Tag: 1940 Page 1 of 3

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 6, 1934.

“If you had a million dollars,” said Jimmie Frise, as we sat over our cigarettes and dirty dishes in a downtown lunch place, “what would you do with it in times like these?”

“I have a great idea,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it this last couple of years.”

“Let’s have it,” said Jim, sitting back.

“If I were a millionaire I would go down around Port Hope or maybe north of Brampton,” I said, “and I would buy 2,000 acres of farmland.”

“Old stuff,” said Jim. “Rich man buys a farm.”

“Wait a minute,” I protested. “You haven’t heard my scheme yet. I’d buy 2,000 acres of fine farmland, with various kinds of soil – clay, clay loam, sandy loam, swamps, pasture, and so forth.”

“Mixed land,” said Jim.

“Yes, and then I’d divide it up into small farms. I would have 100-acre cattle ranches and 10-acre market gardening farms, five-acre chicken ranches and 100-acre mixed farms, for grain and roots, and so forth.”

Real estate racket, eh?” asked Jim.

“On each of these farms,” I went on, “I would build a beautiful modern farm house, of brick, with good barns and buildings, with all modern conveniences like running water and septic tanks and everything. The cattle farm would have modern stables. The small farm suitable for chicken raising would be all chicken runs and houses.”

This has been done before,” said Jim.

“In the midst of this two-thousand-acre estate,” I said, “I would build my own house, the Manor, a large and beautiful house, in the old fashion, but with every convenience, with garages and stables and kennels for all my dogs. From this manor house would radiate drives to all parts of the estate.”

“Ah, you’re going to have a large family?” guessed Jimmie.

“No, sir,” I said. “When I had it all laid out, I would advertise the farms for rent on five-year leases. I would invite the sons of farmers, graduates of the agricultural college and the better class of young farmers who had no land of his own, to come and lease these specialized farms from me. In no time, I would be surrounded by young men, with their wives and little families, working ideal farms provided with every aid to modern agriculture.”

“And what would you do?” Jim inquired.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I would then hire a professor from the agricultural college to act as manager of the estate. He would have a nice house a little way from the Manor. He would do the dividing up of the estate into proper lots of land. He would select the tenants. He would act as adviser to the tenants and to me. Instead of there being an agricultural representative for the county, I would have our own resident adviser, and it would be written right in the leases that the Professor, as we would no doubt call him, would have the right to oversee all operations.”

Lord of the Manor

“Yes, and what would you be doing all this time?” asked Jimmie. “Sleeping? Or gone fishing maybe?”

“I would be the Squire,” I said. “I would be seen in the early mornings, with the dew on the grass, riding a nice quiet little horse about the lanes and roads, amidst the hedges. I would get myself made a J.P.¹, so that I could do all the marrying and so forth. I would just visit around all the tenants inspiring them, joking with them, taking a great interest in the children, acting generally as the lord of the manor.”

“And collecting the rents,” said Jim.

“Yes,” I said, “I have figured out that the rents would give me a good return on my million dollars, especially as I would have a clause in the lease that would let me break it if they didn’t come through.”

“You would certainly have a good time,” said Jim.

“Yes,” I cried. “Think of it. I could pack of beagles and I would forbid any of the tenants to shoot my rabbits. Two thousand acres would provide me a lot of rabbit hunting.”

“How about giving me a job?” asked Jimmie.

“If you really knew anything about farming,” I said, “I might make you the manager of the estate. But you were only born and raised on the farm. How about you renting one of my small farms? There’s an idea.”

“One of the five-acre chicken ranches,” said Jimmie.

“Then,” I went on, “think of the social activity around the manor house! The parties! The tenants coming and going; the people from the city, all my city friends, driving out for the week-ends.”

“You would have to turn Tory,” said Jim.

“Yes, I suppose I would have to,” I said. “I can’t imagine even a Liberal, let alone a Radical lord of the manor. One has to be firm about one’s rents, and you can’t do that if you have any funny political ideas. Yes, I’d be a Tory. And I have thought, too, that I would build a church on the estate. We would have our own church and our own minister. It would be nice to have a front family pew, perhaps raised a little, with me and all my children and grandchildren in it.”

“Ah, grandchildren?” said Jimmie.

“Yes,” I said, “I can picture myself growing pleasantly old around that large and happy community, loved and respected, and perhaps, if titles ever come back, I might have a grandson that would be Lord Clark.”

“Ah, Lord Clark!” cried Jimmie, waving his cigarette. “Lord Clark of Brampton or Port Hope!”

“Mind you,” I cried, “an old-fashioned lord. A lord of the old school. Not one of these industrial lords, in shipping or manufacturing.”

To Recover a Lost Happiness

“But you would still collect the rents,” said Jimmie.

“Yes, and I’d have a community general store on the estate,” I said. “The storekeeper would draw a salary, and he would sell everything at cost to the farmers. I might even have a co-operative marketing office, like the U.F.O.² A fleet of trucks to carry the produce of the farms to the city.”

“Your tenants would never really have to go to town at all,” said Jimmie. “They could just sit there in the peace and quiet of your magnificent estate, and worry about nothing.”

“What would they want go to town for?” I demanded. “You miss the point of the whole scheme. It is to recover a lost happiness. To bring back a former glory. Yes, the professor would manage the co-operative marketing system. There might be even a little profit there. In time, one of my sons might get a good job right on the estate as marketing expert, at a good salary. A salary that would keep him in a condition that befits the son of the manor.”

“And maybe you could bring up one of your sons in the ministry, and he could run the community church?” said Jim.

“Self contained,” I agreed. “That’s the idea.”

“It’s a great idea,” said Jimmie. “I know of no safer way to invest your million. Your family would be fixed for generations to come. How about the sons of your tenants?”

“They could inherit the leases,” I explained.

It was time to go. The waitress was leaning over us piling the dishes on her tray.

We put on our coats and walked out to the street, and I must say, I was surrounded by a kind of pearly-colored glow. I felt benign and serene. I felt kindly toward all mankind, and if any bum had caught me right then, as we stepped out on to the street, I would have given him a shilling or maybe even half a crown, as you might call a fifty-cent piece, along with some sound advice. Yes, sir. I wished I had a walking stick, as I stepped out on to Yonge St.

We walked over to Jimmie’s car that was parked on the kerb, and there was a truck parked ahead of it, with its engine running.

“Drat the truck!” said Jimmie, surveying the way we were trapped by cars behind and in front. It was the usual street scene.

“The man will be out in a moment,” I said. “Don’t be impatient, Jimmie. No gentleman is ever indignant. Or impatient.”

We got into Jimmie’s car and sat there. Three, four, five minutes went by, and still the big truck stood right in front of us, prisoning us, with its body gently jiggling all over with the engine running.

