Here’s an extra post this weekend. Check out how I can still be surprised in researching these guys after 10 years of doing so.
Tag: 1943 Page 1 of 5
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 6, 1943.
“How about a movie?” suggested Jimmie Frise.
“That’s rationed, too,” I stated. “At the least, it’s as good as rationed. All the shows in town are war pictures. And that makes them rationed, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a dandy murder mystery at one of the neighborhood theatres up in the north end,” said Jim, studying the ads in the newspaper.
“Well, that’s rationed, too,” I insisted, “because we haven’t any gas to drive away up to the north end. And I’m certainly not going to spend two-and-a-half hours in street cars to go look at a murder mystery.”
“It’s funny how rationing rations far more than the item under control,” admitted Jimmie. “Now, I was going to suggest we spend tonight tying up a few trout flies. The season is only eight weeks away. Yet we would both feel ridiculous tying trout flies.”
“When they rationed gasoline,” I submitted, “they rationed a thousand other things besides. Trout flies are one of them. Because we certainly aren’t going to get any trout fishing this spring. We can’t drive. We can’t go by bus. And it would be sinful to take up space on trains…”
“Besides,” said Jim, “there are no hooks to be bought for trout flies.”
“And since nobody can get any shotgun shells,” I added, “there aren’t any duck feathers to be had for trout flies. Yes, sir. With a little skill in rationing, you can pretty near cut off all the normal activities of the human race.”
“Well, it’s a total war,” explained Jim.
“But they don’t have to make all the movies war movies,” I protested. “I think the moviemakers are a pretty dumb lot. Here is the biggest chance in their history to establish themselves as a great literary force. Now, more than ever in history, is the time to produce great literary masterpieces that not only will help the public escape from the woes of war, but will remind mankind of the greater, more eternal values of life. But what do the moviemakers do? They produce newsreels with a little story mixed up in them. Every movie producer seems bent on producing artificially a more realistic newsreel of war than the newsreels themselves. They don’t realize how hungry humanity is, right now, for a spiritual and emotional experience that will remind them of the depth of beauty and meaning of human life, and help them, escape from the idea that humanity is a pretty hopeless and helpless muddle.”
“The producers are all working hard,” Jim said, “at propaganda.”
All This Rationing
“Well, I sighed, “if they can all be lined up for propaganda as easily as they are now, we are going to see some fun when the war ends, and half of them are propaganding for the great social changes that are foretold, while the other half are propaganding for the old order.”
“Pshaw,” said Jim, “the social changes are as good as in already. What do you think all this rationing and control is but the training we are getting for the socialism to come?”
“Unless,” I submitted, “we get a good strong party that presents as its platform the getting rid of all the controls and rationings. They’d get a pretty terrific following.”
“Listen: “This rationing,” said Jim, “will have effects that never can be eradicated. When you put both the rich and the poor on one patty of butter per meal, do you imagine that will ever be forgotten?”
“Who by?” I inquired.
“The poor,” said Jim.
“My dear sir,” I cried. “I don’t know much about socialism, but I know enough about it to know you’ve got it entirely backside foremost. The idea of socialism isn’t to make everybody do with one patty of butter. It is to give everybody all the butter they need. It is not to give everybody the same. It is to make sure that a few don’t get all they want, while the many have to lead lives of quiet desperation in order to get what little they can.”
“You have to have some incentive…” began Jimmie.
“Don’t say it!” I cried. “Don’t say it, Jim. It is the worst blasphemy ever uttered against humanity. If the incentive of gain were the only thing that kept mankind alive, we would all have passed off the face of the earth 5,000 years ago. Any one of the hundreds of times in human history when no gain was possible would have wiped us out. No, sir; men work for the sheer love of work. And the greatest proof of it are those rich men who are among the most ardent preachers of that incentive stuff.”
“But we wouldn’t work so hard…” began Jim.
“Why should we?” I demanded. “That’s the whole question in a nut shell. Who says we have to work hard? Only the guys who, for no practical reason on earth, want to bully mankind into giving them a million times more than anyone else, and a million times more than they deserve, for all their brains, ingenuity and willingness to work themselves. Just because a guy is no unnatural and inhuman that he wants to collect a billion dollars, why should we let him make boobies and coolies out of all the rest of us?”
“Without leaders, in industry, finance, and…” tried Jimmie.
“Utter hooey,” I assured him. “Take those same guys and cut their salaries to $2,500 not $25,0001, and they would still want to be boss, they’d still work like horses, they’d still use their brains, and energies exactly as they do now. They’ve been kidding us. We’ve let them get away with murder. They can’t help working. They can’t help being clever and ingenious. It’s the way they are born.”
“Do you mean to say,” scoffed Jimmie, “that if we cut the head men down to the same wages as us, they would continue to work as they do, while we go fishing…”
“Certainly,” I replied. They couldn’t be loafers if they tried. You are a loafer because that is your born nature. Or you are a working, scheming fool because that is your nature. If all the money in the world won’t change you and me from being loafers at heart, why do you imagine all the money in the world would change the boss from being the boss.”
“Then?” cried Jim, amazed.
“Take the money away from him, and watch him be himself anyway,” I triumphed.
“I don’t believe it,” muttered Jim incredulously.
“The real enemies of the big social reforms coming,” I submitted, “are not going to be the rich men. Not even the sons of rich men. The real body of public opinion which is going to fight the reform are going to be the gamblers. The guys who live moderately by their wits. All of us you see jammed into the Gardens to watch hockey games, and at the races. The hundreds of thousands among us who believe that winning is a matter of brute strength, skill and smartness. The worshippers of sport. Those are the guys who are afraid of social justice, not the rich industrialists. Every measly little bird you see in our city, with crafty bloodshot eye and a cunning shut mouth – he’s the enemy of reform. He’s the bird who doesn’t want to work. He wants to live by his wits. Very few of them are rich. Countless thousands of them, however, will fight with all the genius of foxes and weasels against any system that prescribes honest work as the basis of their livelihood.”
“You’re pretty tough on sport,” protested Jim.
“I just used sport,” I explained, “to make a quick picture for you men in the mass. You could say the same about the movies or a political rally. The next time you hear anybody talking about incentive and private enterprise, make immediate inquiries about him. And ten to one you’ll find he is a promoter, whose only work is chiselling a few dimes off the man who makes something and a few nickels off the man who buys it.”
“This is tough stuff,” complained Jimmie.
“Listen,” I said loudly, “a man likes to work if for no better reason than to escape, for a few hours a day, from his wife and kids.”
“Put that in a movie,” scorned Jimmie.
“How about a movie?” I demanded. “There is nothing else to do.”
“Will you even go to a war picture?” asked Jim.
“Yes,” I said bitterly. “And first will be a newsreel full of battle. Next will come a Canada’s War Effort short about making torpedoes2. And then the feature, an unsinkable sergeant who shoots Japs out of every coconut tree and marries an heiress in the W.A.A.C.’s.”
“Aw,” said Jim.
But we went.
Behind Big Hats
And the theatre was jammed. And we went all the way down to the front, with an usher, and found no seats. And then we hunted for ourselves, and off to one side, we got two seats together, climbing all over twelve people’s feet at the very moment the hero of the feature was clutching the W.A.A.C.3 to his many medalled bosom.
And when we got seated, we found that two ladies sitting directly in front of us had those big pie-shaped hats that curve upwards in front.
“Madam,” I whispered between them, “would you mind taking off your hats, please?”
Both ladies turned sharply, sat forward so as to bring a sufficient hauteur into the gesture, and then slowly relaxed back, without touching their hats.
I bundled my coat up for a cushion and sat on it.
But still I couldn’t see past those two hats.
“Can you see, Jim?” I inquired loudly.
“If they’d sit still, I could catch glimpses,” confessed Jim.
The ladies had the habit of leaning together and then drawing apart, a habit not uncommon among those who, while not wanting to discuss the picture play by play, still wish to communicate to each other their appreciation of the finer points of the film.
“Usher,” I called modestly, to an usher, hustling up the aisle twelve seats away.
“Sssshhhh,” said six people. I looked around.
“Can you folks see?” I asked those directly behind me.
“We can see but we can’t hear,” replied a sour lady.
Suddenly, I had an inspiration. I took my hat from under the seat and put it on my head.
Jimmie looked at me with delight, and promptly put his on.
“Hey, there, hey, cut that out,” came several voices back of us.
“If these ladies,” I announced resolutely “can wear their hats, so can we.”
As I turned around, someone from behind swiped my hat off my head, and it bounced off Jimmie and went into the darkness three or four seats to the west.
