciting,” said Uncle Jake, patting the walls and door admiringly. “Farming is no good any more. This is the line of business everybody ought to be in on the farm. I figure I won’t be doing any plowing or sowing next spring at all, at the rate it’s coming in now.”

‘We’re Living At Last”

“Well, one thing.” said Jim, sitting down on the narrow stretcher on the side of the cabin, “we’ll have a chicken dinner. And has Aunt Minnie got any rhubarb pies.”

“Oh, shoot,” said Uncle Jake, snapping his fingers, “we’re just out of chickens. This crowd ate up the whole supply we had ready and I haven’t another on the place that ain’t laying.”

“No chicken?” I said. “No cold bits left over?”

“Not a scrap of chicken,” said Uncle Jake. “I only got a few layers left. I got to buy my chickens in town now, the whole neighborhood is fresh out of chickens due to this kind of business.”

“How about rhubarb pie?” asked Jim. “One of Aunt Min’s famous brown-top rhubarb pies?”

“Jimmie,” said Uncle Jake, part way out the door and all ready to fly in answer to a car horn tooting in the distance, “Minnie is that busy looking after the place we’ve had to get a girl in specially to do the cooking. She’ll put you up a nice feed, though. When you’re set, come to the kitchen and see her. Fifty cents only, for supper.”

He vanished, his boots crunching hurriedly.

Jim leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. He sat a long time so, while I arranged my belongings around the camp stretcher on my side of the cubby.

After awhile, he sat up and we went to the kitchen where a large strange girl laid us out a nice meal of potted meat and mashed potatoes, pickles and buns. But it seemed as if neither thought nor imagination had been given to the meal. The girl just took the stuff off the pantry shelves as her hand found them. They were not viands aimed at us, as individuals. They were food for anybody.

Aunt Minnie swept furiously through the kitchen several times, all flushed and full of vim. She embraced Jim heartily.

“Oh, Jim,” she said, “we’re having the grandest time!”

“The old place is all changed,” said Jim.

“And wasn’t it time?” cried Aunt Minnie. “Why, we’re living at last.”

After supper, Uncle Jake told us to walk around and look the old place over. In the barn were three cows and a horse. A couple of pigs had the look of being fed on chocolate bars and sandwiches. Jim showed me where there used to be 15 cows that he had helped milk. He walked me over fields where he had hunted wary groundhogs as a boy: and now the groundhogs whistled at us scornfully.

We came back at dusk and found two trailer cabins had joined the community, just for company. We sat on the step of our cubby and watched the strange phenomenon of neighbors for a night, this weird society based on hours instead of years. There was music and singing and children yelling to bed and banging and engines and a game of horse shoes. There was advancing night and a gathering quiet. There were snores and mutters and the going out of lights.

“When it is all quiet,” whispered Jim, under the stars that were over the brooding elms, “we’ll get the heck out of here.”

Which we did.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on July 15, 1944, as well as appearing in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors, 1979.

Nineveh and Tyre are both described in the Bible as capitals of mighty empires. Both were reportedly wicked places and had their destruction foretold by prophets.

Viand is an archaic term for food.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 2, 1938.

“Step on her,” said Jimmie Frise.

“This is the speed I like,” I explained. “This is my cruising speed.”

“We’ll never get there, at this rate,” muttered Jim.

“You speed merchants amuse me,” I stated. “Many’s the time I have been in your car and we go whang along at 60 miles an hour, passing everything on the road.”

“Why not?” said Jim.

“Just a minute,” I suggested. “After sitting in a sort of daze of speed and jitters, with our hearts in our mouths every hilltop we come to and a sinking sensation in the pit of the stomach every time we pass a car, you finally pull up at a gas station for gas. And, while we sit there three or four minutes, what happens?”

“I’ve heard this before,” said Jim.

“Along come all the old jitneys, rattle-traps and slow coaches we have been passing 20 miles back. Three or four minutes, and the whole parade we have so magnificently left behind, catches up to us. I think that ought to dispel the illusion you speed merchants are under. You submit yourselves to all kinds of risk and nerve-strain under the impression that you are getting somewhere ahead of everybody else. You beat them, no matter how fast you go, by about 15 minutes or something.”

“I’ve beaten you,” stated Jimmie, “by three hours, going from Toronto to North Bay.”

“Yes,” I replied, and what did you see, on that trip, as you raced like a madman across the province? All you saw was a gray blur of road, while you sat tense and cramped at the steering wheel.”

“Okay,” said Jim, “and what did you see, as you doped heavily up the highway, all sagged back under your wheel with an expression like a purring cat in your eyes. You know: half open and half shut?”

“I saw,” I informed him loudly, “glorious country, hill and dale. I saw vistas and far-flung panoramas. I saw sheep and cattle, horses and birds, like hawks and bright warblers along the woodsy margin of the road.”

“My, my, my,” said Jimmie.