“Look here, Jim,” I said. “There’s an opening across the road. I’ll just get out and drive the truck across to that space.”

“If you like,” said Jimmie.

Back To Reality

I got out and looked about. There was no sign of any truck driver.

I got in the cab of the truck. It was just the same as an ordinary car. I let go the brake, let in the gears, and drew carefully out from the kerb and steered for the open space across the road. But just as I got into the middle of the street, a car slid along and parked itself in the opening I was aiming for.

I drove on slowly. There were no more spaces in the block!

So I drove around the block, carefully, trusting that by the time I got back, there would either be a new opening along the kerb, or else Jimmie would see the situation, move out of his place and let me in and wait for me.

But all down the block there was no open space, and there sat Jimmie, solemnly waiting at his wheel. I drew alongside of him with the truck and stopped.

“Hey!” I cried. “I’ll go around the block once more, and you watch for me coming. And when you see me. draw out of the kerb here and let me drive in. Then wait for me a jiffy.”

“Right-o!” cried Jimmie.

So I drove around the block once more. I ran into a few delays. There was a traffic jam on a side street. And I was held up at all three corners of the block.

And then I got back on to Yonge St, and started slowly for Jim, watching ahead to see if he saw me coming. Jimmie is forgetful.

But there he was, turned in the driver’s seat and watching me approach. I slowed.

Suddenly, I saw a figure running beside me.

He was big and hairy, he had on overalls, his arms were bare and dirty, and he had the most terrible expression I have seen on a human face since the last of the great war cartoons.

“Aaarrrrnnnnnhh!” he snarled, galloping alongside the truck.

I surmised he was the truck driver.

“Just a minute, my good man!” I cried down to him, trying to handle the brakes, gears and steering wheel and also to keep an eye on traffic, though both my eyes were strongly attracted down to this man snarling below me on the pavement.

“Gearrrratttt!” roared the big brute. And while I clung helpless to the big steering wheel, he leaped on the step and laid hold of my shoulder.

He chucked me out over his shoulder as if I were a pillow. As I felt myself passing over his head, I sensed him sliding as if in masterful hands, gain speed and leap down the street.

At that moment, I landed. I landed in slush and mud and cigarette butts and old chewing gum.

Independence Highly Prized

I landed right in front of Jim’s car. I slid quite a piece, gathering slush as I slid. I lay still.

Jimmie was out and beside me in an instant. I felt him wiping my face off with his handkerchief.

“Ah,” cried Jimmie, “as I live! If it isn’t Lord Clark of Port Hope!”

“Jimmie,” I spluttered, “get me out of this!”

He assisted me to my feet. He hastened me into his car. Only a few of the common people had gathered around to see me. “Take me somewhere,” I cried, as we drove off. “Take me to a cleaner’s and presser’s or something.”

“How about a Turkish bath, milord?” asked Jimmie.

“Did you ever see anything so brutal?” I demanded, holding my hands in the air, because I was all gooey. “That truck driver might have known by my appearance that I was not a car thief!”

“Well, if you were a truck driver,” said Jimmie, “and you came out and saw your truck vanished, and then all of a sudden saw your truck driving along the street with a stranger at the wheel, what would you do?”

“Throw him to the street!” I said hotly. “I never saw such outrageous conduct!”

“Ah, times have changed,” said Jimmie. “In the old feudal days, in the days of the manor house, for example, truck drivers knew their place and they knew the lord of the manor when they saw him. Now in the old days, that truck driver would merely have tipped his cap to you. And curtseyed!”

“Jimmie!” I said.

“But you see,” explained Jimmie, “times have so changed. There is a great independence abroad in the world. Men want that independence even more than they want comfort and security.”

“It was outrageous,” I said.

“Sure,” said Jimmie, “but no matter how honest your intentions, you can’t monkey with a truck driver’s truck nowadays. That big guy would rather drive a truck and have the right to throw a benign old squire like you in the mud, than be your flunkey and live on the fat of the land.”

“If I had a million dollars,” I said, “do you know what I would do with it?”

“What?” said Jim.

“I’d buy a fleet of trucks, and by George, I would teach those truck drivers manners!”

“Ah, well,” said Jim, “the main thing is you haven’t the million dollars.”

Editor’s Notes:

This story was repeated on March 23, 1940 as “Times Have Changed”.

1. Justice of the Peace. ↩︎
2. United Farmers of Ontario. This party formed the Ontario government from 1919-1923. By the time of this article, they were in decline and dissolved by 1944. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 3, 1932.

“Barter,” I said to Jimmie Frise, “barter, what is barter?”

“Well,” said Jim, “in the country, for instance, instead of a farmer selling his eggs to the general storekeeper he trades his eggs for a pair of boots.”

“I notice,” said I, “that all the editors are writing about barter and over the radio all the world problem solvers are talking about barter. The dollar is no good any more. Neither are quarters, dimes and nickels. Even fifty dollars isn’t any good any more, according to them. The world, they say, is going to fall back on barter.”

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” said Jimmie. “They’re just earning their living. I bet they take dollars for talking and writing. I bet they don’t take it out in barter. Imagine a radio expert taking a bunch of air in payment. Or a big newspaper editor going around with a truck from house to house collecting bread, potatoes, old boots, cast-off shirts and phonograph records from his readers.”

“Personally,” I remarked, “I don’t see how barter would work. How would it take care of you and me, Jimmie, for example?”

“Well, as for me,” said Jim, “I could draw a lot of little cartoons on small cards and then I could call around at the grocery store and trade a laugh for a pound of butter. Then I’d go into the dairy and get a bottle of milk for a chuckle.”

“Wait a minute, Jim,” said I. “Cartoons are very perishable things. You go into the grocery store and offer an original and new cartoon for a pound of butter. The grocer would want to see it first, wouldn’t he?”

“I guess he would.”

“Well, then, he’d look at the cartoon, have a grin at it and hand it back and say he was full up with jokes for the present.”

“H’m,” h’med Jimmie.

“And it would take a lot of cartoons to buy a pair of boots,” said I. “What shoemaker would want twenty cartoons? One cartoon at a time is plenty.”

“How about you?” asked Jimmie. “You could type out a story, but how far would it get you?”

“I’d do little stories for the grocer and the butcher,” said I, “and big full-page stories for the shoemaker; and I’d write a serial novel for the milkman, a chapter a day, in exchange for the milk.”

“You’d be a lot busier writing than you are now,” said Jim. “I wonder if part of the trouble with the dollar isn’t the fact that cartoonists and jazz singers and brokers and lawyers get too many dollars for what they do in comparison with the people who grow food and make clothes and things?”

“It’s supply and demand,” said I.

