Tag: 1942 Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 6, 1942.

“Hey, look,” interrupted Jimmie Frise, “your gas gauge shows empty!”

“Aw, that,” I said. “I fixed it so it always shows empty. It keeps me worried all the time about how little gas I have. And, besides, it’s a useful dodge for your friends. You can always show your friends that you haven’t any gas, in case they suggest you drive them places.”

“It’s very good of you to drive me,” said Jim humbly.

“It isn’t my gas I’m wasting on you,” I informed him. “It’s my tires. There are 20 miles in a gallon of gas, and that worries us terribly. But there are only 15,000 miles in a tire, with luck. But that doesn’t worry us at all. Yet every mile you roll a tire, you are one mile nearer the end of your driving days.”

“Of course, we can all live in hope of the war being over,” mused Jimmie, “before our tires give out.”

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” I quoted.

“And some day,” sighed Jimmie, “the war will be over. All things come to an end.”

“And I wonder where the peace conference will be held,” I idled. “London, Berlin, Washington, Tokyo or Moscow?”

“Maybe in Ottawa,” suggested Jim. “Or maybe in Rio de de Janeiro. There is a lot of war ahead of us yet.”

“And doubtless a lot of surprises,” I said. “The surprises, with the exception of Russia, have mostly been against us. According to the law of averages we ought to be getting a few pleasant surprises any day now.”

“We sure can take it,” declared Jim. “Think of this time just two years ago. Let’s see: Dunkirk was just over. The whirlwind in France was coming to an end. The last of the British army was being rescued from Belgium. We were holding our breath the way we hold it when we watch our house burn down.”

“What immense changes,” I added, “have come over us all since that day! Think of how we felt about the United States then. And how we thought about Russia. Think how alone we felt then. Think how great a company we feel today. Yet not only are the people with us utterly, completely different from what we thought they were two years ago, but we ourselves are different. Not one of us is the same person he was two years ago. The only thing that is not changed is the mere skin which contains us.”

“I don’t know who I feel sorrier for in this war,” said Jimmie, “the young people or the old people. I feel sorry for the young men and women because their lives are interrupted, broken, altered, sometimes shattered, by the war. Yet the young ones at least have the thrill, the adventure.”

“And the pain and the death,” I reminded.

“Everything Taken From Us”

“But the middle-aged and old people,” went on Jim, “have the uprooting, the surrender, the change, the loss, the sense of guilt. It was our generation that stood by while the world slowly toppled into hell.”

“It is the young ones I feel sorry for,” I asserted. “Think of the lovers parted. Think of the young years wasted in hard, stupid soldiering…”

“Aw, rats,” cried Jimmie. “Do you realize that there are tens of thousands of young Canadian boys today flying airplanes? And not one of them would likely ever have been in an airplane, let alone flying one, if it hadn’t been for war?”

“Are you in favor of war?” I demanded hotly.

“Certainly not,” replied Jim, “but I am not being stupid. I am looking at what can be said in favor of things as they are. For all except the favored few, in this world, life is a pretty drab adventure. During a man’s early twenties he has a little fun, a little romance, a little adventure. He falls in love. He gets his job and starts the battle of working up. But soon he has to settle down to the humdrum round of life, the job no longer exciting, the sodden round of days, up in the morning, off to work, back home to bed.”

“Let me tell you, sir,” I informed him, “that very thing is what we are fighting so fiercely now to re-establish!”

“What chance,” continued Jim, “has the average young man of having any fun in life, normally? Only the crafty, the smart, the shrewd, the foxy get any fun in peacetime. The plain, everyday guy is a cog in somebody else’s wheel before he is thirty, as a rule. But along comes war. And every man can be a man. No more does the manly guy have to make way for the foxy guy. No more does the young kid from the sticks have to live little more excitingly than the cows in his pasture. No sir: the foxy guys, the crafty, the shrewd, the wise, find themselves in an awful hole. It is men who are wanted. And men get their innings.”

“What terrible nonsense,” I interrupted.

