Tag: 1942 Page 1 of 4

What chance has a heckler now? Half the audience are ex-hecklers who know all the tricks

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 21, 1942.

“With the way business is going,” said Jimmie Frise, “it is about time we began looking around for some nice juicy government job.”

“Why so?” I inquired. “There will always be newspapers, won’t there?”

“Maybe so,” countered Jim, “but will newspapers be bothered with the kind of stuff we can do? That’s the problem we’ve got to face. The world is getting more serious all the time. Everything is being rationed. Step by step, government is taking over everything. One of these days they’ll take over the newspapers.”

“Oh, yeah?” I demanded. “How about the freedom of the press?”

“Well, is that any more precious than the freedom,” retorted Jim, “of a man to buy what he likes and sell what he likes? Is it any more precious than freedom of speech? And there are a lot of guys locked up in concentration camps¹, right in this province, who speeched too freely. Ah, no, my boy. one of these days, they will ration newspapers and some chartered accountant will come in as administrator of our newspapers. And the first two guys he will throw out will be us. We’re only frills.”

“Frills!” I snorted.

“Sure,” said Jim. “We’re just a luxury, like ripe olives. What the newspapers will print, under government control, will be the facts. A newspaper will read like a Canadian National time table. You will get the weather forecast and the speech in full of the minister of justice. With applause after each paragraph.”

“How long would the people put up with such nonsense?” I scoffed.

“Quite as long.” submitted Jim, “as they would put up with gas rationing and wage and price ceilings, and rationing of sugar and tires and clothes and all else. In the name of war, my dear sir, we will put up with anything. There is only one good job to have nowadays; and that’s a government job.”

“Well, I never expected to live to see the day,” I heaved.

“Who do you know up at Ottawa?” asked Jim. “We ought to have some pull. Couldn’t you get the job of collector of customs or something for the Port of Toronto? Think of all the fishing tackle that would pass through your hands as collector of customs.”

“Those days are gone forever, Jim,” I sighed. “There was a day when a man with pull could wangle himself into a job regardless of what his qualifications were. But government is no longer merely political. It is becoming industrial, financial, social and everything else. It is becoming expert. There are no better bankers in the banking business than the government has working for it now. And no better industrialists working on their own than are working for the government. In the old days, a smart financial man or a smart manufacturer could make a million dollars as easily as rolling over in bed. But the day came when the government took it all off him in taxes and super taxes. Why should a man worry about his own business and the government’s as well? So all the smart guys are working for the government, making just as much as they had left over after the government was through with them in the old days; and having a lot of fun as well.”

The True Art of Heckling

“I guess,” admitted Jim ruefully, “we haven’t got anything the government wants.”

“We could do propaganda,” I suggested.

“Propaganda won’t be necessary any more,” explained Jim, “when the government controls everything. There won’t be any opposition to propaganda.”

“We could take an active part in politics,” I offered.

“Too late,” said Jim hollowly. “There are about 20,000 guys ahead of us.”

“I attended quite a number of political meetings this last two or three years, Jim,” I said earnestly. “I could get witnesses to prove it,”

“Did you heckle?” demanded Jimmie.

“Heckle?” I inquired.

“You don’t take an active interest in politics unless you heckle,” stated Jim. “When I was a young kid, I loved to go to political meetings to help heckle. Down in Birdseye Center, we had a School of Heckling. It was run by a bad old guy who owned the harness shop in the village. Whenever a meeting was scheduled for our community, old Sam, the harness maker, would start his school for hecklers and we would all gather in the harness shop and learn our parts.”

“You must have been very young,” I suggested.

“Ah, you think of heckling,” said Jim, “as merely asking questions. The true art of heckling is the art of putting a meeting on the bum whether with questions or marbles or chair legs…”

“Marbles?” I protested.

“Look,” said Jim. “The meeting is called to order and proceeds. All is quiet and orderly. The chairman makes his speech. The business of the meeting is disposed of. Then the speakers begin, warming up the audience for the main speaker of the evening who is not yet arrived, but who is momentarily. He, of course, is a prominent politician, making speeches in half a dozen parts of the riding in the one night.”

“It’s the same today,” I confessed.

“Now,” said Jim, “old Sam, the master heckler, is in the audience. And we, his pupils of all ages, from boys of 15 up to old gentlemen of eighty, are discreetly scattered over the hall in little groups. The best way to seat hecklers is this: put the main heckler of the group in the middle, with a guard on either side of him. In the row in front of him, two men, sitting directly in front. And in the row directly behind, three more, to keep people from beaning him.”

“That makes eight hecklers to a squad,” I calculated.

“Correct,” said Jim. “Now, when the candidate arrives, the applause and cheers break out and the hecklers let go a few boos.”

“Correct,” I remembered.

“He has no time to waste,” said Jim. “And as soon as he reaches the platform, the chairman introduces him and he gets going. The first thing that happens, right up near the front row, an elderly gentleman in the audience gets his foot caught in the rungs of his chair.”

“How do you mean?” I inquired.

“It’s very simple,” explained Jim. “As soon as the speaker gets nicely started, you see this old bird up near the front starting to squirm and struggle. Everybody around him tries to help him. He has got his foot twisted around in the side rungs of the chair he is sitting on. The more he struggles, the more excited he gets, and the chair starts banging and people stand up to help him and before they get his foot free, there has been a dandy disturbance. Everybody at the back is shouting ‘sit down’ and the speaker has had to stop his speech, and is looking embarrassed, the way all politicians in a hurry look.”

“Oh, boy,” I gloated.

“When quiet is restored,” went on Jim, “and the speaker gets nicely going again, the marbles start. From three or four different parts of the hall, you hear marbles starting to roll. You hear them fall ticking on the floor and then quietly rolling. At a little distance, you can’t hear them at all. But nearby you can hear them and you can’t help but look down at them and twist around to try and stop them with your foot. If you have four or five fellows with marbles scattered over the hall, and they all start at the one time, you have got people squirming and twisting all over the place.

“Gee, Jim,” I breathed.