“The farmer up north of Orangeville doesn’t demand Greta Garbo¹ or Eddie Cantor²,” said Jimmie. “As far as the fellow who grows our potatoes and turnips is concerned there is no demand for these big shot lawyers that live in those half-acre houses north of St. Clair avenue.”

“I hope barter doesn’t come in,” I said. “If it does I’m going to learn some useful trade. About the only thing I can do, outside of this writing, is hunt and fish. Maybe I could work up a nice business in rabbits and pheasants; and in the summer fresh bass and trout.”

“You’d work out some pleasant sort of job, anyway,” said Jim. “But if the worst came to the worst, we’ve all got a lot of things we could dispose of and never miss. The average home is filled with extras that aren’t needed, goods lying idle that other people need badly, and we could trade them for the things other people have that we need.”

Everything We Don’t Need

“That wouldn’t last long,” said I.

“The farmers,” said Jim, “with wagon loads of meat and vegetables would come driving through the city streets calling their wares and the city people would come out and trade hats, coats, blankets, radio sets and all kinds of things. I know lots of houses that have eleven cast-off wrist watches lying about in drawers, fountain pens, umbrellas, all manner of things, valuable and idle.”

“I can see a farmer,” said I, “trading a roast of beef for an old umbrella or six worn-out fountain pens. The more I think of this barter business, Jimmie, the more it looks to me as if the farmers were going to have all us city people working for them as hired men and hired girls before very long.”

“I must have about a thousand dollars worth of stuff in my house that isn’t working,” mused Jim. “Counting your fishing rods and books, I bet you have two thousand dollars worth of stuff that isn’t earning its keep.”

“I could trade you a good fly rod for one of your guns,” I suggested. “How about it?”

“I haven’t any use for a fishing rod just now, Jim replied, “and this is the shooting season. What else besides a fishing rod would you give me?”

“There you are!” I exclaimed. “That’s barter for you. The old racket. Getting more than you give.”

“I tell you what to do,” cried Jim. “Let’s send our wives out some night to the movies or a hockey game and you and I have a night of barter. A grand spree of barter. I’ll get together everything that we don’t need any longer and bring it over to your house. You collect everything you can dispose of in one room, and we will see what this barter business goes like. What do you say?”

“It sounds good, but our wives–“

“Listen,” said Jim. “These are hard times. Us men have got to assert ourselves. The old-fashioned man wins nowadays.”

“We’ll buy them hockey tickets.”

“All right,” said Jim.

So it was arranged. Jim, as the proposer of the big barter market, was to bring the stuff from his house in clothes baskets. We were about evenly matched. We had been married the same length of time; a couple of war brides. We had worked up fairly large families. We had houses about the same number of rooms and we both had attics, storerooms and mothers-in-law.

Our wives were safely shipped to the hockey game and then we went to work. Jim was to arrive at nine p.m.

I had done some preliminary scouting for several evenings and I was certainly amazed at the quantity of goods and chattels which had succeeded in finding permanent resting places in all sorts of holes and corners, drawers, boxes, closets and shelves in my house.

First, a baby carriage. Blue, wicker, a little gone in the tires, three hub caps gone and a slight sag in one spring.

I wheeled it down to the living room, which was cleared for auction.

Out of bureau and desk drawers I got five wrist watches, seven assorted fountain pens, a lovely white satin book for Baby, with pages in which to enter all the details of baby’s birth, christening, growth, first tooth, first word, etc.

I found a large round cardboard box, white and shiny, of a style I had quite forgotten, in which were four of my mother-in- law’s ancient hats. Boy! Purple ostrich plumes, beads, bird’s feet, glass eyes!

A clock! A great big gift clock that struck the hours. It had black marble slabs on it.

In another box I found a pair of my black dancing pumps that I had not seen for years, and beside them, done up in old tissue paper, a pair of white satin pumps that my wife wore long, long ago.

Three umbrellas, one black, one gray and one mauve. They were worn and ragged, but I do not remember ever having seen them before.

An old gas heater from the cellar.

An old lawn mower that only needed a good mechanic to make it work.

A magic lantern and seven glass slides. I nearly cried when I found this. It was given to me on my twelfth birthday. One slide was of gold fish. Another was Little Red Riding Hood. One was Bible stories. How on earth had it followed me all through the twisted path of life, from twelve to forty!

If We Only Knew How

By nine o’clock I had all these articles placed against the far wall of the living room and I cleared the opposite wall for Jimmie to stack his barter.

And at nine p.m. he arrived and backed his car into the side drive.

First, he handed out a baby carriage.

It was blue, wicker, three of its hub caps were gone and it was weak on one spring. He pushed it into the living room and stacked it up facing mine.

I assisted him to hoist in a couple of clothes baskets. And then he shoved ahead of him a lawn mower. It was a 1910 model, in need of a mechanic.

Out of the clothes baskets, as I sat on the far side watching him, he dished out a large black onyx clock with gilt slabs on it, four fountain pens, seven assorted watches, including wrist and ladies’ bosom watches worn with a pin; three hats with plumes, five pairs of satin slippers, assorted colors, all a little up in the toe; two umbrellas and a hand-carved walking-stick with a horse’s head for a handle; one old gas heater; one magic lantern; and last of all, a white satin book.

“Hold up that book, Jim,” I said, a little weakly. “Let’s see the title.”

On it in gold paint was printed “Baby’s Own Book.”

Jim arranged all his goods along the wall, dusted off his hands and then strolled across the room to look at mine.

He looked at the baby carriage! The lawnmower, the rusty gas heater! He stared intently at the hats, the satin slippers, the Baby book. His hand went up to his mouth when he looked at the umbrellas, the fountain pen and the decayed wrist watches.

Then his wavering eyes met mine.

“This is funny,” he said, uncertainly. “

“No, it isn’t,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking about it. Everybody has about the same amount of no use for the same things. You would likely find these same things in every house in Canada.”

“Let’s trade something,” said Jim, “just for luck. I’ll trade you this pair of green satin slippers with the ostrich feather trimmings for those white satin ones you got there.”

“No,” said I. “I just remember what these are. I just recollect these black pumps of mine were the ones I was wearing the night I met my wife, when she was wearing the white ones.”

“Trade baby carriages,” said Jim. “They are about the same model.”

“It just occurs to me why our wives keep those old things,” said I.

“I better pack up,” said Jimmie, rather lamely.

“Barter,” said I. “Barter means only things you make or grow. It doesn’t mean things you own. And we city people only know how to make parts of things. We don’t know how to make anything whole. Storekeepers, clerks, doers of small services, handers-over-the-counter, adders up of other people’s figures, each of us a jig in the jigsaw puzzle of life. It looks bad for us, Jimmie.”

