Tag: 1947 Page 1 of 5
“Bill Thomas,” announced Jimmie Frise, “has got the sciatica.”
“It’s little wonder,” I reflected, “the life he leads. From the time the ice goes out in the spring until the ice comes again in the fall, he’s out in that boat of his…”
“It’s about the boat,” interrupted Jim, “that I want to speak to you. How’d you like to help me put it away for the winter?”
“You mean,” I protested, “pull it up?”
“It’s a very simple matter,” assured Jim. “All we do is skid it up on some rollers, on to the beach…”
“Nothing,” I declared emphatically, “doing!”
“It’s a small thing to do,” pleaded Jimmie, “for a guy like Bill. The poor chap laid up cold with the sciatica…”
“A small thing!” I cried. “To haul a great big motor boat up on to a beach? Why, it’s work for a gang of 10 men!”
“Not at all,” soothed Jim. “The two of us can handle it easily. Bill has got all the equipment organized for us, All we do is to lay some two-by-six timbers on the beach and down a little way into the water. Then, we hitch a rope from the axle of the car…”
“What car?” I demanded loudly.
“Well, your car,” explained Jim, patiently. “As you know, mine’s laid up.”
“I see,” I said bitterly. “Somebody’s car has got to have the rear end of it torn out hauling a great big power boat out of the water.”
“Listen,” pleaded Jimmie. “Greg, it isn’t a great big power boat. It’s just a little old runabout, a little gasoline launch. It’s only 20 feet long; and with rollers under it, laid on those two-by-six scantlings, a car can haul it up on the beach as easy as if it were a wheelbarrow.”
“I think boat owners,” I enunciated, “should attend to the job of putting their boats away themselves.”
“I’ve just told you,” riled Jimmie, “the poor guy has got the sciatica. His knees are all swollen up. He can hardly walk.”
“And how did he get the sciatica?” I persisted. “All through this same silly boat! He puts it in the water the minute the ice goes out. He rushes down to the waterfront every afternoon, the minute his office closes, and spends his time fiddling and pottering around that boat. Many a night he sleeps right on the boat instead of going home to bed like a Christian. Every week-end he goes on ridiculous cruises, a few miles east or a few miles west, bouncing and bumping over the waves.”
“You and I,” reminded Jim kindly, “have been on many a nice little cruise with Bill.”
“Not for six or seven years,” I countered. “I have no use for boats, except to sit in for fishing. I can’t see any sport in sitting in a boat, going no place, just for the pleasure of going!”
“Every man to his taste,” said Jim. “Lots of people have no use for fishing. Okay, you have no use for boating. But you must admit Bill gets a great deal of pleasure and joy out of his boat.”
“Also,” I pointed out, “the sciatica. Just at the time he has to go to the trouble of putting his boat away for the winter.”
“Well, maybe I can get somebody else,” sighed Jim wearily.
“Oh, I’ll do it,” I subsided. “But I think this is one of the occasions on which I am entitled to squawk a little bit.”
“You’ll probably enjoy yourself,” assured Jimmie. “Boats are a lot of fun.”
“Boats,” I retorted, “are clumsy, damp, cold, heavy, lifeless. They smell.”
“Boats,” corrected Jim, “have a longer association with mankind than any other vehicle or maybe any other tool. Ages before the first crude wheel was invented, men were travelling up and down the rivers of the world, and along the shores of the world, in boats. The first man who ever tried to escape from his tribe jumped on a floating log and travelled downstream to freedom and adventure. The waterways of the world were the first highways of the world. Thousands of years before, the first roads were built, commerce had been established by boats, even if they were only crude. dugouts, and rafts.”
“They served their purpose,” I admitted, “like the spinning wheel, until something better was devised.”
“I’m trying,” explained Jim, “to show you that boats are involved in the very nature of humanity. Since they were the only means of travel, exploration, adventure and commerce for countless centuries, they appealed to men of masculine and adventurous character. To this day, boats have a powerful fascination for manly men.”