“So, with nothing but their manhood,” climaxed Jim, “the men of the nation get their innings. They become soldiers, airmen, sailors, fighters. They go forth to see the world. They journey thousands of miles. They mix with their fellow men, and while the foxy guys still have the edge on them in the early stages, the nearer they get to the fight, the less they are troubled or gypped by the wise guys. Until at last, in battle, they are men. They get their promotions, their decorations. They rate as men among men, not as foxes among foxes. If peace had continued throughout their lives, they would have barely lived at all, except as men in a world in which manhood is one of the minor qualifications.”

“You’re a Socialist,” I accused.

“But I feel sorry,” said Jim, without much sorrow,” for all us middle-aged and elderly birds. Everything is being taken from us, our property, our privileges, all the things we have worked so hard to gather around us and snuggle down into. We are like owls, whose nest has been discovered and the tree cut down. In daylight.”

A Flustered Set of Owls

“We weren’t such a bad generation,” I said. “We had our good points.”

“But we’re a pretty flustered lot of owls, right now,” said Jim. “Is there anything more like an owl disturbed in sunlight than one of us who has all his life been contemptuous of the Yankees and hated the Russians trying to reorganize his life-long beliefs? We flop from branch to branch, trying to get a comfortable grip. And we blink so.”

“You’re not really sorry for us older people at all,” I stated. “You are making fun of us.”

“Well, there is one member of the younger generation I feel sorry for,” said Jim, indicating a young air force man who was standing beside a dilapidated old motor car on the far side of the stop-street intersection where I had pulled up.

“He’s in a dither,” I admitted. The young chap was tall and fair-haired. In his cap was the little white stripe, the badge of distinction, which means he is in training for air crew – that, is, to become a pilot, navigator, observer or bomb aimer.

He was standing beside the car, clutching his cap in his hand. And he seemed to be talking to himself. His face was flushed, his hair rumpled, his eyes wild and he was glaring excitedly up street and down the street and turning to look in the car window at the dashboard.

I drove across the intersection and slowed as we passed him.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he moaned as we passed. “Oh, OH, oh!”

Jim opened the car door and stepped out.

“Hey, young man,” said Jim, “what’s up?”

“Oh, oh, OH,” was all the boy could say.

“Here, snap out of it,” said Jim, taking the boy’s sleeve. “What’s the matter.”

“It’s two,” said the brindle-haired boy, in a dazed way,” it’s two minutes to three!”

He raised his wrist and looked at his watch as if it were a rattlesnake.

“Okay,” said Jim. “What’s the matter. It can’t be this bad. Can we help?”

“Married,” said the boy, swallowing. He had one of those large Adam’s apples like a knee cap in his neck, which clunked up and down conspicuously above his air force collar.

“Indeed,” said Jim. “When?”

“Three o’clock,” said the boy. “No gas.”

“Well, hop in” shouted Jimmie, grabbing the boy’s elbow. “Here, hop in! Where to?”

“My best man, my best man,” moaned the young airman, resisting and drawing back. “He’s gone for gas.”

I jumped out of the car and went around the other side of the boy so as to lend Jimmie a hand.

“Come on,” I commanded. “Step lively.”

“Oh, oh, OH,” said the young fellow, fighting us free. “Wait a minute. My best man. He went away 20 minutes ago to get gas at the nearest gas station. He’ll…”

Three o’clock,” I announced firmly, showing my watch. “Do you want the girl or don’t you?”

“My best MAN,” shouted the young fellow fiercely. “How do I…”

“We’ll serve as your best man, kid,” I shouted back, trying to bring order into his chaotic mind.

“We ran out of GAS,” he bellowed back at me, clinging to the car door handle to resist our pulls and pushes. “Of all the silly, bloody things. It’s 3 o’clock. She’ll…”

“Where’s the wedding?” I demanded quietly, to appease, the frantic frame of mind

of the poor boy.

“The church,” he said. “The… the big church….on Bloor St. You know the church? It has a steeple.”

“Look,” I soothed. “Hop in our car. Your best man has met some difficulty. Maybe he can’t get gas. Has he got a permit?”

“I gave him mine,” said the boy, biting his lip to pull himself together quietly… “He should have been back in five minutes. We had plenty of time, even as it was. But he hasn’t come back. He hasn’t come BACK. And here I am sitting, watching my watch…”

“Hop to it, lad,” said Jim, firmly taking the boy’s elbow. “Pull yourself together. Never mind your best man. Let’s get to the church.”