“No,” replied Jim, his arms full of property. “It’ll work out all right. In the old days the story-tellers went from village to village, singing songs and telling stories, and everybody was glad to see them. The artists travelled all over the world, building cathedrals, palaces, painting frescoes that have lived forever.”

“Not cartoonists,” said I.

“Yes, sir, cartoonists!” cried Jim. “They put gargoyles on the cathedrals!”

“Room for everybody.”

“For everybody,” said Jim, shoving his lawnmower across my hardwood floor. “If we only knew how.”

Editor’s Notes: This story was reprinted on January 20, 1940, as “Fair Exchange”.

1. Greta Garbo was an actress and huge star in 1932. Here name was retained in the 1940 reprint. ↩︎
2. Eddie Cantor was a comedian who was best known for film and a variety radio program at the time. In the 1940 reprint, he was replaced with Bing Crosby. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 11, 1934.

“Well,” said Jimmie Frise, “what’ll we do to-night?”

“Let’s wash dishes,” I suggested. “I have a sink full, besides another pile on the drain board and a few on the kitchen table.”

“Mine,” said Jimmie, “are neatly stacked in piles in the sink. All scraped. Are yours scraped?”

“No,” I admitted rather shamed. “They’re just the way I put them down.”

“You’ve been a summer bachelor often enough,” criticized Jimmie, “to know better than leave dishes unscraped. All you need to do is spread out the morning paper on the kitchen table, scrape the egg, corn flakes or tomato squitters off the plates, empty the coffee cup, and pile the dishes and roll up the newspaper and toss it in the garbage pail. It’s no trouble at all. Yet it saves that funny smell that pervades a man’s house in the summer when his family is at the cottage.”

“I know, I know,” I admitted. “I have been intending to scrape my dishes for years. But somehow, a summer bachelor feels so dreary and low in his spirits, he can’t even summon enough energy to do a little thing like that. I hate my bed, too. All muddled and wrinkled.”

“Don’t you even change your bed?” cried Jimmie.

“Oh, I sometimes do,” I assured him. “But it’s such a problem, pulling the old sheets out and then working the new sheets back under the blanket and quilt.”

“You don’t do that!” scornfully cried Jim. “You pull all the bedclothes off, throw them on a chair, spread fresh sheets, and then put the blankets…”

“But you have to have somebody on the other side of the bed,” I explained. “To tuck in the far side.”

“Ach!” snorted Jim disgustedly. “You a summer bachelor! Do you know what you are? You’re a summer orphan.”

“I get along pretty well,” I protested.

“Listen,” said Jim, “I’ll tell you what to do to-night. If you’ll help me with my dishes, I’ll help you not only with your dishes but I’ll help you change your bed.”

“Swell,” I agreed.

What to do with yourself in the evenings is one of the eternal problems of that class of men whose families go away to summer cottages. Movies are good for so long. Sunnyside is good for a couple of trips. Watering the lawn is splendid maybe for about the last two nights of the week, Thursday and Friday, when you are feeling as homesick as possible and looking forward to seeing them all on Saturday; and it gives you a strange, virtuous feeling, a sort of religious feeling, to water the grass in their honor. But watering the grass is no good Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

“Let’s eat supper downtown,” suggested Jim, “and then we’ll go to your place first, wash your dishes, make your bed, and then, over to my place. It will fill up the evening beautifully.”

For the Big Clean-Up

“Where will we eat?” I asked rather mournfully.

Jim looked thoughtful.

We summer bachelors eat our way right around the city. It isn’t that the restaurants are not good. They are all good. But after a few tries, each one gets on your nerves. So you try something different. You are seeking something unknown, unseen, indescribable. You are seeking your own home. But you don’t know it. So you go anxiously, like a wolf in a cage, from place to place, seeking. And not finding.

Jim named one restaurant. I made a face. Then I named a restaurant. And Jim made a face. So we decided to go to my house and pick up some tomatoes, cheese and a small bottle of cream at the corner store.

The house, when we entered, had that stuffy smell, of closed doors and windows, of stale smoke, of unwashed dishes in the kitchen. Maybe two weeks’ dishes.

“Phoo!” said Jim.

So we ate our tomatoes and cheese out in the garden, on the rustic table. And then we peeled up our sleeves and entered the kitchen for the big semi-monthly clean-up. As I had told Jim, my dishes were partly in the sink, partly on the drainboard, and the rest of them were laid on the table, the kitchen cabinet and the gas stove.

“Even if you piled them up,” argued Jim, “it would give you some feeling of decency. Why do you scatter them around like this?”

I spread a newspaper and started to scrape. But the stuff on the dishes, odds and ends, had dried tight to the dishes and you needed a chisel, not a paring knife; for a scraper.

“Put them in the sink and soak them while we make the bed,” suggested Jim.

“The sink isn’t big enough,” I pointed out.

“Ah,” cried Jim. “An idea! Look here, why should we summer bachelors be slaves to woman’s way of doing things? Let us carry these dishes up to the bathroom and do them in the bathtub!”

“There’s an idea!” I shouted., “Why should we be handicaped by a silly little sink?”

“Put them in the bathtub,” said Jim, “let the water run on them, leave the plug open, and the current will wash them automatically. All we have to do is come along and dry them. Come on.”

So we got trays and we loaded up the dishes, plates, cups, bowls, saucers and all those things you never saw before but which you found in back of the china closet when you started to run short of dishes about the third week. Dishes, little pitchers, funny plates that you dimly remembered having seen when you were a boy.

We carried them up and stacked them in the bathtub. We turned on the shower both hot and cold, although there was no hot water, of course. But the spray of water splashed and roared on the dishes, and in a minute or two, we began to see the remnants of scrambled egg and toast crusts come loose and vanish down the hole.

“Marvellous!” yelled Jim, above the noise of the shower. “We have discovered something every summer bachelor should know.”

By shifting the pile of dishes now and again, the streams of water went new ways, found new channels, and every new way they went, the streams of pure water did good.

“Let’s make your bed while they wash,” said Jim proudly. “It’s automatic.”

So we went in and Jim showed me how to haul the bedclothes off with one large swipe, fling them on a chair, and then he and I laid fresh sheets, and put back the light blanket and the quilt. Jim even tucked the quilt up that way the ladies do, you know, sort of dinted in the middle with the two ends flounced out.

“Ah,” I said. “I’ll hate to disturb it to-night.”

“I’ll come and help you make it any time,” said Jim grandly.

We went back into the bath tub and there the top dishes were already shining white, and we shifted the pile loosely, exposing new surfaces to the rushing water. You could see the old stuff whirling about and vanishing down the pipe.

“Look here,” said Jim. “let’s leave them and run over to my place and put mine in the bath tub. And by the time we get back, they will be ready to dry.”

“Won’t they be kind of greasy?” I asked. “We should put soap on them.”

“Where’s your soap flakes?” asked Jim.