“Oh, then there are the questions, asked by the squads,” said Jim, “and the lady who takes ill and jumps up, holding her hands to her mouth and running for the door. That’s usually reserved until right at the place the speaker starts his real oratory. Then there is the late comer. He should be a farmer. He comes in, right at the peak of the speech, and walks up the aisle, to the front, looking for a seat, stopping and looking up each row as he starts back from the front. He should even attempt to walk in two or three of the rows of seats, even when there isn’t a seat. That always creates a swell confusion.”

“Jim,” I interrupted. “You’ve got it. We will found a heckling school. Right here in Toronto. We can get hundreds of students enrolled. We can wreck any meeting in the country. The government would have to reward us with jobs. Maybe they would make us senators.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “I was noticing just the other day that they are having some sort of reorganization of the council up in George township. The reeve and half the council have gone to war and they are having trouble appointing substitutes.”

“Not a township meeting,” I protested.

“We’ve got to get some practice,” declared Jim. “There is no use starting anything without knowing a little about it. Maybe this heckling school idea is only another hare-brained enterprise. We ought to do a little experimenting, in a small way. before we launch out.”

So we found out that they were having a big meeting in George township on Thursday night. We got 25 cents worth of marbles. I borrowed an old press camera from Tom Wilson, our cameraman. It had no lens, which is the valuable part of a camera anyway; but it did have the flash bulb attachment which was what we wanted. And I loaded my pockets, in true press cameraman style, with the little flash bulbs they use.

The meeting was crowded for a fact. We got there at half-past seven in order to look the ground over, and even so, the hall was almost filled already. Jim got a seat in the second row. And I, identified as a newspaperman by the camera I carried open and ready in my hands, was permitted to sit at the edge of the platform.

By eight o’clock, the hall was full and all the space at the back taken up with standing room only.

The meeting was called to order at 8.05 sharp and the chairman, a very masterful looking gentleman in a blue suit, outlined the situation. He pointed out that two factions existed in the township. These factions had an equal right to be heard. He was going to see they received a hearing. And at this point of his speech, a very large policeman walked slowly down the aisle and wheeled and walked slowly back.

The first speaker was indignant looking gentleman. He was one of those people who was born with an indignant expression on his face. His manner of speech was indignant. He would utter a quick sentence. Then pause and glare around. Then utter another quick sentence. And a long pause, to let it sink in.

This was pie for Jimmie. He got his foot caught in the rung of his chair. He started to squirm. He started to struggle. He began to fight. The chair rattled and banged finally Jim and the chair and everything fell over, causing a great excitement. Fifteen people got to their feet in the first two rows to help him, and the whole hall got to its feet to see what the trouble was. The indignant man was now very indignant, because the pause was all of two minutes and he forgot what he had been saying.

Jimmie kept stirring and fidgetting and rubbing his ankle, which irritated the speaker terribly. Finally, Jim got up and hobbled out to the aisle.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” he inquired, in a hoarse whisper.

Ten rows back, he almost collapsed on his poor ankle, and a young lad of about 15 gave Jim his aisle seat. Jim sank into it.

The speaker had now wound up and was really pounding his fist into his palm. I stealthily slid down off the platform edge and crept along with my camera raised. I huddled there a few minutes, aiming my camera at him. Then I let fly. The flash bulb caused everybody in the place to rise half in their seats. The speaker forgot his argument. I crept back to my place and hoisted myself up on the edge of the platform again.

“Now,” rasped the indignant man, “in the first place…”

Up around Jimmie, in the tenth row, I saw people stirring and twisting in their seats. The marbles had started. Balloons at a hockey game are nothing to marbles. Everybody wants to kick a marble.

“Order, order,” warned the chairman, quietly.

The speaker had ceased speaking and was glaring redly at the meeting. People on the sides were standing up to see what was going on in the middle. I slid off the platform edge and began creeping, bent over, towards speaker again. I aimed the empty camera at him. Bang went the flash bulb.

“He’s a Fake”

“Order!” bellowed the chairman, hammering on the table.

When I turned away from dazzling the speaker, I saw Jim was surrounded by a struggling group of citizens.

All over the hall, people were standing and jumping on their chairs to see the excitement. I started to shove and fight my way up the aisle, my camera held high, as if to try to get a picture of the melee around Jim.

“Hey,” I heard a voice yell, “this bird has no lens in his camera! I know something about cameras..! He’s a fake.”

Hands gripped my shoulders. All was hubbub and riot. Strange angry faces swept around me and I was yanked this way and that. The policeman got me, and after one look at my camera, seeing the big gaping hole where the lens should be, hoisted me aloft and carried me out.

Jim was gripped by two large citizens who happened to find a pocket full of marbles on him.

We went out the door about the same time. And down the steps.

The policeman followed us down and out to our car, professionally.

“None of them tricks around here,” he said, not unkindly. “The minute you pulled that old trick with your foot in the rungs of the chair, there was at least fifty old-timers in that meeting who knew what was up.”

“Well, they didn’t need to get so rough,” declared Jim. “One of those big birds nearly twisted my arm off.”

“Who do you represent?” inquired the cop. “Henderson or Billings?”

“Never heard of them,” said Jim. “We were just out for some fun.”

“Well, times have changed,” said the cop. “People are taking an interest in public affairs now. It isn’t politics they’re interested in, any more. It’s themselves they’re interested in. And when people get interested in themselves, woe betide any monkey business from politicians or anybody else.”

“Have you any kids?” asked Jim. “Here’s some marbles for them.”

---

Editor’s Note:

1. Note that at the time, concentration camp would be a generic term for an internment camp of some type. Now the term is more associated with the Nazi interment and death camps of World War 2. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 7, 1942.

“When this war is over,” enunciated Jimmie Frise, “this world is going to be a different place.”

“No, Jim,” I asserted, “you’ve just been reading the propaganda. What you’ve got to read is history. This world never changes.”

“Are you insinuating,” demanded Jim, “that our propaganda isn’t true?”

“Well, the German propaganda started all this stuff about a new and better world, a new order and so forth,” I pointed out. “Later, we took up the cry.”

“You had better be careful,” warned Jimmie, “what you say about propaganda.”

