The Work of Greg Clark and Jimmie Frise

Tag: 1939 Page 1 of 4

Rumor Has It

“Jim,” I said, “don’t look now but there’s a rumor starting.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 21, 1939.

If you wear an Alpine hat or if your hair is cut like a Prussian officer’s, there’s no telling where you will end up

“Did you hear,” asked Jimmie Frise excitedly, “about the two Germans that…”

“Were caught,” I carried on sarcastically, “trying to poison the waterworks and were…”

“Shot,” cried Jimmie, “after they had been made to dig their own graves?”

“Yes,” I informed him, “I heard that one. And I heard the ones about the German with the bottle full of germs, and about the ones that were caught filing the struts of airplanes, and the one about the German that was poisoning candy. I’ve heard all the rumors.”

“Don’t you believe them?” demanded Jim indignantly. “Don’t you believe that there are hundreds of Germans locked up in Canada’s prisons and barracks? Every one of them caught in the act?”

“I suppose,” I retorted, “that it is our patriotic duty to believe rumors.”

“What else is there to believe?” sighed Jim. “When the censorship goes on, the rumors begin.”

“We can still submit to censorship,” I explained, “and not give way to every childish rumor that comes along. I’m willing to bet that every rumor we’ve heard about local people was started either in fun or in spite.”

“I doubt it,” said Jim darkly. “Those Germans.”

“I don’t hold any brief for any German1,” I admitted heartily. “In the last war, I used to read what the statesmen said about us fighting the kaiser and not the German people. And I always used to wonder who the heck that was across No Man’s Land shooting at me and heaving trench mortars over. Now they’re talking about us not fighting the German people but Hitler and his gang. I still think it’s the German people we’re fighting. And we’re fighting them because they’re such dang fools to let themselves be ruled by any old type of gangster that comes along, whether it’s a titled Hohenzollern or a house painter.”

“Now you’re talking,” agreed Jim.

“We’re fighting the German people,” I insisted, “so long as they follow these crackpot leaders who think they can conquer the world. We’ve got to keep fighting them until we teach them that they can’t go and conquer the world, no matter what kind of leader they follow.”

“I’ve known some good guys who came of German blood,” admitted Jim.

“That’s what I’m trying to get at,” I clinched. “Most of these people the rumors are about are the grandsons or great-grandsons of men who left Germany because they couldn’t stand the Germans. They came to this country for the same reasons we did. To escape from oppression or misfortune and to find a new life and new freedom in a new world. Probably these German grandparents left Germany for the same reasons we’re fighting Germany today.”

Growing Like a Snowball

“We had Germans in our battery in the last war,” admitted Jim.

“In my battalion,” I recounted, “we had dozens of men of German descent who were some of the best soldiers we had. I remember one especially. He could even talk German, though his grandmother came out from Germany as a child. One of the last things I ever saw him do was climb up the corner of a pill box at Passchendaele and drop Mills bombs down the air hole on 19 of his blood relations.”

“He was a Canadian all right,” agreed Jim.

“I used to take him out on listening patrols,” I recalled, “and we’d sit outside the German wire listening to them muttering and mumbling in their trench. And he translated.”

“It’s too bad to circulate rumors about people like him,” Jim submitted.

“Most rumors start,” I repeated, “in fun or out of spite. Just for fun, a man tells somebody a ridiculous tale about somebody else they both know. The story is repeated, all in fun. Pretty soon, somebody who doesn’t know the party hears the tale, and away it goes, getting bigger and bigger, like a snowball. All these rumors sooner or later get into the hands of some born story-teller. And he, looking at the rumor, says: ‘What a poor, puny little tale that is.” And he sets to work to make it dramatic, with a punch, with some quality to it. Lo, a rumor is born!”

“I can see that clearly,” said Jim. “In my own time, I’ve improved a story now and then.”

“The spite rumors are worse,” I pointed out. “For example, I know a German who is Canadian to the core. He is an athlete, and he makes his living teaching gymnastics and athletics. There are plenty of second-rate athletes who envy him his job. The war was not a week old before I heard rumors that this man had been caught putting acid on airplane wires up at one of the big airdromes. I helped trace this story back. It took two days. But we traced it right back to a second-rate athlete who thought he had a fair chance of stealing the German’s job, now that war was on.”

“Could Canadians hold jobs in Germany now?” demanded Jim.

“Probably not,” I confessed. “But that is not the point. The point is, this is not Germany. And this German is as Canadian as it is possible to be without being born here. I know lots of Canadians who were born here who are really less Canadian, in their hearts, than plenty of foreigners who have come here because they loved this country.”

“We can’t trust anybody, though, in time of war,” stated Jim. “If we go around with a sappy faith in everybody, we’ll get skunked sure as fate.”

“You can trust human nature, I decreed, “to see to it that no German will get away without some hostility, even to the third and fourth generation. For one of us who won’t believe rumors, there are twenty who will. For one of us who will be rational about foreigners, there are a hundred who will be irrational, who will see mischief in every angle of the foreigner, who will notify police, who will watch and guard. All I suggest is, that a few of us keep alive a little feeble flame of tolerance and common sense, so that it will be ready to stoke up again after the war is over. I’d hate to see the sacred fire die out.”

“But don’t let us get so innocent,” countered Jim, “that we let the country get overrun with Nazis.”

“And when I’m looking for Nazis,” I retorted, “I’m not going to confine my attention to people with German names.”

“Here’s a note from the editor,” said Jim. “He bawls us out for drawing all the soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms. He wants us to draw the troops in the new uniform.”2

“It makes them look like gas-station attendants,” I scoffed.

“They look like skiers,” snorted Jim. “Give me the good old army uniform, every time.”

“Imagine a Highlander done up in baggy pants and a blouse,” I submitted.

“Well, the editor is the editor,” sighed Jim. “And if he wants us to draw the troops in the new-fangled outfit, okay. We’ll have to see what the new uniform looks like.”

To See the New Uniform

“I’ve seen pictures of it,” I stated, “but I haven’t seen any of the boys wearing it.”

“We ought to go out and look around the armories,” suggested Jim.

“We can drop off at Exhibition Park on our way home,” I said.

Which we did. And I took along my little candid camera for some shots of any men we might see in the new uniform, to help Jimmie with his drawings.

But all we saw were squads and platoons of husky lads in the same uniform Jimmie and I wore twenty-five years ago.

“I suppose,” said Jim, “they’re wearing out all the old stuff first. But how about taking some snapshots to show the editor? We can write a nice sarcastic note back to him enclosing photos.”

So I moved about, choosing the best looking squads, and getting the sun behind me, and I shot some long range infinity snaps, and got a few close-ups as the squads marched near us. Jimmie got out his drawing pad and made some sketches, too. Jimmie can always make a soldier look more like a soldier than a soldier really is.

One of the squads that had marched past several times finally halted near us and the boys were standing idly watching us, when a civilian who had been observing us take pictures and draw sketches, hurried over to the sergeant drilling the squad and whispered to him.

I saw the sergeant eyeing us narrowly, and the civilian giving us a very hostile look.

“Jim,” I said, turning aside and trying to hide my camera, “don’t look now, but there’s a rumor starting.”

Jim glanced up and saw the sergeant bending his ear to the agitated civilian. Jim turned his back so as to conceal the drawing pad.

“Let’s go,” I offered.

We started to stroll away.

“Hye, there,” said the sergeant, striding towards us. The civilian trotted eagerly in the sergeant’s wake. “What are you two up to?”

“We’re a couple of newspapermen,” I explained. “We were just making some notes.”

“Look at his hat,” hissed the civilian. He was a baleful individual, with a long suspicious jaw.

“Why, it’s an ordinary alpine model…” I began.

“And look at the other fellow’s hair,” hissed the stranger to the sergeant. “Sticking straight up. Like Hindenburg’s! Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

“Have you any permission,” demanded the sergeant, cautiously, “to be on this parade ground making pictures and drawing plans?”

“Look,” said Jim. “Do you call those plans?”

The sergeant studied Jim’s sketches and the stranger looked over his shoulder.

“What do you call them?” demanded the sergeant. “Do you call those pictures of us? Is this an insult to the uniform?”

“Those are just rough sketches,” explained Jim, lamely. “Just ideas I can develop later.”

“If I was to show these to my boys,” said the sergeant, “you’d have something rough, all right.”

“Arrest them,” hissed the civilian. “Put them under guard. With bayonets.”

“I’ve a good mind to,” said the sergeant. “I certainly think the little bird has a German hat. And the hair on the tall guy certainly looks foreign to me.”

Suspicious Characters

It was then a movement in the squad caught my eye. One of the boys in the squad was bent double in agony, and three or four others were having a hard time to stand steady like soldiers. As the young man straightened up. I recognized him as a former office boy on The Star, and when he caught my eye, he waved a hand at me in gleeful derision.

“Here, sergeant,” I cried, “there’s a lad knows who we are. That fourth man in the front rank. Call him over.”

“Perkins,” commanded the sergeant.

And the boy fell out and came awkwardly over, saluting with his rifle because he remembered I used to be a major in all the war stories I used to tell the office boys in bygone years.

“Do you know these men?” demanded the sergeant.

“Why,” interrupted the civilian, when he saw Perkins, “this is the lad who called my attention to these two spies.”

“What’s this?” I cried. And the sergeant and Jimmie cried: “How’s that?”

“Why, only 10 minutes ago, over by that tree,” said the civilian, his long, suspicious jaw getting kind of black with blushes, “when this platoon was resting, this very same young man came over to me and pointed out these two spies and asked me to sneak around and see if they weren’t taking snapshots and making drawings. He said I was to tell the sergeant, if I saw that’s what they were doing.”

“Perkins!” said the sergeant.

“Why,” said the civilian, bitterly, “it was even him who pointed out the German hat the little man is wearing and the way the taller man’s hair sticks up.”

“Perkins,” repeated the sergeant sternly for Perkins was just standing there grinning from ear to ear.

“It was just a little joke,” said Perkins. “I know these two gentlemen very well indeed.”

And he introduced us to the sergeant, and the sergeant was very happy to meet us because his wife reads our stuff every week and his little boy wants to be a cartoonist some day, like Jimmie. In fact, the sergeant has a bunch of drawings the kid has done, and he would like to bring them down some day for Jimmie to have a look at.

Meanwhile, the stranger was slowly oozing away, trying to make his escape without being noticed.

“Hey,” called the sergeant, “just a second, mister. Don’t feel bad about this. Come here a minute.”

“No hard feelings,” said Jim. “It was just a joke on all of us.”

“I’ll attend to Perkins,” declared the sergeant grimly. “If there’s anything I hate in a platoon, it’s a witty guy. However, I’ll let him down easy, because he may be the means of me having a famous cartoonist for a son, some day, hey, Mr. Frise?”

“You bet,” said Jim, stowing his drawing pad with its rough notes, so as to spare the sergeant’s feelings.

“I only want to say to you, sir,” said the sergeant, tapping the suspicious civilian on the chest, “that you did quite right, sir. If you see or hear of anything suspicious, it is your duty to call it to the attention of the nearest authority, in this case, me.”

“As a matter of fact, sir,” replied the stranger firmly, “that is what I am doing, hanging around the parade grounds. I’m too old to be of much use to the country, but I can keep my eye peeled for suspicious characters.”

“That’s the idea, sir,” said the sergeant, waving the gentleman on.

So it all worked out just as it should. And we gave young Perkins, the scalawag, all our cigarettes to divvy up with the squad. And as we departed, I glanced back in time to see the sergeant get a handful of them.


Editor’s Note:

  1. “Not to hold any brief” means not to support something. ↩︎
  2. The uniform worn by soldiers in World War 2 was different than the first war. At the very start, there was not enough of the new uniform so some had to wear the old one until they could be produced. ↩︎

Coon Hunt

Up the tree I went heavily. “Stop,” came a sharp voice. It was a strange voice.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 23, 1939.

Tackling the sport of their grandfathers to find out why it isn’t popular today, Greg and Jim discovered it has “gone away, awaaaay”

“It’s a pity,” said Jimmie Frise, “there isn’t more for a man to do at this season of the year.”

“There’s duck hunting,” I informed him, “and in a few weeks there will be pheasant shooting. And then deer hunting.”

“If our ancestors,” said Jim, “hadn’t slaughtered this country, September and October would be two of the merriest months of the whole year.”

“How do you mean?” I demanded.

“To think,” cried Jim, “that here in Canada. less than a century old, with vast areas still wild and unpopulated, we should have to import pheasants from China in order to supply something for us to shoot.”

“Our forefathers had to civilize the country,” I protested.

Civilizing a country, I suppose,” snorted Jim, “means killing everything in sight.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” I submitted. “You wanted your ancestors to shoot less, so that you could shoot more. Is that it?”

“They might have left more than they did,” said Jim. “But it strikes me as funny that we in Ontario, after one brief century, should have to import game birds from China, which has been settled for thousands of years.”

“I guess we did go at settling Ontario a little furiously,” I agreed.

“September and October,” declared Jim, are livelier months in Pennsylvania and Tennessee than they are in Ontario. And I mean sport.”