“I saw farmers, my brothers in life.” I continued emotionally, “plowing their fields or raking hay. I saw the faces of country children as they walked along the roadside. What did you see? Just a zipp and something had been passed. Just a phhtt!”

“Phttt,” echoed Jimmie. “That’s the way I like to travel.”

A Bee in the Car

“Look around you now,” I commanded. “Behold the beauty of summer. Relax and rest your eyes on these lovely scenes through which we are passing. Could we look at these fields if you were driving? No, sir. Both of us would be sitting like in a dentist’s chair, keyed up, nerves taut.”

“Okay,” said Jim. “I’m looking around. I don’t see anything special. There’s a field of wheat. That’s a pasture. Three cows lying down under a tree. And here we’re coming to a rather commonplace looking farmhouse, sort of decayed and run down and seedy…”

“Beauty,” I advised, “is in the eye of the beholder.”

“There’s a patch of woods,” pointed out Jim, “that would have been all right if the cattle hadn’t been in it, and eaten off all the lower foliage.”

“Look at the picture as a whole,” I cried, “not at the detail, as if you were some kind of land valuator. Take in the panorama.”

“It’s a pretty dull panorama, if you ask me.” said Jim, taking it in all around, “dusty looking hills, just a lot of crops sizzling in the sun, homely-looking farm houses and rickety barns, exhausted horses drooping against fences…”

“Very well, forget it,” I said heatedly.

“How can I forget it, at the speed we’re going?” retorted Jim. “If you’d only step on the gas and hustle us through this desolate looking country, I wouldn’t have to sit here staring at all these evidences of man’s futile struggle with life.”

“We’re hitting 38,” I stated. “Thirty-eight miles an hour is fast enough for anybody to go.”

“Could I appeal to you,” inquired Jimmie, “on the grounds of heat? How would you like to go just fast enough to create a breeze? I’m slowly stifling.”

“Open the windows behind you.” I advised. “There’s a grand breeze.”

“Make it 45,” pleaded Jim. “Just forty-five. Give us just enough wind to blow the engine heat out of the car.”

“I’ll make it 40,” I consented, cautiously pressing a little harder on the pedal, “but no more.”

“There,” accused Jim, “you’ve let a bee in the car.”

“Shoo it out,” I ordered sharply. “Shoo it out.”

“It went behind somewhere,” said Jim, turning to look in the back of the car. “Now that’s what comes of driving slow. I never get a bee in my car because I’m travelling too fast. And if one …”

“Come on, come on,” I commanded anxiously, “find that bee. Get busy. Find it.”

“Find it yourself,” retorted Jim. “You let it in. All right. You get it out. I tell you, if any bees get in my car, they’re so stunned, they’re helpless.”

“Jim,” I said, “don’t talk. Just look for that bee.”

“It probably flew out the window,” said Jim. “At this speed, all the bees in Ontario can come and visit in on us.”

“Bees,” I informed him, slowing the car and steering for the shoulder of the road, “give me the willies. I’m going to stop and get that bee out. The thought of a bee crawling up my pant leg actually gives me sort of nervous breakdown sort of feeling.”

I pulled up on the roadside and got out and shifted the baggage around, examining all the nooks and crannies for the bee, while Jim sat with an expression of disgust on his face. I couldn’t find any bee. I found a couple of dry grasshoppers and some bobbie pins, marbles and a small toy automobile that my daughter lost some months ago; but there was no bee.

“Hm,” said Jimmie, as I got back in behind the wheel, “one of these days you’re going to have a mud turtle pop into your car.”

“A bee,” I stated, “is a serious menace. Hundreds of fatal accidents are caused every year by bees.”

“Bees never bother people who drive at normal speeds,” said Jim. “You go 60 miles an hour and you won’t see any bees except dead ones on your windshield.”

“Of the two evils,” I replied, “I choose the bee, because if I am stung at 40 miles an hour, I imagine I could control the car long enough to bring it to a safe stop. But at 60 miles an hour, nobody can control a car in any sudden emergency, like a bee sting or a sudden attack of hay fever.”

“Don’t talk,” said Jim. “Just drive. Every time you talk, you case your foot off the accelerator and we drop back to about 30 miles an hour. Concentrate on your driving.”

I stepped it back up to 38. Just to show I am not bigoted, I stepped it up to 40. In fact, the needle hovered for a few minutes up almost to 45. And Jim sat back and breathed a big sigh.

“If she doesn’t drop to pieces,” he said, “you’re doing all right.”

And then, out of the corner of my eye. I saw another bee, a big, black and yellow one, zoom in the side window and go behind me.

“Quick, Jim,” I cried, “another bee.”

Jim turned around and watched in behind.

“I don’t see it,” he said, preparing to sit back.

“Watch for it,” I insisted. “I saw it come right in past my ear. One of those big yellow bumble bees. See if it’s crawling up the back of the seat”

“Don’t be so jittery,” said Jim. “It probably went out the other window. Keep this speed up and it will blow the bees out.”