“Is it all right if I just think about it?” I inquired.

“It’s better not even to think about it,” advised Jim. “Then you can’t get into any trouble. In wartime, ours not to reason why. Ours but to do and die.”

“Very well,” I surrendered. “But all the same, I think we ought to read history. In times like these, it is good for the soul to read history. It gives you courage.”

“Does history suggest,” asked Jimmie, “that the world won’t be a better place after this war?”

“All history teaches,” I explained, “is that nothing ever changes. What happened to men in ancient Babylon is happening to men in modern Toronto and modern Birdseye Center. There is a wise old saying that history repeats itself. That is just a silly and high-sounding way of saying that men do the same things over and over again, forever and ever.”

“Then, you mean there will always be wars…?” questioned Jimmie darkly.

“I’ll tell you when there will be no more wars, Jim,” I declaimed. “There will be no more wars when no motorist tries to pass another motorist on the highway. When boys no longer fight in schoolyards, wars will end. When women no longer shove each other around at bargain counters, when hockey and baseball and golf are forbidden by law, wars will cease.”

“Puh,” said Jimmie. “No connection.”

“All the connection there is,” I declared. “I’ll tell you when war will end. When you turn the other cheek, war will end. If a motorist, trying to pass you on the street, cuts in ahead of you and bashes in your front left hand fender, and you get out of your car and go and shake hands with him and pat him on the back and plead with him to cease weeping – then wars will end. Read history, Jim. Read history.”

“If history is as cynical as all that…” uttered Jim.

Just the Form Chart

“History is just the form chart, Jim,” I explained. “You’re a racing man. You like horse-racing. How do you decide to bet on a horse?”

“I play hunches,” asserted Jimmie. “I stick a pin through my program and bet all the horses the pinhole punctures. Or else, if I see a guy run over by a truck on my way to the race-track and then find a horse named Smashem on the program, I bet Smashem for all I’m worth.”

“Do you win?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” confessed Jim. “But not often. It’s as good a way as any, though.”

“Better than the form chart?” I protested. “Why, Jim, that’s absurd. In the form chart, you see the full record of all the horses. You see who their sire and dam were, and what blood they’ve got in them. You see all the races they’ve run and how they did in them. You see all the conditions under which they ran: whether muddy track or track fast; whether they run best in the spring, summer, autumn or winter: whether they are due for another win any day now, or whether they’ve had too many wins lately to be likely to win again. That’s what they call form. That’s history. It’s the record.”

“I play hunches,” insisted Jim. “Form charts give me a headache.”

“So you’ve got a hunch,” I followed up, “regarding the war. You’ve got a hunch that the world is going to be a better place after this war?”

“Well, what do you think?” countered Jimmie.

“To tell you the truth, Jim.” I surrendered. “I think so too. But it is not going to be a better place for the rich and powerful. It is not going to be a better place for comfortable guys like you and me and our families. It is not going to be a better place for kings and dukes and barons. It is not going to be a better place for millionaires and smart guys and clever people. It is only going to be a better place for the mass of mankind.”

“And what’s the matter with that?” demanded Jimmie.

“Nothing,” I assured him. “But it does sound kind of funny to hear you, a comfortable cartoonist, making good money for just sitting at a drawing board twiddling your fingers lazily, talking about a better world that is coming. It won’t be better for you. The world that is to come won’t be able to afford to pay fancy wages to cartoonists any more than it will be able to pay a hundred thousand a year to some clever guy who can operate a factory so smartly that he puts all other factories out of business.”

“When I say a better world,” explained Jimmie, “I do not refer to dollars and cents.”

“Most people do,” I assured him. “When public men speak over the radio about the new world that is coming, 99 per cent. of the listeners automatically translate that, in their thoughts, to better wages, a nicer house, more clothes, a new car…”

“Look,” interrupted Jimmie, “if I am going to be paid truck driver’s wages for being a cartoonist, then I am going to be a truck driver. Because it’s a lot more fun to drive a truck than to have to sit here, week after week, year after year, thinking up a new idea every day.”

“Okay, you be a truck driver then,” I agreed, “and let somebody do the cartooning that really loves being a cartoonist, who gets more kick out of drawing a cartoon than out of drawing a fat pay envelope.”

“That would have been me, 30 years ago,” sighed Jimmie. “When you are young, you don’t worry about the wages. You work for the thrill, the adventure of it. Then, as you grow older, your fingers start to crook.”

“History teaches,” I stated, “that men never change, that men will go to war for one cause or another, every generation. The cause is always high and holy. But whether the cause is the natural one that makes boys fight in schoolyards, or whether it is the one that makes you want to knock the block off the guy who cuts in ahead of you on the highway, fight we must.”

“I don’t like that,” declared Jim.

“Fine,” I said. “Then go ahead sticking pins through programs. But history also teaches something else. There is only one central core, one backbone to all history, Greek, Roman, European, Asiatic, ancient, modern-one thing upon which all historians can agree. And that is, that with the passage of time, freedom, power, happiness and privilege is broadening out, ever and ever, from the few to the many. More and more of humanity is being set free from slavery and bondage with every century. Come conquerors, come tyrants, come Charlemagne and his Holy Roman hosts, come Philip of Spain with his world conquering Spaniards, come Elizabeth of England with her Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins and Frobisher… only one thing is eternally true through all the million pages of history: and that is, that the common man, the plain, happy, hungry, insignificant common man is freer, happier, more powerful, has a greater share in life than he had in the 50-year period preceding any page you like to delve into in history, all across the ages.”

“Weelllll,” cried Jimmie heartily, “what more do we want?”

“All right then,” I concluded, “but 10 years from now, don’t expect any sympathy from me when you start complaining about the fact that street car motormen earn nearly as much as cartoonists.”

“When I think of the better world to come,” said Jim, “I have in mind a world where people will be more secure not only as regards money, but as regards life itself. After this war, there is going to be a terrific reaction. There is going to be the most gosh- awful uprising of League of Nations sentiment and humanitarian enterprises. After all this insane slaughter not only of fighting men but of harmless bystanders, there is bound to be a terrific kick-back in human nature. Disarmament, world peace organizations, international brotherhoods…”

“There will also be a powerful group,” I pointed out, “who will insist on keeping big standing armies, and more battleships and war factories.”