“And they’ve been settled three hundred years,” I agreed.

“There must be something funny about Ontario,” mused Jim. “Why should we have to work so hard for our game here?”

“Largely because,” I informed him, “a very large part of Ontario, all the unsettled part, the north country and the lake country, is all rock. It is not fertile.”

“I’ve been reading lately,” said Jim, “a good deal about the sport they have in states like Pennsylvania and Kentucky. They go in for sociable sports. Things that a dozen men can enjoy together. Like fox hunting at night, where they put their hounds out to chase a fox and the hunters, instead of chasing after the hounds on horses, or on foot, with guns to shoot the fox, just sit in company around a big bonfire and listen to their hounds chasing the fox.”

Trained Coon Hounds

“That’s southern for you,” I commented. “Lazy and indolent. I like the chase.”

“Then they have coon hunting,” went on Jimmie. “That’s got action. They have specially trained coon hounds.”

“I love the music of hounds, day or night,” I admitted.

“On a bright moonlight night,” said Jim, “it must be glorious. Away go the hounds, baying. And all the hunters follow after, armed with lanterns and potato bags.”

“Potato bags?” I exclaimed.

“They don’t kill the coon,” said Jim. “After a wonderful chase, over fields, through woods, from one woodlot to another, over fences, across creeks, the coon leads the hounds until finally they overtake him and he goes up a tree.”

“This sounds good,” I agreed.

“The hunters following,” explained Jim, “are by now straggled out, some trying to keep up with the hounds, others using their wits to take short cuts, employing their knowledge of the country, and of coons, to dope out where the coon is heading. When the coon trees, the hounds make a different sound, they ‘bark treed,’ as the saying is. Then all the hunters converge on that woodlot, and gather around the tree, build a big fire, their lanterns all gleaming, and they see the green shine of the coon’s eyes as it stares down.”

“How long does a chase last?” I asked.

“Sometimes half an hour, sometimes two or three hours, with a good big old coon,” said Jim. “Then when all are gathered and the best men are there first, one man shinnies up the tree and shakes the coon down. The dogs pounce on it and before it is killed, the coon is put in the bag. They can either kill it for fur, keep it for a pet or let it go for another hunt after they have proved, back in town, their prowess.”

“And the prowess of the hounds,” I reminded.

“That’s true,” said Jim. “As the hunters follow the chase, they always pause, every few minutes, to hear whose hound is leading. When there is a check, they all stop dead still and listen to hear whose hound first finds the scent again.”

“That ought to be grand fun,” I confessed. “It’s a wonder we don’t follow that sport here.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Jim. “There are plenty of coons, even in Old Ontario.”

“Let’s get Joe Shirk some night,” I submitted, “and try it. He’s got five hounds.”

“There may be some perfectly good reason,” said Jim, “why we don’t hunt coons in Ontario.”

Exploring Recreation Field

“Well, we can find it out,” I said firmly. “If there is some recreation we are overlooking in this province, Jim, it is our duty to discover it and report the facts to the public.”

“Agreed,” said Jim heartily. “I can think of no means of making a livelihood better than exploring the field of recreation for the benefit of the public.”

“What this world needs,” I assured him, “is more ways of amusing itself, not more ways of worrying.”

So we telephoned Joe Shirk and when we outlined the proposition to him, he leaped at it. Joe is one of those men, now unhappily growing fewer in number, whose function in the scheme of nature is to breed hounds. Not setters or spaniels or lap dogs or any of the other of man’s best friends; but plain hounds that sit about bored to death until turned loose after rabbit, fox, deer of other game. One thousand years ago, the Joe Shirks and their hounds were part of the essential economy of the human race. They were to the world what the big meat packers are to our present day economy. Without Joe Shirks and hounds, society did not eat.

“I’ll bring the whole pack,” said Joe. “And tonight ought to be the night, because the moon is just coming full.”

Then Jim telephoned long distance to three of his country uncles and the third announced that he had at least two families of coons in his main bush lot.

“And,” said Jim, hanging up the phone, “it’s less than 50 miles from the city.”

We tried to get together a party. We called up all our fishing friends, all our duck hunting acquaintances and all our deer shooters, but they were all engaged. It was too short notice. Some had dates for the movies with their wives. Others wanted to stay in because it was Thursday night and a big night on the radio. But when we picked Ed up in the car, it was just the three of us in the party, and after a brisk after-supper drive of one hour flat, we arrived at Jim’s uncle’s.

And even he couldn’t come with us, because “Four Feathers” was showing at the village theatre.

“One of the reasons why there isn’t much sport in Ontario,” declared Jimmie, “is that Ontario people aren’t much interested in sport. That is, unless they can sit down to it. In grandstands.”

“You won’t get much sitting down tonight,” said Joe Shirk. “These here hounds are raring.”

As indeed they were. All the way out in the car, I had been in the back of the car with the five of them, and they had climbed and crawled and rubbed all over me, whining and shivering with uncontrolled excitement, until I smelt like a hound myself.

From Jim’s uncle’s, we drove around a concession so as to come on the back of the great bushlot that ran the full way across the concession, a nice swamp buried in its midst. The uncle had one small field of corn stooked, but on the back concession, a farmer had fifteen acres of it, and would most certainly welcome any coon hunters because the coons were playing havoc with the corn.

It was frosty and still and the wide moon just rising by the time we sided the car and let the hounds loose. In the dim first light of moon, the hounds scattered along the road, sniffing and very busy.

Over the meadow and up to the edge of the woods we walked, with lanterns unlighted, stumbling in the moonlight until we came to the edge of the great corn patch. The stooks rose spooky in the soft dark, and the hounds ran and investigated them eagerly.

“Do they know coons?” I asked Joe Shirk as we puffed along.

“They’ve never hunted coon,” said Joe, “but they’ll investigate any trail. And if we show interest, they’ll soon get wise and follow it.”

Which proved the case. For suddenly, one hound halted and arched his back and began sniffing furiously at the ground. Another and then another hound instantly joined him, and with backs arched and tails waving, they followed the trail into the corn patch.

“Hie,” called Joe Shirk in a low, excited voice after them, “hie in there, Mike. Hie in there, Sally. Hie, hie, hie!”

And from the midst of the stooked field there suddenly rang out the sound that echoes out of the ages in the hearts of all men in health. The deep, baleful bay of a hound. A sound like a trumpet, like a French horn, like an oboe, like certain of the nobler notes of a grand organ.

“We’re away,” shouted Joe Shirk vanishing into the cornfield. “Gone away. Awaaaay.” And all five hounds filled the moonlit night with a symphony of their doomlike wails and quavers.

“Light lanterns.” commanded Jim breathlessly.

With shaking hands, we lit the lanterns – plain coal oil lanterns. Jim said, were essential implements of the chase when coon hunting. The hounds curved away and then, from the far end of the cornfield, swept back to wards the woodlot.

“It may be an hour,” cried Jim, leading off, “so save your wind.”

Into the bushlot the cry went, and the whole township seemed to rock and shiver with the music of the hounds. We could see Joe Shirk’s lantern bobbing away off in the bush, disappearing and reappearing.

“They’re headed for the swamp,” shouted Jim over his shoulder. “It’s a big old he-coon.”

He used a sort of Kentucky accent.

Into the bushlot we thrust, our lanterns waving. And if you want to get into a real tangle, try pushing through unfamiliar woods at night with an oil lantern.

Over logs, into thickets, around boulders, under rusty old lost wire fences, we plunged and labored. When Jim came to a sharp halt and cried – “Listen!”

The music of the hounds had changed from the rhythmic baying and was now a series of sharp barks followed by a high long drawn howl.

“Treed,” cried Jim, “already!”

In 10 minutes of staggering, blundering, plunging and falling, we reached the spot where Joe Shirk had a fire lighted and was sitting back, filled with broad joy watching his beloved hounds bounding and baying up the trunk of a tall tree.

Ceremoniously, we set our lanterns down and stood around peering into the tree. The eyes of the coon were shining. But they were red, not green.

“Who climbs?” asked Joe Shirk.

But I had already wrapped one leg around the tree. For if there is anything I don’t like, it is a mix-up with dogs snarling and snapping around on the ground. I don’t want to be mistaken for any coon. It is more comfortable to watch such a scene from above.

Mistaken Identity

Up the tree I went, heavily.

“Stop,” came a sharp voice.

It was a strange voice.

“What are you men doing here?” demanded a stranger advancing into the firelight.

“We’ve got a coon treed here,” said Jim, heartily. “You’re welcome to join us. mister.”

“I’m the game warden,” said the stranger sternly. “Don’t you gents know it is illegal to hunt coons?”

“Illegal?” I asked, from away up in the tree.

“Coons are fur bearing animals,” said the stranger. “You have to have a license to hunt them. They have to be hunted in season. And it is illegal to hunt at night.”

Just ahead of me, on the branch, a dark shape loomed.

In spite more than anger, in spite to think of all the reasons we can’t have fun in this world, I gave the branch a nasty twitch.

The dark shape scrambled for a hold but lost it, and fell with a thud to the ground.

The hounds, instead of staging the coon fight I expected, leaped back.

It was a porcupine.

So we all sat around the fire, game warden and all, and talked about the sport our grandfathers used to have in these parts.


Editor’s Note: This story appeared in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979).

Monkey Shines

Jim started to shinny up the pole. “Jim,” I laughed, winding the music heartily, “don’t do that. Leave it up there.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 5, 1939.

Greg and Jim find that what looks like an interesting stopping place produces monkey business in more senses than one

“Why is it,” demanded Jimmie Frise, “we didn’t stop for that poor chap back there?”

“We didn’t like his looks,” I suggested. “He looked sort of sticky.”

“He was probably a very worthy citizen,” countered Jim. “Maybe he was some poor chap hurrying to the bedside of his dying mother.”

“The law of averages is in his favor,” I reminded. “He signals 100 cars. The 101st picks him up.”

“I often wonder,” mused Jim, “why it is we pick one guy up and pass up 50 others. What is it about certain people that causes us to stop and pick them up? And what is it about hundreds of others that causes us to go right by them?”

“If our curiosity is aroused,” I submitted, “we usually stop. For example, last year I saw a young bum on the road with a bunch of flowers in his hand. I couldn’t help stopping for him. When I asked him why he was carrying flowers, he said it was to arouse curiosity in people so they would stop and pick him up. I never felt so indignant in my life.”

“I guess it’s a combination of things,” said Jim. “For instance, conscience. I have often passed a dozen hitch-hikers and then I began to feel mean, so I stopped at the very next one.”

“And probably got a far less pleasant companion in your journey,” I pointed out, “than if you had selected one of the earlier ones.”

“I’ve had some terrible specimens,” confessed Jim. “I’ve been itchy for a week after picking some of them up. Just imagination. But imaginary fleas are as bad as real ones.”

“The whole hitch-hiking game is difficult,” I stated. “On humanitarian grounds, we ought to give a lift to everybody. It is the parable of the good Samaritan in modern garb. But at the same time, it has a lot of evils. For example, the way those young beggars walk backward along the edge of the highway, thumbing. They walk just far enough out on the pavement to obstruct you, so that to pass them, you have to swing out. I have had some awful narrow squeaks passing cars that were swinging out to miss those backing-up hitch-hikers.”

“It is against the law to hitch-hike,” said Jim. “Yet the police pass hundreds of them every day on the highways.”

“Some laws are in force,” said I, “just in case they are needed. They are like the cop’s gun. He has it in case he needs it, but just because he has a gun is no reason why he should go around shooting it off all the time.”

“How about these?” cried Jim, as we approached two men with packsacks sadly thumbing at us as we approached.

We slowed the car slightly while we looked them over. Two more villainous gents it would be hard to imagine. They were scowling, they had blue stubble on their chins, they looked as if they had just broken out of prison and a life sentence and their clothes seemed damp. But they were thumbing in a commanding way.

“Step on it,” I said.

And as we went by, the two errant gentlemen shouted abusive epithets after us, their teeth bared.

“Phew,” said Jim. “Imagine that pair in the back seat.”

People Mostly Disagree

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “there are people who would actually pick those two up?”

“You can’t judge all mankind by us,” replied Jim. “No two people look exactly alike, and no two people really have the same impressions, the same thoughts or ideas. I don’t suppose any two people actually see alike. Or hear alike. How a rose smells to me may be entirely different from the way it smells to you.”

“In general, though,” I argued, “we all agree on what is nice and what isn’t nice.”

“In general, we disagree, you mean,” said Jim. “The girl one man would marry isn’t the girl 1,000 other men would. And the 1,000 girls those men would marry, the one man would no more marry than he’d marry a freight engine.”

“How about movie stars?” I inquired. “There seems to be general agreement as to them?”

“But who’d marry them?” demanded Jim. “Think that over. How many of the most beautiful movie stars you admire would you want to have around the house all the time?”

“There’s something in what you say,” I confessed. “They’d be an awful problem, wouldn’t they?”