“I’m doing 45,” I gasped. “Better than 45. Look at the needle.”

“Good,” said Jim. “Hold her at 45 or better and we won’t see any bees.”

“I believe,” I said, grasping the wheel grimly and holding my breath,” I believe there is something in what you say about bees. I just smacked into one there a minute ago. Look at it on the windshield. As if an egg had burst.”

“Keep it up,” said Jim, enthusiastically.

Then, with a deep zoom, the bee came from behind and batted on the windshield right before our eyes. It zigzagged and hit the roof and dropped out of sight down by our feet.

“Hey,” shouted Jim, “watch your driving!”

“Get that bee,” I said, already feeling as if ten bees were crawling up my pant leg.

“Look out,” shouted Jim.

I was, as a matter of fact, wabbling a bit. I tried to keep one eye on the road and bend the other one down towards the floor boards, but you can’t do that.

“I got it,” cried Jim, stamping with his foot. But the angry bee now spiralled up and zoomed and hummed around our heads, while Jim batted at it with his hand and I ducked and twisted and tried to keep the car on the road. Needless to say, I had my foot off the accelerator and, in the two or three seconds that all this was happening, the car was coming to a stop. I got it stopped with one wheel just on the edge of the ditch.

And almost simultaneously with us, a speed cop rolled gently from behind us and parked his cycle square across our bows.

“W-hell, w-hell, w-hell,” said the cop, walking up and resting his elbow on my window sill. “What kind of fancy driving do you call that?”

“There was a bee in our car,” I stated. “It’s still in here somewhere.”

The policeman put his head in the window and leaned his face up close to me and sniffed long and judicially.

“What are you insinuating?” I demanded sternly.

“I was just seeing,” said the policeman,” I could smell any honey or anything.”

He backed out the window and opened the door. I scrambled out, shaking my pant legs in case of any bees. Jim got out the other side and came around. The policeman stood very close to us and kept sniffing suspiciously.

“Look here,” I said, “I tell you there was a bee in our car, a big bee. And that was what made me wobble a little.”

“A little?” said the policeman. “I saw you wobble 10 miles back. That’s what attracted my attention to you.”

“That was another bee,” I explained.

Only When You Go Slow

“So you go into a sort of stagger every time a bee gets in your car?” asked the constable.

“It’s all very well,” I said, “for you, with your leather leggings. But you just imagine a bee crawling up your pant leg and see how you feel.”

“I can charge you with reckless driving,” said the cop. “Steering all over the road like that.”

“I can’t help it,” I said. “Go ahead and charge me if you like. But when a bee gets in my car, I can’t help getting excited.”

“You can’t go swerving all over the road like that,” insisted the constable.

“Well, I’ll do my best,” I sighed. “But bees are bees.”

“Just keep your head,” advised the cop walking over to his cycle. “And remember, don’t wobble.”

He tramped authoritatively on his engine and rode on, slowly. Jim and I got into our car and followed. The cop jogged along at about 25 miles an hour, and we kept behind him for a mile or so.

Suddenly the constable’s cycle wobbled violently to one side and only by sticking his leg out did he keep the machine from falling, He pulled up at the side of the road and as we drew near he held up his hand for us to stop.

“Now,” he shouted, “you’ve got me bee conscious.”

“I’m sorry,” I assured him.

“Sorry!” he shouted. “I’ve a darn good mind to charge you with reckless driving after all.”

“It’s only when you go slow,” cut in Jim, very kindly, “that bees bother you. If you’re going fast, they just bump against you.”

“Is that so?” said the policeman grimly.

I nudged Jim to stop talking. The best thing to do with a speed cop is just look at him humbly.

“Maybe,” said the policeman, thoughtfully, “maybe I’ll get bees on my nerves, like you.”

He sat on the cycle, staring around at the grass and weeds. Then he took his gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on. Next, he took a handkerchief from his hip and tied it carefully around his neck. He pulled his cap down well over his ears and slid his goggles on. Hunching his shoulders, and crouching down on his saddle, he started his engine and, with a terrific roar of his exhaust, he leaped down the highway at 60 miles an hour.

“There you go,” said Jimmie. “Putting notions into the poor fellow’s head.”

“He’ll be more sympathetic now,” I pointed out. “Him coming smelling our breath like that.”

“Ouch!” exclaimed Jim. “Pshh! Shoo!”

Jim was flicking his hand frantically as our old friend, the big yellow bee, came groggily crawling up the outside of Jim’s pantleg, heard it scrunch as Jim stepped on it on the floor boards.

“There,” said Jim. “Now you’ve got me going.”

“It’s a mercy,” I said, “that it came up the outside of your pant leg.”

“Let’s drive on,” said Jim.

And he helped me wind up all the car windows, leaving only about an inch open at the top of each.

Editor’s Note: “Wabbling” is the same as “wobbling”.