“They will be snowed under, as usual,” stated Jim. “The mass of mankind will be thoroughly sick of war. As we all were after the last war. Our whole generation will be ashamed of itself, for having gone mad. We will settle back to cultivate the better human qualities within us. Maybe a golden age will dawn, a golden age of art and beauty and literature and music.”

“During which,” I interpolated, “somebody else will be secretly arming with shovels and wooden practise tanks against us.”

A Perfect Example

“You’re terribly cynical,” accused Jim.

“No, sir,” I protested. “I’m childishly simple. I read history. And believe it.”

“Aw,” groaned Jimmie, “how soft and how hard we humans can be! One minute, we are up with the angels, gentle, kindly, filled with humane and lofty ideals: destroying slums; passing mighty legislation to free another vast group of our fellow men from injustice and cruelty; dreaming splendid dreams; writing sublime books, plays, music. The next minute, we are down with the devils, destroying one another like wild men. I am weary of war. I am hungry for gentleness. I just want to go and stand in the streets and watch children at play. I want to take my old dog on my knees and fondle his ears. I… I …”

“Which reminds me,” I interrupted, “of the purpose of my visit, this fine Sunday afternoon.

“By the way, yes,” agreed Jim. “Take your coat off. What have you got in the bag?”

“This is bread, Jim,” I said, opening the bag. “I’m on my way down to Sunnyside Beach to feed the wild ducks. I called to see if you’ll come for the walk.”

Jim was already up on his feet.

“And I’ll get some bread crusts, too,” he said.

So from Jim’s bread box we filched all the crusts and odds and ends of bread and filled the paper bag full to the top. And then we went forth into the fine winter afternoon and walked down to Sunnyside, only five blocks south. Old Rusty, Jim’s feeble-minded Irish water spaniel, joined us.

“Get that dope on a leash,” I warned, “or he’ll chase all the ducks out to sea.”

“He wouldn’t harm a duck,” scoffed Jim. “He’d love to see them.”

“He can see them, all right,” I said. “But get a leash.”

Which unfortunately Jim did, and when we neared the lake, Jim put Rusty on the leash and we walked over the trodden snow beach to the icy water’s edge, where numbers of people, with children, were tossing bread and corn to the mallards, black duck, and a few species of other wild duck which find a winter haven in the open water off Toronto’s pleasure beach.

At first, the ducks were scared of Rusty, even though he was on a leash, and they swam to visit other people who were tossing bread. But with friendly and wheedling calls, Jimmie and I both tossed bread far out and coaxed the ducks toward us. Rusty whined softly.

“The old fool,” said Jim, “He goes to sleep in the duck blind when the hunting season’s on. But now he is all of a tremble.”

“Isn’t it strange,” I mused. “Less than 15 weeks ago, when the duck season was open, we were risking our lives out in harsh blizzards, crouched down in wet, sodden swamps, trying to shoot these beautiful creatures. And here we are, tenderly feeding them.”

“It is a perfect example,” agreed Jim, tossing bread to the ducks now only five feet out from the edge of the ice, “of what I was saying about human nature. One minute, we are full of tenderness. The next, we are shooting guns.”

“I Didn’t Laugh Once”

“Quaaack, quack, quack,” I soothed, tossing broken particles of the bread to the lustrous mallards and the handsome proud black ducks. “You never see ducks like this in the shooting season. When you are hunting, a duck is a wild, racing creature out in the wind going 50 miles an hour. Just a dark swift pattern against the gray sky. Tempting the sporting instinct. But here, on the water, they are queer, comic, greedy little beautiful creatures…”

“It’s quite possible,” said Jim queerly, “that we might actually have shot at these very ducks, up north. And here we are, feeding them like pets.”

“Aw, they’re cute, Jim,” I cried. “Look at that mallard. Look at the expression. Why, he’s smiling!”

“Your attitude towards ducks,” said Jim, “and towards men, depends largely on where and how you see them.”

“I’m almost ready to say,” I said, “that I have nothing against ducks.”

“Hyah,” yelled Jimmie suddenly.

For Rusty, who had been lurking us while we tossed the crusts, whining faintly, gave a violent leap, leash or no leash, in an attempt to break Jim’s hold and make a grab at the nearest duck, a handsome mallard busy with a large hunk of bread.

The leash caught me around the knees, and before Jim could get a proper jerk, Rusty had rounded me and hauled my feet from under me.

The ice, bathed not only by the lake but by the fine sun, was wet and horribly smooth. I felt myself sliding even as my feet went up.

“Whoa, don’t go in there,” warned Jimmie.

But what good are warnings? In a sitting posture, I went in. It was not deep. In fact, it was quite shallow. I raised my feet in the air and was able to hold my upper portions fairly upright, with the result that only my least dignified portions were immersed in the bitter and icy waters of Lake Ontario.

Rusty splashed me a little and the ducks made a great outcry which caused many of my fellow citizens, who might otherwise not have seen me, to witness what they thought was an attempt on my part to snatch a duck.

“I’ve a good mind,” yelled one gentleman who, with his wife and baby, were standing nearby, “to call the cops.”

Jim assisted me out. I was wet only amidships, though it trickled icily down my legs and into my boots. But a brisk walk up street for home soon removed the chills.

“You’ve got to give me credit,” said Jimmie, when he left me at my sidewalk, “I didn’t laugh once.”

“Damn all ducks,” was all I replied.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 12, 1942.

“Just look at those apples on that tree,” exclaimed Jimmie Frise.

“They look like oranges,” I said.

We were sitting on Jim’s back steps in the twilight, feeling the September of it.

The apple tree in question was in the yard of the house abutting Jim’s yard and a low wire fence was all that stood between.

“H’m,” I mused. “I wonder what kind of apples they are? Spies?”

“No, they’re some queer kind of apple,” said Jim, “that tree dates back to the days when all this part of the city was suburban farms. I bet that tree is 50 years old.”

“Are they good eaters?” I inquired.