“No, sir,” said Jim, “people for the most part disagree on all major points. Look at the political parties. Look at the religions. Look at the styles in furniture, in clothes, even in food. When I walk through a cafeteria, I always wonder who the heck is going to eat most of the junk on display. Because out of the whole shebang, I can see only one thing I want.”

“I guess we are more different than we generally suppose,” I agreed.

“That’s why somebody is likely to pick up those two thugs back there,” said Jim. “No doubt there are thousands of people who shudder at the thought of picking up a student preacher as we shudder at the thought of picking up those hyenas.”

“I once picked up a student preacher,” I admitted. “He rode all the way from Bradford to Bracebridge with me, and he talked the whole way about the evils of tobacco.”

“Did he convert you?” asked Jim.

“He converted me to never pick up pious-looking people again,” I averred. “I like a sort of medium-boiled hitch-hiker. I don’t go for thugs and I don’t go for saints in human form.”

“You’re very choosey in your benevolence,” remarked Jim.

“I have one rule,” I stated. “If anything looks interesting, I stop.”

We were by now slowing through one of the nice little cities we pass through on our way to Muskoka, and because the traffic in these places is all angle parked and therefore tangled up beyond all belief, with cars trying to go both ways and cars trying to back out of angle parking and girls in shorts jay-walking and gentlemen of all ages trying to drive a car and take in the scenery at the same time, Jim and I have long ago resorted to the plan of detouring off the main streets of these little summery cities and going around through the residential streets.

And as we drove slowly, as becomes residential streets, we saw a scene of considerable excitement ahead.

“Okay,” cried Jimmie, “here’s something interesting. Do we stop?”

“You bet,” I proposed.

So we stopped and hopped out.

Speaking Commandingly

Amongst a bevy of children, an organ grinder and his monkey were staging a most unusual act. The organ grinder was rolling on the ground emitting loud foreign cries, and the monkey, in its little red and green uniform, was dancing up and down like a maniac, round and round its master on the ground.

As we ran across, a motorcycle cop arrived and leaped off his bike.

“He’s sick,” said Jim.

The cop ran over and knelt down by the organ grinder, and the monkey, baring its teeth, savagely rushed in as if to attack the law.

“Here,” yelled the cop, kicking at the monkey and signalling to Jim and me, “keep that brat away.”

“There’s no string,” shouted Jim.

“Shoo him,” shouted the cop, rolling the organ grinder over.

“Stand back, children,” I said, commandingly. “I’ll keep the children back, Jim. You attend to the monkey.”

“If it had a string on it,” cried Jim anxiously. “Or if I had a club.”

The monkey was jibbering in a high squeaky voice, baring its fangs horribly and dancing wildly around, in and out, trying to get a bite at the bent part of the policeman.

“It’s appendicitis, likely,” said the cop, straightening up. “I’ll throw him in my side car. You gents look after this monkey until I get back.”

“Take our car,” I suggested eagerly.

“No thanks,” said the cop, arching away from another attack by the bounding little beast. “I don’t want any sick man and a monkey both in any car with me. How would you like to bring them both in your car, and I’ll ride ahead, clearing the traffic?”

“We’ll guard the monkey until you get back,” I agreed hurriedly. “Stand back, you children.”

And I went busily in a circle, a wide circle, holding the excited children back.

“Jim,” I commanded, “try to chase the brute up a tree.”

Jim warily circled around the monkey, while the traffic officer hoisted the stricken organ grinder heavily to his feet and dragged him over to the side car.

The monkey did not know whether to follow his master or to stay with the grind organ which was lying on the ground. It raced pitifully after his master, Jim heading it off with wild whoops; then it raced back and jumped on the organ, bounding up and down and shrieking tiny shrieks.

“Hey,” shouted Jim. “The next time it gets off the organ, you pick the organ up and start to play. Maybe that will soothe it.”

“O, yeah,” I protested.

But the children were well back by now and a lady was issuing loud commands from a nearby veranda. And there was really nothing else for me to do.

“Okay,” cried Jim, as the monkey took a last despairing run after the departing motorcycle.

I picked up the organ, ready to drop it if the beast attempted to return to it, and started to wind the handle. It played “The Music Goes Round and Round.”1

With a wild leap, the little monkey started for me, a look of joy on its face.

“Shoo!” I shouted, stamping the one leg of the organ.

“Hoy,” shouted Jim, cutting in with flailing arms and large leaps.

And the monkey, instead of leaping on to the organ, which I was in the act of jettisoning, wheeled and leaped up a Hydro pole instead. Six feet up, arms and legs wrapped around the pole, it clung there, glaring angrily and with purpose at Jim and then at me, making up its mind.

“Chase it higher,” I shouted, winding furiously. “Chase it to the top.”

Jim ducked in and slapped the post safely below the monkey. And with a deft snatch, the beast took Jim’s new straw hat, a lovely new boater, the mate to mine, which we had purchased only this morning at one of those August straw hat sales.

“Here,” said Jim. “Give me that.”

And Stop For Nothing

But the monkey, as slick as a sailor, climbed aloft and proceeded to bite, rip, tear and unwind Jimmie’s lovely hat.

“Here,” shouted Jim, starting to shinny up the pole.

“Jim,” I laughed, winding the music heartily, “don’t do that. Leave it up there.”

“That’s my hat,” shouted Jim.

“A hat is a cheap price to pay, if we can keep it up there,” I pointed out, as the children gathered round me.

“Yes, somebody else’s hat is always a cheap price,” sneered Jim, eyeing mine.

When the monkey had torn Jim’s to its ultimate ribbon and flung the last fragment at us in irate fury, it crouched in deep meditation, eyeing me intently. I played very sweetly. I played slow. I played fast.

“He sees your hat,” sang Jimmie heartily.

“Stand over near the pole,” I commanded.

“You stand there,” suggested Jim.

“Don’t let him come down,” I shouted. “Keep him up. Keep him up. Goodness knows what we’re in for if we let him down.”

“Throw him up your hat,” offered Jim. “

“Don’t be a fool,” I retorted. “One hat is enough.”

“Throw him the hat,” cried Jim. “He’s starting down.”

And in fact the horrid beast was shifting position and starting to back down the pole.

“Hoy, shoo, ffft, scat,” I shouted, grinding very loud on the organ, which was still playing the same tune over and over.

“Your hat,” said Jim, ceremoniously, lifting my hat off, as both my hands were engaged.

Jimmie walked over and held that hat up to the monkey. It looked down, accepted the hat, climbed to the top again and, with an air of fury, and a little more deliberately, proceeded to rip my good hat to pieces, flinging the pieces at us with an almost human derision.

“Suppose I run down the street,” suggested Jim, “and find another August hat sale? Give me a couple of bucks and I’ll buy you one and I’ll get one for myself. We may need quite a supply of hats before the day’s up.”

“Stay right here,” I ground.

“May I take a whirl at the organ?” suggested Jim, very polished. “You’re sweating.”

But at that moment we heard the welcome roar of a motorcycle, and back came the cop with a gentleman in the side car armed with a large net.

“The dog catcher,” cried all the little children.

And in no time at all, the dog catcher had scooped the little monkey into the net and transferred it into a large sack.

“Whew,” said Jimmie and I.

“Thanks very much,” said the speed cop. “Maybe they give some kind of medal for this sort of thing. I’ll see you get it.”

“How’s the patient?” asked Jim.

“He’s okay,” said the cop. “Been eating too much pop corn, the doctor said. Nothing serious.”

So he drove off with the dog catcher and the bass organ and the bag.

“Look here, gentleman,” called the lady who had been watching from the veranda. “Don’t leave all that litter on that lawn.”

We looked very indignant, but picked up all the pieces of straw hat and made a neat pile of them on the side of the road.

“The best thing,” I said, as we got back in the car, “is to nick up nobody and stop for nothing.”


Editor’s Notes:

  1. The Music Goes ‘Round and Around is a popular song written in 1935. It can be heard here. ↩︎

Rejuvenation Pills

I got into the wagon first. “Get off,” said Jim, grasping my coat and pulling.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 17, 1939.

This Greg-Jim adventure is from Gregory Clark’s book, “Which We Did,” published by Reginald Saunders, Toronto.

“I wish,” said Jimmie Frise, “we were living 100 years from now.”

“A hundred years ago would be better,” I disagreed.

“Ah!” said Jim, “100 years from now, all this bewilderment we are living amidst will be over. All the problems solved. We’d know how communism turned out. And what became of Germany and Italy.”

“If we’d lived 100 years ago,” I debated, “we would know now what had happened. I would feel a lot safer if I had lived 100 years ago,”

“Think of the miracles,” cried Jim, “that are certain to come to pass in the next 100 years. Do you realize that in our lifetime more miracles have happened than in the rest of the entire history of the world?”

“I guess we have lived in a thrilling time,” I admitted.

“Thrilling?” said Jim. “Listen. Human history is divided into two parts. The past 100 years is one half. The other half are all the millions of years before.”

“Maybe it’s over,” I suggested.

“When we were born,” said Jim, “the telegraph was the last supreme wonder of the world – the telegraph. Since we were born, recollect the miracles that have come to pass. The telephone, the phonograph, the electric light, the gas engine, the motor car, the paved highway, radio, the airplane, television, the x-ray, a million per cent. development of electrical and mechanical understanding, several thousand per cent. increase in medical science.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Previous to our birth,” continued Jim, “the greatest event they could tell us about in the school books was that Columbus sailed across the ocean. Now people fly the ocean in a few hours.”

“A hundred years from now, I suppose,” supposed, “all we will need to do is go up to community stratosphere platforms overnight, and wait for the earth to revolve underneath us, and then come down for breakfast in London or Calcutta.”

“Boy,” said Jim, “how I would love to live 100 years from now. What will we look like? What will we be doing? Will there be newspapers or only news broadcasts with television? For example, the news agencies all over the world will be television reporters with their outfits to rush from place to place. All you will have to do is tune in on a world news centre, say, in London. There you will learn from an announcer what is going on. A revolution in Spain. A big parade in Moscow. A murder in Chicago. You just twist the dials and get the local station, and there, instead of X marks the spot where the body lay, you can see the police carrying the body out and the suspect being grilled like a pork chop.”

“In which case,” I explained, “you and I would be out of jobs. They won’t need cartoonists and writers.”

Mankind’s Two Classes

“In 100 years,” said Jim, “I doubt if many people will have to work. We are just about now beginning to discover that work is the bunk. Despite the million discoveries of how to do things easily and painlessly, we still have the silly idea that we all have to toil and labor the way we did back in the days of wooden plows and Magna Carta. But in 100 years I bet nobody will have to work except those that want to work.”

“Will anybody want to work?” I protested.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Jim. “Mankind is divided into two classes – those who don’t want to work, a very large class, and those who can’t help working, a small class, but easily able to support all the rest of us. This interesting division into classes has been staring us in the face now for nearly 100 years. But we haven’t tumbled to it yet. We still think it is a political division. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s purely a biological distinction. Some men are born to like work. To be unhappy unless they are working. They get as much kick out of work as we get out of fishing.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I cried, “it’s true.”

“Of course it’s true,” said Jim. “Take one of these people away from their work and they actually pine, grow ill and die. It’s like liquor to them. They are work addicts. Yet, from time immemorial, we have foolishly allowed these people, these addicts, to possess the earth and the fullness thereof. With their energy and pep, they have bossed us and bullied us and made life miserable for countless generations of mankind.”

“How simple it all is,” I mused.

“A hundred years from now,” went on Jimmie, “with the aid of medical science, advanced psychology and that sort of thing, we will have all work addicts classified. We will put them in a special uniform. We will supply them with all the machinery they, in their folly, have invented. And we will permit them to work to their hearts’ content, the poor addicts, while the rest of us, the natural man, the human, lazy, happy multitude, will be amply supported in glorious leisure.”

“Jim,” I confessed, “I, too, would like to be living 100 years from now.”

“It will be a great time,” declaimed Jimmie. “The workers will be honored by us all, instead of hated for their wealth and industry.”

“I would feel kind of sorry for them,” I confessed.

“They would likely be very snobbish about it all,” said Jim thoughtfully, “and as the years went by we might behold the comic spectacle of our own children aspiring to be workers.”

“Like now,” I offered, “young people wanting to be movie stars and aviators.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “there is in all human hearts a faint desire to want to do something. When it is no longer necessary, 100 years from now, to do anything unless you want to, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a most extraordinary development. We might get those cathedral builders we used to have centuries ago. We might get poets again. People might actually get to like living so much that they would just naturally want to make their lives beautiful.”

The Secret of Life

“A minute ago, Jim,” I said, “I was happy to be alive in this exciting age. But now, you make it all seem kind of drab. As if we were here standing in the dawn, in the cold and fog and grayness, waiting for the day we will never see.”

“You never can tell,” declared Jim. “Sometimes I get the feeling we are on the very edge of the secret of life. As if we were hovering on the very brim of immense revelations, when all our troubles and misunderstandings will vanish away like mist, and we’ll stand in the clear, all over the world, understanding, comprehending and realizing. Almost any day now some scientist will discover the very essence of life. Maybe before we die we can take a pill or drink a liquid that will restore our youth and allow us to live indefinitely.”