I ran down cellar and got a package of soap flakes, which we sprinkled liberally over the pile, and even the cold water made foamy suds. A lot of the flakes caught in various places in the pile which would melt in time.

“Come on,” said Jim.

So we walked the two blocks over to Jim’s house, carried his dishes up to his bathroom, piled them and turned the water on and scattered soap flakes all over them. We also went in and saw Jim’s garden for a few minutes, and chatted with a neighbor who knew all about zinnias. And then we strolled back to my place.

We went in the garden and sat down. Through the open bathroom window we could hear the shower mumbling. Occasionally we could hear a dish clink.

“Having solved the dish problem,” said Jim, leaning back in the garden seat, “let us turn our attention to the laundry of a summer bachelor. You know, all it takes is a little attention to solve any kind of problem. Women are set in their ways. They have their little dinky way of doing things. Little sinks. Little dish towels. Everything is tiny and routine and sissy. Now, if we men can improve on dish washing, why can’t we improve on laundry? In time to come, I would not be surprised if, instead of a little sink, and dishes to wash three times a day, the house of the future will have a huge sink in it, where all the dishes will be put after each meal. And then, at night, one big dish washing bee will held. How much more freedom this would give to womanhood! One dish-washing bee each day, on a large scale. It would be a lot cheaper to buy a few more dishes than to spend three-quarters of an hour three times every day, like a slave, washing a few dishes. We haven’t solved the problems of the domestic world yet. Science needs to pay attention to the home.”

“It isn’t science so much as just common sense, Jimmie,” I said. “That bath tub idea has been staring mankind in the face ever since bath tubs were invented. Yet who thought of it?”

“I did,” said Jim, “in the year 1934. Let’s remember it.”

We chatted on, philosophically.

“Perhaps I should run up and shake a few more soap flakes over the pile,” I suggested. “I don’t hear the taps.”

“Maybe Women are Right”

We listened.

There was no mumble of the taps.

“That’s funny,” said Jim, half rising.

“Jimmie!” I gasped.

We had both thought of the same thing. We leaped and ran to the back door.

We were too late.

The back entrance is a French door leading directly into the dining room. When we opened the doors we were at first confused. The dining room had disappeared. The wallpaper was drooping in large glistening festoons from the ceiling. I thrust through the clinging jungle. Water was dripping merrily, briskly. Bumping against tables and chairs. I got into the hall, where there is a painted plaster ceiling. Into the front lobby I dashed, to find a cascade of water pouring down the front stairs. There was a secret, busy air of water seeping, creeping. crawling, dripping, everywhere. I sloshed upstairs, Jim behind me.

“Oh, gosh!”

The bath tub was overflowing, and cups and bowls were floating happily in a little sea.

“It’s plugged, Jim,” I moaned. “Something plugged it.”

“Toast crusts,” cried Jim. “Bacon rind.”

I snapped the taps off. An inch of water lay all over the floor and out into the bedrooms, the rugs were soggy, the garments I had thrown on the floor of different rooms, the items of next week’s laundry that I had tossed aside on various floors, all, all were sodden. We heard strange, mysterious slithering, slickery sounds downstairs again. We hurried below, to find wallpaper slithering off walls, collapsing off ceilings. We tore it away, to discover tables, chairs, upholstery soaked and soggy. The chesterfield was like a vast pudding.

“Oh, Jimmie,” I moaned.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said Jim, starting for the front door. “I got to get home and turn off my shower.”

“Don’t leave, Jim!” I shouted. “Not now.”

But Jim was gone.

I waded about for some minutes, baling, mopping, sloshing. What a terrible thing! Then the telephone rang. It was Jim.

“I got my taps in time,” said he. “Come on over and help me with my dishes and let that place dry overnight. You had better stay over here with me to-night.”

“All right, Jim.”

“We can see what has to be done better to-morrow at your place. Let her subside.”

“All right, Jim.”

“And incidentally, maybe women have the right idea about things. Maybe sinks are better for dishes.”

“You’re right, Jim.”

So I got my hat and went over to Jim’s.

Editor’s Notes: We’ve mentioned summer orphans before, when men used to stay in the city during the summer while their family went to a cottage or summer resort. The men would only join them on weekends and therefore were on their own during the weekdays.

“…although there was no hot water, of course”: Some people turn off their hot water heater in the summer to save money.

The dishwasher was invented before this article came out, but did not really become more common until the 1970s.

This story was repeated as “Almost Automatic” on August 10, 1940.

It also appeared in Silver Linings (1978).

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 21, 1934.

“How,” asked Jimmie Frise, “do you sleep these hot nights?”

“Just the same,” I answered. “On top of the bed.”

“I mean, do you sleep well?”

“Say, Jimmie, I sleep like a log. All I have to do is get into a horizontal position and inside of about a hundred seconds I’m sound asleep.”

“Sleep is a great blessing,” said Jim. “I sleep like a top, too.”

“Why,” I said, “I have to fight like the dickens against sleep when I am in the dentist’s chair; and whenever I get shaved by a barber I always go to sleep. Horizontal. That’s all I need to be.”

“Boy,” said Jim, “I’ve slept in some of the funniest places. I’ve slept on the back of a mule. And the mule was moving. I’ve slept in a wheelbarrow. I’ve slept in a canoe.”

“I,” I said, “have slept in an aeroplane, in the mud, a foot deep, and me sound asleep in it. I’ve slept on the floor for two years. And I liked it. Board floors.”

“Ah,” said Jimmie, “those old war days! They showed us a few things about human nature, didn’t they? Some of us went to war with the funniest ideas of how essential comfort was to human happiness. And we learned we could be perfectly happy forever without beds, baths, chairs, roofs, walls.”

“Sometimes, Jimmie,” I said, “I often feel like getting out of bed and sleeping on the hard floor just for old times’ sake.”

“I wonder,” said Jim, “if we could stand it now or have we grown soft? Remember, we were a lot younger in those days. The young can stand a great deal.”

“Pshaw!” I cried. “Jimmie, I am tougher than I was in those days. I was just a young cub, a softie. I had never been away from my mother’s apron-strings. I bet, if we had to, we could stand twice the hardship now and feel it less.”

“Our wives are away,” said Jim, musingly. “I tell you what we might do some night. We might just drive out into the country a little way and lie down on the ground and sleep. For old times’ sake.”

“I’m on,” I said. “Any time.”

So that hot night last week Jim called for me and said if I had nothing better to do we would go out and sleep on the roadside. “The sun will wake us at reveille, as usual,” said Jim, “and we can drive back to town and have a bath and shave and change our suits before time to go to work.”

“Better go in our old clothes,” I said. So we changed into old fishing clothes and went for a drive.