“To tell the truth,” declared Jim, “I don’t know. The bird that lives there is a queer one. He’s lived there ever since I’ve lived here. And do you know, I’ve never even spoken to him.”

“But heck,” I cried, “that little fence…”

“I know,” agreed Jim. “And I’ve been within four feet of him. In the spring, he’s been working in his garden on one side of the fence and I’ve been working on my side; we could hear each other breathing and grunting. But we have never so much as said hello.”

“Look here,” I said, “that’s not normal.”

“Sure it isn’t,” agreed Jim. “But right from the start, any time I was in my garden he walked out of his. If we happened to meet near the fence, he looked away and didn’t meet my glance. After the first few times, it became a sort of game, a sort of rule. Maybe he was as ready to speak to me as I was to him, at the start. But after a while, it became a sort of convention, an unspoken agreement.”

“What nonsense.” I protested, looking intently at those rich, red apples all so healthily clinging in the tree.

“Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like it,” said Jim. “Life is usually so commonplace. It’s nice to have an oddity like that in it.”

“Is he shy?” I inquired. “Or crusty?”

“No. I’ve often heard him joking and laughing with the neighbors on either side,” said Jim. “I know them well. We even exchange garden tools. And he’s quite chummy with my two neighbors on either side. But it just so happens, we started queer and we’re still queer. And I kind of like it. I’d be sorry to lose this situation now. And I bet he would too.”

“I suppose we should cultivate a little mystery in our human relationships.” I confessed. “Life shouldn’t be one great big Rotary club.”

“That’s it,” agreed Jim. “Every city block should have at least one haunted house.”

“Don’t those apples ever roll into your garden?” I asked.

“You’d think at least one would have, in 12 years,” said Jim. “Once I caught my boy with one of them when he was little. I made him take and throw it back over the fence.”

“So you don’t even know whether they eat good or not?” I insisted.

“I think they do,” stated Jim. “Because he takes the greatest care of them. They are some old-fashioned apple, popular 50 years or more ago but out of fashion now. That’s the trouble with apples. Certain popular kinds got a grip on the farmers, and because it takes so long for an orchard to get established, the farmers all went for the few profitable brands, spies, St. Lawrence, greenings, shows and so on. But I’ve heard my grandma telling of many a strange and beautiful apple you never hear of now – the Duchess of Oldenburg…”

“Wouldn’t that be the apple we call the Duchess now?” I asked.

“Ah, maybe,” cried Jim. “But it doesn’t taste like the Duchess of Oldenburg my grandma talked about, slightly tart to the tongue. The tallow apple, the wine apple, the pinnock … boy. I remember them; the swaar and the Vandevere, the Talman sweet and the Newton Pippin.”

“Some of those you can get today,” I declared.

“Ah,” said Jim, but they were better the way my grandma knew them.”

“Apples,” I pointed out, “were a greater delicacy in your grandma’s day than they are now. In her day, there were no soda fountains, no coke, no chocolate bars. There were no fruit stores, winter and summer, making the streets of the towns beautiful. Life was pretty drab until September when the harvest was in and life was brightened up with the orange of pumpkins and the green of squash, and the glossy brilliance of apples, September was a far greater month in the life of the world, 50 years ago, than it is now. It was the month of color, of brilliance, of great heaps of fruit and vegetables. It was the gala month, lovelier far than May or June with their pretty flowers. But nowadays, we have colored up our world so that every month is as gala as September. Even February is a is a blaze of color, with our bright and noisy homes, our resplendent shop windows, our night streets ablaze with red and green and golden lights and signs. The apple was one of the things that lived on past September into the bleak world of February. Apples in a dish on the table, in February, were a spot of color long after even the memory of flowers had faded.”

“They still taste good,” sighed Jim.

“But in your grandma’s day,” I recollected, “except for a few jars of raspberry vinegar and maybe some cider in the fruit cellar, apples were the delicacy which fulfilled the craving that is now met with soft drinks, candy bars, sodas, sundaes…”

“Mmmm,” said Jim, staring either into space or at those apples hanging in the twilight like little moons. “Can you imagine kids preferring a sticky sundae to a lovely, fragrant, spicy, crisp apple!”

“Life,” I submitted, “consists largely of thinking up something to sell. What will appeal to our grandchildren will probably be as queer to us as ice cream sundaes or coke would appear to your apple-eating grandma when she was a girl.”

“The bins,” muttered Jimmie. “Down in the front cellar. Not a bright, hard cellar like ours today, but a dim, dusky soft, mysterious. strange-smelling cellar. And at one end, great sloping bins, each holding about a barrel of apples, with slats to take out as you used up the apples. And every week, somebody had to go down and sort the bins over to make sure there were none spoiling, to start them all spoiling. And when you opened the door leading into, this front cellar, the perfume of the apples would nearly sweep you off your feet.”

“This fall,” I declared, “with sugar rationed and a lot of other delicacies likely to go short, every family ought to lay in a couple of barrels of apples.”

Temptation’s Ugly Head

Something went thud in the dusk and Jimmie and I both leaped up and walked to the foot of the yard, examining the ground eagerly.

But when we reached the fence, there it was, a good ten feet on the other side; a great, dim red apple, lying on the ground under the tree.

The house was in complete darkness. In the neighboring yards, nobody was to be seen. I leaned on the low fence, resting my elbows across into the next yard. It was like feeling the water with your toes before going in swimming.

“Maybe,” said Jim, “if we went for a drive along some of the secondary highways, we could find some of these same apples. I’d love to know what they taste like.”

“I … ah…” I said.

But Jimmie turned on his heel and walked back to the steps.

“Nothing,” he said sternly, “doing!”

Another thud.

We held our breath.

One, two, three thuds!

Jim was leaning forward, peering into the dark.

“Boys,” he breathed. “It’s kids robbing the tree.”

We rose and crouched. We crept, as only boys bent on apple stealing can creep, along the hedge of Jim’s garden, and in its deep shadow paused and listened.

From this vantage we could now distinctly hear the scrape and swish of boughs being shaken and the thud of many apples falling.