“Come on, science,” I cheered.

“Oh, it’s partly done already,” said Jim. “What do you suppose those monkey gland experiments were for?1 And all these gland pills and rejuvenation pills?”

“I hadn’t paid much attention to that stuff,” I said. “I guess I still feel pretty peppy.”

“You can buy pills now,” said Jim, “that make you 20 years younger. For a little while. But you have to keep taking them or else you feel about 80.”

“I guess they only make you feel 20 years younger,” I suggested. “I’ve seen some of my friends acting 30 years younger and they didn’t take rejuvenation pills.”

“No,” said Jim. “I’m told these pills actually make you 20 years younger. For as long as they last, they restore to your system the worn-out essences of life itself. To all intents and purposes you are 20 years younger.”

“That would be a nice feeling,” I admitted, trying to remember what 20 years ago felt like.

“The way I understand it,” said Jim, “we are all lit up inside by our glands, as if they were a string of those little lights you put on a Christmas tree. Some are bright and some are dim, according to the way we are born. Sometimes one of them burns too bright and all the rest go dim. Sometimes one goes out, and then they all go out. Our glands are all hooked up on a sort of circuit.”

“Taking pills then,” I said, “is like putting in a fresh bulb?”

“Sort of,” agreed Jim. “We have glands in our head and neck and all over our bodies. Some of them are so small they haven’t been discovered yet. Others are so newly found the doctors don’t know what they are for, but they all work together to make us what we are. One gland makes us lazy and another makes us work. One makes us bad tempered and another makes us have dry skin or bushy hair. In a few years they will be able to give a gland pill so you can see a joke. Or to improve your ear for music.”

“Character won’t be worth having,” I protested, “if you can buy it at the drug store.”

“You see what I am getting at?” said Jim. “A few more steps in this game and they’ll find a gland preservative and then we can live to be 500 years old.”

“Are any of these pills to be had?” I asked.

“Doctors use them all the time,” said Jim. “You’ve heard of thyroid pills and adrenalin pills?”

“As journalists, Jim,” I declared, “we ought to have been looking into this long ago. We should even have been taking some of these pills.”

“You can’t take them without a doctor’s orders,” Jim said. “If your glands are good and you took a pill, goodness knows what it might do to you. But of course these rejuvenation pills you can get anywhere. They’re on sale like any patent medicine.”

Not Wanting to Be Younger

“I’m not particularly anxious to be 20 years younger,” I mused. “Twenty years ago I remember the war too vividly. I’m not very sure I would like to be as I was then.”

“Even 10 years ago,” agreed Jim. “I wouldn’t like to go back 10. I used to be so anxious and working and worrying and full of trouble.”

“Ten years ago,” I said, “I had the eczema.”

“Even five years,” said Jim. “Five years ago I thought I would never get my house paid for. It used to keep me awake at night. Now I don’t care.”

“It would probably,” I said, “be only a physical feeling. It would only last a couple of hours. Let’s try it. We owe it to humanity.”

“On an empty stomach,” said Jim. “We’ll take a couple of hours for lunch.”

Our favorite druggist spoke very highly of four or five brands of rejuvenation pills. He told us of an elderly gentleman amongst his clients who had taken off 30 years on one brand of pill. There were Chinese pills, big jelly looking objects; and tiny pinhead pills made in Europe by societies with long names, that were the secret, the druggist told us, of the fact that all the fashion styles come from Paris. Some of the pills were in old-fashioned packages with pen drawings of virile looking gentlemen with long black beards. Others were done up very discreetly in vivid modernistic style; others in a plain envelope, as the saying is.

“This here,” said the druggist, “is one of the newest. It comes from Europe. They say the German army, is fed on them daily.”2

We bought that one. Fifty pills – $2.753.

They were small white flat pills with a curious pallid expression. We read the instructions: “The effect of this prescription is cumulative. Take one tablet the first time, two tablets the second time, and so on until a maximum of five pills at a time are taken; by which time a permanent sense of rejuvenation and well-being will permeate the whole system.”

“Well,” laughed Jimmie, “let’s take the first one here at the soda fountain to begin with.”

Which we did and then went forth to stroll in the crisp noon air, amidst all the hurrying throng of luncheoners.

“It does not say,” said Jim, “at what intervals to take them. But I suppose we ought to give them at least time to dissolve.”

“I feel a slight sense of well-being already, Jim,” I submitted, squaring my shoulders.

“They have a minty flavor,” said Jim. “Not at all bad to take.”

“Pop us out a couple,” I suggested, and Jim produced the bottle and we each palmed and swallowed two.

We mingled with the crowds up towards the big department store corners.

“Jim,” I said, “do you notice anything?”

“I certainly feel light on my feet,” said Jim. “But the best part of it is, how nice everything looks. And everybody.”

“Ah, this is a great old town,” I agreed. “Anybody that couldn’t be happy here couldn’t be happy anywhere.”

“Wheeeeee,” said Jimmie. So we went through the revolving doors of one of the big stores and stood in the lobby while we took the next course; three pills each this time.

“They dissolve quick,” said Jim.

At the Magic Counter

We stood in the lobby for a little while, letting them dissolve and watching all the lovely people hurrying through. There were a lot of other people, mostly young men, standing in the lobby. It felt good to be there with them, standing and watching everybody passing.

“Where to?” asked Jim.

“Let’s go through the gent’s furnishings,” I said. “I’ve got the idea I’d like to look at some ties and shirts and things.”

We spent a happy 20 minutes looking at the haberdashery. I had no idea haberdashery had developed so interestingly of late. Snappy, we used to call it when I was younger. Jim and I both agreed that the youth’s and young gent’s was away ahead of the rest of the department, and we told the salesmen so, Jim finally bought a club stripe tie and I got two blue shirts with nifty fall-over collars that expose the throat.

“How do you feel?” I asked Jim.

“Hungry,” said Jim. I observed that he had his hat on the back of his head and his hair was sticking out in front. It looked nice. So I put my hat the same way. Jim began picking things up off the counter and putting them down again. I followed him and did the same. It was fun.

We saw the escalator at the same time and raced for it. We rode up three floors on it and then came down four. Then Jimmie invented the trick of going down the up escalators and up the down ones. A man came over and told us not to do that.

“Let’s go to the toy department,” said Jim. Did we ever have a swell time in the toy department? We tried all the things, the pop-guns and the mechanical automobiles. We blew the horns and beat the drums. We pushed dolls off the counters and spent a long time at the magic counter. It was when we got to the wagon and tricycle department that the difficulties began.

There was one lovely wagon like an automobile. It was blue and had shining metal headlights and disc wheels. I got into it first. “Get off,” said Jim, grasping my coat and pulling.

“I got it first,” I retorted.

“Get off it,” hissed Jimmie, giving me a dirty pinch.

“I won’t,” I yelled.

Jim put his shoulder against me and sent me flying to the floor. Weeping with rage, I rushed him and we clinched and punched and pinched and shoved all over the department, stumbling over carts and tricycles, while girls tried to separate us and managers came dashing up. They got us apart and Jimmie leaned sobbing bitterly against the counter.

“Aw, Jimmie,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Now,” sobbed Jimmie, his fists in his eyes, “we’ll be late for school.”


Editor’s Notes: As was indicated at the start, this story was originally exclusive to the book Which We Did (1936).

  1. This refers to the work of Serge Voronoff who gained fame for his practice of xenotransplantation of monkey testicle tissues onto the testicles of men for purportedly as anti-aging therapy while working in France in the 1920s and 1930s. ↩︎
  2. The German army was provided a drug called Pervitin, an early form of methamphetamine. ↩︎
  3. $2.75 in 1939 is about $58 in 2024. ↩︎

Life is Peril

“Urk!” I said half rising. Jim rose and ran around to hit me a terrific thump on the back.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 18, 1939.

“World peace be jiggered,” declared Jimmie Frise. “What I’m interested in is a little personal peace.”

“If we had peace amongst the nations,” I pointed out, “there would be little to worry us.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” retorted Jim. “This world uneasiness isn’t at the top. It starts at the bottom. Men are uneasy. Men have made their lives uneasy, troubled, anxious, restless. There is no peace in the home, in the shop, factory or office. There is. no peace in daily life for any man, woman or child anywhere. And naturally, there being no peace in the nation, there can be no peace among nations.”

“Professor Frise,” I jeered.

“Okay,” said Jimmie. “Suppose absolute and perfect peace were declared amongst the nations, would that make us peaceful? Would it stop the telephone ringing? Would it decide who is going to use my car – me or my children? Would it mean I wouldn’t have to get up at 7.45 a.m.?”

“Those are trifles,” I protested.

“Trifles?” cried Jim. “If we had world peace would that mean I didn’t have to do a cartoon every week, rain or shine, winter or summer?”

“Ah, you’ll get that kind of peace soon enough,” I pointed out.

“It makes me sick,” declared Jim, “to read and listen day and night to this talk about peace amongst nations when every day we are bending every human effort to making our lives less peaceful. Inventing new and faster and more furious ways of doing everything we have to do. Inventing new ways of disturbing the home. Inventing new interests to eat up every spare hour of our lives. Like cars and radio and movies.”

“Why don’t you retire to the country,” I suggested, “and buy a buggy?”

“We buy a car,” ignored Jim. “In about a year, the same make of car we’ve got is brought out far snappier looking, far more powerful, far faster. Every time we go out in the streets, we are made uneasy and restless because newer and faster cars whip past us and around us, making us conscious of our old bus, waking in us the restless thought that pretty soon we’ll have to buy a new one.”

“It would be the same,” I explained, “if you owned a horse and buggy. Somebody would pass you on the road and you’d be trading your horse by nightfall.”

“The first radio I had,” said Jim, “was a crystal set1 with earphones. It was perfectly good. If I had it now, I would be hearing the programs just as good as I do now.”

“Oh, hardly,” I protested.

“I mean, as far as actually hearing the programs,” said Jim, “I would get them all. And what’s more, with the earphones on, I couldn’t hear all the distractions you have to put up with now, people talking and interrupting and doorbells ringing and everything. I loved that old crystal set. When you put the earphones on, you were shut up with the program as though you were in a little cell.”

“You can still buy those old-fashioned sets,” I pointed out.

No Peace For Anybody

“But no,” continued Jim. “We have to buy new models every couple of years. Bigger, louder, farther reaching, so that you seem actually to have orchestras in your house, and Mr. Chamberlain2 comes from England to speak to you in your living room.”

“I’d hate to have to give up my radio,” I assured him.

“Movies,” went on Jim. “Every so often. I say to myself, after a night at the movies, ‘well, I’ve seen all the movies I ever need to see. I’ve seen them all.’ Then along comes talkies. Then technicolor3. Then ‘Snow White’4. Then some super-mammoth feature picture that seems to make everybody goggle-eyed and breathless, and you are prodded into going again. So it goes. peace. No rest. Always change. Always something new and startling to keep you on the go.”

“That’s life, Jim,” I insisted.

“But don’t you see,” cried Jim, “there is no peace? No matter how poor and humble we are, there is always something new, demanding that we labor and struggle to make the money and find the time to partake of it. If we don’t, we feel we are neglecting ourselves, we feel out of it, we feel injured, we are uneasy, disappointed, restless.”

“The spur of life,” I assured.

“Then how can nations, made up of people like that, restless, ambitious, greedy, struggling,” demanded Jim, “ever be at peace with one another?”

“Do you mean,” I exclaimed, “that we should stop trying for world peace?”

“I mean,” stated Jim hotly, “if you want peace among nations, you’ve first got to make men’s lives more peaceful.”

“But you can’t stop the vast struggle of progress,” I explained. “It is a march. A mighty onward thrusting of human energy.”

“Okay, then,” said Jim. “You can’t have world peace. My desire and determination to own a new car, multiplied by millions, becomes the desire and determination of nations. Remove my desire for a new car, and you can have world peace. Make me impervious to the appeal of the latest and most colossal mammoth movie production, and you can have world peace. Cut out my passion for super radio programs or feature news broadcasts from Rome or London, make me indifferent to all these things, and you can then expect world peace.”

“Jim,” I protested, “your life is happier and easier and more interesting than the life of any of your ancestors, from your father and grandfather back through thousands of years. You are right now the flower, the bloom, of countless struggling ages of human progress.”

“Some bloom,” muttered Jim. “The jitter-flower. A new hardy annual, beautiful in herbaceous borders. Plant in soft warm soil.”

“Think,” I impressed, “think where your ancestors walked, you ride. Your grandfather had to walk 10 miles with a bag of flour on his back through the pioneer forest road. You roll over and reach for the telephone.”

“What would I want with a bag of flour?” scoffed Jim.

“No,” I said, “where your grandfather walked 10 miles with a bag of flour, through mosquito-infested forest trails to his little cabin, you telephone for a caramel custard pie.”