Meanwhile, the two ladies had leaned forward slowly in their seats and turned equally slowly, and were surveying the disturbance with high disdain.
“Pass me my hat, please,” I requested.
Jim’s was still on his head. After a few scuffles, my hat came back to me and I placed it at once on my head.
Now fifteen or twenty people were standing up behind us and among the angry outcries were calls for “usher, usher.”
We sat grimly, holding our hats to our heads.
Deep-Rooted Customs
A social revolution is a sudden thing. At first, just a few angry outcries, lost amid a widening mutter and murmur of discussion. Then all of a sudden, everything explodes.
My hat was jerked from my head and I didn’t even see it depart. Jim’s I saw go sailing ahead fifteen rows. Ladies began screaming. One of the proud ladies in front, with the offending hats, rose to her feet and shouted into the darkness:
“George, where are you. Come quick!” And from three rows behind, two gentlemen, apparently the husbands of the offenders, came hurdling and grunting, and all was great confusion of shoves and hoists and bunts with knees, until I found two ushers helping me to escape, Right behind me, two more ushers were helping Jimmie along.
And without any delay whatever, we were hurried out the doors where the large elderly commissionaire at the ticket escorted us rapidly down the slanting parquet.
“Our hats, our hats,” I protested hotly.
“Inquire for them,” said the commissionaire, “at the box-office after hours.”
And he dusted us out on to the sidewalk.
This being a neighborhood theatre, we did not wish to attract the attention of any people who might know us by standing on our rights or even our dignity. So we pretended we were just leaving the theatre anyway, and we hurried a few doors east and went into the ice cream parlor and got a sheltered booth in which to recover our composure.
“Well, anyway,” I stated, “my hat was an old one, and I was thinking it was time I got a new one.”
“The same here,” said Jim. “But that just goes to show you. You can’t try innovations. You can’t easily upset old, established customs.”
“I’ll bet those ladies have got their hats off now,” I argued. “It takes a few revolutionaries like us to bring about social justice.”
“I bet they still have their hats on,” retorted Jim, “and I bet not only do they feel like social heroines, but half the people around them are looking admiringly at them.”
“If their husbands hadn’t been sitting back of us,” I stated, “I bet we would have won the argument.”
“Naw,” said Jim, “it is you that doesn’t understand human society. Things are too deep-rooted even for justice. It is an old, deep-rooted custom for ladies to wear their hats in movies, even if they constitute a public nuisance. But it is unheard-of for men to wear their hats in theatres.”
“But how about justice?” I demanded heatedly.
“Okay,” smiled Jimmie, smoothing his ruffled hair, “how about it?”
Editor’s Notes:
- $2,500 in 1943 would be $44,800 in 2025. So $25,000 would be $448,000. ↩︎
- Not the same thing, but if you want to watch Canadian Army Newsreels, they are on Youtube. ↩︎
- W.A.A.C. was short for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, a term used in various wars and countries for women who volunteered to help free up men for combat roles. It became a catch-all term for women in the military, though there were other acronyms. In Canada in World War 2, they were the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC). ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 20, 1943.
“Forty cents!1” protested Jimmie Frise loudly. “Forty cents to develop a film!”
“Ah,” I explained, “but that includes printing the snaps, too. If they’re any good.”
“Forty cents,” muttered Jimmie. “I bet there isn’t two cents’ worth of chemicals used. In fact, the way they put through 500 amateur rolls of film at one time, in a bathtub, I bet the chemicals wouldn’t cost a fraction of one cent per roll.”
“There’s the overhead,” I explained.
“Some little old dirty damp darkroom,” snorted Jimmie. “In some back attic of some old downtown warehouse.”
“Okay,” I submitted. “Then why don’t you develop your own rolls? You say it used to be a hobby of yours when you were a kid.”
“As a matter of fact,” declared Jimmie, “everybody who takes pictures should develop his own. Not only is it a fascinating hobby. It rounds out the whole art of photography. All over this city are nice, happy people with cameras, shooting pictures for all they’re worth. Pictures of soldier sons or soldier sweethearts in their new uniform. Pictures of new babies. Pictures of new brides. A lot of happy, eager people doing their best to capture in pictures a moment, a mood, a crisis of joy or happiness. And then what happens?”
“I know,” I said. “They can’t buy any film.”
“No,” cried Jim. “Suppose they have a film. In 100 different places, at different times of day, by different lights, sunlit, dull or almost dark, these pictures are taken and then rushed to the corner drug store. From the drug store they are collected by the bathtub corporations that develop and print the pictures. The precious, hope-laden films, shot by all these expectant amateurs, are rushed downtown to some damp mass production darkroom, where the whole works are dumped into hog troughs, bathtubs and vats with 19 cents’ worth of chemicals taken from barrels. The whole lot is swished and whirled around for a few minutes and then fished out.”
We Shouldn’t Dogmatize
“What do you expect for 40 cents?” I inquired.
“Well,” declared Jim, “every one of those films in those hog troughs and bathtubs was taken under different conditions of light, under varying conditions of expertness. To get the best out of them, every one of them should, be developed separately, in front of a ruby light, the operator watching with expert care to see that the utmost value of the film is preserved, giving it neither too much nor too little development…”
“Maybe you can get that kind of developing,” I suggested, “by paying for it. But it would be a lot more than 40 cents for a roll all developed and printed.”
“I’ll bet you more swell pictures,” declared Jim, “are ruined by mass development than by amateur shutter snapping.”
“What do you expect?” I demanded. “This is democracy. This is not technocracy. Under our system, anybody is free to buy a camera and shoot pictures. Some buy cheap cameras and never learn how to run them. Others buy costly cameras and make a technical and intricate hobby of it. The ones who buy the cheap cameras and never learn how to operate them are perfectly content to take their films down to the drug store and let the bathtub boys develop them. If they turn out lousy, the least surprised of all is the owner of the cheap camera who doesn’t know how to run it. That’s democracy. It permits anybody own a $500 camera or a $2 camera: whatever you like. It also permits anybody to become his own amateur developer. It also permits a bunch of the boys to organize a little company and gallop around daily, by motor car, to all the drug stores, picking up rolls and pitching them into bathtubs.”
“Democracy,” agreed Jim, “gives elbow room for all the saps. Imagine a guy paying $500 for a camera.”
“And imagine a guy,” I inserted, “paying $2 for a camera and then not knowing how to run it.”
“The more money spent, the bigger the sap,” maintained Jim.
“False,” I decided. “Because maybe the guy who spent the $500 has plenty of money, and if he hadn’t spent it on a camera he might have spent it on a 10-year subscription to all the professional hockey games until the end of the season of 1953. You can never dogmatize about the way a guy spends his money. Maybe the sap who bought the $2 camera and then didn’t learn how to operate it spent $498 on a lawyer to get him out of a breach-of-promise suit. No, sir. You never can say one man is a sap and another isn’t. The safest course is to believe that everybody is a sap. Then you can’t go wrong.”
Sly Digs At Democracy
“Is this a veiled attack on democracy?” inquired Jim sternly.
“Not at all,” I assured him. “The question is: Does democracy breed saps? Or do saps breed democracy? Hitler tried to find out. So he’s finding out.”
“Look here,” exclaimed Jimmie, “you’ve been taking some pretty sly digs at democracy lately. What goes on? Where do you stand?”
“It isn’t democracy,” I explained. “It’s just humanity. Look: we live under a free, democratic system of government in which the elected representatives of the people sit in parliament. Is that agreed?”
“Correct,” said Jim stoutly. “Representative government.”
“Okay,” I submitted. “An election is coming along. So, in the riding in which we live a meeting is held to choose a candidate for the Liberal party. Is that meeting announced? Maybe. If it is, would you and I give up movie to attend it? Maybe. At any rate, in St. Hoosis Hall in our riding on the 27th a meeting is held of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal Association. Forty-seven guys turn up, of whom 16 are professional politicians, each bringing a friend, making 16 more, and the rest of the 47 are guys out for a walk to the corner to buy cigarettes who, seeing St. Hoosis Hall doors open, walked in.”
“Aw now,” protested Jim.
“Meantime,” I went on, “in St. Pollywog’s Hall, in the same riding, the St. Hoosis riding Conservative Association is holding its nomination meeting. It being Toronto, no fewer than 51 people are in attendance. Maybe the same night, in a church basement or in a dancing academy up two flights, the C.C.F. are holding their nomination meeting. It being a slightly northerly section of Toronto, no fewer than 60 people are present.”
“Aw,” said Jimmie.