“Okay,” said the young man heavily. And he swung into the back seat of the car. And in a swipe, I had her in motion and we were down the street, heading for Bloor.

“Which church?” I inquired again. “The big gray one? On the south side?”

“That’s it,” said the groom. “My best man knows all about it. He was there this morning and last night both, for the rehearsals.”

“Weren’t you?” I demanded.

“I couldn’t get out until noon,” said the boy, exhausted. “I left my leave as late as possible so as to have more time for the honeymoon. So, Bill – that’s my best man – attended to all the details.”

“Listen, son,” I reassured him, “this is all as easy as pie. It’s only five minutes past. Everything will be waiting. The minister will in the vestry. Your bride will be out in the car, in front, waiting for your arrival the signal to enter, on her father’s arm. These church weddings are pie. All that’s going on now is, they are playing the organ a little longer, the guests are having a little longer to sit and look at each other’s hats, and the only guy that is at all excited is your best man, wherever he is…”

“I can’t understand what happened to him,” grated the young flier, who was appreciably calmed now by our soothing talk and the fact that he was en route.

“Two blocks to go,” I cried cheerily.

“And this way,” said Jimmie, “it will be all over quicker.”

I could see, far ahead, the throng of cars in front of the church, the usual gathering of spectators around the steps and pavement in front of the church. We drove to a space left in front of the vestry, and even as the policeman strolled towards us, we all three were out of the car and up the sidewalk to the vestry and in the door.

All was silent.

The vestry was deserted.

I tip-toed over and pushed the swinging green baize doors that led into the church, to peek in the crack.

The sight that met my eyes froze me with horror.

There, in the packed church, the gowned clergyman was in the very act of handing the ring to the bridegroom, with the bride standing there and the best man and all. And the groom was an airman.

It all came to me in a flash.

The best man was perfidiously marrying the bride for himself!

“Quick,” I hissed, beckoning the groom and Jimmie towards me. “Quick!”

“Wha… wha…” said the groom, relapsing into his terror again.

“There’s your best man,” I hissed, “marrying your girl!”

In the Wrong Church

The groom peeked through the crack. He kicked the green baize doors apart. At the very instant the ring was about to be placed on the bride’s finger, he kicked those doors wide open with a great bang and strode into the church.

Jim and I stood transfixed. Talk about romance! Talk about excitement. Oh, to be young once more.

The groom took five terrific paces forward in front of a paralyzed church, minister, bride, and all.

Then he halted. Then he executed the perfect Manning Pool about turn, in the best precision drill style.

And towards us he marched back, his heels ringing on the stone floor.

“Wrong church,” he said, as he passed us.

Wham went the green baize doors. Out the vestry we went, helter skelter, just as the cop was starting to take down our car license number on his nasty little one dollar pad.

Into the car we bounced.

“Hey,” said the cop.

“Wrong church,” I said to him, stepping on starter.

“Oh,” said the cop.

We raced west three blocks.

“Will this be it?” I cried over my shoulder.

“Hey, yes, whoa, wait,” yelled the boy, half opening the door. “There’s my bride, just the way you said, in the car with her father.”

“In the side door,” I yelled, as he streaked across the street heading straight for his bride.

“Okay,” he shouted back, turning to point. “My best man.”

And coming out the vestry door was another airman, as red and tousled and flustered as the groom, waving his arms and gesticulating.

“All’s well that ends well,” sighed Jimmie.

And we blocked traffic for a couple of minutes as we sat and watched the groom and the best man pull themselves together on the vestry sidewalk and then, side by side, in the best Manning Pool tradition, step off by the left and march, stiff, straight and chins high, into the vestry.

Then we heard the organ resounding in the church and still another airman appeared on the church steps and bowed stiffly towards the bride’s car.

And her Daddy got out, poor, bewildered, excited old boy, and bowed his pretty little daughter out, and gave her his arm.

And they went up the church steps, amidst the crowd, all eyes leaping, all mouths open.

Including ours.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 18, 1942.

“Air,” said Jimmie Frise, “is about the only thing they can’t ration.”

“And water,” I suggested.

“Even water is rationed, indirectly,” asserted Jim, “through the rationing of the things you put in water, like sugar, tea, coffee, soap. But air is free. It is the one thing they can never control.”

“How about poisoning it with poison gas?” I inquired.