Uneasiness of Progress

“Don’t try to compare my life,” challenged Jim, “with my grandfather’s. He had peace and little else. I have everything, but no peace. He had to clear the land, but all around him was peace. This land was his. Hour by hour, day by day. season by season, he worked with patience and peace, knowing that what he planted he would reap, that all things in his life were measured, evenly and honestly in relation to his work. The better he worked, the more he earned. Above all things in his life, he treasured peace. Peace of mind, peace of heart and peace of body. He worked when he liked and quit when he liked, knowing just when to quit, peace being the price. He was not anxious. He knew how many mouths he had to feed, how many bodies to clothe, and in the spring he knew just how hard he had to work to win the peaceful heart before winter came again.”

“You can do that now,” I pointed out.

“Unless,” accused Jim, “the company you work for folds up because some other company comes along with a newer and better product. Or unless a depression sets in, and they shorten the payroll. Or unless any of the other desperate circumstances of modern life cuts you off without a day’s notice.”

“We may have had to sacrifice a little peace,” I confessed, “but we have gained countless wonders and joys.”

“Okay, then,” said Jim, “stop hollering for peace.”

“Who’s hollering for peace?” I demanded.

“The whole world,” said Jim.

“It’s you that is hollering for peace,” I informed him. “You started this, groaning and moaning for a little personal peace.”

“They say history repeats itself,” mollified Jim. “Maybe all the great civilizations of the past went through what we are going through. Maybe Egypt and Babylon and Greece and Rome went through all this sacrifice of peace to the uneasiness of progress. I often wondered why they always went smash, in the end. I often wondered why one of those great civilizations didn’t survive until today. Why didn’t the Roman Empire survive until now? It had everything: laws, science, culture, civilization. In fact, they handed us our civilization almost intact. Our roads, architecture, plumbing, laws, philosophy. We haven’t added much to what Rome gave us. But Rome went smash. Do you know why?”

“Because some greater power rose against it,” I suggested.

“Never,” said Jim. “A lot of heathens with lice in their hair, a lot of swarming uncivilized hillbillies, who plunged the world into centuries of uncivilized darkness, destroyed the Roman Empire. And I’ll tell you why. Because the Roman Empire wanted to be destroyed. It was too much trouble. There was no peace. The Roman Empire was sick unto death of itself. It wanted peace. It wanted to sag back on to the pleasant earth, amid vines and orchards and fields. It wasn’t overthrown at all. It threw itself away.”

“A lot you know about history,” I scoffed.

“History is in the hearts of men,” said Jim, “not in books. We used to look upon the Italians as a secondary race. We used to look down upon them, as they dwelt in their peasant villages on hillsides, with their wine and olives, and their music and simplicity, and their dwelling in ancient ruined towns; we felt sorry for them. We shouldn’t have felt sorry for them. They were happy. They had won peace. And now the poor devils are caught up again in the fury of progress. I wonder how many centuries it will be before they recapture peace again?”

“Let’s Eat a Symbolic Meal”

“You’re homesick,” I accused. “Homesick for the farm of your boyhood. It’s the approach of spring.”

“Thank goodness,” sighed Jim, “it is lunch time. Thank goodness, a few simple joys remain, like eating and sleeping. Despite everything civilization can do, it can’t civilize a boiled potato.”

“Or a baked one,” I submitted,

“Boiled or baked,” said Jim, “a potato is a peaceful, a beautiful and eternal thing. And a simple slice of rare beef.”

“Or,” I suggested, “a nice bit of broiled fish. Lake trout, for example. A piece near the tail end, where there are no bones.”

“Eating and sleeping,” gloated Jim, “they are the peaceful things that can’t be tampered with. All other aspects of life have been changed, altered, improved. They do their best to doo-dad up our food; but we come back, even in great cities, to simple foods, the eternal verities like steak and onions, corn beef and cabbage, bread, ham and eggs. Aaaaaah.”

“And sleep,” I agreed. “They invent marvellous mattresses, light and wonderful bedclothes. Air-conditioned bedrooms. But the minute I close my eyes, I am gloriously and insolently unaware of all progress.”

“I’m famished,” said Jim, getting, up and reaching for his coat.

“Let’s,” I suggested, “let’s eat a symbolic meal. An old-fashioned meal in honor of our forefathers who had peace.”

“Pork and beans,” offered Jim.

“Pawff,” I scoffed, “too modern. Let’s go away back. To primitive man. The most peaceful of all.”

“Ham and eggs,” said Jim.

“Invented by the Greeks,” I rejected.

“Beef.” said Jim.

“Ages before man had become civilized enough to be able to kill a cow,” I demurred, “he could catch fish. With nets woven of bark and roots, men caught fish. Let’s eat fish.”

“Why not go right back,” protested Jim, “and eats meal of nuts, green lettuce and radishes, to symbolize the herbs and roots he subsisted on.”

“I’d still go for a bit of fish,” I urged. “A nice bit of lake trout preferred, broiled. The tail end.”

“With boiled potatoes, well soaked in melted butter,” added Jim.

“They didn’t have potatoes until quite recently,” I pointed out. “Queen Elizabeth’s time, to be exact. But the potato can symbolize the roots our ancestors dug out of the earth.”

“What the dickens did they eat, away back before civilization?” demanded Jim, as we went out to the elevator.

“Heaven knows,” I admitted. “I’ve often wondered. I guess life was a pretty dreadful business, away back before men discovered what things to grow and how to grow them. Nuts and roots, and such little animals like frogs and things that were easily caught. I wonder who first thought of saving up nuts and roots to tide him over the winter? I wonder how they got through the winters?”

Living Dangerously

“I guess there wasn’t much peace to life in those far-off times,” confessed Jimmie.

“Probably there never was much peace at any time,” I concluded.

And we went down into the basement to the rich and odorous mood of the restaurant where we sidled, along the counter, picking our food with historic eyes. I took whole wheat bread in honor of my ancestors of about the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, and some radishes and lettuce in honor of those of my ancestors that escaped the Ice Age. And a lovely bit of grilled lake trout; the tail being gone, I had to take a cut from the middle. And a boiled potato, well slathered with melted butter, in honor of such of my ancestors as were around Omagh, in Tyrone county, the time Sir Walter Raleigh let loose that famous fungus, the potato, upon Ireland. And so we struggled for a table, shoving and shouldering our fellow moderns aside in the battle; getting, in fact, a nice little table to ourselves, with a pleasant profile view of several young lady stenographers very chatty and gay over their heaped platters of mulligan5 or sizzling steaks, despite the fact that there is no peace in the world. Pretty stenographers at a pleasant distance are like a dash of spice to a good luncheon.

Jim took fish also, and we set to, bending to savor the curious and attractive odor of sharply seared lake trout.

“Mmmmmmm,” said Jim. tucking a nice solid hunk of potato in back of a crumbling forkful of grilled trout.

“Here’s to my hairy ancestors,” I saluted, raising a forkload of trout. “To the first of them that ever caught a fish.”

I slid the tasty gobbet over my waiting teeth.

“Drat,” I said.

“Bone?” mumbled Jim, solicitous.

“Mmmmm,” I agreed, cautiously feeling about with my tongue and teeth for the bone. I got it. I delicately and as surreptitiously as possible removed the bone and then spent the usual helpless moment trying to detach it from my finger and make it lie down on the plate. I swallowed.

“Urk,” I said. “Hawwwwch. Kchah. Hyaaawch.”

My eyes began to bulge. I half rose, signalling frantically to Jim. Jim rose and ran around to hit me a terrific thump on the back.

The manager and three waitresses came running. All the pretty stenographers rushed to our aid. Jim kept thumping and I kept dying a violent death. My eardrums rang. My blood pressure rose to the bursting point. I could no longer see out of my bulging eyeballs.

Jim bent me back and opened my mouth. One of the stenographers, peering deep within, reached down with her long, scarlet, pointed fingernails and captured the fish bone.

“Hah.” she triumphed, holding the little bone aloft for all to see.

And in a few moments, except for charitable smiles from all sides, and the manager hovering tenderly near in case of further difficulties, we finished our luncheon.

“Life,” explained Jimmie, “is always perilous.”

“I can’t understand,” I agreed, “how the human race has survived till now.”


Editor’s Notes:

  1. crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. ↩︎
  2. Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister at the time. ↩︎
  3. Technicolor is a series of advances in colour film that was evolving at the time. ↩︎
  4. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released 2 years earlier. ↩︎
  5. Mulligan Stew is a term used for a stew made of whatever ingredients are around, as referred to by hobos. ↩︎

Skixcursion

The young woman slid over our way. “Aren’t you slaloming?” she asked, and her voice was the husky kind.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 28, 1939.

“How’d you like to go,” asked Jimmie Frise, “on one of these ski excursions they’re running?1

“Heh, heh, heh,” I replied.

“They’re no end of fun,” declared Jim. “Whole trainloads of merry skiers, heading for the snow.”

“If the snow won’t come to the skiers,” I said, “the skiers go to the snow.”

“Why not?” demanded Jim. “They are running ski trains out from Boston, New York, Chicago, all over the country. When there are thousands of city-penned people just dying to romp in the snow; and hills full of snow only 50 miles away, what’s the answer?”

“Read a book,” I replied. “Light the grate fire, pull up a deep chair and snuggle down to a good book.”

“Ten years ago, that wouldn’t have been your answer,” sneered Jim.

“Oh, yes, it would,” I retorted. “Ten years ago, I preferred a deep chair to a snowbank even more than I do now. I have always maintained that winter was the season of hibernation. Nature does not intend us to go out romping in the snow. Why does she put the bear to sleep in his den, all winter; and the groundhog and all the rest of them? Why does she pack off all the birds to the south? Because the winter is fit for neither man nor beast. Because winter is no time for anybody or anything to be out. And we should take a tip from nature and stay in our dens as much as possible during the winter.”

“It’s just your age,” said Jim. “If a bear had heavy woollen underwear and a leather coat and fur-lined boots, he wouldn’t den up for the winter.”

“Physical comfort is the first law of happiness,” I decreed. “A man can have all other troubles, but if he is physically comfortable, dry, warm and at ease, he can withstand poverty, grief, fear, everything. What makes poverty unbearable is that it is so uncomfortable.”

“If you were younger,” prodded Jim, “you wouldn’t be so stuck on comfort. Young people get an actual thrill out of discomfort.”

“They can have it,” I assured him.

“One of the lovely things about youth,” went on Jim, “is that it has the stamina and resistance to deliberately submit itself to discomfort, in order to enjoy comfort all the more. They go out and ski in the cold and bitter weather, under a bleak sun, knowing that presently, after so many hours, they will be going back to a nice warm fireside. And oh, how much lovelier a fireside is, when it is contrasted with exposure and chilblains2.”

“I admit that,” I admitted.

“You take an aging and lazy person like yourself,” said Jim, “who never sticks his nose out of doors in winter unless he has to: think of how little real enjoyment he must get out of a fine log fire.”

“What do you mean,” I asked, “by aging and lazy? Whom are you referring to?”

“You,” said Jim.

Glands Must Be Applauded

“Jim,” I informed him, “I resent that. I am not aging. I am younger than you. I am in the very prime of my life.”

“You are in,” said Jim, “what are called the middle 40’s. That means you’re past 45,”

“At that age,” I declared, “a man is just ripe. Just seasoned. Just perfect.”

“Unless, of course,” submitted Jim, “he folds up and quits. Unless he abandons all forms of action in favor of comfort and rest.”

“No man is more active than I am in the spring, summer and fall,” I advised. “Fishing and shooting. But winter just doesn’t appeal to me.”

“It’s the thin end of the wedge,” said Jim. “It’s the beginning of the end. You surrender to comfort and inaction in winter a couple of years more, and then you’ll reach the stage where you put off the trout fishing until the end of May, rather than the wet and cold beginning of May. Then you’ll find it a little easier to sit on the cottage veranda during the hot weather than get out and row a boat…”

Jim could tell by my expression that he was hitting pretty close to the mark. As a matter of fact, I have been postponing the trout season a couple of weeks, and I did sit on the cottage veranda quite a bit last summer. In fact, I lay on a couch on the veranda. In short, I slept a good many afternoons…

“It’s insidious,” explained Jim. “There is no year of a man’s life at which you can say he is starting to grow old. There is no dividing line. You see lots of men who are old at 30. They’ve given in. They have surrendered to a routine of life that gives them the maximum of comfort. Poor, solemn, habited men, who go through life according to a dreadful routine. The streets are full of them, solemn young men, old at 30. But thank heavens you see other men who are not old at 70, who take life on the wing, who never submit to routine, who find zest and pleasure in every hour of every day, who never go to bed at the same hour, never do the same things twice, are full of zip and ginger and answer every beckoning call of life.”

“It’s their glands,” I suggested. “Healthy glands.”

“Glands have to be encouraged,” cried Jim. “But if you just ignore a gland, if you act as if it wasn’t there, what would you do if you were a gland? Why, you’d go to sleep too. You’d relax and pretty soon you would be dormant. Glands have to be encouraged and applauded. You have to take them for a ride every now and then. You have to go out in the cold and snow and test your glands, see how they can support you, for it isn’t your lungs and heart alone that keep you going under strain, but all the little glands strung through your system like the lights on a Christmas tree, the pituitary, the endocrines, they are the little batteries and generators distributed all through your system, and they are the power plant of all your energy.”