“Hey,” came a raspy whisper of a boy’s voice. “Hey!” That’s enough for now. Come down and help fill the basket.”

“Okay,” came another harsh whisper from up the tree.

But Jim took a short run and a leap and cleared the fence and I came after him a little less athletically, and we grabbed and swung around in the dark, trying to catch the villains.

But they had vanished as if they had never been there.

We stood, listening. Not a sound. Not even a scurrying of feet.

“What a shame,” said Jim, lighting a match. “They’ve shaken down dozens.”

There was an empty basket on the ground and Jim picked it up.

“We’d better pick them up,” he suggested, “and put the basket oh his back steps. It don’t do them any good to lie here on the ground all night.”

“That’s the idea,” I said, as the match went out, and I reached down and felt around until my hand encountered a dandy.

“Mmmm,” I said. “They smell glorious. Spicy”

“Put it in here,” said Jim sharply coming over with the basket.

“I was just smelling it,” I informed him.

And I placed it in the basket and reached for another. But Jim stayed right beside me, almost touching me, so that the two of us picked up apples with no chance of

any little accidents that might occur.

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Feel this one, Jim. Here’s a dandy.”

“It’s as big as a northern spy,” said Jim passing his hand affectionately around the waxy beauty.

“I bet you,” I said, “this apple may be one of those kinds your grandma used to tell about. What were they?”

“Duchess of Oldenburg.” recited Jim quietly, in the dark. The pinnock, the tallow apple, the Vandevere and the swaar.”

“Jim,” I tempted huskily, “maybe this is a swaar.”

And at that instant a blaze of blinding light cut through the night and held us.

“Aha,” said a bitter voice from the invisible region back of the light. “Ahaaaaaa!”

“Who’s that?” demanded Jim with dignity.

“Who do you think it is?” retorted the hostile voice.

“Look,” said Jim, laying the basket down, “my friend and I were sitting on my back steps when he heard sounds…”

“You didn’t hear me,” retorted the voice grimly, and from the dazzle slowly approached the owner of the house, with a flashlight in one hand and a golf club in the other.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jim stiffly. “We heard sounds in your yard. We determined that it was a gang of boys robbing your apple tree. We saw your house was in darkness…”

“Indeed,” murmured the neighbor.

“We came down to chase them away,” went on Jim thickly, “and we saw they had shaken down a large number of apples and left a basket. So we thought we would gather them up and put them on your back step rather than leave them on the ground…”

“Gentlemen,” said the neighbor doggedly “when I drove up in front of my house I caught a glimpse of a match being it in this yard. I saw no boys running out of my drive or anywhere else. I go in the house and get a club. I come out and I hear you talking excitedly and quietly together. You were naming apples, old-fashioned apples, in the voice of apple addicts. Nobody knows the names of those old apples except people who…”

He paused.

Apple Addicts

“People who what?” I demanded indignantly. “We are both very fond of apples. That is why we took the trouble to try to protect yours.”

“I’m sorry if I have made a mistake,” said the neighbor simply.

“Skip it,” said Jim stiffly.

“Look,” said the neighbor, turning the flashlight on the basket, “gentlemen try one of these. Have a bite.”

“No, thanks,” declared Jim firmly, starting for the fence.

“Please,” cried the neighbor eagerly. I want you to taste one of them, just to prove I believe you entirely. Here, please try them.”

And he handed me the big one I had been holding, and gave Jim another beauty.

The man seemed so earnest, I obliged him. I bit widely into the fat red shoulder of the apple.

One chew and I spat it out. It puckered my mouth up. It tasted like a crabapple that had been improved by the Nazis.

“What on earth kind of apple is that?” I demanded.

“I’ve no idea,” said the neighbor eagerly. “It was some experiment, maybe, of some pioneer. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

But why do you guard them so?” I inquired.

“It’s a funny thing,” confessed the neighbor “But a man will guard his apple tree even if the apples aren’t fit for hogs.”

“Well…?” said Jim, over in the dark by the fence.

“Well good-night,” I said.

“Good-night, gentlemen; thanks all the same,” said the neighbor.

And Jim and I swung over the fence and up to his back steps, where we sat down listen to September’s crickets until the 10 o’clock news.

---

Editor’s Note: I have a low-res copy of the artwork that I have included below.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 5, 1942.

“AAWW,” said Jimmie Frise. “ker-CHOW!”

“Where did you get the cold?” I inquired.

“This is a war effort cold,” confided Jim thickly. “Instead of riding to work in my own car, I ride in the street car. I got soaked yesterday in the rain. And then I inhaled a nice, fat germ from somebody coughing down my neck. And besides, my clothes are half cotton now, instead of all wool. And furthermore, my shoes are wearing out.”

“Jim,” I asserted, “the biggest part of the war effort right now, at this time of year, is to guard against sickness and colds. Anybody who gets a bad cold these days is a public enemy, so long as he mingles around with the public, following his own, selfish interests. One careless person in at street car or even behind a counter or in a factory can infect a dozen before the day is done. And each one passes it on, until we’ve got, say, one thousand war workers laid up.”

“Well, is it my fault,” demanded Jimmie, “that somebody coughed in my face?”

“No, but it was your fault that you got your clothes wet, and your feet soaked,” I informed him sternly. “The Germans would be mighty happy if they could make a poison gas attack on a city and put one thousand workers out of business for a few days.”

“Oh, so I’m a poison gas attack, am I?” snorted Jim.

“A German agent,” I stated, “could do no better work than go and catch himself a swell juicy cold and then spend the day going coughing around the big department stores and riding up and down the elevators of the large skyscrapers, coughing and sneezing and spraying poison far and wide.”

“So I’m a German agent?” gritted Jim, miserably, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes.

“All I say is,” I advised, “at this time of year, you should get up in the morning in time to look out and see what the weather is like. And dress yourself accordingly. Most people just get up and dress in a sort of blind and woebegone stupor; and not until they reach the front door, on their hurried way to catch the street car, do they see what sort of a day it is.”

“I get up earlier than you do,” snuffled Jim.