“Purely incidental, and purely temporary,” said Jim lightly. “They have rationed what we eat, what we drink, what we wear. They have controlled our roof and shelter. How we live, what we can buy, where we can go – all these things are under control. The only thing we can count upon in unlimited quantity is air.”

“Let us breathe deep,” I said devoutly.

“Sometimes,” mused Jimmie thoughtfully, “when I look upon the civilized world of Europe and America in their present condition, I have to smile even in the face of all the tragedy. For in this vast, storm-tossed scene, the only person who is free or happy is the person who has nothing.”

“Nothing?” I questioned.

“Those who are suffering the most, right now,” stated Jim, “are those who possess the most. The rich. The prosperous. It goes for countries as well as for individuals. Compare the freedom today of a hobo and a great industrialist.”

“Most great industrialists are in the war up to their necks,” I asserted. “It is only the would-be industrialists, the ones who couldn’t quite make the grade, who are yelping.”

“I am speaking,” said Jimmie, “of freedom and happiness. If the rich man is a good man, he is working as never before in his career; a prisoner of his great possessions, all of which must now bear fruit as never before. If he is a bad man, think how he must be agonized by the taxes, the restrictions, the controls.”

“A hobo is a happy man,” I agreed.

“The nations that are suffering the most,” went on Jim, “are those that have been accustomed to the most. And is true not only of possessions like money or property. It is true of men with sons. The man with the most sons today, whether they are in the war or not, is the unhappiest. And it is true of education and other spiritual possessions. The man with the most brains, the man with the greatest intelligence, is today the least happy and the least free. He is a prisoner of his thoughts, the way the wealthy man is prisoner of his possessions.”

“A hobo,” I agreed, “sitting on the side of the road, not even thinking, is the happiest man in the world today.”

“And the freest,” pointed out Jim.

Small Farm Best

“What makes you smile, then,” I inquired “when you look upon a world in such a mess?”

“Just the thought,” explained Jim, “that all over the western world of Europe and America we have been so desperate to gain the very things that would steal our freedom. The more you own and the more you know, the less free you are. And in the golden age of the past century, we have, like maniacs, been fighting to get into prison. We have invented and manufactured and amassed every conceivable thing. We have pursued knowledge and education like madmen. And having got it all, we now know that a small house, in the midst of a few acres of land, with a well and a rope to lower a bucket, and a plow and a horse and a haystack, are all that the human spirit can possess without going nuts.”

“Why, Jim,” I protested, “that’s worse than communism.”

“It’s the next thing after communism,” agreed Jimmie. “Communism is old stuff. It’s over and done with. It’s here. Now we’ve got to look beyond, to the next stage.”

“You’d have us all peasants,” I snorted.

“Several thousand years ago,” declared Jim, “the Chinese tried civilization, as we know it, and discarded it as silly. By painful experiment, they discovered that possessions are merely a burden. Only the fools submit to possessing things, beyond the merest essentials. A cup, plate, knife. That’s about all a man needs. And usually he can borrow them, from some fool who has two.”

“Have you gone Oriental?” I demanded.

“We’re all going Oriental,” said Jimmie. “We are all wishing we didn’t have half what we’ve got. Already, we are giving things away. And the first things we are giving away are our most cherished beliefs. The next thing will be our property. It’s too much trouble.”

“What started this?” I muttered unhappily.

“It started,” remembered Jimmie, “with me saying that the only thing they couldn’t control was air.”

“And a fine remark that was,” I submitted.

“What I had in mind,” said Jim, shifting his feet from the office window sill to his desk, “was a boat.”

“A boat?” I protested, since most of these casual ideas of Jim’s are tied up to a stump somewhere.

“A sail boat,” said Jim. “There’s nothing like a sail boat. A dinghy. Or a little sloop of some kind. With a sail boat and air, you are the nearest thing to being free there is in all the world.”

“Aha,” said I, seeing light.

“We thought when we invented engines for boats,” said Jim, “that we had made a great step forward towards freedom. But a boat sails the sea today at its peril. And you can’t get fuel to run even a little launch.”

“I can still paddle a canoe,” I asserted.

“If you are well and strong,” countered Jim. “But you can be as weak as a cat and still go places in a sail boat. The wind takes you. And they can’t control wind. Or ration it. That is why the Chinese still like sail boats. We call them junks. Were we ever wrong!”