“I’ve tested mine,” I submitted. “They’re working. But they don’t crave to be chilled and exhausted.”

“No gland,” stated Jim, “gets any satisfaction out of lying dormant. The only thing at gland can do is work. One of these winters, my boy, you are going to hug a warm hearthstone once too often, and your glands are going to sleep and you won’t be able to wake them. up. When spring comes, they’ll be drowsy. That will be the end.”

Life Is Like Fire

“Drowsy, eh?” I muttered, remembering last summer on the cottage veranda.

“Life is like fire,” concluded Jim. “You’ve got to keep it stoked.”

“What is this excursion you were talking about?” I inquired.

“There is one every week-end,” said Jim, eagerly. “The train runs wherever the snow is. Sometimes the ski train goes up Owen Sound way or over the Caledon hills. Another time, it may go out Peterboro way. All you do is buy your ticket for the ski train, which leaves at 8 a.m. and you get aboard, and go where it goes. It has diners on it, for those who don’t carry their lunches. It waits on a siding all day, amidst the snow, and at dark. it leaves for home again, after suitable tootings of the whistle to warn all the passengers of the time.”

“My, that sounds good,” I agreed. “Have they a parlor car on too, in case a fellow gets tired of skiing and just wants to sit in a parlor car seat and read a book or look out the window?”

“I suppose that could be arranged,” said Jim.

But it was not arranged. For when, in the bitter week-end morning we arrived at the station and got aboard the ski train along with a hastening throng of other gaily clad ski-bearers, there was no parlor car, nor was there any diner. There were just half a dozen hissing and steaming day coaches of the plainest and most old-fashioned degree, best suited to carrying a crowd of noisy and joyous people, with their skis, poles, haversacks, massive boots, fogging cigarettes and an overwhelming air of hilarity.

Everybody handed up their skis and poles to the baggage car boys as they passed along the platform. Everybody swarmed into the steaming coaches, fighting past other skiers who were trying to keep places for belated friends, for whom they peered and watched. from the car doors.

There were very few young people and no elderly people. The entire passenger list seemed to consist of people at that age which is most oppressive both to the young and the elderly – 28 to 35. People of this age are curiously depressing. They have the energy of youth plus the wisdom and authority of years. They are doubly fortified. They are noisy, because they are young. But you can’t frown them down, because they are mature. Unlike 20-year-olds, they have no respect whatever for gentlemen in their middle 40’s. In fact, I think the great majority of skiers are 31 years old.

At the second to last coach in the train, Jim and I managed to slip on board past a crowd of place-guarders, by the simple pretext of joining on to the tail of a throng of five for whom the door was being held. Other place-keepers were all ready to jump into position and crowd the door, but we laughed and pretended to be part of the successful crowd and so got inside the coach and by a little finagling, got a seat together. The young fellow who had the double seat turned back, with his feet on it, succumbed to my stony stare and question. “Is this seat taken?”

He was only about 25. So very grudgingly, he gave up the spare seat, hoisted all his haversacks to another place, and Jim and I turned the back over and disposed ourselves very happily in the hot and smoke-filled coach.

Joyous Trainload

It was, after all, a joyous trainload. Their colored scarves and jackets, their sturdy air, their heavy boots giving them a sort of massive and hearty quality. They made a din. In groups and couples, men and women, they shouted greetings and laughed uproariously, as 30-year-olds laugh. In belated squads, they came and pushed and shoved through the coaches, looking for seats. And by the time the train, with a reluctant grunt, got under way, I was glad I had come.

The day was gray and wintry, with promise of a blizzard, and in no time the windows we so steamed and frosted you could not see out. So we just sat and observed the motley throng catching eyes and pleasant glances every now and then, with people strange and interesting and sometimes beautiful. The ski train giddley-bumped out into the country, northerly taking the Owen Sound line for luck, because they said there were big snow hills north of the Caledon mountains.

“Normally,” I said to Jim, “people of this age do not appeal to me. I avoid them. But they seem a very hearty crowd, after all.”

“What age do you mean?” inquired Jim.

“Thirty-one,” I explained. “They’re all 31.”

“Nonsense,” said Jim, staring round at them.

And after a long time, with several wheezing stops on sidings to let freight trains crawl by, we arrived at a siding in the hills where the train stopped with several merry hoots its whistle, and everybody piled out.

The train did not wait, however, on the siding, but after discharging a great stack of skis, went on its way, the brakeman telling us that it would be back for us at 6 p.m.

In no time at all, the pile of skis was demolished and skiers with their haversacks and poles were threading away in all directions over the fields, up and down a country road that crossed near by, while others proceeded to make little bonfires to prepare tea for lunch, because it was only an hour until noon. Jim and I elected to have a fire out of deference to my devotion to the beautiful element, not to mention our mutual devotion to a pail of good boiled tea. We had cheese and onion sandwiches and leberwurst3 sandwiches, some cold fried bacon and some cakes. And under a gray and muttering sky, we lunched and chose for our direction the way that fewest people had taken. Because Jim and I are what you might call chatty skiers. We just like to slither about.

A Hard Pail of Tea

We slithered across a field to a dark wood. Around the end of the dark wood, we saw a vista of rolling fields and lonely farm houses, and all the fences drifted deep. In no time at all, we had slithered a mile or two, until the dark wood was far behind us, and other dark woods beckoned us on. We rounded a couple of them, and swung northerly to where numerous dark moving dots on the horizon proclaimed some sort of rallying point. And after another pleasant hour of slithering and stopping to observe the view until our perspiration would begin to congeal into ice, we came to the rallying point, which was a long tricky hill, with humps on it, down which 30 or 40 skiers were trying their skill sliding between ski poles set up as markers.

Women and men both were furiously toiling up this hill and abandonedly hissing down it, swerving and swooping amidst the sticks. We joined the watchers at the top, but this was an aspect of skiing neither Jimmie nor I go in for. We haven’t got much swerve in us, to be exact. Up the hill, toiling and flushed and handsome, they came, and after a quick breather, down they would go, like children. Little fires burned. Tea pails bubbled. We decided to light a little fire of our own, for warmth, because just standing watching is cold skiing.

One particularly pretty young woman whom we had observed go down the hill twice with special grace and who now arrived at the top for another go, got her eye on us. She bared lovely advertisement-style teeth at us. She even waved a mitted hand.

“Do we know her, Jim?” I inquired eagerly.

“I don’t recall her,” said Jim.

She slid over our way.

“Aren’t you slaloming?” she asked, and her voice was the husky kind.

“No,” I answered, “we’re just going to light a little fire. We’ve taken a long tour around, so we’re going to rest for a while.”

“Would you mind,” asked the beautiful young woman, she would be about 28, maybe, “putting our tea pail or your fire?”

“Not in the least,” I cried.

“Hurray,” cried the young woman, gliding smartly over to a group of men and women on the crest; “get the sack, Ted, and get our tea pail out. Grandpappy is going to boil our tea pail for us.”

So we boiled their tea pail for them, which was one of the hardest pails of tea I ever boiled in my life, and we gave it to them and they sat at another fire and then we skied back across the rolling fields to the dark wood and around it and so back to the siding where we built another and a bigger fire and sat by it, thinking, until the welcome train came in the darkness and we were two of the first aboard.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. Ski or Snow trains were common in the 1930s as a Depression era way of boosting train travel. ↩︎
  2. Chilblains is a condition that causes inflamed swollen patches and blistering on the hands and feet. It’s caused by exposure to damp air that’s cold but not freezing. ↩︎
  3. Leberwurst is another name for liverwurst. ↩︎

War Nerves

Without warning a terrific loud bang exploded right behind our heels…

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 14, 1939.

“This war,” said Jimmie Frise, “is still the Great War. Don’t forget it was just an armistice we signed, 21 years ago.”

“I suppose,” I admitted, “that a hundred years from now, historians will really look upon this whole period, from 1914 to goodness knows when, as one long conflict.”

“We signed the armistice,” said Jim, “so as to allow us all to grow a fresh crop of men. Twenty-one years are up. The new crop of men is ready.”

“In some respects,” I stated, “they are a better crop than we were. And in other respects, they’re not as good a crop as we were.”

“In all respects,” declared Jim firmly, “the young men of today are a better crop than we were. My dear sir, don’t you realize that this generation today is a war-born, war-prepared, war-conscious generation?”

“Not one in 10,000 of them has played soldier in the militia, these past few years,” I protested.

“You’ve got it wrong,” insisted Jimmie. “Our boyhood was passed in the golden glow of the dying Victorian age. We played Indian or cowboy, for a little romantic release. But our true interests, even as little kids, were saturated with the spirit of the Victorian and Edwardian era; we were little business men, little lounge lizards, little athletes and aesthetes. When war came, it came as a profound surprise. All we had to go on was the Boer war and the Russo-Japanese war. To us, war was an adventure, a romance. We thought in terms of masses of men marching: and then charging; and battles won. We had no sense of bitter sacrifice, personal, fatal.”

“There were casualty lists a foot long in the papers when I enlisted,” I informed him.

“But those lists,” pointed out Jim, “were not reinforced with all the power of press and radio and movies. You had not been going to movies ever since your childhood seeing pictures that realistically portrayed war with death in the air, and hell on earth, and men thrown, away as weeds are cut. This generation, my boy, has been steeped, body and soul, in war.”

“We were pretty good,” I reminded him.

Remote Control Justice

“We weren’t good enough,” retorted Jim. “If we had been, this outbreak would never have occurred. We all got tired, all sides, and seized the first opportunity to end it. We should have marched into Germany. into every city, town and village. All the farmers should have seen us passing by, in our terrible might. Without harming a hair of their heads, we should have passed before them, our guns, our machines, our men, like dark angels of justice, moving harmlessly among them, an unforgettable lesson. But instead, from afar, we wrought justice, taxed and fined, took their goods, punished them, by mail order. From afar, we meted justice, and at home, their own old soldiers proceeded to do what all the defeated do; they put on bitter airs, passed the buck, explained, wept and were figures of grim sympathy among the old and the young in the towns and the villages. Instead of leaving colored troops1 and missions of staff officers among them, we should have left teachers.”

“Teachers?” I protested.

“Yes, teachers, who would answer their questions about us, and give lectures on what we thought and believed,” explained Jim. “And from them, we would have brought teachers to explain to us what the Germans thought and believed. But instead, we all retired to our own towns and villages, and hated each other by remote control.”

“Our hate faded, about 1925,” I agreed. “But theirs took root.”

“The one thing that makes me confident,” said Jim, “is that the Germans have been taught to love war, while our new generation has been taught to hate war. I think men who hate war will always fight harder and longer than men who have been taught to love it, and sooner or later are disillusioned.”

“That was true in our war,” I agreed. “I never saw a Canadian or a Britisher weeping, but I saw lots of German soldiers weeping and carrying on.”

“They’re an emotional race,” explained Jim. “We imagine them a stolid and phlegmatic people. But they are nothing of the kind. They are intensely emotional, and only emotional people would think that by putting on a fierce air, they could scare others. That is the way a child thinks, until he grows up and his emotions come under control.”

The Men in Charge

“I know a lot of Canadians of German descent,” I submitted. “And they’re not in the least like the Germans that we know through history, past and present.”

“Why do you suppose,” asked Jim, “that the grandparents and great-grandparents of these Canadian Germans came to this country? To escape from the rest of the Germans, most likely. They were unhappy, they did not fit into the German scheme of things. Men don’t come to a new and hard country, and a foreign country at that, without very good and very deep reasons.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I wish we had done something a little more permanent while we were at it.”

“You and I weren’t to blame anyway,” said Jim.

“Then who was?” I inquired bitterly.

“The men in charge of us,” said Jim.

“And who put them in charge of us?” I retorted.

“They just took charge,” explained Jim. “That’s always the way. We talk about placing men in charge. It’s not that way at all. The ones in charge just step up and take charge.”

“They’re chosen,” I corrected.

“Listen,” pleaded Jimmie, “how does a guy get to be the manager of a business? Is he elected? No chance. He works up to it. He schemes and he contrives, he works, he plans, he sacrifices and plots. And every chance he gets, he takes charge. And when his big chance comes, he is all ready. He just takes charge.”

“It sure was like that in our old army,” I admitted, “that is, after we got to the front. Once we got into action, all the officers and sergeants that weren’t equal to the real job soon shook loose. I suppose it’s the same in business and politics and soldiering. In a jam, the real men shove naturally to the front.”

“Let’s go home,” said Jim, “along the Lake Shore and on the way, we’ll stop at the armories and watch these new-fangled mechanized soldiers.”

“To tell you the truth, Jim,” I stated, “I can’t see the slightest difference between these new soldiers and what we were in our time. Every time I get near enough to a platoon of them. I can almost imagine it’s my old platoon, and I want to step out and take charge of them.”

“They’re far different,” said Jim. “They’re a new breed.”

“They’re making a sad mistake,” I differed, “not including a lot of us old soldiers in their ranks, to steady them.”

“We could never keep up with them,” said Jim. “We’d be a drag.”