“Oh, is that so?” I scoffed.
“Down through the ages,” pursued Jim, “has been handed this love of boats, from generation to generation. And Canadians, more than any other race on earth, should love boats. Because they have the Atlantic on one side of them, the Pacific on another, the Arctic ocean on the third side. And, for more than half the width of Canada, they have the Great Lakes as their fourth sea-girt boundary.”
“Well,” I said, “speaking for myself and the great majority of Canadians, I like to puddle around on a few rivers and some inside channels and plenty of small summer resort lakes. But as for the ocean or the wide open Great Lakes, they’re all very well to cool the air for me, and to supply a little commercial fish…”
“You’re right,” cut in Jim curiously. “There is something mighty funny about the attitude of the average Canadian toward the sea and the Great Lakes. By all odds we should be a maritime people, with love of the wide seas and boundless lakes very strong in our make up. But, except for a few small yacht clubs scattered along our waterfronts, and a couple of dowdy old excursion steamers plying a tenuous trade here and there, the Canadian attitude toward the great waters that surround us amounts almost to – fear!”
“That’s natural,” I submitted. “Big water is uncomfortable. And dangerous.”
“We come of a maritime race, the British,” reflected Jim.
“Maritime my eye!” I exclaimed. “There’s another of those myths! The British have been marooned on a small island for centuries. For centuries, the only way they could get off the island was in boats. For centuries they’ve been getting off the island as fast as boat could carry them. Generation by generation, the young Britons went to sea in order to escape from the sea. For one that remained at sea, hundreds escaped to far lands, deep lands, where you couldn’t even smell the sea: and there they stayed! The far-flung British empire was founded by Britishers escaping from the island and looking for dry land: the dryer the better – Canada, India, Australia, Africa – good inland land from which you can’t see the sea…”
“You are tampering,” interrupted Jim, “with a noble tradition.”
“The noblest service boats have rendered humanity,” I summed up, “is to have carried men to parts of the earth where boats aren’t necessary.”
“Poor old Bill Thomas,” smiled Jimmie. “I’m glad can’t hear these sentiments and him trusting you to haul his beloved boat out…”
My old car, as Jim pointed out, has new tires. And these, he explained, would bite into the sand and gravel when it came to the actual traction necessary to drag the boat up on to the beach.
We drove down to the waterfront area where Bill keeps his boat moored out to a mooring buoy. It is a 20 foot launch with a small plywood cabin over the forward part. It isn’t quite a cabin cruiser, though you can sleep in it.
Bill had left, at a small boathouse nearby, some 12 foot scantlings of two-by-six, and half a dozen large rollers, like oversize tent poles. These, with a length heavy rope, were to be used in very simply hauling the boat ashore.
“I don’t see Bill’s boat,” I exclaimed as we drove out on to the shingle of the beach.
“There she is, the black one,” pointed Jim.
“I thought she was white,” I apologized.
“Bill painted her black two years ago,” said Jim.
With a canvas tarpaulin buttoned over her after end the little boat swung, among a dozen other assorted sail and engined craft, at her mooring buoy.
We carried the two-by-six planks from the boathouse down to the beach. The heavy rope I carried to the car and made an end fast to my axle. From the boathouse, Jim carried eight heavy billets of wood which, he explained, were to prop the launch in an upright position on the sand when we got her beached.
“We leave her,” he explained, “resting on the rollers and planks. But securely propped on both sides, so as to prevent her becoming what they call ‘hogged.’ That sagging at the bow and stern.”
“I’ll do the hauling,” I replied. “You do the propping. I’ll leave all the nautical stuff to you.”
We laid tracks, as it were, of the two-by-six scantlings. On them, at handy intervals, we laid the rollers which Jimmie, as I hauled, would lay under the keel, as she rolled. Last of all, we laid a couple of the two-by-sixes down the sloping beach right into the water.