“But I haven’t a cold,” I enunciated. “No matter how wet the day, if you keep your clothes from getting damp and your feet from getting wet, you will not catch a cold. And if you do get your clothes damp and your feet wet, don’t let any silly formality prevent you from drying your clothes and taking off your wet shoes. As a matter of fact, I think everybody ought to have a spare pair of light shoes or slippers at his place of work, to change into on wet days.”

“And a pair of dry socks,” added Jim.

“We’ve Been Sheltered”

“And no matter how shabby the raincoat,” I declared, “wear the raincoat. Or else a good big thick overcoat that can take the wet. An awful lot of people who have been sheltered for years by driving in their private motor cars are going to get wet and be exposed to cold germs now, in street cars and buses.”

“That’s my case, exactly,” agreed Jim, sadly, through his handkerchief. “We’ve been sheltered. Now we are exposed.”

“But the germs would never get you,” I asserted, “if you didn’t invite them. Germs are everywhere. Your throat and nose are full of them all the time. But they’re on the surface. They can’t get in. They can’t penetrate into your healthy tissue.”

“How does getting my feet wet let them in?” inquired Jim wetly. “Do they penetrate through my toes?”

“No,” I explained, having been reading all about it in an almanack the other day in a flour and feed store where I was trying to get some dog biscuits. “When you get your feet wet, your feet get cold. And the rest of your system starts trying to step up the heat so that the blood will go down and warm up your feet, which are sending out distress signals.”

“How does your system step up the heat?” demanded Jim.

“By staging a small fever,” I elucidated. “And at the same time, due to the cold, your skin is constricting a little bit, which clogs up the blood vessels in your nose, amongst other things. So you start sneezing, to loosen up the constriction. And the sneezing and the small fever, inflames the tissues of your nose and throat. And wham, the germs, that a moment ago were sitting all frustrated on the surface, promptly dig down into the inflamed and swollen tissues.

“That’s enough,” said Jim, “that’s enough! I can actually feel the little devils burrowing in my nose. Aawwww-ker CHOW!”

And I ducked smartly to one side to avoid the poison gas spray.

“First of all,” I concluded, “if you can’t get rubbers, wear good stout shoes. This is no time to consider style, Wear the toughest, roughest boots you’ve got. And buy some light penetrating shoe oil and take a little paint brush and paint the bottom of the soles liberally, and all around the crack where the sole joins the uppers.”

“It’s no use oiling my shoes now,” wheezed Jim. “I’ve got the cold.”

“This is the time,” I assured him, “so you won’t get wet feet again and help the cold hang on another week. Let’s see your shoes.”

Jim held his foot up.

“Why,” I protested, “Jim, you ought to be ashamed to wear light shoes like this in December. In the first place, the wet and rain and spray of walking can get on your ankles and do just as much damage as if the wet soaked through the soles. And besides, these soles are thin enough for a hot summer day.”

“I can’t afford new shoes,” said Jim. “I’m on a war budget.”

“Get them half soled,” I advised. “The next time you’re down town, go into one of those while-you-wait, shoe repair shops and get new soles.”

“I could wear goloshes,” figured Jimmie, “but the trouble with goloshes is they are so much trouble. I wear them down in the morning. Then, at noon, I look out and see it is a fine day, and instead of going to all the nuisance of putting on my goloshes, I figure it is only a block or so to the restaurant, so I go without them. And before I have gone 50 yards, I can feel the cold around my ankles.”

“And a slight tickling sensation in your nose?” I inquired alertly.

“Now that you mention it, yes,” said Jim. “It all seems to fit the picture.”

“Out in the country, on the farm,” I submitted, “they don’t have half the colds we have in towns and cities, although they walk around all day in wet and slush and mud. But they wear good dry footwear. And you will always see dry socks hanging on the clothes line in the farm kitchen.”

“In December,” summed up Jimmie, “we all ought to carry a spare pair of socks in our pocket.”

“It would be a swell idea,” I agreed. “My grandfather always…”

And then I stopped.

“What about your grandfather?” inquired Jim heavily.

“Jim,” I exclaimed. “Down cellar! In the old tool chest! A complete shoe repair outfit. I haven’t looked at it for years. Come on. Let’s go down cellar.”

And I led Jim down to the room beyond the furnace cellar where, in a dusty and forgotten corner, beyond even the farthest groping of family salvage hunters, a big old red tool chest that belonged to my grandfather and which my father in turn had kept for 30 years down in the dustiest and most forgotten corner of his cellar, reposed as forgotten as if it were a part of the foundations.

“I haven’t opened this chest,” I cried, as we lifted off the various old table leaves, baby bassinets and ironing boards, “for 20 years.”

“Why, it may be a regular mine of tools and stuff,” said Jim eagerly.

But of course, it wasn’t. My grandfather had been the kind of man who loved tools. He had all the essential ones, when this chest was new. But my father had taken out the hammers and the saws. And a couple of generations of exploring boys had extracted the chisels and braces and bits and augers.

Grandfather’s Tool Chest

When I lifted the lid, it was a ghostly spectacle of empty tool racks and empty sockets and brackets that met our eyes. Only a few old rusty cold chisels, a few misshapen and antique cardboard boxes of nails and screws were scattered over the bottom. But still fair and hard and bold was the shoemaker’s last¹, the iron foot on which the cobbler sets the shoe for its repairs. A brown paper parcel contained a leather cobbler’s apron, stiff as metal with age. And when Jimmie and I dragged the chest over under the furnace room light, we saw that there was a small package tied, with such brown string as they used in the gay nineties, to the shank of the last. And when I opened it, it was full of small shoemaker’s nails, a brittle coil of shoemaker’s thread and a tiny bundle of bristles which the shoemaker rolls with wax into the end of his thread. This bristle he uses like a needle, to thread the waxed end through his awl holes in the sole of the shoe.

“My grandfather,” I said, “would not think of taking a pair of shoes to the cobbler. Fifty years ago, a man was a fairly useful creature.”

“If I remember right,” said Jim, “a shoemaker’s last, like this, used to be as common an item in people’s cellars as a wash boiler. A man was not considered to be a man, unless he could repair the family’s shoes as readily as the wife could darn the socks, sew on buttons and mend the children’s clothes.”