“What could we do with a sail boat?” I inquired.

“We could go to work in a sail boat,” said Jim calmly. “We could keep it tied up to a wharf out at Sunnyside. And in the morning, we could come down the street, get in the boat and sail down to the foot of Yonge St. There, we could get permission to tie it up at one of the company piers. And at the end of the business day, we could walk down to the lakefront; get in the boat and sail home westward to Sunnyside again.”

“If the wind was right,” I interposed.

“We can always tack,” asserted Jim, the sailor.

“And take half the morning,” I scoffed.

“We could get up early,” retorted Jim. “And besides, business life isn’t going to be half as strenuous as it was. With gas rationing and crowded street cars and everything, business just isn’t going to be in a position to expect people to be at work on time. Anyway, it will be the bosses who will be latest.”

“I suppose we are going to take life a lot easier,” I admitted, “now that the means of speed are being taken from us.”

“Would you go shares in a sail boat with me?” demanded Jim.

“Are you serious?” I retorted.

“Perfectly serious,” declared Jim. “We can’t go touring in the country because of the gas rationing. So we will go sailing on the lake. We have no means of taking a load of anything from here to Hamilton. But if we have a sail boat, and a fair wind, we can get to Hamilton in five hours. A boat with sails is, in view of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, the most practical possession in the whole world.”

“We’d look ridiculous coming to work in a sail boat,” I scoffed. “In Toronto.””

“Let us hope we will never look more ridiculous,” said Jimmie. “In Toronto.”

So I said I would go halves on a small, cheap sail boat with him. Whereupon Jimmie picked up the telephone very business-like and called a man.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I protested; because you don’t agree to a philosophical proposition like a sail boat as if it were an ordinary business deal.

But Jim had, it seems, already done quite a bit of snooping for a sail boat and had located just what we wanted from a man down near the foot of Cherry St., towards Ashbridge’s Bay.

A Home-Made Dinghy

“We’ll be out to get her,” said Jimmie over the phone, “at about 2 p.m. We’ll sail her to a boathouse I know up at Sunnyside.”

“Hah,” said Jim, hanging up.

“How much?” I inquired grimly.

“Fifteen bucks, each,¹” said Jim. “Sail and all,”

“It can’t be much of a boat at that price,” I submitted. “I’ll bet anything you like that boats are more in demand now than ever.”

“Thirty bucks,” said Jim. “Hull, sail, mast, boom, rudder and gear, all in first-class shape.”

“It doesn’t sound reasonable to me,” I muttered.

And when we arrived at the old tumble-down boathouse on Toronto Bay down beside the coal piles, and were led through a sort of Davy Jones’ junk shop of boats and the carcasses of old boats picked clean long ago, and were shown our dinghy, it was obvious I was right.

It was a home-made dinghy about 10 feet long. It was old. It was warped. Its mildewed sail, when we unrolled it, was patched and patched over the patches. The ropes looked rotten to me. But Jim was undismayed.

“What do you expect for $30?” he demanded haughtily when I attempted to point out some of the deficiencies.

“I’ll put a pail in,” said the tired old boy who closed the deal with us. “She’ll probably leak a little at first.”

“Naturally,” said Jim. “They always leak at first.”

The three of us hauled and lifted the dinghy out of the old boathouse and down to some decaying wooden piles in the water which used to be a dock in the great old days of sail. We lowered her, and the water spurted through all the seams.

“Let her fill up for a little while,” sighed the old boy wearily, “while we step the mast and rig the sail.”

The mast had a bend in it. Two of the rings that hold the sail to the mast had broken away from the sail, and the old man had to go and slowly find a cigar box with sail needle, thread and a sailor’s palm². And he sewed the rings back on.

Then we stepped the mast, and wedged it into place with some wooden chips. The rope broke twice while hoisting the sail, but the old boy went slowly away again, into the staggering boat house, and brought some marlin twine with which to splice the rope.

“You can bail now,” he gusted heavily. “See if she leaks faster than you can bail.”

I got down and bailed. It took 17 full pails and 20 short dips to reach the floor boards. An invisible slow trickle was still coming in which you could see if you sat and watched one special spot on the floor boards.

