The Work of Greg Clark and Jimmie Frise

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Cobbler, Stick to Your Last

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.

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. ↩︎

Very Special!

November 28, 1942

75 cents in 1942 would be $13.75 in 2024. 15 cents would be $2.75.

The Longest Way ‘Round

At last we shoved her into the nearest service station. “I certainly feel terribly,” said Jim.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 14, 1942.

“Come on,” said Jimmie Frise, sticking his head in the door, “I’ll drive you home.”

“Thanks, Jim,” I responded, “but I think I’ll just take the street car. I have a few things to do.”

“I’ll wait,” said Jim, coming in and sitting down.

“No, no: you go on, Jim,” I urged. “I don’t know how soon I’ll be ready.”

“Heck, it’s nearly supper time,” said Jim. “I’ll wait.”

“Jim, to be perfectly frank,” I submitted. “I prefer to go home by street car. I’ve sort of got into the way of it now. I actually look forward to my nice, comfortable ride home before supper…”

“Nice,” scoffed Jimmie indignantly. “Comfortable. With people trampling all over you? Besides, it’s raining cats and dogs.”

“Please, Jim,” I interrupted him.

“At my age, a man likes to follow a routine. I have got into the way….”

Jimmie rose from the chair and looked at me a little hotly.

“For the first time in weeks,” he said, “I have brought my car down to work. Just to loosen up the grease. Just to turn the battery over. And it’s raining. And I offer you a lift…”

“It should be a treat, Jim,” I confessed, “but somehow it isn’t. I haven’t the slightest desire to ride home in a motor car any more. The very idea of it bores me. I can’t understand how, for years and years, I went to all the trouble and nuisance of motoring to work. The trouble of getting the car out of the garage, unlocking and locking the doors: the business of wheeling it out into the street and entering traffic. The dreary business of sizzling along the Lake Shore Road in a stampede of cars. The slow nerve-pulling business of struggling up through the downtown nine o’clock traffic and fighting my way into the parking station. I look back on those days with a kind of horror. There wasn’t a day of it that I did not get myself into a temper, with my blood pressure all steamed up, over some other driver. Either somebody drove too fast or somebody cut in on me. Or downtown, somebody sneaked up on the wrong side of me, at a stop-light, and tried to get the jump past me. I didn’t realize, until I started using the street car, how much of an endless quarrel driving oneself to work was.”

“Look at the rain,” said Jim, going over and staring out the window.

“Once you get used to the street car,” I pursued firmly, “nothing compares with it. It is effortless. Tired after the day’s work, you climb on board and sag down into your seat…”

“If you can get a seat,” put in Jim.

“…and you can practically snooze all the way home. You can read the newspaper. I haven’t read the newspaper for years as thoroughly as I have the past few months of street car riding. In the old days, when I drove to and from work, all I did was take a quick gander at the headlines. Now I even read the editorials.”

“Clear up your desk,” said Jim. “And let’s get going.”

The Comfortable Feeling

“Jim,” I pleaded, “you go on. I’ll be quite a few minutes yet. I have a couple of things I want to read on the way home in the street car tonight. I won’t get another opportunity. I have set these things aside all day to read on the way home.”

“Read them in my car,” said Jim. “I’ll turn on that little dome light in the car.”

“One of the things about street cars is,” I said resolutely, “that you don’t have to talk to anybody. Very rarely do you know anybody in a street car. And if you do, they usually have got a seat already, and don’t come bothering you. In a street car, you just nod at your friends and hurry past to find a seat all by your lovely lonesome. A street car ride, you might say, offers you about the only real solitude you will find all day. It is the only escape from your family or from your office. You are completely and happily alone. You can read. Or you can just sit and look out the window.”

Jim was standing looking at me very hurt.

“What you are saying is,” he accused, “that you don’t want my company home? Is that it?”

“I have your company all day at the office,” I pointed out kindly.

“So you’re tired of my company,” said Jim, walking towards the door.

“If you don’t want to understand me, Jim,” I said. “All I am trying to do is preserve to myself a little new-found liberty and freedom that I have discovered in the morning and the evening. A little solitude…”

“Good-night,” said Jim hollowly, passing out the door.

After thirty years of partnership, you can’t allow even these little misunderstandings to distress an old friend. So I leaped up and grabbed my coat and hat and caught Jim at the elevator.

“After all, it’s a filthy night,” I grinned at him. “And besides, we’re having pot roast at my house tonight. I’d forgotten that.”

Jim said nothing.

“When we have pot roast,” I added, as we went down in the elevator, “it is good to get home a little ahead of time, so you can go into the kitchen and smell it cooking. Half the virtue of a pot roast is the way it excites your appetite.”

The way the people in the elevator turned and looked down at me, especially the business girls who were probably going home to get something out of the ice box, spurred me on:

“Pot roast,” I gloated. “With carrots, white onions, several stalks of celery and especially the leaves of the celery. I think it is the leaves of the celery, in a pot roast, that give it that…”

One girl groaned. So I quit.

Outside, the rain pelted cold and hissing. We ducked along in shelter of the buildings and reached Jim’s parking lot and picked our way across the muddy expanse.

“A fine night,” cried Jim, “to stand on a street corner waiting for a car!”

“It’s astonishing,” I said, sliding into the car seat, “how skilful you become at finding shelter, when you are a street car traveller.”

Jim drove out the parking lot, peering anxiously through the flooding windshield. The downtown was jammed with cars, street cars and trucks and dark huddled swarms of home-goers blindly bending along.

“The worse the night,” observed Jimmie, “the worse the traffic. I bet you would have to wait ten or fifteen minutes for a street car on a night like this.”

“All exaggeration,” I assured him, “arising from the impatience born of the motor car age. I have timed myself, even on nights like this; and the longest wait isn’t five minutes.”

“And then you get into a steaming car,” snorted Jim, “and some girl’s umbrella trickles water down your pant leg!”

We made a turn, with motor cars honking at us savagely and street car bells clanging and muttered curses coming through the windows from the pedestrians. Jim was sitting up stiff at the wheel, tense and strained, peering through the windshield like the pilot of a bomber over Saarbrucken.

“It’s restful, once you’re aboard a street car,” I submitted.

“Do you want to get out?” demanded Jim sharply.

“Go ahead, go ahead,” I said hastily.

Tense While Driving

And down the jammed street we toiled, in slow lurches and jolts, three blocks to the Lake Shore highway, where the stampede flattened itself out into the long race home.

The traffic balked and speeded; even in this wide highway, with no cross streets to harry it, traffic still pulled at all the nerves, the car ahead suddenly slacking, the car behind screeching up on you, and cars beside racing past, with arrogant horns braying….

“I’d almost forgotten what it was like,” I mused.

“I hope I’m not boring you,” remarked Jim.

“Take it easy, don’t hurry for me, Jim,” I assured him.

And he relapsed into another silence, sitting tense and stiff at the wheel, staring through the floody windshield.

We got a little way past the ball park when I noticed the car swaying.

“You’ve got a soft tire, Jim,” I warned.

“Feels like it,” admitted Jimmie grudgingly.

The car gave another swerve on the streaming pavement. Jim steered cautiously for the curb, not without a few angry snorts from cars behind.

“Well, well, well,” was all I said.

“Sit still,” said Jim, starting to get out. In a moment he came back and said through the window that the left rear tire was flat as a pancake.

In the gathering dusk, we looked ahead and then looked behind. The nearest service station was a good half-mile. The stampede of cars raced ruthlessly past us.

“I could drive it,” speculated Jim through the car window, “but it would finish the tire. And tires, these days….”

“Don’t think of it, Jim,” I declared. “Put the spare on. I’ll give you a hand….”

“Sit still, sit still,” pleaded Jim. “It won’t take five minutes.”

But you can’t sit still in a car, on a wild and stormy night, and think of your friend out there alone. So I turned up my collar and got out and joined him. He had the jack out and was figuring how he could get it under the car without getting his knees wet, when I gave the spare a thump with my fist. “Your spare has no air in it,” I informed him.

He stood up and felt the spare.

“It’s got enough,” he muttered. But on shoving at it with the handle of the jack, it proved to be as I had said. Soft.

“I’ll thumb a lift ahead to a service station,” said Jim, “and take the spare with me. And I’ll be back in the tow truck in five minutes.”

I thought of the pot roast and was on the point of suggesting that I too might thumb a lift and get home somehow. Once I could get near a street car line, I would be all right. But down here on the Lake Shore Drive, it is a long hike to a street car line. Then I thought of how Jimmie would feel.

He soon had the spare tire unhitched. And with it for a sign and symbol of distress, he had no trouble getting a lift. A dirty old car with five smudgy and big-hearted war workers pulled up; and tire and all, Jimmie was invited in. He waved me good-by.

After at least 17 minutes, in which time I got so expert at remembering how a pot roast smells that I was practically watering at the mouth, I saw the tow truck slow down across the street and after nearly a minute and a half of trying to make the turn against traffic, it drew in behind.

“Sorry,” cried Jimmie, “but I had to try three service stations.”

And in about four minutes, the service station man had the spare on and the old tire back in his truck.

“I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” said Jim, as we drove off.

The tow truck whizzed past us, in the manner of tow trucks that belong to service stations that shut up bang at seven sharp.

We got along near the Exhibition Grounds when the engine gave a couple of funny coughs and jerked.

“What the…” said Jim grimly.

But there was no mistaking that sound. After another 50 yards, the engine barked and coughed several times and then quit.

“Out of gas,” I submitted.

“Don’t be crazy,” growled Jimmie. “I put three gallons in only last Tuesday.”

But the gauge showed empty and the dry jack handle Jimmie explored with down in the tank showed empty. And it was empty.

“Well, thank goodness,” said Jim, appearing at the car door all wet, “there’s a hill ahead only a little way and we can coast down it and turn up beside the Park, where there’s a gas station.”

Back to Street Cars

So I got out and we shoved the car about 100 yards, not without numerous helpful comments from car horns from behind, to the start of the slope down to Sunnyside. And when the car took the slope, Jim jumped in and seized the wheel and I ran and boarded her. And down the slope we coasted, not too fast, so as to let a clear place in traffic grow ahead of us so that we could get fullest advantage of the coast. This caused quite a lot of horn comment from behind us.

But we coasted almost to the Merry-Go- Round before our momentum died. And from the Merry-Go-Round to the Park is about 300 yards.

And at last we shoved her into the nearest service station.

“I certainly feel terribly,” said Jim, as we ran her stern level with the attendant waiting with the hose. “Keeping you all this time. I had only the kindest intentions…”

“Forget it, Jim,” I assured him. “This only makes a more confirmed street car passenger of me.”

“But that pot roast?” said Jim, feeling in his pockets.

“A pot roast is all the better of a little longer cooking,” I informed him.

The attendant laid the end of the nozzle in Jim’s gas tank.

Jimmie was still feeling in his pockets.

“Holy!” he suddenly exclaimed, snatching his hand out of his pocket as if he had been stung.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“I lent the ration book to the kids last week…” he said.

“Hmmm,” said the attendant, lifting the nozzle out of Jim’s tank.

We explained the situation to the man

“The law,” he said, “is the law. Besides, there is the darndest lot of chisellers.”

So we shoved the car off to one side on the service station lot.

“I’ll pick it up in the morning,” said Jimmie brokenly to the attendant, who was already looking at his watch.

And in the rain, we walked three blocks back east from the Park to Roncesvalles where we caught a street car.

And the family was just finishing the deep apple pie when I walked in.

“Oh, those street cars,” said my wife.

But the pot roast couldn’t have been better.


Editor’s Notes: Because of gasoline rationing during World War 2, Greg has been taking the streetcar to work, and Jim decides to take his car out for a day to make sure it does not seize up from being parked too long.

The illustration advertises the “Send Over Smokes” campaign that Greg wrote about earlier.

Summer’s Over

I thought of sailors… of rich men… of carelessness… of loveliness. “Jimmie,” I said, but not very loud, “we must work, we must toil.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 10, 1938.

Greg and Jimmie take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year

“Heigh-Ho,” sighed Jimmie Frise, stretching, “summer’s over.”

“Now we’ve got to turn from grasshoppers,” I agreed, “into ants.”

“New Year’s Day,” stated Jimmie, “ought to be somewhere around this time of year instead of in the dead of winter. Because in reality, each year really begins about now, when summer’s ended, and we all knuckle down to the grind.”

“That,” I admitted, “is a real idea.”

“How did this January the first business start,” inquired Jim, “as the beginning of the year?”

“Julius Caesar,” I informed him.

“Oh, him,” muttered Jim, bitterly; remembering his far-off unhappy high school days.

“Yes, sir,” I declared, “Julius Caesar adopted what he called the Julian calendar, in his own honor. And to this day, all over the western world, as if his empire were not in the dust a thousand years, we go on honoring old Caesar by obeying his edicts.”

“It’s time we changed,” stated Jim. “I can’t think of any time of year being less the beginning of anything than January the first is just the dreary middle of the winter, the dreary middle of the long laborious year.”

“Even the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians,” I advised Jim, “had the right idea. They began their year on September 21, at the autumn solstice.”

“The Egyptians?” cried Jim. “Good gracious, how did we ever get ourselves mixed up with the Romans? Why didn’t we stick with the ancient Egyptians? They’d haye handed us down something like a little civilization, instead of all this glorification of Julius Caesar.”

“Well, you see,” I explained, “the Egyptians could see a year begin and a year end. They saw the crops develop and the calves get born and the year come to its fulness. Then they gathered the crop and that ended the year. They began a new year in September, when a year begins now as it began then. Here we are back from our vacation. Everybody is back from vacation. All the hot dog stands are shuttered. All the highways are getting the has-been look. The show is over. The stage is being dismantled and the properties piled against the wall. Summer’s carnival is ended and here we are back to the grind. The year begins.”

“It ought to be New Year’s,” repeated Jim firmly. “How I hated Latin and algebra.”

“The Jews,” I stated, “begin their civil year still on September 6.”

“Why didn’t we stick with the Jews?” demanded Jim. “All we took was their Bible. We would have been better off if we had taken their calendar and their laws and everything else.”

“My, how vindictive you are,” I smiled. “Who would dream that Julius Caesar could be so alive after 2,000 years?”

“I am happy to learn,” stated Jim, “that Latin is now an optional subject in nearly all civilized nations on the globe.”

“The school year begins in September,” I reminded us. “The, fiscal year begins on October 1. I wonder what we could do to start an agitation for the abandonment of January 1, and the adoption of September 15 as New Year’s Day?”

“Ah, it would be great,” cried Jimmie. “What a lovely season of the year. With its hale winds and its ripeness and vigor. How we could set the stage for a new year’s celebration about September 15.”

“Even nature herself,” I pointed out, “goes into a sort of celebration, turning her leaves scarlet and orange, and all her fields golden.”

Dawn of New Work Year

“Instead of going out into a sleet storm on a blizzard,” went on Jim, “as we do in January, we could stage such a September carnival as would fill every man, woman, and child with a sort of joy at getting back to work again. The dawn of the new year of work.”

“It could be a festival of industry,” I recounted.

“Oh, it could be a great day,” cried Jim. “In the cities, the carnivals, the visiting and inspection of big industrial plants, all decked out, the banquets of employees; and in the country, the farmers painting their barns and hauling in the implements to be painted and repaired for another year’s toil, instead of being left to rot in a far corner of the farthest pasture. And at midnight, at the stroke of midnight, all the factory whistles would blow and all the workers of the world would gather about their shops and factories and offices, brilliantly lighted and bedecked, and a new year would have begun.”

“It’s a beautiful idea,” I confessed. “I think we ought to do something about it.”

“By the way,” said Jim, yawning and pushing his drawing table back a little, “what are we going to do this coming year? I never felt so empty of ideas in my life as I do right now.”

“It’s just the reaction,” I assured him. “Everybody feels like this at the beginning of autumn. It’s a sort of let down after the activity of summer.”

“That’s a funny thing,” declared Jim. “We work harder in summer than any other time of year, yet in summer, there is less accomplished than any other season. Business slacks off. Everybody is away having fun. Yet we exhaust ourselves.”

“Rightly so,” I said. “Summer is the real end of the year. We celebrate the end of the year’s work with a vacation. And we exhaust ourselves having fun.”

“That shows you the true nature of man,” said Jim. “Man’s natural instinct is to have fun.”

“We’ll have to get together right away,” I proposed, shoving back my typewriter desk so as to get my feet up on the edge, “we’ll have to get together in a regular conference and decide on plans for the coming season.”

“Yaw,” yawned Jim, “we’ve really got to. Here we are dawdling through life, writing a few simple stories and drawing a few simple cartoons. Just earning our bread, that’s all.”

“What more can any man do?” I submitted, relaxing.

“Talent,” declared Jim, “is that which a man has in his power. Genius is that which has a man in its power. Why can’t we do something, this winter, on a big scale? Why can’t we do some serious work, like against war or to promote the brotherhood of man?”

“Who’d read it?” I inquired.

“Well,” said Jim, “we’ve presumably got somebody reading your stories now and presumably somebody looking at my cartoons. They’d read the stuff.”

“But they wouldn’t read it again,” I pointed out.

“They’d read it before they knew it wasn’t any good,” explained Jim. “And we’d have scored before they knew it. Let’s work out one tremendous article about world peace or the brotherhood of man or something important like that. Let’s sock it all into one grand big smash. All our regular readers will read it before they discover it’s no good. And we’ll have done our life’s work. Our one noble deed. Our one worthy opus. I hate to pass away, being only a cartoonist.”

Intended to Be Great

“I often see,” I admitted, “a queer expression my family’s face and on the faces of friends and companions. I’ve sometimes wondered if it was pity that I should be so dumb as I am when I write.”

“Can we help it?” demanded Jim, a little angrily, though resting his arms on his drawing board and relaxing his head upon them. “Can we help it if we are only cartoonists and scribblers?”

“I always intended,” I confessed, “to be a great man. I used to read great books and plan what a great book I would write some day. I remember I had a row of books on my desk, as a young man, a row of books like Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ and ‘Sartor Resartus’1 and Plato’s Republic’ and things like that. I remember how I used to come in at night, after a long day spent covering the waterfront or reporting the police court, and I would look with dignity at that row of great books and they would look back with dignity at me. It was a nice feeling to come in at night to that little room and look at those books.”

“Me,” said Jim, drowsily and unhappily, “I used to get from the library big heavy books about Michael Angelo, full of illustrations not only of his finished masterpieces but with fragments of his rough sketches and drawings preciously preserved across the centuries, and I would pore over these drawings, dreaming and practising, thinking some day I would paint great murals and travel from one country to another, in the wide world, painting the frescoes of cathedrals and vast canvasses that would hang in museums for silent multitudes of people to come and gaze at, breathless and wide-eyed.”

“Ho, hum,” I sighed. “I remember the bronze book ends that held up that long row of noble books. They were bronze moose. I can see those two bronze moose yet, peeping invitingly around the ends of the row of books. I think the end book around which one moose peeped was Maeterlinck’s ‘Treasure of the Humble,’2 and at the other end, the moose spied at me from the corner of Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man,’ The books are gone, now. I gave them to my son. He was glad to have them. I can see him often, now, looking at them in a soft way, and they looking up at him with a quiet dignity. But I saved the two bronze moose book ends.”

“What do you do with them now?” inquired Jim, faintly.

“I use them for a rack on the mantel, to rest my good Mauser rifle on,” I confessed.

“That’s the way life is,” sighed Jimmie. “The commonplace always triumphs.”

He was resting his cheek on his arms now and his eyes were closed.

“Here,” I exclaimed, “snap out of it. Let’s do a little figuring. Let’s figure out our stories and cartoons for the next couple of weeks, anyway.”

Jim opened one eye and it had a blank expression in it.

“Think of it,” I cried, “seven, eight, nine years we have been up here, like flagpole sitters3, banging out a story and a cartoon a week…”

“Twenty years,” muttered Jim. “Twenty years for me. Fifty-two times twenty?”

“Flagpole sitters, that’s what we are Jim,” I assured him loudly, because he was obviously slipping away. “Just a couple of flagpole sitters.”

Here we are,” I propounded, “at the start of the new year, in the lovely September, with a whole fine year ahead of us. Think of all the white paper that lies ahead of us. Fifty square yards of drawing paper that you have to fill in the next 50 weeks with just your cartoon alone.”

“Ughhhh,” said Jim.

“And another 50 square yards for this cartoon for me,” I urged. “Jimmie, wake up. Summer’s over. We must be up and doing.”

But he just drew a long slow breath and snuggled a little on his arms.

“And think,” I shouted, “of the thousands of miles of newsprint that we’ve got to help smear. Tens of thousands of miles of newsprint, lots of which is still little trees growing in the swamps up north of Lake Superior somewhere. Think of that.”

“Zzzzzzz,” said Jim, just like in the comics. So I sat and looked at this grizzle-headed old artilleryman snoozing on his drawing desk, this wielder of billiard cues, this lover of pumps and barns and all the homely things of life, and saw in him all the people of the world, in all countries; the workers and the toilers, all flagpole sitters on jobs not amusing in the least; the men who wield axes and handle tools, eternally making the same things; the men and women who go each day at dawn to the same shop and the same store, forever and ever, and glad of it, to handle goods and bow across a counter to the old familiar and the unfamiliar faces.

I thought of sailors at sea, scrubbing decks and knowing they are five, four, three days from land, and that the land will be the same old land as ever. Of all the patient land, round and round, where men till and sow and garner, knowing that no fortune ever was hid beneath any acre, and only by determination. and patience, will even, the daily bread come up out of the earth.

Of rich men, I thought, and how ashamed they often must be, though their faces are proud. Of rulers and governors and presidents and princes, and how in the night time often they must weep.

Of women, young and lovely and afraid. Of cruelty and despair in nations bright upon the map. Of carelessness in a hundred million hearts. Of loneliness, in a hundred million hearts.

Of loveliness unutterable, glinting for an instant in a thousand million hearts, a glint, an instant, of joy, of delight, of pleasure, of happiness, this moment, countless as the pebbles on a shore, at this instant all over the earth, men, women, and children, feeling in their minds and hearts those beads of colored instants…

“Jimmie,” I said, but not very loud. “Jim, wake up. It’s a new year. Summer’s ended. Autumn is here. Winter’s coming. We must work. We must toil. The whole world is waking.”

But Jim just went on gently breathing.

So I shifted my heels a little better on the edge, and lowered my eyelids just to take the weight off them, and in a little moment, I knew that another crowded year of glorious life had begun.

September 2, 1942

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on September 2, 1942 as “Time for Toil”.

  1. Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books is an 1831 novel by Thomas Carlyle. ↩︎
  2. The Treasure of the Humble is a collection of thirteen essays by Maurice Maeterlinck. ↩︎
  3. Flagpole sitting was a test of endurance and a fad in the 1920s. I believe Greg and Jim worked on the top floor of the Old Toronto Star Building, which is why he would say this. ↩︎

Thanks Eli!

August 22, 1942

Eli is so lazy, he would rather give up the lawn mower to the war time scrap drive than cut the lawn. At least the cow can help.

In the Public Interest

So now we rowed a little harder. And the cargo seemed suddenly to grow heavier.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 11, 1942.

“If that darn supply boat doesn’t come in today,” declared Jimmie Frise, “we’re in a fix.”

“This is three days they’ve given us the go-by,” I stated.

They’ve got us at their mercy this year,” said Jim. “They know we haven’t got the gas for our boats to run up to the Landing and shop.”

“We’re out of bread at my cottage,” I announced: “We have no bacon, three eggs, one pound of butter. And no milk.”

“Everybody in the community is running short,” said Jim. “We went around last night to three or four of the neighbors to try and borrow a few things.”

“Well, it’s only six miles up to the Landing,” I reassured. “After all, we’re not in danger of starvation.”

“Twelve miles there and back,” estimated Jimmie, “is one gallon of gas. And I’ve only got 14 gallons for the whole summer.”

“It’s a wonder some of the people with big launches,” I submitted, “don’t undertake to run up to the Landing and shop for the whole community. I’ve been watching for one of them to start out, and I’m all ready to signal them.”

“If you see anybody start out,” requested Jim, “be sure and get me in on it. I want three loaves of bread, four ham steaks, about half an inch thick. Butter, eggs, bacon. Four quarts of milk. Some canned soup, some oranges…”

“You’ve got a good order there,” I admitted.

“I hinted pretty broadly to the Millers last night,” said Jim. “They’ve got that fast boat and I bet Miller has plenty of gas in his ration book for his boat.”

“He didn’t take the hint?” I inquired.

“No, he hinted back that somebody in the community with a small outboard ought to volunteer to make the trip for the gang of us,” said Jim, “because an outboard uses so little gas compared with a launch.”

“I suppose he’s right,” I muttered. “After all, the idea is to conserve gas.”

“If the supply boat doesn’t come in by 3 o’clock this afternoon,” said Jim, “I think I’ll go around and suggest to the different cottages that we draw lots to see who will run up to the Landing on a shopping expedition for the whole Point.”

“The simplest thing,” I suggested, “would be for one of us to take our boat to shore and get one of the farmers to drive us to the Landing by road.”

“It’s 18 miles by road,” countered Jim. “Thirty-six miles there and back.”

“Well, let’s wait and see,” I subsided. “Somebody is sure to break under the strain. Here’s the whole Point, all sitting watching one another, waiting to see who’ll start for the Landing first. I bet every family in the community has somebody posted to watch all the rest of the cottages.”

Two Kinds of Rowing

“I bet Mr. Cottrelle1, the oil controller, would know the answer to this,” said Jimmie. “He’d say, ‘Row, you lazy slobs.””

“Row 12 miles?” I protested. “We’d have a heart attack.”

“We rowed 12 miles yesterday,” declared Jim. “All of it. After those three measly bass.”

“Ah, but that’s a different kind of rowing,” I pointed out. “Rowing while fishing is pleasure. Rowing for supplies is labor. I’m going to give that Loony Lake supply boat a piece of my mind when they do turn up.”

“We’ve done little else for 15 years,” sighed Jim. “They’ve got us where they want us this year. In the past, any time we felt like a little spin on the lake we’d run up to the Landing and do most of our shopping at Billy Smith’s. He’s the opposition to the Loony Lake supply boat. We never think of going into their store when we go down to the Landing. We always shop at Billy’s.”

“Well, it’s kind of nice to see some other display of merchandise, besides the same old line they’ve got in the supply boat,” I explained. “It’s a wonder Billy Smith doesn’t operate a supply boat this year, with everybody rationed like this.”

“Billy’s got too much sense,” said Jim. “There’s nothing but grief in the supply boat business. Goods spoiling, bread going mouldy, things getting bent and bust in the cramped quarters, so that they are shopworn and people won’t take them…”

“Well, they can’t neglect us like this,” I declared. “Three days and not a sign of them.”

“Maybe their engine broke,” suggested Jim. “It’s getting to be an old boat. Or maybe the boys have joined up…”

“Hey, look,” I interrupted sharply. “There’s the Millers all running down to their wharf!”

We watched the Millers. The whole family came running down the path from their cottage towards the wharf where their smart 30- footer was moored.

“Quick!” cried Jim, leaping up. And we rushed down to our own wharf, leaped into Jim’s square-stern skiff, and Jim had the pull rope on in a jiffy2, and at first jerk his engine spun to life.

As we veered away from Jim’s dock, we saw people running from all the cottages, helter skelter, leaping into their skiffs, rowboats, canoes and launches, and heading for the Millers’.

And as we neared the Miller wharf, there were all the Millers sitting as easy as you please on their dock, in summery attitudes of relaxation. None of them was in their launch. None of them appeared even to be getting into the launch. There were seven boats of various kinds on the water all at the one time. Some of them pretended they just happened to be on the water and steered around the bay aimlessly. But two others besides Jimmie and me went straight to the Millers’ wharf.

“We thought you were starting out for the Landing,” Jim hailed, as we drew alongside.

“Oh, no,” said Miller, lying back on the planks. “We just thought we’d get a little sun.”

“Look,” said Jim, “if that supply boat doesn’t come by 3 o’clock, how about drawing lots among the lot of us on the Point to see who will go up to the Landing for the whole lot?”

“What’s the fuss?” demanded Miller. “The supply boat will be in all right. Don’t fret. They know we haven’t any milk, for one thing. And bread. They’re probably far more worried than we are. It’s probably engine trouble. If they can’t get here by tonight, I bet they hire some other boat and come down.”

The Other Fellow’s Boat

“Well, we’re right down to last year’s canned stuff at my cottage,” asserted Jim. “If it doesn’t come by tonight…”

“You should always keep a little emergency shelf of provisions,” said Miller easily, from his recumbent position.

“You haven’t anything to spare?” I inquired.

“I’m afraid not,” said Miller. “I can hold out until tomorrow, by which time I am sure…”

The two other boats that had drawn near the Millers’ wharf now sheered off and went slowly home. The other boats around the bay returned to their various docks.

“Well,” said Jim, with sudden resolution, “I’m not going to starve on my holidays, for one. I’m going to the Landing.”

Miller sat up.

“It would consume three times the gas in my boat,” he said. “I don’t see why some of you people with outboards don’t make the trip.”

Jim shoved off and spun the rope on the outboard. He had forgotten to shut off the gas and air and it took half a dozen yanks at the rope before it started; during which time Miller was reciting off what supplies he needed.

“Four loaves of bread, three pounds of butter, some sugar, and here’s our ration cards….”

He had them in his pocket all ready. I caught them.

“And six cans of vegetable soup, six quarts of milk, two dozen oranges, two bunches of beets, two heads of lettuce…”

Jim’s engine whammed into life.

“Okay, okay,” we yelled above the din, while Miller excitedly bellowed some further orders which we failed to hear.

A Handsome Order

Our voices had penetrated the full extent of the bay and now, once again, from all directions boats started for us. We returned to our dock, for Jim to make a list of what he required. And while he made out his list and I made out mine, nine boats arrived at Jim’s dock, all with lists already written out.

“I have the feeling,” muttered Jim, when I followed him into his boathouse to get the gas can with his two rationed gallons in it, “that the whole community was waiting for us. And they knew it would be us.”

Some of them had the money with them. Others said to shop at the Loon Lake supply boat store and charge it to their account.

And in 10 minutes we were off up the lake.

Jim’s square stern goes nine miles an hour, but it takes us the full hour to go the six miles to the Landing. This may be on account of the fact that the Landing is up the lake from our place. Probably coming down the lake the boat makes the nine miles an hour. I never checked.

It was a fine sail up the lake, with freshening breeze. We enjoyed the scenery along the shoreline, which was new to us this year, since we had not made the almost daily trips on the lake as in former years. We arrived at the Landing in five minutes less than the hour, and were welcomed very heartily by Billy Smith. In fact, after discussing the question, we decided to do all our shopping at Billy’s not merely to save time and trouble, but just to indicate, in a quiet way the whole village would understand, that the cottagers up at the Point were not to be trifled with in the matter of supply boats.

Besides, it was a very handsome order when you wrote it all down, and Billy was delighted with it. The biggest order of the season so far, he said. And it would be bound to be talked about around the Landing.

So Billy got busy with his boys and filled the cartons and wrapped the stuff up and carted it down to our skiff.

“Anyway,” said Jim, “it’s a 200-yard walk with all this stuff from the other store.”

Inquiries about the supply boat indicated that there had, indeed, been engine trouble. They had had to send all the way to Toronto for spare parts and that had been the cause of the holdup. Billy thought, from what he’d heard, that it might be another two or three days before the boat was got going.

“Why the Sam Hill,” cried Jim, “don’t they rent or borrow another boat? I’ve a good mind…”

“Aw, this will give them a lesson,” assured Billy, his arms filled with cartons, as he headed for our skiff.

“Sure, sure,” I said, “what’s the use of making a row with people you’ve got to deal with all summer…? Anyway, that wind’s getting up.”

So we shoved off, our little skiff laden with enough supplies to feed a lumber camp. Jim yanked and the engine purred and away we went.

“We won’t make nine miles an hour with all this load,” shouted Jim as we steered down the lake for home. “We’re too deep in the water.”

The engine hummed and snarled and gurgled as outboards do. It shoved us manfully, but obviously at less speed than with just the two of us in her.

About two miles down the lake, just as we got comfortable amongst all the freight, the engine began to make funny sounds. It would go slow, then fast. Jimmie began fiddling anxiously with the gadgets, the timing handle and the little gas jigger.

“Leave it alone,” I warned shoutingly.

But in true outboard driver fashion, Jim continued to fiddle, while the engine got steadily worse. It nearly died. Then it started up with a roar. Then it died completely.

“Just a minute,” said Jim, kneeling up over it.

But it was not a minute. It was 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour. I had to take the oars and row, to keep us from drifting out right across the lake.

“I wish we’d brought some canvas or something to cover this stuff,” said Jim during one of his rests from yanking the rope. “It’s going to get splashed.”

The wind was really frisky.

Jim yanked, yanked, yanked. He cussed, got red, got white, got weary. I took a few yanks, but they lacked even Jim’s limited authority over the silly engine. Nothing looks sillier than an outboard that won’t respond. Jim took out the spark-plugs and cleaned them. He drained the carbureter and took the screen out…

The little screen slipped from his, fingers and fell into the lake.

“That cooks it,” he said. “Now we HAVE to row.”

We had drifted about half a mile, which made it four and a half miles down the lake we had to row. Jim took the bow oar and I the stern, in separate seats, so as to balance the skiff a little head-down into the wind.

We rowed cheerfully at first. Then not so cheerfully. Rowing is not one of the better sports, when you have to do it. As pleasure, it is exhilarating. It stretches your muscles, expands your back, makes you feel wide and deep inside. But as work it has nothing to redeem it.

Besides, after the first half hour, in which we seemed to be still opposite the same boathouses we had started in front of, we began to lose our timing…

“It’s your job,” I informed Jim hotly, after we had got into still another series of chopping strokes with Jim half a stroke behind me; “it’s your job, as bow oar, to match your stroke to mine.”

“How can I take little, stubby jabs like you’re taking?” retorted Jimmie angrily.

It Wasn’t Much Fun

So it wasn’t much fun, and the hour and a half we took to reach the Point was as long a one as I recall. The wind, especially after we rounded the Point for the stretch, was lively and the waves splashed spray all over our supplies. We stopped frequently to shift things around so that the bread, sugar, fancy biscuits, and so forth were protected from the spray. But it seeped down anyway.

“I hope our kind neighbors,” I said over my shoulder, “will appreciate this little service we’re doing them.”

“Let’s not hurry along here,” replied Jim. “Let’s take our time so they can see us.”

“They’ll all be watching for us, anxiously,” I agreed. “So let’s make them appreciate the fact that this has been no picnic.”

We labored, therefore, a little harder at the oars. We sagged in our seats, humped our backs, dug the oars deep and leaned far back on the pull. We got into several mix-ups as to timing, because nothing gives the impression of desperate struggle so much as two men floundering around with their oars.

“I bet Miller is feeling his neck3,” I said. “Sitting there on his veranda, with that fast little power boat tied to the wharf. He could have made this trip in fifteen minutes.”

“Well, we have one satisfaction,” declared Jimmie. “Our reputation as public-spirited citizens can’t be challenged after this.”

And then we heard a familiar toot from a boat klaxon and there, steaming out from the bay, was the Loony Lake supply boat, as large as life.

“They’ve been in to the Point,” I cried.

So now we rowed a little harder. And the cargo seemed suddenly to grow heavier. Especially all those items for which we had paid our cash instead of charging at the other store at the Landing.

The end of the story is briefly told. Everybody, including our families, had stocked up. Not even our families had made any allowance for what we had been asked to bring.

Why,” said Miller, “I took it for granted you’d see the boat passing on your way up.”

“It must have been in at some cottage,” was all we could reply.

Miller was willing to take the oranges, the canned goods and even the beets and lettuce, but he said the bread, sugar and other things were of no use to him in their wet condition.

“They’re ruined,” he said. “Why didn’t you take a canvas to cover them?”

All the others were the same way.

“After all,” they said, “you could hardly expect us to take bread saturated with water and soggy boxes of fancy biscuits…”

So in Jim’s boathouse we figured out the loss. And we were about $44 out, counting our own stuff that our wives wouldn’t take.

“Some men are so impatient,” our wives explained. “They ought to know the supply boat will be in sooner or later.”

So the gulls got it. And Jim and I went back to High Rock, back of my place, where we have two cedar chairs; and we watched the stars come out and talked about how essentially heartless humanity is.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. George Cottrelle was a banker by profession and was appointed Oil Controller for Canada on June 29, 1940 by the wartime government. Note there was gasoline rationing at the time, hence the concern over being careful with their allotment. ↩︎
  2. On old outboard motors, the pull rope was separate and had to be wound on for each pull. ↩︎
  3. “Feeling your neck” would mean “being anxious”. ↩︎
  4. $4 in 1942 would be $73 in 2024. ↩︎

Sweet and Low

“In less than 30 seconds, the first of the intruders were pushing in our door.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 19, 1942.

“Well sir,” said Jimmie Frise, “I never felt less like Christmas in my life.”

“Maybe this is the way our folks felt,” I submitted, “on the fourth war Christmas in the last war, when we were over there.”

“Fourth Christmas!” exclaimed Jim. “Is this the fourth war Christmas?”

“Thirty-nine was the first,” I reminded him. “This war has been a lot longer than you think.”

“The counterpart of this Christmas, then, “figured Jim, “was Christmas, 1917.”

“And a pretty grim one it must have been,” I recalled. “The Germans were still lodged solid in France. We had staged a couple of battles, like Vimy and Passchendaele – how small they seem now. On a front of a couple of miles, we hammered and raged, and advanced a mile. In a whole battle.”

“We were proud of those battles,” declared Jim.

“Yet on Christmas, 1917, which was the fourth Christmas, like this one,” I said, “it looked as if the war might go on forever.”

“I wonder if we dare hope,” sighed Jim, “that next Christmas will be like Christmas, 1918?”

“Well, if those of us who want the war to end,” I proposed, “will work and fight harder than those who don’t want it to end, it might well be over by next Christmas.”

“Those who don’t want it to end?” demanded Jimmie hotly.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We must not overlook the fact that there is a pretty powerful element, all over the world, in all countries, who will look with regret on the war’s end.”

“What monsters!” scoffed Jim. “Surely…”

“Oh, they’re not really monsters.” I explained. “They don’t consciously want the war to keep on. They don’t deliberately plan to keep the war going. It is a passive thing in them, not active. But scattered and hidden though they be, in all countries, they are a power and a force to be reckoned with.”

“Fifth columnists,” muttered Jim.

“Not at all,” I countered. “For example, in all armies, everywhere, among the generals and big shots are a few who are having the time of their lives. They were insignificant squibs before the war, they have risen to be persons of great importance now. And they know in their hearts that the minute the war is over, they are going right back to obscurity. They look with dread on peace.”

“It can’t be,” Jim exclaimed.

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Then, consider all the people, in all countries, people of importance and power, who are afraid of what is coming after the war, socially, economically and industrially. Those people are mighty worried. It looks, right now, terribly unsettled to them. They are talking about it, this very hour, in clubs and board rooms, in offices and mansions, trying to see into the future, trying to organize their security. Do you imagine such people would not, in some quiet, unconscious way, try to prolong the war a little while until they can see a little farther?”

“Utter monsters,” declared Jim.

Winds of Opinion

“They didn’t get rich and powerful,” I pointed out, “by fretting about the mass of mankind. But besides them, there must be people, in all countries, who are definitely far better off than they ever were before, due to war industry. The minute the war ends, they feel, in their hearts, that they are going back to the weary, tricky, hazardous life of unemployment and insecurity. These are people drawn from all classes, professional, managerial, workers. To suppose that a number of such people does not exist is simply silly. And it is the job of all of us who want the war to end victoriously as soon as possible to be alert for them. Because, sooner or later, at some stage of the victory, circumstances might arise that would allow these people to gang up and actually interfere. Public opinion is a funny thing. It is like the breeze. Mostly it is a vagrant breeze, idly flowing this way and that. Often, it sets strongly in one direction, like a west wind or an east wind. Sometimes it blows a gale. But there are also little unexpected winds of opinion that blow -like, on a fine day, an east wind rises, and in no time, there is a thunderstorm. Or. on a pleasant summer day, suddenly a sharp gust sweeps up, and canoes and sailboats out on the shining water are upset, and tragedy stalks in our midst.”

“That is exactly,” agreed Jim, “like public opinion. Each part of the country has its different prevailing winds; like Ontario, Alberta, and so forth.”

“In this strong gale of war,” I concluded, “we’ve got to keep our eye skinned for the little currents of adverse wind that might deflect it. In the hearts and minds of people there are areas of high and low pressure, just the same as in the atmosphere, which make the winds of opinion.”

“People who would try to keep the war going, so much as by one hour, one minute,” said Jimmie, “are monsters.”

“The tragic part is,” I explained, “they are utterly unconscious of their influence. They believe themselves to be as true patriots as anybody. No man ever really knows what he is up to, any more than the wind knows where or why it is blowing.”

“I wish,” said Jimmie, “I knew how to celebrate Christmas this year. Should I have a Christmas tree? Should we decorate our houses?”

“Oh, I think so,” I offered. “After all, Christmas is the birthday of Jesus. In untroubled times, we forget all about that and make Christmas the high celebration not of Jesus’ birthday but of our own prosperity. We’re pretty humbled these days, so maybe if we keep in mind what Christmas really is, we can decorate our houses modestly and go ahead with as much of the spirit of Christmas as we can decently afford. This might be the chance to revive a whole lot of the forgotten and old-fashioned Christmas customs.”

“Like waits1,” said Jim.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Each family could organize itself into a little choir and practise up a few carols and go and serenade its friends and neighbors.”

“Isn’t it a pity,” said Jim, “the modern family has no musical talent, like when we were kids. The radio and the phonograph finished that. But when I was a youngster, every home had one or two musicians amongst the kids. My first great possession in this world was a saxophone. Do you remember the saxophone craze around 1910?”

“I once owned a cornet,” I confessed.

“Well, well, well,” cheered Jimmie. “I had no idea we had musical interests in common.”

“I played in the school band,” I announced.

“And in Birdseye Center2,” stated Jim, “we had a very snappy little dance orchestra of five pieces. I played sax.”

“When I got home from the war,” I said, “my kid brother had been using my cornet as a bugle, playing soldier. It was wrecked.”

“I sold my sax,” related Jim, “to get enough money to come to Toronto and try to get a job as an artist.”

“It would be a nice thing,” I mused, “to be able to play some instrument. How changed the world is! Everything is specialized. We leave music to the professionals.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun,” said Jim, “if we could borrow a sax and a cornet off somebody and go around and serenade our friends Christmas Eve?”

“That is exactly the sort of thing we ought to do, this war Christmas,” I admitted. “We haven’t the right to celebrate it as usual, with the whole world in flames. What Christmas ought to be this year is the greatest religious festival in history. It should be a day of prayer and atonement. The churches should be filled. We should gather our families together not for a feast and a hullabaloo but for a conference and a discussion of the war, of ourselves and of the future. It should be a day of meetings, public and private, of men gathering humbly together to take stock of themselves and the world.”

“And I can’t think of anything,” declared Jimmie; “more fitting than that people like us should forget our proud and foolish ways and go out, as simple, honest men did centuries ago, to sing and play to one another the carols of Christmas.”

“I’m thinking of it,” I protested, “in a broad, general way.”

“And I’m trying,” asserted Jim, “to get down to brass tacks. How about you and me borrowing a couple of instruments and practising up? Maybe there are half a dozen others in our neighborhood who can play horns and things. We might get a regular community band going in time for Christmas.”

“You can’t find musical instruments these days for love or money,” I informed him. “They’re right off the market. And the only people who own them are using them professionally.”

“I saw a sax in a second-hand store window on York St., not three days ago,” declared Jim.

So at lunch hour, we strolled up York St. and looked in the second-hand store windows, and sure enough, not only did we find the sax Jimmie had spotted, but as we stood outside the window, we could hear the strains of a violin being played inside.

The second-hand dealer, when we opened the door, was sitting in a chair at the back of his congested and cluttered emporium, a fiddle under his chin and a sheet of music propped up. It was Brahms’ Lullaby he was playing. He nodded to us and went ahead to the bottom of the page. Then he laid the fiddle down reluctantly and came to meet us.

“Gentlemen?” he said.

“We were wondering,” asked Jim, “if we could rent that saxophone in your window?”

“Ah, it’s not for sale,” said the dealer, “or rent. It is being bought on the instalment plan by a young man who comes every night and practises here on it. He has only $12 to pay until it is his. Meantime, he and I have very pleasant concerts here, each evening.”

“So you’re interested in music?” I inquired.

“It is my life,” said the second-hand dealer. “My passion, my blood, my very existence. But I don’t play very good.”

“We,” said Jim, “were thinking of renting or borrowing a saxophone and a cornet to practise up for Christmas. We were going to serenade our friends and neighbors this Christmas, as an old-fashioned reminder of the lost spirit of Christmas and what it stands for.”

“That is a most delightful fancy,” said the dealer. “Especially this year, since all the regular musicians who go about playing cornets from door to door are more profitably engaged in war work.”

He reached in the window and handed Jimmie the saxophone.

“Please play a few bars,” he invited courteously.

“I haven’t had one of these in my hands,” said Jim bashfully, “for 30 years.”

But he hurriedly took off his gloves and cuddled the clumsy instrument and after a few hot blows on the mouthpiece, puffed out his cheeks and ran up the scale.

He did it fairly well, with only a few blurts and a couple of squawks.

“Good,” cried the dealer. “After 30 years that’s good. What do you play, mister?”

“I used to play a cornet,” I informed him modestly.

He went out through the back and came in with a very large and slightly battered instrument that looked like a cross between a cornet and a trumpet.

“A beautiful Yugoslavian instrument,” he said, “that my late wife used to play.”

I tried it. It was not the same key as Jim’s saxophone and it took some pretty fancy puckering on my part to sound Jim’s A.

Serenaders Practice

The dealer hurriedly picked up his violin and set the Brahms Lullaby up before all three of us.

“One, two…” he said, waving the fiddle bow.

But of course, you couldn’t expect much under such circumstances, and after a bar and a half of riot that caused a policeman to open the shop door and look in anxiously, the dealer rapped with his bow in the approved maestro manner.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I tell you what we do.”

For the sum of $1 each we could borrow the instruments for the afternoons, with the understanding that we could have full possession of them Christmas Eve and all day Christmas.

There were no cases for the instruments so we wrapped them in newspaper and carried them back to the office, entering by the freight door and up the freight elevator. Nobody noticed us smuggle them into our room. We shut the transom and the window and hastily unwrapped our prizes.

“Softly, now,” I warned.

“Do scales first,” suggested Jim.

But only an artist can play softly. And in less than 30 seconds, the first of the intruders were pushing in our door. And in two minutes, half the staff was crowded outside, until the assistant city editor arrived, with the managing editor’s compliments, and suggested that the paper storage vaults down in the basement might be a better place to work.

So that is where we are practising now, half an hour each afternoon, not counting a few bars of Brahms’ Lullaby up at the second-hand dealer’s each lunch hour and each evening as we return the instruments.

“John Peel3” is our most successful number so far, all except that high note.

But by Christmas Eve, we hope to have “Holy Night.”

And maybe it will be us outside your door.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. Christmas waits were bands of street musicians who formed during the holiday season to play carols around their community in hopes of raising money. ↩︎
  2. In stories, they often said that Jim came from Birdseye Center, rather than give his actual birthplace (Township of Scugog). ↩︎
  3. “Do you know John Peel?” is a famous Cumberland hunting song written around 1824 by John Woodcock Graves. ↩︎

A Close Shave!

December 5, 1942

When sharpening a straight razor, a “leather strop” is used. Here, Mrs. Clipper cuts right through it, implying she should not be trusted.

The Friends of Yesterday

“We carried it the whole three-quarters of a mile with the three of them following very jolly on behind.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 31, 1942.

“What gripes me,” announced Jimmie Frise sadly, “is what war does to friendships.”

“There is no brotherhood,” I informed him, “like the brotherhood of arms. I have sometimes thought that there is no human relationship deeper, dearer, more passionate than the comradeship of men who have passed through battle together.”

“Yet,” sighed Jimmie, “where are our blood brothers of the last old war? I remember swearing eternal friendship with comrades of mine. Yet inside six months or a year at most after the war, we had forgotten about each other. We were embarrassed when we met. Inside of three years, we were avoiding each other…”

“I remember,” I confessed miserably. “I went through the same experience. Don’t remind me.”

“After six months of front line experience,” went on Jim, “you know the difference between men and mice. You gravitate together, according to your quality. The brave guys gang together. The tough guys chum up. The medium brave guys segregate themselves into little groups. The lazy and the crafty, the lead-swingers and the bums, cast off by all the other groups, are forced into each other’s company.”

“That’s it exactly,” I recollected.

“Ordinary peacetime life,” continued Jimmie, “does not offer the same chance to weigh and measure your friendships. But in war, you see a man for what he is, morning, noon and night. He can’t pretend to be better than he is for long. The truth comes out. I think there is no greater time in a man’s life to choose his friends than in war.”

“Then why,” I demanded, “have we all drifted away from our war-made friends?”

“I remember in Hersin-Coupigny,” related Jimmie, “five of us who had served together a long time formed a sort of little lodge or secret society of our own. We lived in at billet in Hersin-Coupigny. We had it all worked out. We made complete plans for our lives when the war was over. The main feature of the plan was that we were going to stick together after the war, come hell or high water.”

“I suppose half of them were casualties?” I submitted.

“No, I was the only casualty,” said Jim, “and all I lost was a finger. We five never got together again. We’ve met, one by one, across the past 25 years. But we don’t ever refer to the plan of Hersin-Coupigny. Yet I never in my life made a more earnest and sincere vow than we made in that old chalk barn in France, a quarter of a century ago.”

“Of course, those were hard years, right after the war, Jim,” I reminded him. “We had to scramble like hogs to get jobs and get back into the swim of peacetime life.”

“If we had stuck together,” declared Jim, “we soldiers, maybe it wouldn’t have been so hard for us. But we threw off our uniforms, turned our backs on one another, and started burrowing, each his little burrow.”

“And of course,” I recollected, “the political parties of those days had no intention of letting us old soldiers form a soldier party. They both saw to that. Every time a veterans’ organization got going successfully, the politicians would finance a rival veterans’ organization with smart politicians guiding them. And so we were bust up into fragments, easily handled. Divide and rule is the ancient prescription. It worked on us old soldiers.”

“Still, that doesn’t explain,” insisted Jim, “how all our old war friendships were abandoned.”

We sat thinking about it for a while, with guilty hearts. And at length I offered this suggestion:

“Maybe friendship, the real, deep friendship such as the comradeship of war inspires, requires hardship, struggle and danger to keep it aflame. War is so stark and simple and honest. Peace is so filled with pretense and compromise, bluff and fakery. To live honestly as a civilian is ten times harder than to live as a good soldier. Maybe when we got back to the creeping, crawling ways of civil life, we were ashamed to look our wartime friends in the eye.”

“Maybe that’s it,” muttered Jim.

“How did we get on this melancholy subject?” I demanded.

“Oh, I was just thinking,” said Jimmie, “how war busts up friendships. For the past 20 years, we have been patiently sorting over our acquaintances, gathering together a little gang of those we are entitled to describe as our friends. It isn’t easy to gather together six or eight men who are all equally willing to go places and do things together; such as deer hunting.”

“Ah, deer hunting,” I said. “No thanks. Not for me. Not after last year.”

“Well, that’s what I mean,” declared Jimmie. “Up until 1939, we had, for 10 long years, the best, most congenial hunting party in Canada. No eight guys anywhere in the country were as harmoniously blended into a unit as we were. Then what happens? Jake and Lou are whisked off to war jobs in Ottawa.”

“Joe and Andy went into the army,” I added.

“Pete had to go back to the United States,” completed Jim, “and Sam wouldn’t go deer hunting because his son was in the air force and he thought it would be unpatriotic of him.”

“And there we were,” I rounded up, “you and me.”

Arguing About Shooting

“So we went. November, 1939,” said Jimmie, “and what happened? We found out that two men can’t hunt deer.”

“They certainly can’t,” I agreed. “Not you and me, anyway. We never even saw a deer, did we?”

“Not one,” said Jim. “Then, in 1940, after you got home from Dunkirk, we rigged up a dandy party. Jake and Lou both promised to take a week off their war duties at Ottawa. Pete promised to come up from Chicago. And at the last minute, they all reneged.”

“So we didn’t go at all,” I recounted. “That was 1940.”

“Last year,” began Jimmie.

“Ugh!” I said and shuddered.

We sat, with cold smiles, remembering last year’s deer hunting party.

“I never,” declared Jim, “in my life, saw three such heartless, selfish, cold-blooded guys all in one group.”

“They played us for suckers, all right,” I admitted.

“How did we ever get tangled up with them?” demanded Jim. “How did it start?”

“It started, you remember,” I said, “at lunch that day. The three of them were sitting at the next table to us. I’d often seen them around the downtown district, and at lunch and in elevators. In fact, I was on nodding terms with Jackson long before that day.”

“And I knew Buddy and Jones,” admitted Jim, “by sight anyway.”

“Well, you remember,” I exclaimed. “They were talking about whether a .30-30 was accurate at 500 yards. Jackson was blowing away about having shot lots of deer at 500 yards…”

“Ah, yes,” recollected Jim. “And you leaned over to their table and said that at only 300 yards, a .30-30 had a midway trajectory of 12 feet. And that at 500 yards, it probably had a mid-range rise of nearly 30 feet.”

“And what did our pompous friend Jackson say?” I inquired.

“He said,” laughed Jimmie uproariously, “that he always allowed for that.”

“Then,” I recalled, “we got into an argument. I asked him if in these 500-yard shots of his, the deer was standing still or running. And he said running.”

“Then you said,” remembered Jim, “with the mid-range trajectory of about 30 feet, how many yards ahead of the running deer did he shoot? And besides, how did he know which way the deer was going to jump?”

“Oh, boy,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “That was some argument.”

“It was the first of hundreds!” said Jimmie. “I don’t know which was the hardest part of last year’s hunt; washing the dishes when it was Jackson’s or Jones’ or Buddy’s turn; or listening to you and Jackson arguing.”

“Well, there was nothing else to do,” I protested. “Was I to sit there silent and listen to that big blowhard?”

“It would have been better,” sighed Jim.

“It shows you how easily you can get into trouble,” I mused. “There we were having lunch. We had no intention of going deer hunting last year. It was only eight or 10 days to the opening. Then, overhearing that big fat slob’s ridiculous chatter, I lean over and make a casual remark. And inside of 15 minutes, we are invited to join their hunting party.”

“And,” said Jimmie bitterly, “what’s worse, we went.”

“It was awful from the start,” I recalled. “Do you remember the night up at Jackson’s house, planning the grub list?”

“That was bad,” agreed Jim, “but how about the trip on the train?”

“The hike into the cabin was worse,” I submitted. “I can see Jones still, carrying that one little carton. I tried a dozen times to pick it up, whenever we rested along the trail, just to see if it was heavy. I never did get my hands on it until we reached the cabin. And then we found it was nothing but a carton of soda biscuits.”

“Buddy,” said Jim, “with his sprained ankle!”

“Ah, yes, sprained at the station,” I remembered. “And he could barely hobble when we started down the trail. So he didn’t have to carry anything. And next morning, he insisted on going away over to the Cedar Narrows, two miles away, the best runway of all. And he walked like an athlete!”

“They sure made pack mules of us, that trip,” confessed Jim.

“Pack mules!” I said. “Did either of us get a shot, did we get one shot, at a deer between us, in the whole week? Who cooked the meals? How many meals did Jackson cook? How many times did Buddy wash or dry the dishes? And did Jones do a single chore the whole week?”

“Every time it was his turn,” recalled Jim, “he had palpitation of the heart. And Jackson was in with him on it, because it was always Jackson who rushed him off to bed and fed him pills. They just took us for a ride, that’s all.”

“It’s hard to say which I disliked the most of the three,” I pondered. “Jackson, with his pompous airs of captain of the hunt. Buddy with his tricks for getting out of chores, like dishwashing. Do you remember, the minute the meals were over, how he’d go out and stand by the wood pile with his shotgun, watching for ducks flying over?”

“Jones was the worst,” insisted Jimmie. “Him and his palpitations! That doe he shot, I bet he chased it two miles over hill and dale, through muskeg and tag alders. And when we caught up to him, he was as fresh as a daisy. Yet, when somebody had to bring in an armful of wood, he had heart murmurs and palpitations.”

“I can hear Jackson’s voice, yet.” I grated. “First thing in the morning, he lying, there in his sleeping bag roaring at us to get up. And the last thing at night, as you or I sometimes fixed the stove and turned out the lamps, Jackson sleepily droning from his snug bed the instructions for the morrow.”

“You would think one of them,” declared Jim, “would have been a little thoughtful of the visitors.”

“The first thing Jackson said,” I reminded him, “when we arrived in the cabin was- ‘now this is a hunting party, boys, and we all have to pull our weight’.”

“Whereupon,” said Jim, “they put the harness on us.”

“Why didn’t we rebel?” I demanded. “We knew what kind of birds they were, before the first day was over.”

“Well,” explained Jim, “for the first two or three days, we were sort of strangers in camp. The next couple of days, we were so mad about it, it was funny; and we just kept on to see how much they would let us do. Then, the last couple of days, we had more or less given up hope, and we just carried on…”

“We were guides, that’s what we were,” I asserted. “Two guides, without pay. Will you ever forget carrying out Jackson’s big buck?”

“I won’t ever forget it,” said Jim, “but I still don’t understand it. Not one of them laid a hand on it.”

“I gutted it,” I reminded him. “You went and cut the pole to carry it. We both tied it on to the pole.”

“Then,” said Jim, “we hoisted it up and carried it. Carried it the whole three-quarters of a mile to the river.”

“With the three of them following very jolly on behind, carrying our rifles,” I gritted bitterly.

“Well, on a hunting party,” sighed Jimmie, “some of us aren’t happy unless we are suffering.”

“Maybe that’s it.” I said. “But it certainly goes down in our history as the worst hunting trip we have ever been on, and the queerest trio of cold-blooded, lazy loafers we have ever encountered.”

“How sweet, though,” smiled Jim, “they make the memory of dear old Jake and Lou, and Pete and Joe and Andy…”

“Ah, what a gang!” I agreed. “The hunting trips we’ve had. I wonder if they’re thinking about us now, too, with the opening of the season only a couple of days off?”

“I’ll bet they are,” said Jim. “Especially Joe and Andy, over there in England somewhere…”

The phone rang and Jimmie reached for it.

“Who?” he said, eyebrows up. “Oh, hello, there, how are you? Glad to hear your wheezy old voice.”

Jim winked at me violently.

“You don’t say? When? Saturday, eh? Who else is going?”

Jimmie hunched up his shoulders and rolled his eyes at me in glee.

“Just Buddy and Jones and you, eh?” said Jim into the phone, “Are you going to the same camp?”

He reached out with his foot and kicked me, winking furiously at the telephone mouth piece.

“Well, well, well, we were just talking about you, Jackson. Sure, he’s right here.”

“No, no,” I growled. “I don’t want to speak to the…”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Jimmie. “We had no plans made for this year. Our party is still all scattered to the four winds. I think we’ll wait till the war ends, and then we’ll have a grand reunion…”

Jimmie sat listening to a long harangue from Jackson. I could hear the mutter of his voice. My hair bristled at the mere sound.

“That’s a fact,” said Jim. “Mmm-hmmm. That’s a fact. Well, I hardly think we could I make it on this short notice. If you had called us a week ago…”

“Jim,” I hissed. “Hang up on him!”

“That’s a fact,” said Jim in the phone. “That’s so. Mmm-hmmm. A cook, eh? How many? Three guides, eh? Well, that would be a lot handier than last year, doing all our own work.”

I listened intently.

“Yes, you’re right,” said Jim. “It was sort of catch-as-catch can. Yes, that’s a good idea. Draw for runways each morning. Sure, that would give everybody an even break. Sure, sure; I realize that. You wanted us to get the hang of the country before putting us on the best runways.”

I waved my hands in front of Jim’s face, but he shut his eyes and went right on listening.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll talk over with him and if he feels the way I do, I’ll call you back at supper time tonight. That will give plenty of time to get the extra provisions…”

Jimmie hung up and looked at me with glittering eyes.

“Listen,” he said. “In this world, you have to take such friends as you can find.”

Anyway, excuse us now. We have to and try and locate some ammunition in the shops. And this year it is awfully hard to find.

His Old Instructor

October 3, 1942

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