Out west of the city we turned up a pleasant summer road in the night, and the summer stars glowed down and the young couples were parked along the road and as we took such turns into country byways as fancy directed us we saw cows with insomnia behind the rail fences and the toads trilled and the crickets chirped.

“Gosh,” said Jim, “I don’t feel like sleep yet. Let’s just dangle along until we get sleepy.”

“Not too far from town,” I said.

Glorious Freedom

“Lets take roads we never saw before,” said Jim. So we went hunting for roads we had never been on and it was a good game.

We passed Malton and Brampton and Georgetown. We passed Acton and Ospringe and Eramosa. We got down roads that ended in corduroy, and over high hills that seemed to touch the liquid stars, and through cool, dank cedar swamps, where we heard mysterious sounds in the depths when we stopped the car.

“It’s pretty near bedtime,” I said.

“Yeah,” yawned Jimmie. “We can turn. In any time now. Just pick a nice-looking bank of the road and we’ll go to bed.”

It was a glorious feeling. Without a care in the world. With no property like houses to surround and smother us. Just the wide and starry sky for our coverlet and the good old earth for our bed.

We came out into a level country in which dark farmhouses stood under the starlight faintly and under an elm tree we stopped the car and got out.

“O-wah,” yawned Jim, stretching. “This’ll do me.”

I found another good spot and sat down. “Well, Jimmie, sweet dreams.”

In the army I slept on the flat of my back and preferred plain boards to straw or any other so called bedding. I turned on my back under the elm tree, put my arm under my head and relaxed.

A bug jumped on to my face and off again. Something creepy jittered through the grass near my down ear. A stone began to press into my hip joint. I shifted.

“Oo-wah,” yawned Jimmie and shifted. He was about eight feet from me.

Something soft and small, like a green worm, dropped from the elm tree and hit my vest. I sat up and brushed it off.

Jim shifted.

“Isn’t this swell?” said Jim, sleepily.

I lay down and breathed deeply. Another stone was gouging my shoulder. I shifted and squirmed and burrowed with my back to find a good place on which to arrange my various touching-spots. Some extremely small thing, an ant probably, ran quickly across from my chin, past the corner of my mouth to my eyelid before I brushed it off.

“Kind of buggy around here,” I said.

“Remember the earwigs in France?” asked Jim, eagerly, propping up on one elbow.

“Say,” I said, sitting up and reaching for a cigarette, “weren’t they the limit! Worse than cockroaches.”

So Jim and I both sat up and talked about earwigs for one cigarette. Then we lay down again. I got a little better place this time and got half drowsy when a stone again wakened me and I was just in time to see Jimmie creeping on hands and knees toward the car. I watched him reach up and very softly turn the door-handle and start to get into the car, when I called him.

“Jimmie.”

“Yes! I was just going to see if the key was turned off.”

I got up. The stars were still where they were. The night was still filled with the trill of toads and the chirp of crickets.

“Let’s go and find a barn or something,” I said. “I was never much good at sleeping on the ground. It was more on hard boards, as I said. Hard boards, that’s what I was good at.”

A Ghostly Awakening

So we started the car. It must have been midnight. And we coasted along to somewhere near Fergus, when, rounding a bend, we came in sight of a regular little village of tourist cabins.

“The very thing!” cried Jimmie and I together.

“Why didn’t we think of it before?” exclaimed Jimmie. “A tourist cabin. With no bedding. Just right on the floor. It’s perfect.”

We drove into the yard of the tourist camp. All was still and dark. We parked the car and walked around looking for the head-office. At the gas pump was a small shack, but nobody was in it.

We rapped delicately at one of the cabins.

“Hello,” said a sleepy voice.

“Can we get a cabin for the night,” asked Jim.

“Sure. Help yourself. The man has gone home, but help yourself. Down the far end,” said the voice.

We walked down the row of cabins. Some were single and some were double. There were new ones and last year’s ones. At the far end we tried two or three doors, but they were locked and sleepy sounds indicated they were occupied.

And at the very end we came to the dearest little cabin of all. It was low and not too wide. It stood a little apart and we feared it must be occupied, too. But when we tried the door it opened, to reveal a perfectly empty little cabin, without beds even, without any furniture at all. Just a little bare cabin without windows, but ventilated by slits along the eaves.

“Swell,” said Jimmie, lighting a match.

So we just slid in, closed the doors and, lying down in perfect comfort on the painted board floor, it was no time until we were asleep. I heard a snore from Jim. Then I heard a snore from myself. And I knew all was well. I just let go.

The next thing I knew Jimmie was shaking me excitedly.

“Hey, hey!” he cried hoarsely.

I woke up in terrible confusion. It was unreal and ghostly and frightening. It was pitch-dark.

And our cabin was travelling, humming, racing through space!

“Jimmie!” I yelled.

“We’re moving,” shouted Jimmie, attempting to stand up in the lurching cabin. We could hardly hear ourselves speak.

“Hey, hey, HEY, HALLLOOOOO!” we roared, hammering on the walls, the front, the back of the swaying, lurching cabin.

“Jimmie,” I cried, “what has happened?”

“I just half heard a sort of grating sound,” shouted Jim, “in my sleep. I tried to wake up, but I couldn’t. And the next thing I knew I felt the cabin starting to move.”

“Jimmie,” I wailed, “it isn’t a cabin. It’s a trailer. Hey, hey, stop, STOP!”

“Hey, hallooo, stop, stop!” yelled Jimmie, banging at the walls.

But we just went rolling along.

“Jimmie,” I said, “heaven knows where we are heading.”

“Take it easy,” said Jim, sitting down again on the floor. “This guy will have to stop sooner or later. At a crossing. Or for gas. And when he stops we can get out. There is no use making any fuss now. He can’t hear us.”

“Couldn’t you see it was a trailer?” I demanded indignantly.

“I was so sleepy,” said Jim.

“Could we try to jump out the door if he slows down?”

“I tried the latch,” said Jimmie. “It doesn’t open from the inside.”

“We may end up in Montreal,” I declared bitterly, “or North Bay.”

“He’ll stop sooner or later,” said Jim. “Just save your wind.”

So we sat there, wide awake, on the floor of that rushing, gravel-flinging, lurching trailer, while the driver, with never a slackening, with never a slow-down for crossroads or towns, bore through the night. We felt pavement under us several times, then gravel again, then pavement for a long time. It was quieter, and we shouted and banged, but it was no use, as the trailer had a clatter all its own that made conversation difficult. And the absence of windows gave us no chance to do any practical yelling.

“It’s getting daylight,” said Jim. And through cracks along the pent roof I could see faint streaks of gray.

Mile after mile we ticked along, but neither Jim nor I could close an eye.

“Hist!” cried Jim.

We heard a train whistling.

“Wooo, woo-woo!”

“A train!”

Again it whistled, faint but nearer. “Jimmie, I hope he sees it!”

The train whistled again, nearer. A moment later, as we sat clutched in our own muscles, it whistled, nearer, nearer, and we felt the speed of the trailer increase.

“Jimmie,” I hissed, “the fool is racing!” This time the engine whistle sounded very, very near and the speed of the car never slackened.

“Good-by, Jimmie,” I said.

Then the brakes went on, the trailer wobbled and lurched and we heard the train roar and whistle fiercely past us only a few feet away.

“Get ready,” said Jim. “Keep time with me when I yell and hammer.”

We heard the train’s end whizz by. The trailer jerked.

“Hoy!” we roared, banging in unison on the walls of our prison. “Hoy, hoy, hoy!”

The trailer, which had started to move, slowed, bumped over the railway tracks and came to a dead stop.

“Hello, there! Hoy, thump, thump!”

“What the heck!” said a voice muffled from without.

“Let us out!” we shouted.

The door of the trailer opened.

“What are you doing in there?” demanded a figure in the dawn, stepping back in alarm.

“What do you mean by dragging us all over the country?” I shouted, slithering out of the trailer.

So we explained it to one another. We told about calling at the tourist camp and being told to take the end cabin.

“But couldn’t you see this was a trailer?” asked the motorist.

“It was standing there, just like a cabin,” we insisted. “Where are we?”

“We’re about ten miles north of Huntsville,” said our host.

“What are you going to do about getting us back?” I asked.

“Sorry,” said he. “I am delayed now. I am taking this trailer up to Lake Nipissing and promised to be there by morning. I had parked it where you found it while I ran into Fergus for provisions.”

“But I have no money,” I exclaimed.

Jim had eighty-five cents.

“I tell you what I’ll do,” said the stranger, shutting the trailer door, “I’ll compromise with you. I’ll leave you here instead of taking you on to Nipissing.”

And before you could say Jim Frise he had walked up to his car, got in and drove off.

“Jimmie,” I said, “he can’t do that!”

“He’s done it,” said Jim, walking over to the side of the highway to sit down and wait daylight, which was just breaking.

So we sat there until a poor, lonesome commercial traveller came south from Sudbury and picked us up and talked us both to sleep.

Which we did until he waked us at St. Clair avenue.

Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on July 27, 1940 as “Sleep Riders”.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 27, 1933.

“How is it,” asked Jimmie Frise, “that you and me have never taken up golf?”

“Pah,” I replied contemptuously, “the most fruitless pastime in the world!”

“Even so,” said Jim, “there must be something in it, so many thousands of men play it. Men of our type.”

“I know of no sight more depressing,” I quoted some unknown philosopher, “than that of a golfer plodding hopelessly from shot to shot.”

“Do you think,” asked Jim, “there is something psychological in it? Is it possible these fellows, after failure at the office, disagreements at home and general despair with life, go out and defeat themselves at golf just to make the rest of their all-round licking seem less painful?”

“Listen, Jimmie,” I said, “don’t go into any of those complicated psychological theories of yours!”

“No, but look at history,” said Jim. “For ages, when none of us had turned easy-going, whenever we were filled with troubles, what did we do? We put on a hair shirt and turned hermit. That is like golf. A man goes out and suffers the torments of golf so as to make seem easier the troubles of business and home.”

“It might be,” I admitted admiringly. “But I would just as soon play postman as play golf. It’s the same sort of thing. Walking along, stopping and starting, going over familiar ground all the time. Give me fishing, where a fellow can visit new country every time he goes forth.”

I’m afraid you don’t know the rudiments of golf,” said Jim.

“I am thankful I don’t,” said I. “All I know is, I never heard of a golfer who won. If they don’t lose to their partner, they lose, anyway, by not doing as well as they did once before, about 1928. It is a gloomy game. A game of perpetual defeat.”

“Do you even know how they play it?” asked Jim.

“Sure,” said I. “They have a small hard rubber ball which they hit with different kinds of sticks with iron blades and knobs on the ends. They have half a dozen or more of these sticks, all different, so that no matter which one they use, they can believe it was the wrong one. If they used their birdie, they can always say, in a bitter voice, that they should have used their bunker or their giblet, I think they call it. It is a game with a bagful of alibis.”

“What is the object of the game?” asked Jim, slightly sneeringly.

“To play from hole to hole with as few shots as possible,” I replied. “Sometimes they play nine holes, and sometimes eighteen. The more holes they play, the greater is their defeat. I knew a fellow who once played twenty-seven holes on a Saturday and was so filled with grief he entirely forgot the depression.”

“My friends are always inviting me out to play golf,” said Jim. “I think some day we might try it, just to know what we are not missing.”

“The only reason I would ever visit a golf course,” I retorted, “would be to give it some new ideas, to introduce something to the game. For instance, I have often heard these old boys telling how they went around in eighty-four. But when I asked them how long it took them, they just stared. Do you know, Jimmie, they let them take all the time they like? Yes, sir, these old badgers go prowling around the golf course, pausing and thinking before every shot, taking all kinds of practice swings and figuring out every shot, every move, like chess players. Imagine hockey, in which every player was allowed to have the puck until he had figured out what to do with it? That’s what’s the matter with golf. It needs action. It needs some manly indecision about it. If these old guys could say, I went around in eighty-four in thirty-eight minutes, there would be something in it. But just to say they went around in eighty-four over the week-end is simply comical. That’s what it is, comical.”

Borrowing a Bag of Alibis

“Suppose I could get an invitation,” asked Jim, “would you come out and we would try a whirl at putting some speed into golf?”

“I imagine I would,” said I.

So Jim got in touch with a few friends and got an invitation for us to go out to a golf links on Thursday. The first few friends were overjoyed, and thought Jimmie meant he would come out with them. It is pathetic the way these golfers like to initiate a fresh sufferer. But Jim had to explain that he had an important friend up from New York, who was not only deaf and dumb, but was deformed and he hated mankind, and would only play with Jimmie. So one friend very gladly gave Jim a letter of introduction to his club. Jim borrowed a fellow artist’s outfit and I got a bag of alibis from my brother. There were nine balls and fourteen sticks in the bag, not to mention spare socks, small sponges, a raincoat that folded up about the size of a hankie and a whole lot of little things such as scoring gadgets and so forth, the meaning of which only amused me.

We arrived out at the club about two ‘clock, by which time there were several hundred people dotted all over the fields, all having that bowed, hopeless look that prisoners have on prison farms, as they go about their tasks.

We dressed up in the locker room in our ordinary fishing and shooting outfits and dragged our golf bags out to the starting place.

“You have to follow a certain course,” explained Jim in a low voice, as we waited for six men to start off. “These holes are numbered, and you must take them in proper order.”

“But we don’t even know that order,” I protested.

“We can ask as we go along,” said Jim.

“Nonsense,” I said. “How could we make any speed if we had to slow up all the time and say where do we go from here?”

“What do you suggest?” asked Jim.

“We play from one of these bunkers with the box on it, don’t we?” I demanded. “And we shoot for one of those little flags?”

“That’s it.”

“All right, starting here, we shoot for the nearest flag, and from there, we go to the nearest box, and in that way, work straight out, taking them as they come.”

“How will we know we haven’t done one hole before?” asked Jim.

“We simply won’t put the flag up,” I explained. “We will be working fast. The idea will be to see how small a score we can make in the shortest possible time. So after we do each hole, we’ll just leave the flag down and beat it for the next one.”

“What will all these gentlemen think of that?”

“They may be a little disturbed, if they notice it,” said I. “But they’re so engrossed in their game, they’ll never notice a little thing like a flag being up. Anyway, suppose they do get a little sore? When they realize what we are doing for the royal and ancient game of golf, when it comes out that we have revived, resuscitated, modernized a dying game, they will tell their grandchildren that they were actually on the links the very time Frise and Clark conducted their first experiment. Don’t worry about these people.”

Jim and I waited patiently while the six of them, two by two, leisurely gazed off into the distance, watched their slow-footed predecessors get out of range, and I think they all flattered themselves at that. Then we scratched our heads and repressed our feelings as they each one stood forth, leisurely laid their ball, waggled their sticks, waggled their nether anatomies, paused, thought, gazed, thought again, made a few cautionary swings, all in perfect style, and then, with no style at all, socked the ball off to one side.

Jim and I didn’t even nudge each other.

At last we stepped forth, by which time there were four other players ready behind us.

“Wait for those birds ahead to get out of range,” said Jim as I set the ball down.

“Nothing doing,” said I. “I have just taken the time as I set the ball down. The game is on. We’ll shoot for that flag right near there.”

I aimed at a flag down in a valley, only about 75 yards from us and off at an angle from which the others had played. I hit the ball high in the air and about half way to the flag, without any waggling whatsoever. Jim leaped up and laid the ball down without delay, socked it and we seized our bags and raced off on the first hole.

“Hey,” shouted one of the men who were coming next after us.

But there was no time to waste in explanations. We ran nimbly down the valley. I had the stick ready by the time I reached my ball, threw down the bag, socked it, picked up the bag and ran after it before Jim had even reached his ball.

Jim hit his beautifully and put it near the flag. I took three quick, short bats at mine before I laid it on the green, as they call it, although it was a kind of brown. holed in nine, Jim in fourteen, in exactly two minutes, fourteen seconds.

Just a little way to the side was one of those boxes on a bunker which is the starting place for each new hole, and we raced over to it. No silly dawdling. This was a contest not only of skill with the stick, but speed, endurance, strength, fortitude. We socked the balls away and dashed after them just as four men walked over a hillock and stood staring at us with some astonishment. But we rushed up to the balls, batted them a little way, and I found that if you did not lay the bag down but just hit the ball with a polo action, in your stride, you would hit it just as far and just as straight as some of those fellows who took five minutes to get at it. So Jim followed my style, and we dashed off the next hole in ten and sixteen, despite the fact that two men were near the hole and coming from the opposite direction.

“Are you ahead of us?” called one of these men, not at all snootily, but just sort of surprised to see us.

“We’re so far ahead you can’t imagine it,” I replied, as Jim and I dashed for the next box bunker.

“The flag?” shouted this man.

“Never mind the flag,” I called to Jim, “It’s this conversation and palavering that makes golf so slow.”

We made the next hole in nineteen and forty-one, Jim developing a bounding style, which did not send the ball far but at least did not delay us ten minutes looking for a lost ball. We passed through two parties of golfers, one going one way and one another, who stopped and held a discussion, probably about us, as it turned out. But we did this hole in three minutes flat, the whole score being on the first three holes, Jim 71, self, 38, with a time of only eight minutes and seventeen seconds.

Others Get the Idea

The nearest flag we could see on the fourth hole was quite a distance away, all of a hundred yards. We dashed up to the box, banged off the balls and were just getting into our stride, I with six strokes, Jim with eleven, when two elderly gentlemen in gray sweaters came over a rise and started running after us. Each held one golf club in his hand.

“It’s taking on!” I yelled to Jim. “Here’s two others have caught the idea.”

It developed into a race. We had the advantage of age, because both the old boys were staggering behind large, swaying stomachs. We finished the hole in a net score of Jim, 91, self, 50, time, eleven minutes, one second, when we saw, joining the elderly men, six or eight more, some of them younger and faster, and as far as I could see, they were not playing fair, because I could see no balls at all. I suspected them of kicking the ball ahead. Which was not a bad idea, and I tried it. You can get better distance kicking it, but not the direction.

Anyway, as we started from the fifth bunker box, the followers numbered twelve, and four of them were gaining rapidly on us.

“Experienced golfers,” I puffed to Jim. “We’d be better, too, if we spent half our lives on the golf links.”

We succeeded in getting away from the fifth start before the leaders caught us, but I had only got thirty yards before two of them, both twice my weight, caught up to me, and to my consternation, tackled me as if it were rugby we were playing and slammed me down.

“Foul, foul!” I yelled, and with some justice, as I was really the inventor of the game.

As they picked me up, I saw the other two catch up to Jim and grab him. By this time everybody had caught up, even the stout old men, who had gray moustaches and purple faces, and they were speechless. They just made gestures. Six men each carried Jim and me across the fields and down a little gully, where, I am sorry to admit, they threw us into a small muddy creek, without a single word. Not a word. They just carried us down, perspiring, and never a word out of them, and said one, two, three, and heaved us in.

“Now get out!” shouted one of the old men, who had a husky voice.

“Our clothes at the club house!” I called from the creek.

“Our golf bags, they’re borrowed,” called Jimmie, from the same place.

“Get out!” repeated the old gent. It was all he could think of to say.

They stood on the bank and watched us so we just waded out and up the bank and climbed a fence and signaled, as they say, a passing motorist who happened to be driving a truck, and for fifty cents he drove us home.

I explained to my brother about his clubs and my good clothes, and he just laughed and said a friend would pick up his bags.

I asked him what he thought of our idea, and he said it was an excellent one, but suggested we try it out some time when there were not many people on the links.

“When would that be?” I asked my brother.

“Well, say, the First of July; it’s a public holiday, and everybody will be away fishing.”

“But so will I,” I explained to him.

“Oh, well, then some other time,” he suggested.

Editor’s Notes: palavering means to talk unproductively and at length.

This story was repeated on May 25, 1940 as “Fruitless Pastime“.