“Haw,” I laughed, “just wait until the first big shell comes whooping in. A five-nine or an eight-inch. Or one of those drum-busting big trench mortar pigs.”

Left Countrified Town

“They no doubt scared you,” said Jim, “but they won’t have much effect on these kids. Don’t forget, when you went to war to face five-nines, you came fresh from a peaceful, quiet, almost countrified town called Toronto.”

“Countrified?” I demanded.

“About the only motor car in Toronto,” said Jim, “was Sir John Eaton’s2. The street cars were run by a guy in the front with a big brass handle he wound up, while he banged his bell with his foot, the car raging along at all of 18 miles an hour. About the only time you had to move at anything faster than a crawl was to step out of the way of the butcher cart. All the rest of the wagons went at a walk.”

“Wagons,” I snorted.

“Have you completely forgotten your generation?” demanded Jim. “Don’t you recall that one of the most exciting things of your young manhood was to go down to the old Union Station and see a train come in? There was no stress or strain in the world you left to go to war. The street cars rocked and bumped and dawdled along the streets. Cars were few and far between, and an airplane was like television. Lou Marsh created a tremendous sensation, at the outbreak of the war, by going for a ride in an airplane and reporting it for The Star.”

“You exaggerate,” I submitted. “Life was lively enough in those days.”

“From a quiet, unruffled world,” said Jim, “you, the heir of languid centuries of slow progress, went to a war that grew into an inferno of noise, explosion, traffic on the ground and in the air, of speed, of wireless, of fury and strain. But these new lads of the army are entering war from a world that is already a riot. In fact, many of the young soldiers are already bored with the country peace and quiet of army life.”

“I bet they will duck just as quick when a shell comes over,” I sneered.

“They’ll duck quicker,” said Jim. “That’s the point. They are used to the fury of modern civilization, as we speeded it up in the war. They have been born and raised amid the stress and strain of modern traffic, of cars, radio, planes, racket, rumpus and panjandrum. Their nerves are attuned to war. We were a jumpy, startled generation, because we left a quiet, peaceful world. These boys leave a madhouse world to enter into the order and law of modern warfare.”

A Generation of Action

“I held the championship of the Eighth Brigade,” I stated, “for being able to jump higher, dive deeper and lie flatter than any other officer in the brigade.”

“These boys won’t have to do any jumping.” said Jim. “They’ll lean to one side, as cool and easy as they cross street traffic today. That is why they don’t want any mid-Victorians running amok in their ranks nowadays.”

“They’re just like us,” I grumbled. “I can’t see the slightest difference between them and the old platoons I used to know. They look the same. They stand the same. They have all the little old tricks. Every guy that used to be there is there still. The one who traded his rum for cheese. The one who was always tying his puttee when he should have been going over the top. The one who always wanted to be paraded to the officer. The one who could have been an officer if he wanted to. The one who joined the army to play cards.”

“We’ll see,” said Jim, as we got into the car and headed through downtown streets and steered for the Lake Shore.

Out at the armories, the fading lawns were crowded with drilling troops. Some were clustered around machine-guns, taking lessons. Others were playing soccer, others lying prone practising the sighting of rifles. But always, some were drilling.

“And look you, Jim,” I exclaimed. “The same as ever, old drill sergeant in front of young soldiers. It never changes.”

“And as usual,” remarked Jim, “the old soldier looks us if he didn’t belong….”

“Why, listen, Jim,” I cried, “he even sounds the very same.”

The sergeant was “hup, hup-hupping,” as the boys wheeled and turned and marked time. His voice had the same old authority, the same sharp bite to it.

“Caesar had drill sergeants, Jim,” I said as we got out of the car and strolled along the pavement for a closer look. “Caesar’s men looked exactly the same as those men. It never changes, because men never change.”

“Young men never change,” sighed Jim, “until they start to get a little old.”

“I bet in six weeks,” I declared, “we could be just as good as that old drill sergeant.”

Without a warning, a terrific loud bang exploded right behind our heels. It was probably the nature of our conversation that really upset us, not the bang. For it was only a tire on an old truck that had been delivering packages at the armories. But the effect of so untimely an explosion, and so nearly under our feet, made Jimmie leap about a foot in the air and I very nearly lost my balance entirely, owing to leaping both upward and forward. My old infantry muscles and nerves naturally looked for a shell hole.

The squad of lads that was nearest us laughed outright. But the grim old drill sergeant, who had done a bit of a jump himself, turned on them and roared and bellowed and had them at the double.

We covered our confusion by helping the driver of the truck, himself an old soldier, to unfasten the rusted spare tire off the back of his jalopy, and while we were at it, the drill sergeant strolled over the lawn toward us.

“Old soldiers?” he inquired confidentially.

“Yes,” we admitted, variously confiding the names of our old units.

“I noticed you,” he said, “when that tire went off.”

“We were just talking about shells when it happened,” apologized Jim. “We kind of had shells on the brain at the moment.”

“Did you… ah… notice me?” asked the sergeant.

“We were too busy,” I explained.

“I was just wondering,” said the old sergeant, “if I jumped too. I just wanted to know if those young squirts were laughing at you two birds or at me.”

“When I looked,” I admitted, “you seemed to be quite calm.”

“I just went kind of numb,” said the old sergeant. “I don’t remember what happened there for a minute. When you put the uniform on again, after all these years, a loud bang is very upsetting.”

“I don’t believe you turned a hair,” said Jim stoutly.

“I hope I didn’t,” said the old sergeant. “It means a lot whether those young kids were laughing at me or not. The young devils.”

“Are they hard to handle?” I inquired.

“They have no nerves at all,” groaned the drill sergeant. “The worse I roar, the cooler they get. Back when I was a drill sergeant in the old war, all I had to do was let ‘er out a little, and boy, they wilted. These kids are sound proof.”

“They look good,” agreed Jim.

“They haven’t any nerves,” sighed the drill sergeant. “They don’t know what a drill sergeant is. They’re as cold as ice. They’re all business. They do exactly what you tell them, faster than you can think up what to tell them to do next. They’re getting on my nerves.”

“It’s a new generation,” suggested Jim.

“It’s a mechanized army,” said the old sergeant, looking furtively over his shoulder at the squad which stood silently waiting, almost eagerly waiting, for him to return. “Even the men are mechanized.”

So with further assurances that he stood like a rock, and looked ten years younger than his age, and that all we old soldiers envied him, the drill sergeant turned and marched stiffly back onto the lawn and began barking fiercely again. And the young men, like joyous panthers, leaped into their drill.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. Jim’s reference to “colored troops” was related to the Occupation of the Rhineland after World War One. That France used some “non-white” French colonial soldiers in the occupation was considered disgraceful by some. ↩︎
  2. Sir John Eaton was the youngest son of department store magnate Timothy Eaton. ↩︎

FLY DOPE!

“Take a sniff of that,” said Jim. “Pfui,” I gasped. “What is it? I’ve smelled that before.”

Greg and Jim are convinced they really had something until they picked the wrong bottle

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 22, 1939.

“Don’t forget.” warned Jimmie Frise, “we’ve got to invent a real good fly dope this spring.”

“You said it,” I agreed. “Will you ever forget the black flies up on the Mattawa?”

“Huh,” said Jim, “black flies. It’s those infernal mosquitoes I hate.”

“No, black flies are worse,” I insisted. “A mosquito is a gentle and effeminate creature, who sticks its long bill into you and sucks your blood and ends up by sucking back all his poison. But a black fly is a butcher. He’s a gouger.”

“I hate mosquitoes,” declared Jim, “I hate everything about them. Their shape, skinny and trailing. Their sound, thin and penetrating and insistent. A black fly is a gentleman. A pugilist. He steps right in and gives you a bite.”

“Why,” I protested, “the dirty little sneaks will crawl up your pant leg, down your collar, up your sleeve. Why, black flies are about as much a gentleman as a burglar. I’ve come in from fishing and found my whole body bathed in blood from bites they took all unknown to me. A mosquito is a real sport. He warns you with his music. Then, if you don’t take alarm, he warns you with a sharp little sting the minute he punctures you.”

“Music,” sneered Jim. “You call that music, that mean, high, infinitesimal scream; you call that music? I tell you, one mosquito, one solitary mosquito, in a room at night has more than once almost driven me insane.”

“You’re fragile,” I assured him. “You’re high-strung. The best way to treat a mosquito that gets into your room is make a game of it with him. Treat a sportsman like a sportsman.”

“Ignore him, huh?” scoffed Jim. “Let him sting you, and, just lie there until he’s full, and then he’ll fly off, loaded, and take his sting with him. I’ve heard that tale before.”

“No, make a game of it,” I insisted. “I always take a flashlight to bed with me in the early summer, and when I hear a mosquito, I don’t waste time making wild swipes through the dark, or waiting until he lights and then trying to smack him. The minute I hear him, I quietly reach out for my flashlight and suddenly point the beam at the sound. Then I chase him.”

“Get out of bed,” cried Jim, “and go stumbling around chasing a mosquito? I see myself.”

“Well,” I pointed out, “it’s the surest way. I used to be nervous of mosquitoes myself. But I decided the best way to solve the problem was to face it like a man.”

“Armed with a searchlight,” said Jim.

“No,” I said, “there’s no doubt about it, a mosquito is a very superior person to a black fly. Black flies give no warning. They fly almost invisibly. In fact, I believe they know enough to approach you from behind. They have no sound. You can’t feel their feet on your neck, as they run. And they can run like lightning. And they even know enough to crawl down your collar or up your pantleg. That lets them out. They’re criminal. They show all the criminal traits.”

A Chance For a Fortune

“You remember that fly dope you had last year?” said Jim, darkly. “The one you raved about so, before we went north.”

“Aw, well,” I submitted, “science never does anything in a day. It experiments.”

“Experiment,” said Jim. “I’ll say that was an experiment. It was pie a la mode to those flies and mosquitoes.”

“It kept the black flies off,” I reminded him.

“For the first few minutes,” said Jim. “And then it egged them on like bacon frying. No, my boy. I’m taking nobody’s advice in the fly dope question. This very month, before the season opens, I’m going to invent me a fly dope that will really dope them. I want a fly dope that will not only keep the flies off me, but out of the whole township. I want a fly dope that will stop the birds from singing, and when I walk by, all the little buds on the trees will shrivel.”

“And your skin?” I queried.

“What did your dope do to our skins last year?” cried Jim. “It peeled us as if we’d been boiled.”

“Ah, I should have left out the carbolic acid,” I admitted. “But trial and error, you know?”

“What was in that stuff you had last year?” demanded Jim.

“Well,” I enumerated, “there was oil of pine tar, oil of citronella, oil of pennyroyal, camphor, eucalyptus, oil of cedar, lavender, castor oil, carbolic acid, mange cure, a dash of turpentine and a squirt of pain killer.”

“And it didn’t work?” Jim was amazed. “If all those things won’t keep flies off, what will?”

“Well, you see, the principle of the thing,” I explained. “I had lots of good ingredients in there, but the ones that evaporate, like citronella, camphor and so forth, just whiffed the good stuff off. Especially if we got hot and perspired.”

“What we’ve got to do,” stated Jim, “is invent a fly dope that not only stinks but sticks.”

“You’ve got it,” I admired. “Sticks but stinks is a good slogan for it. Maybe we could patent it. Maybe we could make a little money out of a real fly dope.”

“That’s the way some of our greatest fortunes were founded,” agreed Jim. “Some- body invented a little pill, and suddenly they were millionaires, and even knights.”

“With the King coming, and everything.” I mused. “Now, there’s an idea.”

“Look,” said Jim. “We’re just a couple of poor newspapermen, but there is no reason why we shouldn’t stumble on some little idea, some gadget, something everybody must have. We look forward to a long and ever wearier life writing and drawing and little by little nobody laughing at our jokes any more. And all we’ve got to do is think up some simple problem like this fly dope and we’re all set. Millions in it. Thousands, anyway.”

“Jim,” I said respectfully, “I think you’ve got something. Do you realize how many people there are in this country who would give anything for a good reliable fly dope? Think of the summer resorts, the cottagers, and the guides and lumberjacks.”

“Lumberjacks,” cut in Jim, “just rub a hunk of fat bacon rind all over their faces and hands.”

To Do Some Experimenting

“I mean something,” I cried, “that you could put on a little baby. Something a beautiful girl could put on her face. Think of the fortunes that must have been made this last two or three years in suntan oil.”

“No pretty girl,” agreed Jim, “wants to look all warty with mosquito bites.”

“Okay,” I snapped, “let’s get going. Let’s start running down the ingredients one by one that are known to be repulsive to mosquitoes and flies.”

“Citronella,” started Jim.

“Too volatile,” I said. “It evaporates in a few minutes.”

“Citronella in olive oil,” said Jim.

“Too greasy,” I submitted, “When you’d perspire you’d smell like a salad even to yourself. You wouldn’t be able to hold anything in your hand. You’d be slippery.”

“Pine tar,” said Jim, writing each of these things down.

“It’s too black,” I countered. “Ladies hate it. It stings sensitive hides and you can’t get the smell of it out of your hair for about three weeks after you come home from the bush.”