Jim borrowed a small skiff from the old boy who minded the boathouse, and rowed out and released the launch from the mooring buoy. He towed the launch in while I, with my boots and socks off and my pants rolled up, waited on shore to waggle the two submerged planks neatly under the prow of the incoming launch.
“Neatly done,” admitted Jim, as he shoved the launch’s nose my way. I waded into the chilly lake water and drew the nose of the craft in between the two planks.
Jim beached the skiff and, removing his boots and socks and rolling up his pants, came-with the first roller, which he shoved and wedged down under the launch’s nose, against the planks.
“Heave-ho, my hearty,” he commanded. “Now pass me the end of the line, and when I give you the signal – get your car in low gear and gently haul.”
I paid the line away from my axle down to Jim, and he made it fast to the bow of the launch, passing it rough the two little metal rope guides on each side of the bow.
“Okay, now,” he called. “Take it easy and steady. As you haul, I’ve got to nip along and tuck these rollers under her keel.”
I started the engine, let her into low and, watching at the rear-view mirror, eased up the clutch. My tires bit into the sand and shingle. I felt the strain take hold. I felt the car edge forward and in the mirror I saw the nose of the launch rise slightly as she started to crawl ashore on top of the rollers.
“Slow!” rang Jim’s voice.
And I could see him nimbly jumping and ducking, as he grabbed up the rollers and laid them, one after the other, under the nose of the boat, as it slowly progressed up the beach.
We got it up the four lengths of two-by-six. Then Jim decreed that we ought to pull it still farther up. As he went back and got the two-by-sixes we had passed and laid fresh track. And on these, with the rollers, we succeeded in dragging the launch a good 60 feet from shore, well above the winter storm and ice line, and safe and snug against tempest, gale and blizzard.
While I undid the rope, Jim set the heavy billets up, as props, all around the bow and stern of the launch, to hold her steady and to bear some of the weight of the upper structure that otherwise would fall in the bilges and keel.
When all was snug and shipshape, a man in a yachting cap and turtleneck sweater came striding from the direction of the old boathouse, and he roared:
“What is the name of blazes are you characters up to?”
Jim looked him up and down.
“We’re pulling out Bill Thomas’s boat,” he stated.
“That isn’t Bill Thomas’s boat,” roared the mariner.
“That’s MY boat! And I want it this afternoon. I want it NOW!”
“Well, uh, how,” inquired Jim, weakly, “how do you pull a boat BACK into the water?”
He showed us.
He went and got block and tackle. And he got another yachtsman to come and drop a heavy anchor well out in the water, to fasten one end of the tackle to.
And with my poor little car shaking and trembling and scraping on the other end of the block and tackle, we rolled the launch back down the two-by-sixes, with Jim very nimbly slipping the rollers under the stern.
By which time it was getting dusk.
So tomorrow, or maybe the day after, at any rate, the next nice day we have, we will come down again and haul Bill Thomas’s launch out.
It’s a WHITE one. He repainted it this year.
We’ll come, that is, providing I don’t get the sciatica. For I feel slight twinges of something at the moment.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, August 23, 1947.
“Meet,” cried Jimmie Frise, “High-rigger’s Axman!”
The most beautiful dog I ever saw stood before us in the farmyard.
He was noble. He was a creamy golden color, and was about the size of a good hound, but heavier-built, with a deep chest and powerful legs. His coat was dense and slightly wavy, and of an indescribable tawny hue. He was a Golden Retriever.
“Jim,” I said, “I never saw a nobler expression in a dog’s face.”
“Next to a cocker spaniel,” informed Jim, “the golden retriever, of all dogs, tries hardest to be a human being.”
“Hi, Axman!” I greeted, bending.
And the beautiful creature lowered his head and with heavily wagging tail stepped a couple of paces forward so I could fondle his skull.
Mrs. McGinniss, the farmer, came to her kitchen door and viewed us.
“Did you ever see a more beautiful animal?” she demanded. “You’ll have fun with him the next three days.”
“I can’t see anything we can do for him,” I replied. “He looks to be in the very peak of condition.”
“Just his runs over the fields,” said Mrs. McGinniss.
Our friend, Horace Parkhouse, who owns High-rigger’s Axman, had to go to Minneapolis on urgent business there on the very eve of the Canadian National Exhibition dog show. All summer, he has been grooming and exercising and conditioning Axman for the big show -the first after all the years of war.
And at the psychological moment, the very last week before the Ex opens, he had, in the interests of finance, to run away off to Minneapolis.
So he had asked Jimmie and me to go out to Mrs. McGinniss’s farm, where Axman is boarded, for the three days he had to be away, and give the beautiful dog our personal and loving care.
Runs over the fields. Brushings night and morning. Daily routines of making Axman stand steady and cool, while we pretended we were showing him in the ring before the multitudes of the dog show.
“The fact that we’re strangers to him,” explained Jimmie, kneeling down beside Axman and setting his feet just so, to reveal his fine build, “is all the better. Because it will accustom him to all the strangers he’s going to meet next week…”
Axman, who had already been thoroughly schooled since puppyhood to take up this show-ring stance when requested, stood before us in all his beauty: head up, ears alert, front legs set straight, and hind-legs stretched I well back to show the fine slope of his back.
“He’s a winner!” declared Jim.
“Come to lunch!” called Mrs. McGinniss from the kitchen door.
With alacrity, Jimmie and I wheeled and made for the kitchen door, for, in the little while we had been in the McGinniss door-yard, the most ravishing odors had been wafting out to us.
“We eat,” explained Mrs. McGinniss, “right here in in the kitchen, the old-fashioned way….”
It was old-fashioned, all right. I have never seen a farm table more abundantly burdened than the one standing before us.
In the city, there is an affected fashion of putting one course at a time on the table. But in the country, the whole business is set on the table so that a man has a fair idea of what is ahead of him. A man can pause, reverently, for a minute, before seating himself at a farm table, and take a quick survey of the whole situation. And plot his course.
In front of Mrs. McGinnis, was a large tureen of vegetable soup. To one side, a platter heaped with golden scrambled eggs, with a sort of ruching or frill of bacon all round.
On the other side, a bowl of what are properly called home-fried potatoes. These are not the battered and mushy things that go by the name of home-fried potatoes in cities. Mrs. McGinniss had sliced good large potatoes in whole, sound slices of a reasonable thickness. And they were fried dark brown on one side only. There is the secret: one side of each good wholesome slice a crisp dark brown: the other side creamy from the butter in which it was fried.
Now, there was also cole slaw and a side dish of stewed corn by each plate. And sundry scattered saucers of large snappy radishes and old-fashioned tangy leaf lettuce. But what caught and held the eye of the speculator on beholding Mrs. McGinniss’s table was a sort of fortress, or turreted and battlemented tower, in the midst of the table, consisting of pies, warm in their original pie plates; low dishes of preserved peaches in the foreground, tall dishes of preserved cherries of extraordinary rich color in the background. And, as a sort of core or heart of the architectural design, a chocolate cake about fourteen inches in diameter and four inches in thickness, from which the deep, rich coiling dark icing seemed ready to drip; but just didn’t.
“Aaaaahhhh!” said Jimmie, for want of something better to say as he sidled into his chair.
High-rigger’s Axman, who had come in the door with us, sat down midway between Jim and me and thumped the floor heartily with his tail. I looked at him pityingly, for his mouth was open, and his noble eyes were filled with a dreamy look, and he appeared to be smiling….
“None of this for you, boy!” I consoled. “You’re in training…”
And Mrs. McGinniss handed me the soup.
For my sake, as well as the reader’s, I must not dwell on that meal. Mrs. McGinniss coached us hurriedly through the soup, scrambled eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes and so forth.
“Save some space,” she cautioned, “I want you to taste these pies…”
Taste! In city restaurants, they have discovered a way of cutting a pie into seven. Anybody with a little practise, can cut a pie into six. But Mrs. McGinniss was poor at mathematics. She just cut her pies into four.
First on the program was green apple pie.
“It’s not so filling,” explained Mrs. McGinniss. “I want you to compare it with the combined cherry and gooseberry…”
From out that central fortress or tower in the centre of the table, she drew forth, after the combined cherry-gooseberry pie had been voted the equal of the green apple, a pumpkin pie.
“Preserved pumpkin,” apologized Mrs. McGinniss. “But my own recipe…”
We each had a quarter. Then after a large wedge of chocolate cake, to top off, Mrs. McGinniss prevailed upon us to sample a little plum conserve she was very proud of, buttered on a small tea biscuit; and to test its tang as compared with some rhubarb marmalade she was equally partial to, a little dab of it on another tea biscuit…
Poor old High-rigger’s Axman had, long before the scrambled eggs were gone, given up all hope and had laid down, his beautiful head across his forepaws. About the time I sighed down the last morsel of tea biscuit with rhubarb marmalade, he raised his eyes reproachfully from under his noble brow, smacked and readjusted his lips comfortably, and closed his eyes as though in pain.
“Jim,” I asked, shoving the table away, “how about the dog…?”
“We’ll take him for a run…” agreed Jim.
Outside the kitchen door, under the porch roof, was a weatherbeaten old sofa. I got to it first, and sat on it.
“Now, now,” protested Jim, “don’t let’s forget Horace…
And I thought, guiltily, of poor old Horace Parkhouse away off there in Minneapolis, trying to attend to finance while his heart was back here with Axman and the big Canadian National Exhibition show in which he had high hopes for Axman.
“Jim,” I suggested, “you take Axman this afternoon and I’ll take him after supper…. eh?”
But Jim declined on the ground that we were equally uncomfortable from food, and equally responsible, in our promises to Horace, for Axman getting his exercise under our watchful eyes over the fields.
So I heaved myself off the sofa and, after bidding Mrs. McGinniss adieu for an hour, we headed down the lane past the barn and out over the pasture.
Axman was beautiful to behold in action. He ranged eagerly along the fences, into every covert and through each weed patch, with the tireless air of the hunting dog.
“He’ll win something,” I huffed, as we climbed the slope. “Maybe best in show, eh?”
He’s got tough competition, don’t forget,” said Jim, breathless. “This is the first Canadian National Exhibition in six long years. The dog breeders have been busy all through the war, despite everything. They’ve had a breathing space to weed out and choose only the best of their fancy. This will probably be the greatest dog show in the history of the CNE.”
“Wouldn’t it be something,” I gloated, “if Horace were to take best in show with Axman?”
“And we,” added Jim, “could feel some share of the glory, even if only three days of this…”
“It’s the last few days,” I pointed out, “that puts the final show finish on a dog.”
At which moment we came to a grassy knoll, with sumach bushes, where, as if by common assent, we both sat down for a moment.
“We can watch him from here,” sighed Jim.
And while Axman explored and exercised far and wide, Jimmie and I talked about the dog show, and the CNE which had been suspended for six years after its long and famous history, so that the troops could use its great buildings and park for training. And I lay back to rest my torso…
The sun was setting when I waked. And there was Jim sprawled out beside me.
And Axman nowhere to be seen!
“Hey, Jim!”
We found Axman comfortably asleep on the sofa under the porch roof by the kitchen door. And Mrs. McGinniss in the throes of preparing supper.
Supper? Well: there were pies again; new ones. And tea biscuits and various assorted jams, jellies, conserves; and a new cake, this time a maple walnut cake, with icing the color of Axman’s golden coat.
Mrs. McGinniss egged us on and watched our every bite.
“Now, how does that cake compare,” she demanded, “with the chocolate cake we had for lunch?”
And we confessed that maybe it had a slight edge. “That raspberry jelly; now?” she queried, thrusting the jar under our noses. “Take a bit of that cottage cheese and a dab of the raspberry jelly…”
So that it was full dark by the time we withdrew from the kitchen table. And too late to take Axman for any romp in the night, when he might get lost or tangled in a wire fence.
“We’ll take him,” yawned Jim, as we prepared for bed up in Mrs. McGinniss’s spare room under the sloping gables, “for a good sharp run before breakfast. Let’s get up at six.”
And as we pulled the covers over, we could hear busy sounds from below, in the kitchen.
“Do you know,” said Jim sleepily but with wonder, “I believe that woman is at the oven again!”
Well, it was a quarter to eight before we waked. And when we got down to breakfast, Mrs. McGinniss had a johnny cake and maple syrup, tea biscuits and still another serried array of jars of new and fresh jellies and conserves, preserves and marmalades.
And though she had finished her breakfast long ago, she sat with us at the table, and watched our every bite, and questioned us close and narrow on the merits of the preserved melon over the acid tang of the thimbleberry jelly; or the aroma of the spiced peach jam over the grape conserve.
So that after breakfast, we took Axman down the road a few hundred yards, until our fears of him being hit by a passing motor car – although there were none – caused us to take him back to the farm. By which time, lunch was in preparation.
We arrived here at Mrs. McGinniss’s on Thursday, before noon. It is now Saturday afternoon. And Horace Parkhouse arrives back here tonight from Minneapolis.
We have combed and brushed Axman both night and morning. We have, to the best of our ability, given him several runs over the meadows and pastures. But Axman has decidedly put on weight since Thursday. You can see it. It is obvious.
We also had a very unfortunate experience.
We caught Mrs. McGinniss giving Axman a large hunk of chocolate cake.
And when I inspected his feeding pan, I discovered traces of what could not be anything else but the loganberry pie which we had had for lunch a little time before.
“Mrs. McGinniss,” I accused hollowly, “do you mean to say you have been feeding Axman pastry… and… and… CAKE!”
Aw, I can’t see it go to waste…” protested the dear old lady.
“But… but Mrs. McGinniss!” cried Jimmie, “You seem to have gone crazy over cooking! Surely you don’t cook like this all the time…”
“No indeed,” said Mrs. McGinniss. “But it’s six years now since I showed any pies, cakes, jellies and preserves in the Exhibition. And I have been just testing out my recipes so as to pick the sure fire winners…”
“Testing them on us!” I ejaculated. “And on Axman…!”
“You’ll all thrive,” scoffed Mrs. McGinniss joyously.
Horace will be here in a few minutes. He telephoned from the village. But before he gets here, may I suggest that if you go to the Canadian National Exhibition dog show and see a particularly well-fed Golden Retriever with a dreamy expression in his eyes, that will be Axman.
And DO go and see the women’s home cooking exhibits. Look for Mrs. McGinniss’s entries.
They will explain all.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, August 9, 1947.
“When all’s said and done, a houseboat,” said Jimmie Frise expansively, “is the ideal home for the people of this country.”
We were sitting on the stern deck, or piazza, of as nifty a little houseboat as ever was designed.
Ahead, a local launch was towing us slowly up one of the prettiest lakes in the summer resort district. We were progressing at a rate of about five miles an hour, and the shores slowly unfolded in beauty before our astern-gazing view.
“You mean summer homes,” I suggested.
“Not at all,” declared Jimmie. “I mean all-the-year-round homes! What more does the average man want than we’ve got right here in Bill Sparra’s houseboat?”
Our friend Bill Sparra, who has always scoffed at the idea of having a summer cottage stuck down on some inhospitable rock somewhere, had given us the loan of his houseboat for the week.