“Now,” I explained, “besides these riding associations there are the provincial party committees. And besides the provincial and district committees there are the federal party headquarters, with big offices in Ottawa. Now, who do you think is the chairman at each of these three nomination meetings here in St. Hoosis riding in Toronto? Is it just some guy was on his way down to the corner to buy smokes? Or is it somebody they even know about away up in Ottawa, in those national head offices? Which do you think?”
“Aw,” protested Jimmie loudly.
“At any rate,” I pursued, “at each of these three meetings, you might describe as secret societies except there isn’t a tyler2 at the door, highly successful nominations are arrived at. Speakers speak. The calamitous state of the country or vice versa, is dealt with. The candidates are introduced – that is, in case the local boys have fallen out – and then all those entitled, that is, the authentic and accredited members of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal, Conservative or C.C.F. Associations, are called upon to vote. Thus are chosen the people’s representatives in our free, democratic system of government.”
“Aw, that’s cynical,” protested Jimmie.
“Look.” I cried, “you can have your choice: three. The election comes along, and it’s like Christmas. We have three Santa Claus parades instead of one. The three parties parade their people’s choice up and down, and we line the thoroughfares, cheering madly and choosing our one true, genuine Santa Claus. And when it’s all over, the people’s choice is elected. The representative of the people. One of these three guys selected, very, veeeery cautiously, at a little semi-private meeting in a semi-private ward by a little gathering of professionals.”
“We could all attend if we liked,” cried Jimmie.
“So could we all develop our own films,” I submitted. “But it’s easier to just drop them in the drug store on our way past.”
“What you’ve just said upsets me,” muttered Jim. “You make it all sound so cynical.”
“What I’ve just said,” I retorted, “is not mine at all, not a all, not a word of it. It has been said by this country’s very best men, its greatest editors, its greatest preachers, teachers and statesmen for 100 years. If you don’t care for good pictures, okay: let the bathtub boys do your developing and printing. If you don’t care about government – which is how you and your children are to live – okay, leave it to the bathtub boys.”
Jimmie sat silent and grim for a long minute.
“I haven’t got,” he said at last, “a really decent picture of you in my whole album. I’ve got a few snaps of you up fishing at Lac Alexandre and a couple of deer hunting poses. But with that swell old camera of mine I’m entitled to a real, true, characteristic picture of you. We’ve been partners a long time now. I want you to quit at 4 today and we’ll call at my house…”
So we quit at 10 to 4, which is all right for creative workers like us, who are just as liable to run into a million-dollar idea, or a ten-dollar one, which is just as good, riding on a street car as sitting at a dumb desk; and we got to Jim’s before 4.30 p.m., with a fine, ambient winter afternoon light. And Jimmie got his camera and his light meter and sat me on the veranda pillars and made six shots of me at various angles, and I made six shots of him.
“Now,” said Jim, triumphantly, “surprise!”
Unknown to me, he had bought a supply of chemicals, developer and hypo3. And a box of print paper.
And, taking me down to the fruit cellar, he explored amid the barrels and boxes and emerged with a portable ruby light of ancient vintage and several old-fashioned black trays.
“Wonderful,” I crowed. “Why didn’t you tell me you had this equipment long ago. We could have had barrels of fun.”
“After I was first married,” said Jim, “I tinkered with photography. I haven’t even seen this stuff in 25 years. But I knew it was here.”
Jim washed out the trays in the laundry and brought them in full of water of the right temperature. A big tray for washing. lesser trays, one for the developer and one for the hypo or fixing bath. He set them all out in precise like a hostess arranging a table before the guests arrive.
“Orderly procedure,” he explained, “is the whole secret of the job. As a matter of fact, developing and printing pictures is childishly simple. Organize it and you can’t go wrong.”
He then explained to me the process. With the ruby light casting its warm and secret radiance around, we would unroll the spools and then immerse the negative in the developing tray, running it, by a process of up and down, through the chemical for a period of from three to eight minutes, watching all the time, in the glow of the ruby light, to see how fast the developer worked and how the impressions on the emulsion side were coming.
Then, rinsing the film in the water bath, which, under ideal arrangements not possible in a fruit cellar, would be running water, the film would be dipped and run up and down in the fixing bath until all the emulsion was good and hard.
“Then,” said Jim, “15 minutes in the water to wash, and we hang her up to dry. Tonight, after dinner, you come over and we print. Printing is the sport. You can really experiment for artistic results. You can enlarge parts of it. For example, that one I took of you in profile, I’ll enlarge just the head. If I’m any judge, there was a Byronic pose to that one…”
“Come on, come on,” I urged, removing my coat. “Which will I do?”
“I’ll mix the chemicals and you do the slow, even running up and down of the film through the bath.”
“Okay,” I said.
“One last look,” said Jim, checking over each tray, each package of chemical, each spool, all in readiness. “Okay.”
He turned on the ruby light and reached up and switched off the bright bulb.
In the dim ruddy glow, there was an air of mystery, of science, of exploration.
“Wait a minute,” cautioned Jim, “until our eyes get used to the light.”
Main Thing is Ideals
“Stand back a minute,” said Jim, leaning over the trays. And with a spoon he measured out the chemicals, smoothing off the chemicals like a chemist himself. With a stick, he stirred.
“Okay,” he said. “Unroll the first negative.”
I reached and got one of the spools and broke the seal. Carefully I peeled off the outer covering until I came to the film, which I detached according to Jim’s instructions. It was wiry and curly.
“Hold it carefully by the ends,” said Jim, “and now run it slowly and evenly through the bath.”
He stood, superintending. And I dipped the film in the tepid chemical and felt it soften as it slid up, down in the solution.
“How’s it coming?” demanded Jimmie, bending down to get the film between him and the ruby light. “Is it soft?”
“It’s getting wiry again,” I said. “It was soft at first.”
“Whoa,” commanded Jim. “Hold it still in front of the light.”
I held it dripping over the tray while Jim leaned close and peered at it against the red light.
“H’m,” said he.
And before I could utter a word, he reached up and turned on the bright light overhead. In his hand he held one of the packages of chemical, which he was studying intently.
“Just as I feared,” he said bitterly. “You put it in the hypo first!”
“I,” I yelled. “I put it in the hypo!”
So we agreed that, even if we do try to do things right, whether it has to do with representative government or merely developing photographs, it very often means only a lot of fussing, with little result.
“With saps like us,” I explained to Jimmie, after we had properly developed the second roll and found that I had had my finger in front of the lens each time, “the main thing is we at least have high ideals.”
“That’s what really matters,” confessed Jim.
Editor’s Notes:
- 40 cents in 1943 would be $7 in 2025. ↩︎
- A tyler in Freemasonry is an appointed officer stationed outside the closed door of a lodge room to guard against unauthorized intruders. ↩︎
- Hypo is is the traditional term for Sodium Thiosulfate (
), which is used to fix, or stabilize, images as a final step in the photographic processing of film or paper. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 16, 1943.
“Hooray!” yelled Jimmie Frise, waving a letter.
“Surely not,” I said. “Surely no good news!”
“My Aunt Judy,” cried Jim excitedly, “has got her arthritis back.”
“Back?” I protested. “Is that good news?”
“It’s an ill wind,” said Jimmie, bringing the letter over, to read to me, “that blows nobody good. Listen to this:
“‘Dear Jim:
“‘When you were a boy you used to come over and help me with my churning. Now, when every pound of butter is a real part of the war effort, my arthritis has come back and I simply can’t churn. If you have any weekends free these times you could drop around and visit your old auntie and at the same time do a bit of war work that is sorely needed.'”
Jimmie waved the letter joyously and executed a few dance steps around the office.
“But, Jim,” I interposed, “why all the excitement? This can mean nothing to you. Your Aunt Judy can’t let you have any more butter than you can buy at any store.”
“What?” snorted Jim. “You mean my Aunt Judy, on the farm, can’t give away any butter? Even to her favorite nephew?”
“Not a fraction of a pound,” I assured him solemnly.
“Don’t be foolish,” said Jim. “Don’t tell me the law has invaded the sanctity of the farm home and the family.”
“Your Aunt Judy,” I announce “if she made a single pound of butter that she failed to report to the government, would be a bootlegger, a moonshiner…”
“A buttershiner!” said Jim. “Don’t tell me that’s the law.”
“That is the law, my lad,” I asserted. “And if you don’t believe me, call up the local office of the wartime prices and trade board.”
“But it’s preposterous,” scoffed Jim. “Butter!”
“That’s what the boys who drink booze said when prohibition came in,” I explained. “But it’s preposterous, they said. Liquor!”
“Don’t try to compare booze and butter,” declared Jim warmly.
“Why not?” I inquired. “If what you like is taken away from you, you are indignant. A great gulf has divided those who wanted booze from those who hated booze. A vast gulf filled with the darkness of misunderstanding. But now, when a comfortable dowager who hates booze but loves butter is faced with being deprived of what she loves, she has the heaven-sent chance to try to understand the agony and trickery and schemery of a booze hound who tried to beat the law. Let all people of good-will beware of buttershining. Let all who love justice for others be just to themselves and stick to half a pound of butter per person per week.”
“Poor Aunt Judy,” said Jim tenderly. “She’s got the arthritis back.”
Law and Intention
“Snap out of it, Jim,” I warned him. “You thought it was a wicked and vicious thing not only for bootleggers to operate but for people to patronize bootleggers. If I remember you right, you used to claim that it was not the bootleggers but the people who patronized bootleggers on whom the real guilt lay. So don’t go around trying to bootleg the odd pound of butter in the delusion that it is merely butter. The greatest weakness in human nature is the notion that your case is different. But I say unto you that it is purely a moral question and a patriotic question. Have you got the guts to stick to half a pound a week? Or are you, like a lot of smart people, a little lacking in guts which you make up for by smartness?”
“I was hoping,” sighed Jim, “that you and I could go out to Aunt Judy’s tomorrow for the week-end and churn her butter.”
“Jim,” I said, “if you don’t believe me, call up the wartime prices and trade, board office. It is contrary to the intention of the law even to beat up a little butter with an egg-beater or electric mixer…”
“Where could you get the cream?” demanded Jim.
“Cream off the top of the milk bottle,” I announced.
“But look,” protested Jim. “If a quart of milk has certain food values in it, and if I prefer to use those food values by beating up little butter instead of drinking the milk-“
“Don’t squirm,” I warned him. “That’s the way the old bootleggers and moonshiners used to think. They used to say: Here I have a few bushels of potatoes. What does it matter whether I boil the potatoes and eat them or let them ferment and drink the alcohol out of them? The law is the law. The intention is the intention. To help fight this war, the government has organized certain controls, many of them as little and apparently meaningless as a spike or a switch on a railway track, but without which the whole system cannot operate.”
“So if I cheat on butter,” mused Jim, “I might as well cheat, say, on making cartridges. I might as well fill cartridges with sand instead of cordite.”
“Correct,” I said. It is time we all started playing the game. We are needed, up till now, to let the airmen and sailors and soldiers play the game for us. Leave it to the soldiers. They volunteered, didn’t they? But now it begins to seep into us that we all have to take a piece of the war. I heard a dandy at lunch yesterday. A man who hates Mackenzie King got going as usual. And the man lunching with him interrupted him mildly and asked, ‘By the way, how much do you get for that?’ ‘That what?’ inquired the other. ‘That stuff you are spouting about Mackenzie King? How do you mean?’ demanded the other indignantly; ‘how much do I get for it?’ ‘Well,’ said the other fellow, ‘don’t tell me you are doing it for nothing when there are guys in Buffalo and Detroit and all along the border who would gladly pay you $15 a week to go around spreading that kind of stuff. Why, the Germans have spent millions of dollars all over the world hiring people to do that work. Don’t tell me you are working for the Germans for nothing!'”
“What happened?” asked Jim, delighted.
“The luncheon broke up,” I advised.
“Well, sir,” said Jim, “you’ve certainly taken the joy out of life regarding Aunt Judy.”
“Ah,” I said, “but I still think you should go and help your Aunt Judy do her churning. It is less than 30 miles out. It is a little used branch line of the railroad. I’ve been on that train when there weren’t two dozen passengers. In fact, churning up a batch of butter strikes me as a very useful activity for a couple of city men on a week-end, with nothing better to do.”
“A couple of city men?” inquired Jim happily.
A Useful Activity
So we left on the noon train and arrived at Aunt Judy’s farm before 2 p.m. And she was very delighted indeed to see us.
“I sort of knew you would come,” she cried.
And we took our coats off and put on the aprons Aunt Judy laid out for us. In the outer kitchen, back of the main farm kitchen, we found the churn on its sawhorse legs standing ready. It was a regular barrel which rocked violently when you turned the crank. A little window in it allowed you to peek and see how the butter was coming.
“You will have to wait about an hour,” explained Aunt Judy, “while I set the cream out to come to room temperature. It’s cooled now, so if you’ll just lift it into the room…”
So Jim and I carried the pails and cans of cream from the cream shed into the kitchen. and poured most of it into big pans and open dishes, the sooner to reach room temperature. And Aunt Judy took us into the main kitchen, where we sat in rocking-chairs around the big stove and talked about butter.
“Do you know,” said Aunt Judy, who is very prominent in the Women’s Institute and reads all sorts of encyclopaedias and almanacs, “that Canadians are probably the biggest butter eaters in the world?”
“Aw, now,” cried Jimmie.
“Even in the United States,” declared Aunt Judy, “where they have the highest standards of living in the world, the per capita consumption of butter is only 17½ pounds per annum.”
“Holy smoke,” said Jim. “Is that all they use? Why, that’s only a third of a pound of butter per person a week.”
“Then what are we Canadians kicking about,” demanded Jim, “at a half a pound per person per week?”
“In Britain,” went on Aunt Judy, “the per capita annual consumption is about the same as the United States, between 17 and 18 pounds a year.”
“And what do we use in Canada?”
“In Canada,” declared Aunt Judy triumphantly, “we consume 27 pounds per capita per year! Ten pounds per person more than the United States, 10 pounds more than the British Isles. We are a butter-guzzling race, we Canadians!”
“Maybe it is because we are a northern race,” I suggested. “Look at the Eskimos. They need fat so badly they eat raw seal blubber.”
Aunt Judy’s Churn
“We Canadians,” said Aunt Judy, “are terrific cake eaters. We cook with butter, where more frugal nations use cheap fat. We soak butter into our potatoes. We slather bread with butter. We have a beaver for our national symbol. We would be more honest if we had a pound of butter on our coat of arms.”
“Well, then,” said Jim, “I don’t feel so bad about being cut down to half a pound. But I’ve seen my family use six pounds a week for the six of us. A pound a week per person.”
“That’s not uncommon,” agreed Aunt Judy, “the lavish way we cook and prepare our meals. Canadians, I imagine, have the highest standard of living in the world, when it comes to the domestic side.”
“What a right little, tight little island we are in Canada,” I smiled, thinking of our vast size and our little scattered population all busily greasing its insides with choice butter.
So we went into the outer kitchen and got to work.
“It’s the simplest thing in the world, making butter,” said Aunt Judy. “Just pour in the cream. Start the churn. And after while you see flecks of butter appearing on the little glass window. Keep right on. And at last, you take off the lid and there’s your butter, solid gobs of it, floating on top of a lot of buttermilk.”
Into the barrel churn we poured the thick sweet cream.
“With sour cream,” announced Aunt Judy, “the way the factories do, they have to doctor the cream up with bacilli.”
“Ugh,” I said.
“But creamery butter made from fresh cream,” said she, “keeps in storage far better than butter made with sour cream. The Danes proved that. They set the pace for the whole world in butter. When I was a girl, butter used to be highly colored and salty. The Danes started to show the whole world how to make butter with its natural lovely pale yellow color, its waxy texture and hardly any salt at all. That’s the way I make it.”
We put the lid on the churn and clamped it down. And, while Jim started the crank, I gathered the big wooden bowl and the big wooden spoon like a ladle, and rubbed salt into them so the butter wouldn’t stick.
All that butter is, is cow grease and elbow grease. The cow gives milk. Aunt Judy puts the milk in the separator and takes out the cream. And Jimmie and I supplied the elbow grease. Turn about.
“It takes,” said Aunt Judy, “27 pounds of milk to make one pound of butter. When the cream’s taken out, you have the milk left. And when you take the butter out of the cream you have the buttermilk left. But it’s really very simple.”
And simple it was. Jimmie cranked until he was flushed. Then I cranked until I was flushed. It took about four flushes each and then the little flecks of butter started to appear in the small glass window in the churn. First, the cream turns to whipped cream. Then the water in the cream, which is what cream mostly consists of after all, begins to come loose from the steadily whirling and crashing contents.
The Final Spurt
You could even tell by the feel of the churn, as it swung and banged, that there was something lumpy developing inside.
When we unscrewed the barrel lid of the churn there, floating on the top, was the gorgeous, pale yellow mass of the butter, with the buttermilk streaming and draining off it.
“Okay,” said Jim, seizing the big wooden bowl. “Scoop her out.”
And with the wooden scoop I lifted the butter, taking the big gobs first and the lesser gobs until I finally strained quite small globules and blobs off the surface of the buttermilk.
And with the wooden spoon Jimmie kneaded and patted and squeezed the butter in the bowl, forcing all the buttermilk out of the waxy mass. The exact amount of salt Aunt Judy had left in a dish, and this Jimmie kneaded and kneaded into the butter still in the wooden bowl.
Aunt Judy came back from feeding the chickens and supervised the cutting of the butter into pound “prints,” as she called them. There was a small wooden box, also salted so the butter would not stick, which we pressed into the mass, filling it. The box held exactly a pound of butter, and it had a false top with a handle. When the box was squeezed full you just held it over a square of wax paper and shoved down on the handle, forcing the pound of butter out, beautiful, yellow and pure, on to the paper.
The box also printed Aunt Judy’s name right into the butter.
Twenty-six pounds we got for the churning.
“And much as I’d love to reward you boys,” said she, “with a pound of butter each, I can’t do it. I have to have my license to make butter. I have to report every pound I make. I am allowed only half a pound a week per person in the family for myself. And I must turn in a coupon and a record of every pound I sell.”
“Don’t mention it,” said both Jimmie and I. “It was a pleasure.”
But we did lick our fingers.
And at supper, before we drove back in the cutter to catch, the 8.47, not a pat of our butter did Aunt Judy produce; but only the butter dish in which, carefully cut into squares, was some of Aunt Judy’s former churning.
“But,” said she, marching in with a huge white granite pitcher such as is used at church socials, “there is no rationing of buttermilk!”
And we drank most of the pitcher, full of the sweetest buttermilk that ever swelled your neck; and we each carried home a gallon jug of it.
Editor’s Note: This seems to be another war-time public service announcement, rather than one of their regular stories.
Reunited overseas with Frederick Griffin, his companion of many stirring news adventures, is The Star’s Gregory Clark, whose first story after arrival appears today. The two comrades are accredited war correspondents for The Star in the European theatre.
“Feed Him Like Horse, Work Him Like Mule and Trust Him”
Show How It Works
By Gregory Clark, London, July 6, 1943.
It is customary for a war correspondent returning to the scene of his previous adventures to say something of the changes he sees. After these first few days back living with Canadian units, to me the changes are terrific. Making an army is something like making an engine.
First you assemble materials and then you start with some heavy foundry work, melt your metals. and pour it into moulds. These rough and clumsy castings then proceed through the hard and tedious process of grinding and filing and polishing. Then the assembly begins.
Many an army of our race has had to go into battle when it was no more than a rough casting. When I was last here the Canadians had reached the assembly line. Today, by the grace of history rather than good fortune, the Canadian army is an engine that has been run in 2,000 miles and is now ready for the road. Not polished, but honed.
Yet to write in this vein has its perils. Of the dozen top men I have met in the past week, six have said practically in these same words: “Please don’t send any more stuff to Canada about our fast-moving, hard-hitting army. Two years ago when we talked that way of our army, we did it to reassure the folks at home. We had no idea it would be two more weary years before we would go into action. The result is the people at home have the idea that we are some sort of miraculous army to which no harm can come. Please start to tell them at home to stiffen their hearts.
“They are writing from home to us of inquiries and debates parliament on our performance. We begin to feel that if we do not win a battle without losses we will all be pilloried. There is not man in the Canadian army who has not calculated those losses and is prepared for them. But there is not one of us, from bugler to brigadier, who does not thank God for the chance we have had, by training and stern selection, to equip himself to hold those losses to a minimum.
“It has been hard for us. It will soon be hard for those at home when our battle comes. All we hope is that they bear their hardship the way we would like them to.”
Like Scattered Showers
So my first job has been to look around for stories that would deliberately avoid glamour. With the air force this has been easy. Like the premonitory spatter of raindrops on the roof, the casualties of the air force have been coming in for three years like scattered showers the sound of which are well and sorely known to thousands of Canadian homes. There is glamour forever in the air force, yet when I visited a sombre squadron all I could think of was the Mimico freight yards. Here were no sleek brown and gray planes with carefree youngsters swinging in and out of them, but freight yards where giant and grim freight cars on wings come and go, day and night, and tireless freight crews, wearing no tinge of glamour, and solidly to the freight business and carry the packaged goods to destinations with the plain glamourless determination of the West Toronto yards or North Bay.
In the army there is not even the glamour of color or shapely equipment. Its color is as glamourless as the earth in March. Its machines are the shape of rocks and stumps. And to go where there would be no possible expectation of glamour, on arriving with the troops I went where no other correspondent had ever been before and that was to No. 1 field punishment camp. This is like calling at the back door instead of the front door. Yet let us see what we find.
“Up for Office”
With a great many tens of thousands of Canadians in Britain for two, three and more years, with nothing to do but train and make ready to pack and unpack, to start training all afresh again, there are some who grow weary and sauce their officer back, some who go absent for a holiday and some who grow resentful. To imagine all Canadian officers are perfection, or that all Canadian boys are little Willies is absurd even in a recruiting sergeant. When the crime is committed – and it is called a crime. in the army – the lad is “up for office” and his colonel can give him up to 28 days field punishment. Field punishment means his pay stops and if his sentence is under eight days he goes to the guard house and performs sundry menial tasks such as small construction jobs, like building a new flagstone path to the orderly hut, plus punishment drill, which he does in quick time and sometimes with sand in his packsack instead of socks and shirts. It is a sort of grown-up spanking in public.
Run on Honor System
But if his sentence is more than seven days he goes to this No. 1 field punishment camp, which serves the whole Canadian army. Its commandant is a French-Canadian captain, Charles O. Rochon, formerly a C.P.R. freight official at Montreal. He is the only officer in the camp and his staff are 30 other ranks, most of them non-commissioned officers, expert in discipline. Here comes our “Little Willies,” are recalcitrant, rebellious or fed up, or as they say now, “browned off.”
“This camp,” said Capt. Rochon, “is run on the honor system. There is neither barbed wire nor sentries. When we took the camp over it had barbed wire 12 feet high not only all around it, but barbed wire 12 feet high in between each hut. With the men sent in from all over the army for field punishment we started by building new huts and tearing down the wire. We have very big garden and we will have 10,000 pounds of potatoes and 18,000 head of cabbage this year. Any man can walk out of the camp if he likes, but he does not like for this reason.
“In the first six months of this year we have had an intake of 2,177 men. This includes all crimes from getting funny with the bugle to fighting with the military police in town. Of that 2,000 odd men, 761 have become non-commissioned officers and 17 have become commissioned officers. We have had only 11 escapees. Repeaters have been one-seventh of 1 per cent. Our sick parade is one a day. And the last man we had to put in a detention hut was on June 3.”
“Absolutely Spotless”
In other words, Capt. Rochon’s little academy has a better record than many a training centre. We asked him to explain it.
“We realized,” he said, “that in the Canadian army there are mighty few bad soldiers. I say 99 per cent. of the Canadian army are good soldiers. Maybe you in Canada have not realized what a strain it has been on the boys these three-and-a-half years, maybe you do. We run this field punishment camp with all the hard work and punishment you ever saw in any army punishment camp anywhere. But there is neither humiliation nor the slightest trace of brutality in the hardness. It is a dismissal offence for any of the staff to swear at soldiers under sentence, as we call them.
“Reveille is at six, breakfast at seven, parade at eight in full equipment. It has to be absolutely spotless or there is punishment drill from six to seven. We give a man four days to learn how to be absolutely clean and smart and his quarters kept absolutely spotless. Then we give him the business.
“He starts with squad drill, the first thing he ever learned when he first joined up. We go through, depending on the number of days of his sentence, a refresher of his whole training from squad to company drill. We feed him like a horse, work him like a mule, trust him absolutely and give him punishment drill if he fails us.
Keeps Them Moving
“Punishment drill is one hour at 180 paces to the minute, with no more than five paces in any one direction. Three sergeant-majors handle this punishment drill. One gives commands, one counts and one checks. We haven’t had a punishment drill since last Tuesday. There have been no offenders. “In the past six months we have out of the men who served here, 761 non-commissioned officers and 17 commissioned officers. If you want to know what kind of men the Canadians are, there is the answer. These are the men who offended against the rules. Given something to do, they did it.
“The funniest case I have had was a bugler with an absolutely clean conduct sheet, not one mark on it. One night, sounding the first post for the thousandth time in his young life, he could not resist the temptation and finished off with that well-known little thing called a “Piccadilly rum to tumta tum tum.” His commanding officer was so incensed that he sentenced the boy to 28 days field punishment. After all, you can’t have buglers playing tricks, especially when you have another thousand men wanting to play tricks, too. But the boy considered it an outrageous sentence and came here in a desperate frame of mind.
“As a matter of fact, both you and I would like to have heard that bugle just the once. However, the boy did his 28 days here and left vowing he would really dirty-up his conduct sheet. In a couple of weeks was back with me again. It is my privilege on studying cases, to refer them to a selection officer, which I did in this case and had the boy transferred to a strange unit. His training here in two punishments was so valuable to him that he called on me six days ago to thank us all, especially the sergeant-majors, who had horsed around on many an evening’s punishment drill. He himself was now a sergeant-major.”
Crossed Ocean 36 Times
Capt. Rochon, who as a provost officer has crossed the Atlantic 36 times in charge of prisoners of war, gave me his 1942 figures. The intake for the year was 3,933. Part of that time was before the barbed wire was removed, so escapees were 12 per cent. and only 11 per cent. became non-commissioned officers after serving and none became officers.
Inspecting the camp with me were several officers recently graduated from training centres and they said the condition of the camp and huts and the smartness of the soldiers’ quarters and kit was definitely better than an officers’ training camp. Only four men are detailed to the huge garden producing three months vegetable supplies because, after hours, boys come and garden themselves, do all the work voluntarily. And remember, these are the bad boys of the whole Canadian army.
I do not know why I tell this story to back up my claim that now you all must be brave when your time comes. But in these random facts and figures about a punishment camp lies some queer power of truth and courage and pathos that out of the bad boys we make hundreds of non-coms and nearly a score of officers in a few months. Hidden in it is the proud story of the patience and hard work with the never-ending littleness of army life until the bigness comes. When the bigness comes there will be stories of infinite power and meaning about these men, for it is easy to be big in battle. And everybody has to be big in battle.
Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the regular Toronto Star.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 3, 1943.
“We’ve made a great mistake,” declared Jimmie Frise, “coming on this week-end.”
“It’s been one of the happiest I’ve ever had,” I countered.
“What I mean is,” said Jim, “we should have saved it until the end of July or the middle of July or the middle of August. We took it too early.”
“We couldn’t have had a lovelier time,” I insisted. “The weather has been sublime. The lake fairly glowed. The woods seemed literally to speak to us. It was as if the whole place welcomed us and beamed upon us.”
“That, explained Jimmie, “is because we know in our hearts that we aren’t going to see many week-ends this year or maybe for a long time to come. We Canadians are just about to realize we have been a privileged people.”
“We sure have,” I sighed. “There is hardly a city in the whole Dominion that hasn’t got lakes, rocks and forests within a couple of hours’ drive. There certainly isn’t another big country in the world that has even a fraction of the holiday land Canada has, at every back door.”
“And we use it,” pursued Jim. “Mighty few city families in Canada with an ordinary living that haven’t got either a summer cottage or a favorite little summer hotel or a farm where they spend at least a couple of weeks of summer. Thousands of families with very modest incomes spend the whole summer at their cottages. We are a country-house nation, and it isn’t only the earls and dukes and gentry who own the country houses. All the professional and management classes, most of the business and most of the mechanic groups have some sort of a country house, even if it is only a little beloved shack.”
“One of the things to be credited to the war,” I agreed, “is that it is going to show us how privileged we Canadians have been. Now that we can only have two or three week-ends, now that we can’t run up to our cottage every Friday night, we are going to appreciate how blest we have been.”
“And took it for granted,” said Jim.
“Most people take their blessings for granted,” I submitted.
“I still think,” stated Jimmie, “that we pulled a boner coming up this week-end. Later in the summer, we are going to wish we had saved those four gasoline coupons1.”
Kind of Wheezy
“Maybe something will turn up,” I suggested, “that would have prevented us coming later. Maybe I’ll have to go overseas again as a war correspondent.”
“Aw, you’re too old and feeble for that any more,” laughed Jim. “This is a young man’s war. You’d make a fine war correspondent, coming limping along about two days behind the battle.”
“It takes us old fellows to tell about war,” I protested. “It is we who appreciate it. The young fellows take war so for granted that they won’t even talk about it. One of my nephews is in the Navy and came home after what I knew to be some pretty furious action. I asked him all about it, very eager. And all he said was that they had quite a bit of fun, popped off quite a number of cans, and had a lively time altogether.”
“The silent service,” reminded Jimmie.
“The army and air force,” I insisted, “are the same. I talked to two young officers who had completed, between them, over five years of operational flying as fighter pilots. They both had shot down several Huns and both had bailed out of their own ruined Spitfires and Hurricanes. I spent a whole evening with them. They said it was very dull, something like a speed-skating contest. Now and again, you saw another speed skater through your sights, and if he was the right shape, you squeezed the trigger. And now and again you hit him. But mostly you went right on skating.”
“What a line!” snorted Jim.
“Well, they didn’t want to be bothered talking about it,” I explained. “It is to them like a master musician talking about Bach to a bevy of old ladies.”
“Well, whatever happens,” mumbled Jim, as we drove southward over almost deserted highways towards the city, “I still think we’ll bewail the waste of these gas coupons before the summer’s over.”
“On the other hand, Jim,” I opined, “I rather think we are wise guys to come this week-end. I don’t know how much longer the tires are going to last. And by the sound of the engine, maybe the old schooner won’t even be running by August.”
“She is kind of wheezy,” admitted Jim, listening.
“Wheezy?” I scoffed. “She fairly clanks. Hear that clank?”
“Sounds like a bust connecting rod to me,” said Jim. “It will tear the bejeepers out of your crank shaft.”
Remembering Happy Days
“Listen to that whistle,” I said, slackening speed. “Just like a canary.”
“That’s your fan belt,” said Jim, “probably the bearing, burning itself out.”
“I think it’s a generator whistle,” I suggested, “that has got past the whistle stage to the warbling stage.”
“She smells hot, too,” said Jim. “Isn’t it a caution how we are neglecting our cars these days? Even when we know we should be taking care of them, nursing them, petting them, for the first time in 20 years of driving experience, we are letting our cars go to blazes.”
“Well, for one thing,” I pointed out, “we aren’t driving them much, and we lose the sense of time that we used to have in the days when we changed oil every thousand miles and had things looked over every couple of months.”
“Besides,” said Jim, “we aren’t driving enough to notice the deterioration. We are so busy watching the fuel gauge, we can’t notice anything else. Something amiss, that would have been sensed by us instantly in the old days, now goes by unnoticed. Say, doesn’t she smell awfully hot to you?”
“It’s the day, Jim,” I said. “It’s a warm day.”
“Hmmmm,” muttered Jim. “The way she is wheezing and clanking and whistling. I’d say that smell was worth investigating.”
“Even if we investigated,” I reminded him, “we wouldn’t know what to do if we found anything. And with all the gas stations closed on Sunday, there is nobody around to tinker with it.”
We wheezed along a little way in silence, and as we passed an abandoned service station, all weed-grown, along the highway, Jimmy heaved a big sigh and said:
“Ah, the good old days.”
So, for about 20 miles, we remembered the good old days. The carefree driving, with supplies, attention, service at every bend of the road. The freedom to come and go, and all of us living like gentry. The food, the fun, the happy days before and behind, with no dream, no hint, of the dark storm that was coming to engulf us.
As we approached a main crossroad, we saw, hiking down ahead of us, three khaki figures, each laden with full equipment, bulging haversacks, and one or two small dunnage bags hoisted on their shoulders.
“Tankers,” I said, noting their black berets2.
“In battledress, for Pete’s sake,” remark- ed Jim, “on a day like this!”
“That means they are probably going overseas,” I informed him, “for they can’t wear summer drill in Britain. I bet they’re kids going on their last leave. We’ll pick them up.”
I ran slowly past them and we gave them the grins that mean a lift. They ran when we stopped and heaved their bags and haversacks in on the floor behind.
“Take off your junk,” I commanded, “and, be comfortable. Are you on your last leave?”
They favored me with cool, pleasant stares.
“Changing camps, sir,” they said.
“Battledress,” I remarked. “I thought -“
“Changing camps,” they said quietly, with steady look.
You can find fault with some of the young ones. But when a boy is ready, for overseas, he is a pretty good soldier.
We got them comfortably stowed and cigarettes lighted, and started off. Jim leaned over the back and chatted with them and I threw sundry contributions into the conversation.
After a couple of miles, I felt one of the young fellows’ heads beside mine and he was leaning forward to listen.
“Timing pretty bad, eh?” he smiled.
“I can’t figure what that clank is,” I admitted. “Maybe a connecting rod?”
“Timing, I think,” said the boy. “Hey, Jerry, what do you make of that ping?”
The three sat forward.
“Timing,” said they all. “Pull off to the side, mister, and we’ll take a gander at it.”
“Now, now, boys,” cried Jim. “You’re heading on leave.”
“We’re 2,000 miles from home, sir,” smiled the one who had leaned forward first. “There’s a lot of rocks and prairie and a few mountains between us and any leave that matters. We’re in no hurry to get any place. Pull over to the side, sir.”
I drew up to the shoulder and the boys bailed out. Up came the lid and the three of them leaned down.
Off came the coats, and one of the three swung back into the car.
“Tools in the back, sir?”
“Not many tools, I’m afraid,” I mumbled.
They got out my shabby old oil cloth tool kit and examined it. One of them undid his own haversack and brought out an exquisite little tool kit of his own, all brightly glittering wrenches and spanners.
“Turn her off, sir.”
And while Jimmie and I watched, they worked with smooth, rapid movements, undoing nuts, removing things, tightening, adjusting. It was like a three-piano team, all at one piano.
Five minutes they worked, and then stood back.
“Start her up, sir.”
Almost Like Home
I stepped on it. And the old schooner purred with a new, sweet voice. I looked at Jim. Jim winked at me.
“Okay, sir, on our horse!”
And they piled in, drawing on their blouses.
So we went another 10 miles, with the three of them enjoying the breeze and leaning back and waving at the girls in the villages.
Then the same boy as before leaned his head near mine again and said:
“How about letting me at the wheel a little way, sir, she’s not quite right yet.”
I changed places with him, glad of the extra breeze of the back pew of the old stone hooker, and after a mile of smooth and skilful driving, the lad turned and sang back to the boys:
“Clutch, do you think?”
“Clutch it is,” they chorussed, already unbuttoning their blouses.
And off to the side, under a spreading maple, we pulled again, while the boys opened up the lid. Two of them got underneath to a place I never knew existed, where you can get at the clutch. I have always paid $20 just for people to look at the clutch, which seemed to be a matter of lifting the whole top off the car.
They went into committee on the clutch, on the transmission, and on a general tightening up job. They banged and hammered and grunted.
“Boys, boys,” I pleaded, “you’ll never get home at this rate. You are very kind, but…”
“Sir,” said one, “we haven’t had our hands on a little old baby like this for two years. We’ve been working on brand new, big tough army stuff. This is the nearest we’ve been to home since we left British Columbia…”
So old Jim and I got out and sat and crouched and watched and tried to get in on it and share with these youngsters the queer, strange joy they were feeling, as they tinkered with our battered old grand banker.
A Swell Country
Forty minutes, like gremlins, they climbed over and under and all around, with my old rusty tools and their bright glittering ones. They started the engine and listened. They turned it off and clinked and gritted. They drove it 50 feet and backed it 50 feet furiously back. They put my wobbly jack under the rear end and hoisted her up to get at the transmission and rear end.
Like a centre and two forwards passing the puck from one to the other, they made power plays all over the old mousetrap Jimmie and I could scarcely hear the engine when they started it, and when at last the boys stood back and started pulling on their battle-dress blouses, I took my place at the wheel and stepped on the starter. I let in the gears as they cried all aboard, and, like a rabbit, she leaped under my toe.
“Holy smoke,” said Jim.
Even the gears shifted in a strange and beautifully clicking style. She hummed softly. I gave her the business. She climbed like a cat into high.
“Boys,” said Jim, turning to face them, “you’ve given us a new car.”
“If we hear anything else…” they warned, leaning back, with their big feet resting on the floor load of their baggage.
But we did not hear anything else. And like a young bird, she floated us southward along the beautiful highway, with all the trees leaning tenderly over us, and all the wide country, the hills and fields and woods, shining at us in the afternoon.
And when we came to the city and let the boys out at the place they insisted, declining our urgent invitation to eat with us at least, we got out and shook hands ceremonially with them, and the best thanks I could think to give them was to say:
“Canada is a swell country.”
I think they understood what I meant.
Editor’s Notes: Buckshee is slang for “free of charge”.
- Gasoline was the first thing rationed in Canada during the war. Initially, the government relied on voluntary restraint by motorists and the closure of service stations on Sundays. Coupon rationing for gasoline began on April 1, 1942. ↩︎
- In the Canadian Army in World War 2, black berets were worn by the Canadian Army and Reserve Army Tank units. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 22, 1943.
“The more primitive we become now,” summed up Jimmie Frise, “the better our chance of survival.”
“You would hardly call the modern war machine primitive,” I objected.
“I refer to the human factor,” stated Jim. “True, our aircraft, our new ships, our latest tanks and fighting machines of every kind are increasingly complicated and technical. But the men who operate them have to become more primitive as human beings exactly in proportion as the machines become more complex. To fly the very latest bombers at great heights the crews have to become primitive as Eskimos or prehistoric men so as to stand the intense cold. The crews of our newest fighting ships on the sea have to have, not the qualities of Nelson’s sailors, but of the Vikings and Phoenicians who sailed their long ships recklessly into the unknown. The British Navy hasn’t been in habit of fighting its battles alone in the Arctic circle and in the jungle seas of the south.”
“All you mean by primitive,” I scoffed, “is physically tough.”
“I mean primitive,” declared Jimmie. “The dictionary says primitive means early, ancient, old-fashioned, simple, rude and original. What’s the use of being physically tough on board a destroyer that gets wrecked off Greenland? Your toughness won’t do much for you, unless you have also developed the primitive qualities of your mind and spirit. It’s the guy with the primitive mind among the crew who will steer the lifeboat to land without, a compass and make a camp out of nothing. Have you seen that movie, ‘Desert Victory’?1“
“Who hasn’t?” I retorted.
“The men who are winning those battles,” asserted Jim, “are not merely tough. They are not merely skilful in using the tanks, machines and technical weapons. The ones who drive through are the ones who have developed the primitive characteristics of the human race. When the tank quits and the gun jams and the machine breaks down, it is a primitive fighter who keeps right on going. And wins.
“I suppose you are right,” I mused.
Too Much Civilization
“There are certain primitive characteristics of the human race,” insisted Jim, “that should never have been weeded out of us. Civilization got so carried away by its own rush, this past hundred years, that it seemed bent on depriving us of every primitive virtue. The whole aim and object of civilization in recent times appears to be to convert humanity away from the primitive. Every invention, every new device, from kitchen utensils to social laws, has been to make men act, look and be as unlike primitive men as possible. If we find a band of Indians in some a remote and impenetrable jungle, a department of the government rears up and goes crazy until it can capture the primitives and load them up with electric toasters, portable radios and vitamin pills.”
“You are confusing primitive,” I said, “with underprivileged.”
“I suppose,” said Jim, “you would say those soldiers in ‘Desert Victory’ were underprivileged? I tell you the very qualities that modern society has tried to eliminate from mankind in the past century are the qualities now that will win the war for us.”
“Toughness?” I repeated.
“No,” said Jim. “The ability to go on living, acting and carrying out your plans even after all ordinary means have been taken from you. The Germans figured we were so dependent on the means of modern life, the conveniences, tools, gadgets, comforts and equipment of modern life, that we would be helpless without them. In France, they proved right. The minute the Germans smashed the cities and drove the city dwellers out of their towns, the French were helpless. They were unable to live without roofs, taps, windows, kitchens and feather beds. So they surrendered. Then the Germans attacked the British under the same delusion. They tried to smash the cities. But they didn’t quite succeed. They didn’t smash enough houses. So they attacked the Russians. But the Russians were primitive.”
“Hmm, I see,” I admitted.
“The Russians could still live without cities and towns,” went on Jim. “They could live in the woods, in the fields, in root cellars, in scooped out holes in hillsides. They did not feel helpless. So they fought. And they won. Suddenly the shoe was on the other foot. The primitiveness of the Russians proved greater than the primitiveness of the Germans. The Germans had to have shelter against the Russian winter. So the Russians deprived them of that shelter; and they were ruined.”
To Study Woodcraft
“You are getting at something,” I stated shrewdly. “Something is cooking.”
“Yes,” confessed Jim. “I have a plan. A scheme. A project.”
“To make me primitive?” I inquired.
“No,” proceeded Jim eagerly. “I am going to start a little neighborhood group around here to study woodcraft.”
“Boy scouts?” I suggested sweetly.
“If we were attacked,” declared Jim, warmly, “and driven out into the fields and woods, it would be the Boy Scouts among us who would show us how to survive. What I propose is to organize a little group of a dozen or so of our neighbors into a class. And each weekend, we will hike for the out-of-doors, with nothing more than we can carry of bedding, food and utensils, and study how to live in primitive fashion.”
“It’s just a scheme,” I accused, “to go fishing. It’s just a way you’ve thought up of making respectable, in wartime, your own desire to get into the country on week-ends.”
“I’m serious,” declared Jim firmly. “Over in Buffalo, the natural history museum has organized classes to teach the people how to live in the open. It’s a war measure. At Cornell university, they also have organized classes to study woodcraft, to teach people how to survive without the aid of organized towns and cities. Our boys are all gone to war and have learned how to fight. But we are snuggled down here at home, unprepared to fight at all. If our cities are smashed, we quit. Mark my words.”
“Would woodcraft save us?” I snorted.
“Do you know how to make bread in a frying pan?” cried Jim indignantly. “Well, there isn’t a prospector, a lumber jack or a trapper who doesn’t know how to make bread in a frying pan. Do you know how to make a shelter out of boughs so that you can sleep dry and warm on a rainy night? No. Well, every living man, woman and child in Canada ought to know.”
“Can’t we take tents?” I inquired.
“How many people, in Toronto,” demanded Jim, “have a tent handy that they could pick up and take with them if they were bombed out? Don’t be silly. If we are going to fight, as Canadians, we have to know how to survive on what we can carry on our backs. The greatest woodsmen in America say that a pack of 40 pounds is a burden for anything more than a short portage. Thirty pounds is plenty. And the more you can get your pack below 30, the better off you will be for a long journey.”
With What You Can Carry
“In France, in the retreat to Dunkirk,” I admitted, “I saw people trying to get away with loads in wheelbarrows, baby carriages and hand wagons – that is, after their cars gave out for want of gas.”
“All you can take is what you can carry,” announced Jim. “And first comes an axe, then a frying pan and a pail, then blankets. Make a bundle of that alone, without any extra clothes, spare boots, weapons, first aid kit, fishing tackle, rubber sheet or any precious possessions you can’t abandon, and see how far you would like to carry it. I tell you, about the best way the people of Canada can spend their week-ends this summer is going out as families, and living in the open on what they can carry on their backs. It will show them how helpless they are, if nothing else.”
“To tell you the truth, Jim,” I confessed, “I think it is a swell idea. Not that I think the day will ever come when we Canadians will ever have to take to the woods. But at least a little experience living in the open with only what we can carry on our backs will make us a little less snooty towards the French people. There are a lot of us who feel quite high and haughty about the French. They think they should have stuck it out longer. Well, a few days in the open with nothing but a blanket, a frying pan and a pail might develop a little more sympathetic attitude in the hearts of some of our cockiest citizenry.””
“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “seven of the neighbors have already expressed themselves as being interested in my scheme. I have spent the last couple of evenings chatting with whoever I saw out raking his garden…”
“Good for you,” I cried. “Are there any young men among them?”
“No, they’re mostly our age,” said Jim. “I think maybe seven is enough for the first party. If we get too many in the first lot, it might prove a flop. We’ll pioneer the scheme and work out a practical system for teaching woodcraft. For example, we’ll each carry our blankets, rubber ground sheet, spare shoes, extra socks, sweaters, etc. Then we’ll divide the community items, such as axe, pails, fry pans, and the food we take, among the lot of us equally.”
“That sounds good,” I agreed.
“We’ll go by street car to the city limits,” outlined Jim expansively, “and then hike for the country, taking back roads, until we come to some wild bit of country where we can make camp. We will construct brush lean-to shelters. We will study fire-making. How to build fire under difficulties. How to make camp bread. Camp cookery, without canned goods. The first week-end, we will study the rudiments. On successive week-ends, we can go into the refinements of making shelters, cooking, and getting the utmost out of living off the land through the art of woodcraft…”
“When do we start the program?” I inquired.
“All seven,” announced Jim triumphantly, “are set for this week-end.”
“I make eight,” I announced heartily.
“You make nine,” corrected Jim, who stated that he was going to be the captain.
The Pioneers Assemble
Friday night, at Jim’s house, there was a meeting of the neighbors to discuss the plans for the morrow. Three of them could not come on account of engagements, which left the six of us. Without exception, we were all, to some extent, woodsmen. Each of us had been fishing, or shooting or had been in the old war or laid some similar claim to knowing a thing or two about how to look after ourselves in difficult circumstances.
One of them wanted to bring a tent. Another had a patent charcoal camp broiler he would like to bring along, and we could take sirloin steaks for the party.
“And boys,” he said enthusiastically, “I’ll serve you up the swellest charcoal broiled steaks you ever…”
“No, no, gentlemen,” cried Jimmie. “This isn’t a camping party we are going on. This is research. This is a study group, to see how men, suddenly deprived of all the civilized means of subsistence, can carry on their lives with vigor, purpose and health.”
When we came to the grub list, we ran into other difficulties. Jimmie insisted that no canned goods should go.
“This isn’t a canoe trip,” he explained. “What we have, we carry on our backs. For miles. Canned goods are too heavy. We aren’t even taking bread. We are taking corn meal, flour and baking soda, and I am going to make bread in the frying pan, propped up before the camp fire…”
“How often have you made it?” inquired the neighbor who owned the charcoal camp grill.
“I have a recipe,” retorted Jim, “certified by Dillon Wallace, Horace Kephart, Dan Beard and all the greatest woodsmen of America2.”
In the end, two of the party said they would have to drop out. The man who owned the tent said he had been troubled with sciatica the last four years. And the man who owned the charcoal camp grill said his doctor had only last week warned him about his stomach. But, not counting the three members unavoidably absent, but in all likelihood coming with us tomorrow, that left a good company of us still in the scheme.
Saturday, as you recall, dawned dull and threatening. By noon, there could be no doubt in anybody’s mind but Jimmie’s that rain was imminent. At 1 p.m., after phone calls to all the pioneers, only Mr. Fresco, Jim and I were on Jim’s veranda for the departure. Mr. Fresco had never done anything in his life but work hard as an accountant, to save up enough money to retire and take a trip to Europe. Just when he got his fortune made, in 1939, the war broke. Mr. Fresco was coming with us in desperation.
Each of us had a pack made up of blankets, ground sheet some items of spare clothing. What little food we three required, Jim carried in his pack – bacon, flour, six eggs. one small tin of milk contributed by Mr. Fresco, and baking powder, a fistful of dried prunes, a packet of dehydrated soup, etc. I carried the frying pan and pails, Mr. Fresco, the axe. Each of us had our own cup, plate, eating utensils.
Life in the Open
Boldly disregarding the interest of neighbors, we headed for the street car and with two transfers, reached the end of the line. Though rain fairly hung in the air, ready to fall at a false word, we hiked north to the first country road, which we took eastward. About three-quarters of a mile along, the first drops of rain fell, and Jimmie cried:
“We camp in this gully ahead. First consideration, always, amongst woodsmen, a dry camp.”
Mr. Fresco and I admitted we were happy to halt, because our packs, though small, were like lead on our loins.
In a jiffy, Jim had the axe swinging. Half a dozen stout saplings made the tripods. Down came a sturdy evergreen tree, and with skilled strokes, Jim denuded it of its branches, skilfully hanging them and weaving them over the poles, so as to make a lean-to shelter. The rain came through it easily, but Jim explained he would thicken it up later with more brush.
“Next a fire,” he cried heartily.
And in no time, we had a pile of kindling, sticks, twigs and billets, which Jim expertly set alight.
It flared up brightly, and then, with little hissing sounds from the raindrops, died away. I knelt down and blew it. The rain started in earnest. Mr. Fresco, sitting under the brush shelter, began to shiver. Over the fence behind us came a loud voice:
“Hey, what are you tramps doing cutting down my evergreens? Don’t you know there’s a by-law in this township against lighting fires the roadside?”
He was a farmer and he came over and joined us. While I continued to blow the fire, without results, Jimmie outlined to the farmer the great enterprise we were engaged upon, the discovery of how men can survive and remain active, vigorous and full of purpose, after being deprived of all the normal means of living.
“Well,” said the farmer, “you picked a heck of a day for it. Mother has just made a batch of new bread. We’ve got fried chicken for supper and rhubarb pie. I think you had better come up to the house until the rain passes.”
Which we did. And as the rain did not pass, the farmer about 10 p.m. drove us back to the end of the street car line, which had us home about 11.30.
And all day Sunday, we lay low, for fear the neighbors might see we were home already.
It rained all Sunday, too. Remember?
Editor’s Notes:
- Desert Victory was a 1943 film produced by the British Ministry of Information, documenting the Allies’ North African campaign against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps. ↩︎
- Dillon Wallace, Horace Kephart, and Dan Beard were all famous outdoorsmen. ↩︎