“All right,” said Jim, “what have you to offer?”

“Well, there’s oil of cedar,” I submitted.

“Poisonous,” said Jim, “and burns.”

“Flea powder,” I offered.

“Be useful,” begged Jim. “Think. We won’t ever make any fortunes this way.”

“Don’t be too sure,” I declared. “It isn’t by thinking that you get rich. If everybody that sat down to think things out got rich, there wouldn’t be any poor people in the world. It’s by accident the great discoveries are made.”

“So you’re sitting here waiting for an accident?” inquired Jim.

“I mean,” I said, “don’t let us just say what we think is sensible. That flea powder idea of mine was a good one. How do we know that if you dissolved flea powder in coal oil or something, it wouldn’t make the greatest fly dope the world will ever see? If we just sit here thinking of the obvious things, we’ll never get anywhere. It’s the adventurous minds get the prizes.”

“Okay,” agreed Jim bitterly. “Shoe polish. Soap chips. Goose grease. Boy, I can hear those mosquitoes singing already. I wish we could get some place. What’s in these patent fly dopes you buy?”

“Oh, citronella, lavender and things like that,” I said. “But they’re mostly the same. If you put enough on, like a thick coat of butter, you can keep the flies off because flies haven’t got any butter knives, but that’s about the size of it.”

Jim sat pondering, now and again glancing furtively up in the air around his head, so nervous had he got himself with thinking about mosquitoes.

“I tell you,” he said finally. “The sensible thing to do would be to do some experimenting. Let’s get a bunch of these things and make some combinations and see what we get.”

“At your house?” I queried.

“How about yours?” suggested Jim. “We kind of wrecked my house last week.”

“Well, Jim,” I said, “there’s a little difficulty there. You see, I made up that fly dope I had last year in my kitchen, and I had to promise never to do it again. I mean, it’s an understanding, see? A fixed agreement.”

“Do you think there might be any druggist that would let us tinker around in back of their shop?” mused Jim.

“No, those kind of drug stores,” I pointed out, “are one with Nineveh and Tyre. The modern drug store is the kind full of everything but drugs and a smart uniformed man comes charging out from the back the minute you half open the door. I know the kind of drug store you mean – a kind of dim, sleepy place, where the owner comes out from behind after you have coughed three times, and then spends five minutes pulling out drawers until he finds what you want.”

“The kind of drug store I mean,” said Jim, “had a big transparent green jar in one window and a big red one in the other, with lights behind them.”

“That’s the kind of place to invent a fly dope,” I admitted.

“Why, shoot,” shouted Jimmie, leaping up, “my cousin Fred. My forty-second cousin Fred. He’s a druggist.”

“What kind of a druggist?” I asked.

“The old-fashioned kind,” cried Jim, excitedly. “Why, he’s had a drug store out in the suburbs for the past 30 years. And it’s exactly the kind of a place we’ve been talking about; in fact, it’s the one that was in my mind’s eye all the time. Why, shoot….”

And in no time at all, Jimmie had his cousin Fred on the phone, and it was no trick at all to explain what we wanted to do, and all was arranged for us to go out in the evening after supper and make ourselves at home.

Fred was a shy smiling and slow-speaking fellow with a bushy head of hair and a kind of far-away look about him. As you talked to him, he kept looking absently out the window. His drug store was sure enough a relic of the past. The windows were largely filled with huge cardboard placards supplied free by patent medicine companies. The brown shelves were filled with hundreds of bottles of extinct medicines in faded paper wrappers. No spring hats, no bathing caps, umbrellas, patent bottles, alarm clocks or other modern equipment of the notions counter of a drug store were to be seen. He had a little damp-looking stationery, a jar or two of colored candy drops, but other than that, nothing but drugs.

“I think I see what you’re after,” he said, when Jim and I had detailed our ideas of a fly dope. “You want something insect repellent but emollient.”

“Whatever you say, Fred,” Jim agreed eagerly.

“Well, come on in to the back,” invited Fred, and he led us into the holy of holies, that secret small place which remains today one of the few mysteries of modern life.

“I’ll set you down all the insecticides and repellents I can think of,” said Fred, “and some emollients or soothing agents, and then just help yourselves. Light up that little gas burner there, Jim, and use those little pots and things all you like.”

Fred was a slow, kindly man – far from the madding rush of modern pharmacy.

So Jim and I took off our coats and rolled up our sleeves to feel a little more pharmaceutical and proceeded to examine and sniff the various bottles Fred had set down on the old stained desk.

There were powders and liquors and oils; there were greases and pastes and salves. Every few minutes, Fred would stroll back from the fore part of the store and watch us gently. Occasionally he would bring us something else he had thought of.

“The way we go about it is,” said Jim, “we’ll melt up various combinations and number them, the way the research men do. No. 1, No. 2, and so forth. Frise and Clark’s No. 23 may some day be on everybody’s lips.”

“Let’s start at 100,” I submitted. “It sounds a little more scientific.”

So we started at 100, and Jim poured some oil of lanolin in the heating saucepan, and to it added a small quantity of citronella, a pinch of camphor and a dash of something that sounded like squills but probably wasn’t. This we poured into a small bottle and labelled No. 101.

Next was a combination of lavender, essence of cedar, creosote and olive oil.

“Boys,” said Fred, interrupting. “I’ve got to run this message up the street. Would you tell anybody that comes in I’ll be right back?”

“Sure, I’ll wait on them,” I offered.

“No, no,” blushed Fred, awkwardly, “you can’t wait on them. It’s against the law.”

“We’ll stall anybody that comes,” I assured him.

Jim had a third concoction on the little gas burner. It was Frise and Clark No. 103. As it simmered and Jim put a pinch of this and a sniff of that in, he eyed the wall above him, looking at all the big fat dusty bottles with their mysterious algebra on them.

“I wish,” he said, “I had some nice, limpid, delicate stuff to put in this one. It’s a little too greasy.”

He reached up and lifted a few of the bottles, holding them to the light and shaking them.

“Ah,” he breathed, “here’s one. Look at that sparkle.”

He lifted it down and pulled the glass stopper. He sniffed it, jerking his head back violently.

“Oh, boy,” he gasped, “take a sniff of that.”

“Pfui,” I said. “What is it? I’ve smelled that before.”

“Would it be ammonia?” asked Jim, cautiously lifting the topper and taking another cautious sniff.

“Or some kind of methylated spirits?” I suggested.

“It’s the very thing,” said Jim, “for this mixture. It’ll sure lighten it up.”

“And will it ever knock the black flies dizzy,” I cried, as Jim poured a small libation of it into a sort of little gravy boat thing to transfer it into the saucepan.

“Quick,” I said, “that stuff is rank.”

“Okay,” said Jim, bending and pouring it into the saucepan.

“Jim, hurry,” I commanded. “That stuff will stink out the store.”

“Awwwwwggghhh,” garbled Jimmie in a weak and trailing voice and, to my horror, slowly slid down the edge of the desk and on to the floor.

“Jim,” I shouted.

I picked up the gravy boat, which had spilled some of its contents over Jimmie’s shirtfront, and when I stooped to get my arms around Jim’s shoulders to prop him up, I felt very dizzy and then weak, and then, my nose falling gently on Jim’s shirt front, I passed away gently and swimmily.

It was Fred’s voice.

“Okay,” he was saying, amongst the buzzes and ringing and thumping and humming. “Okay, okay, okay, now, okay.”

We had been hauled out along the linoleum floor to the front of the store and the door was open and two ladies were looking at us darkly.

“What was it?” I inquired, seeing Jim looking at me groggily.

“Just chloroform,” said Fred easily, “just chloroform.”


Editor’s Notes: Fly dope is a term for insect repellant.

Greg mentions the visit by the King and Queen to Canada, that was coming up from May 17 to June 15, 1939.

“Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!” is from the poem “Recessional”, by Rudyard Kipling. They are mentioned in the Bible as the capitals of empires that no longer exist, so it means “no longer exists”.

~ and Costs!

April 8, 1939.

Assemble Ere Dawn for Pope’s Coronation

March 11, 1939

Thousands to Stand in Queues for Hours Ere Ceremony Begins

Greg Clark Will Fight His Way to St. Peter’s at 5.30 a.m.

TO BRING RELICS

By Gregory Clark

Rome, March 11 – My ticket for the papal coronation tomorrow is green, and larger than a sheet of note paper. On its four sides are details of the routes by which I must fight my way into St. Peter’s. I approach St. Peter’s square by the Street of the Sacristy and enter St. Peter’s through the door of St. Simon. I am lucky enough to have a bench in the tribune.

Father Edward Crossland of Barrie is calling for me at 5.30 a.m. and even so, we are afraid we will have to use hockey finals tactics to wedge our way into our places, tickets or no tickets, because at noon we overheard a group of very elegant English people in the hotel lobby, agreeing to meet at 3 a.m. And if 50 English aristocrats are planning to start at 3 for the procession that begins at 8.30 a.m. and does not get really going until 10 and does not finish until 1 p.m., how about the hosts of pilgrims who are hording in from every quarter all day.

The big fashionable hotel I am at is jammed to the doors. A party of Germans, men, women and children, who wired for their accommodation three weeks ago, arrived today, 35 of them, and got their rooms, while in the lobby, Italian nobles from up-country fumed and fretted because there was no room for them. Every hotel, every private house with a room to spare, and all the villages out around Rome like Frascati and Osita are jammed with pilgrims of all nations, intent upon seeing that three-tiered golden crown go up on the head of Pius XII tomorrow on the balcony of St. Peter’s.

My seat in the tribune is one of the choicest in the church, thanks to Catholic friends in Canada who gave me letters to these genial Canadian and English priests in Rome. It is in full view of the papal altar. Father Crossland will be beside me to explain to me the liturgy of the whole ceremony, the procession of which starts at 8.30 and the liturgy of which lasts almost three hours. The minute it ends, I have to fight my way somehow through the throngs… expected to amount to somewhere short of half a million now, and well over a third of a million… who will be packed in and about St. Peter’s, and make my way to where I can sit down and prepare my broadcast for Sunday evening.

Many of my Catholic friends in Canada have asked and written to me to bring them home, sacred mementoes of Rome. At the final stage of the pontifical mass tomorrow the pope will bless the multitude and I have arranged with Father Crossland to have cupped in his hands at the moment, a number of silver medals, rosaries and some missals. These articles will, thereby, receive in this great church at that historic moment, the blessing of the pope.

The broadcasting station of 2RO in Rome from which I will give a description of the ceremony in St. Peter’s is a magnificent building, about a quarter of a mile from St. Peter’s. It is not so enormous a building as that which houses Radio City in New York but what New York wins in height Rome wins in marble of red and rose and green. The headquarters of Rome’s broadcasting is a veritable palace. I was a little intimidated at the thought of talking from Rome to Toronto. Dr. Bell, the director of 2RO, speaks English perfectly. He showed me where to come after the coronation, introduced me to the engineers, gave me easy directions as to time and place.

To speak to you from Rome, my dear friends, is almost easier than speaking to you from CBL up, on Davenport Rd. The reason I say easier, is that the colored marble, the giant murals and the generally elegant surroundings at 2RO, deprive you of self-conceit and send you to the microphone in in all humility.

Tune in On CBL Sunday

Spanning oceans and continents in one brief moment, Gregory Clark’s voice will bring to Canadian radio listeners Sunday night a vivid word picture from Rome of the crowning of a new pope. This will be The Star staff writer’s second message to North America from Rome. He will speak from the studios of 2RO, one of the most powerful radio stations in Europe, and his words will be picked out of the air at Ottawa by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s shortwave station. Greg Clark’s talk will commence at 9.30 p.m. and will be carried in Toronto over stations CBL and CBY.

Mr. Clark will be among the lucky few to view the actual ceremonies in St. Peter’s, in the Vatican, when Pope Pius is crowned head of 400,000,000 Roman Catholics. Later he will mingle with the excited, milling thousands in St. Peter’s Square as they strive to catch glimpse of the new pontiff.

Then Mr. Clark will hurry to the studios of the Italian government to paint a grand word tapestry for his listeners “back home”. The description will be carried over the coast-to-coast network of the C.B.C. Be sure to listen. The time will be 9.30 p.m. Sunday.


Editor’s Notes: It likely cost the Star a lot to send Greg to cover the coronation of Pope Pius XII, so they sure were going to promote it out the wazoo. You have to remember that this is in early 1939, when international tension is sky high. Everyone was gearing up for war, Franco had just won the Spanish Civil War, Czechoslovakia is days away from being dissolved by Nazi Germany, and amidst all of this, Greg is traveling to Fascist Italy for this story.

The use of the word “ere” twice in the headlines for this story are trying to make is sound fancy? It means “early” and very archaic.

CBL was/is the main CBC station in Toronto. I’m not sure what CBY was. It was a radio station in Newfoundland, but since it only started in 1943, it does not seem to be the same.

I tried to find a photo of the broadcasting station of 2RO in Rome since it sounds impressive, but could not find anything in English.

Page 1 of 4

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén