Tag: 1940 Page 1 of 4

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

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

“Love them,” I replied.

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

“In their shells?” I asked, excitedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oysters Not Prepossessing

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

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

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

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

“The beginning,” said Jim, scrubbing away.

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

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

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

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

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

“Lit with electricity,” I said.

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

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

“Or tried to eat,” added Jim.

It was now nine o’clock.

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

“Where’s your oyster knife?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

I shoved. Scraped. Tried here. Tried there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Try the other side,” suggested Jim.

I turned it over and tried the other side.

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

“Ouch!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was now nine-twenty o’clock.

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

“It was your suggestion,” I reminded him.

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

“Nnnhhh!” he grunted.

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

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

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

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

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

“Hurray!” I shouted.

Another pry and twist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Original Way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, 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. ↩︎