“Aye, ye, Sir!”

“Let her soak overnight, Jim,” I suggested, “and we’ll come down tomorrow and take her away.”

“When I buy a boat,” said Jimmie, “I’ve got a boat. I’ll sail and you bail. It’s a swell southwest wind. We’ll be at Sunnyside in less than one hour.”

I dipped a few more part pailfuls out. I glanced across the bay. Toronto Bay is not exactly a noble body of water. But it is an expansive, dirty and cold one from over the deck of a small, wet, leaky dinghy.

“Okay?” cried Jim.

“Aye, aye, sir,” I said with a feeble effort.

Jim in his young days, before the old war, used to be quite a sailor on Toronto Bay. Personally, I like prairies. Or, better, mountains.

The old man took hold of the mast and headed her into the breeze. Jim got set at the tiller and close hauled her. Then the old man gave us a shove and we were off.

“Bail,” said Jim, calmly; and the boat heeled slightly over in the breeze, causing the little water in her to slosh down to the low side, wetting my feet and legs clammily.

“Head straight for the Western Gap,” I warned, as Jim with a fixed grin only to be seen on the faces of amateur sailors, hauled hard and headed our craft for Hanlan’s Point.

“We’ll beat up, a little,” hailed Jimmie, “and then run down on the gap.”

I bailed. The dinghy’s heeling over had discovered new and larger cracks in the hull, and I suddenly found the water was coming in at least as fast as I could bail if I bailed all the time.

“Hey, Jim,” I warned. “Don’t waste any time. Don’t get too far from shore.”

“She’ll tighten up,” halloed Jim, “in no time.”

The mast creaked. The sail, which had more creases in it than any sail I had ever noticed, slatted; small things popped and rattled; something groaned; and the water slapping the hull seemed just outside. It seemed, I should say, almost in.

“Jim, steer closer to shore,” I commanded. “This water is getting ahead of me.”

“Bail,” ordered Jim cheerfully, hauling the sheet tighter.

Suddenly a hoarse whistle roared almost in my ear, I straightened to behold a tug bearing square down on us.

“Jim!” I roared.

“Sail has the right of way over steam,” said Jim, with a confident and dreamy smile on his face. And he never even shifted muscle.

The tug, with another fierce toot, swerved slightly and passed behind us so close that the captain could have spit aboard us if he had had a spit ready. But he heaved a few big, loose cusses aboard us instead.

Shipwrecked

The swell from the tug came rushing high and crested straight for our stern.

“Jim, look out,” I shouted.

But Jim just leaned farther out and took another haul on the sheet. The big wave lifted us the way a lady lifts a rug to shake it. It gave us a shake and a snap.

The mast cracked, right across, like a stick of macaroni. The sail, with a calm slow bulge, folded quietly down on the heaving water. The dinghy, with Jim crouched beside me, remained flat.

Slowly the tug made a large circle and came back to us at quarter speed.

“What’s the big idea,” said the master hoarsely, “sailing an old hencoop like that around at this time of year? Don’t you know the frost ain’t out of spars yet?”

“Can you tow us?” demanded Jim coldly, a man of sail to a man of steam.

“To Hanlan’s Point, and no further,” said the master. “I’m tyin’ up there for the night.”

“Very good,” said Jim.

So they took us aboard and we hand-reefed the sail back aboard the dinghy and laid it, mast and all, inboard and Jim lashed her down.

“If she fills,” warned the tug master, “I don’t stop.”

“Go ahead,” said Jimmie.

And the tug, which was full of rumble and roar and power, leaped to life and surged and plunged across the bay to Hanlan’s Point, dragging the dinghy close behind, nose uplifted, in the churn and wake.

At Hanlan’s we paid the skipper $2 for his consideration and then found a local man who said we could haul our dinghy up on his lawn until we could make arrangements to sail her on the next leg of her journey westward. Then we took the last ferry home.

But there was a high gale of wind last night.

And I have hopes that when we go back tomorrow, the dinghy will have washed away.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. $30 in 1942 would be $572 in 2026. ↩︎
2. A sailmaker’s palm is a specialized leather tool worn over the hand, featuring a metal thimble plate with divots to safely push thick sewing needles through canvas, leather, or heavy fabrics. ↩︎

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.