“It was in my father’s time.” I said, exploring the little package further and finding a small round ball, about the size of a walnut, black as pitch, which I knew to be the cobbler’s wax, “that family shoe repairing started to go out of fashion. I should say about the year 1900 was the period, in cities and towns, anyway, when men started to decay.”

“Women can still darn and knit and mend,” said Jimmie, taking the cobbler’s wax and warming it in his hands, “Women can still make pickles and preserve fruit. Women, if the worst came to the worst, could this very day, knit us our underwear. tailor us our shirts, even cut and sew fairly presentable suits of clothes. But what can we men do?”

“We men,” I confessed, “are the softies. It is we who have surrendered to the modern age. Each of us can do only one thing. We have learned to be bookkeepers, salesmen, mechanics, truck drivers. And if we are asked to do anything different, we form a union to prevent it.”

Jimmie held out his hand and revealed the little black ball of cobbler’s wax already starting to soften.

I kneaded the black waxed thread. It began to soften.

“Jim,” I said, “if we only had a pair of soles! I’d cobble your shoes, by golly.”

Jim leaned down in the chest and slithered the dusty iron relics and perishing cardboard boxes about. And then with a sudden yell, rose up with a shoe sole in his grasp.

It was gray and dusty and hard as a board with age. But it was a shoe sole. And in another moment, I, exploring the chest, found two more. All three were of the same size, much too large for Jimmie’s shoes.

“But that is how the cobbler does,” I explained. “He sews the sole on and then trims it with a knife to the correct size.”

Putting On a New Sole

And down we both bent to explore for the cobbler’s knife and awls.

“Here it is,” I announced surely, holding up the old curved knife.

“That’s not a cobbler’s knife,” declared Jim. “That’s a skinning knife. A cobbler’s knife cuts with the inside of the curve. That’s sharp on the outside of the curve.”

“Would my grandfather,” I inquired, “have a skinning knife? It stands to reason, Jim, that this knife belongs with the shoemaker’s last, the leather and the rest of it.”

So we selected a good spot under the light. And there I set up the cobbler’s shop. With neatsfoot oil² I annointed the leather soles, and such is the deep and true character of leather that in a few moments of bending and rubbing, the neatsfoot penetrated and the life came back into that ancient hide until it might have been a sole fresh bought from the store.

And a little more neatsfoot on the creases of the cobbler’s apron loosened up its antique brittleness so that I could fit it on very comfortably. Since I could find no awls, we decided not to sew the soles on Jim’s shoes, but use the nails we found tied in the little package.

“After all,” I pointed out, as Jimmie surrendered his first shoe to me, “sewing is an art and must be learned. But driving a nail comes as natural as throwing a stone.”

“The cobbler,” instructed Jimmie, “always secures the sole in position with a few nails first. Then he proceeds to nail it all around, regular.”

“And with a little shifting and sliding, I got the sole in a promising position and drove the first nail.

“The cobbler,” said Jim, “carries the nails in his mouth.”

“At least,” I remarked,” we have more sanitary ideas nowadays, even if we men have lost our handicraft.”

The first nail missed the edge of Jim’s old sole. The second was too far inland. But at the third try, I got the nail just about a third of an inch from the edge of the shoe. At four more points. I inserted nails, making sure that the sole was evenly and symmetrically placed in position.

Then it was a simple matter to proceed, in an artistically curved line, all around the sole, spacing the nails just about as they were spaced in our own shoes. The wide new sole prevents you from seeing underneath, when the shoe is on the last. So you have to do it by feel.

The first 10 nails gradually worked further and further in on the sole, until, near the toe, I found my row of nails was a good inch and a half away from the edge of Jimmie’s shoe.

So I used a screwdriver and pried it all loose and proceeded to withdraw the nails with a pair of pliers.

“Look,” said Jimmie, “how about practising on an old shoe first? I can wait. Besides it’s not too good for my cold to be down here…”

Cobblers are Silent

But cobblers are silent and intent men. I paid no attention, but leaned closer to my work, wrapped my legs around the last stand, and having the holes of the nails of my first try to guide me, I laid a new course of nails along the sole, following much nearer the edge of Jim’s shoe, so that as I rounded the toe, I was within a quarter inch of the edge. Jim was sitting forward anxiously.

“That row of nails looks like a worm track,” he remarked.

“They won’t show,” I assured him shortly. Cobblers don’t talk much. “You can’t see the nails in a shoe’s sole.”

Thus I drew the curve around the toe, and ran a fairly true course down the outside of the sole, only occasionally changing direction a little, and now and then putting in two nails, side by side, in case of doubt.

And with a final bang and tap, I finished the little space across against the heel.

“What’s the matter, with that?” I inquired triumphantly, holding the shoe up with the new sole, projecting, of course, all around, but clinging snugly and stoutly to Jim’s shoe.

“Now comes the ticklish part,” said Jim. “Cut very gently. Take it off in little slices.”

“I’ve watched shoemakers,” I said, briefly.

It is funny how uncommunicative cobbling makes you.

With the neatly curved knife, I started to slice, holding the shoe against me and drawing with the knife as I had seen cobblers do.

“Eeeeaaaassyyy,” warned Jimmie, as I started around the curve.

But the neatsfoot had perhaps not penetrated as deeply as I had thought. The knife made a quick jump. And sliced a large gash in the toe.

“Ruined!” yelled Jimmie, snatching it from me.

So I lent him a pair of goloshes to wear home.

And worst of all, as I let Jim out the front door, I was seized by a large, violent sneeze. “Now you’ve done it,” I accused.

But he just pulled the door shut in my face and stamped down my steps in my goloshes.

---

Editor’s Notes: The title “Cobbler, Stick to Your Last”, is a term that that means people should focus on what they know and not try to do things they are not familiar with.

1. Details on the cobbler’s last is here. ↩︎
2. Neatsfoot oil is a yellow oil rendered and purified from the shin bones and feet (but not the hooves) of cattle. “Neat” in the oil’s name comes from an Old English word for cattle. Neatsfoot oil is used as a conditioning, softening and preservative agent for leather. ↩︎