“Look,” said Jim, “it’s simply a cottage built on a scow. A good sturdy scow. In front, there’s a little verandah. Then, the bedrooms, with good wide windows looking ahead. Two little bedrooms, about the size of ship’s cabins, with upper and lower bunks. Next, amidships, the living room. And astern here, the combined kitchen and dining room. And out here, a lovely covered piazza, with these easy chairs.”
“It’s just about the ideal summer home,” I admitted. “Isn’t it a wonder more people don’t go in for houseboats in this country?”
“I see by the papers,” said Jim, “that an old fellow of over 70 is right now completing a canoe trip across North America, from Vancouver to New York City. Nothing I can think of illustrates better the nautical character of the North American continent.”
“It’s got several deserts,” I pointed out, “and the prairies. I wouldn’t want a houseboat in Saskatchewan.”
“For the most part,” countered Jim, “both in the east and the west, a man who owned a houseboat would probably be the most independent character in the community.”
“Think of taxes,” I suggested. “Just before the tax bill comes around, you loosen the ropes and move to another part of the country.”
“I mean,” pursued Jim, “that there are thousands of miles of connected waterways in North America – the Great Lakes, the numerous canals associated with the Great Lakes – thousands of miles of rivers – all connecting.”
“There’s portages,” I protested.
“Look: if they can ferry a railroad train across a river,” asserted Jim, “they can ferry a houseboat across a few miles of land. I tell you, we’ve got something here. Why should a man devote his entire energies and fortune into building a house in one spot? Most jobs, nowadays, aren’t fixed, as they were a few years ago. Our industrial situation has entirely altered in the past couple of decades. A man gets a job in one part of the country and keeps it two or three years. Then he gets an offer – or else sees a bigger opportunity – in another part of the country altogether. As the situation is now, the poor guy has devoted most of his earnings, in the past two or three years, to buying a little house. So, when his job gives out, or he sees an opportunity in a distant city, what happens? He has to sell his little home for less than it cost him, and he loses all the money he put into it…”
“Whereas, if he had built a houseboat…?” I agreed.
“He’d simply hire somebody,” elucidated Jim, “the way we have up front here, to tow his home off to the city of his choice.”
“It wouldn’t cost too much?” I queried.
“It’s only costing us,” scoffed Jim, “four bucks to be towed all the way up this lake. And it’s the summer tourist season, at that. No: I bet if there were large floating populations in this country, there would be reasonable competition in the houseboat-towing traffic. You’d see a floating population on the move, coming and going.”
“Think of the neighbor problem!” I enthused. “You’d have houseboat villages all over the country. And instead of trailer camp suburbs of the big cities, you would have houseboat suburbs. AND, if you didn’t like your neighbors, why, all you’d do be pull up anchor and move to a more agreeable neighborhood. Look: how about the winter?”
“Okay,” said Jim. “What about the winter? What does Bill Sparra do with this houseboat in winter? Why, he just leaves it wherever it happens to be when winter comes, and it freezes in. If you were living in it in Toronto Bay or Montreal harbor, or Fort William or any of the thousand miles of canals connecting dozens of the country’s biggest towns and cities, you’d simply let it freeze up wherever it was. And instead of having to commute 10 miles, through the winter blizzards, away out to some bungalow suburb of the city of your choice, you’d simply have to go a few blocks from the downtown business district and there would be your bungalow frozen in the ice!”
“Ah, but maybe not a very savory neighborhood!” I pointed out.
“You can move in spring!” triumphed Jimmie, “which is something you can’t do when you buy a bungalow on solid land, when you discover you’re stuck in an unsavory neighborhood. Let me tell you something: in the province of Kashmir, in India, white men aren’t allowed to own any land whatever. Either for houses or for business, no white man can own or occupy any land. So, in Kashmir – which has less connected water than this country, by a long shot – the white population lives in floating communities of houseboats. Small villages, big towns, of houseboats. They have homes, offices, shops – all afloat!”
“And they can get a change of scenery,” I remarked, “or neighbors, by simply being towed anywhere. Jim, it’s a wonderful idea.”
So we sat in our deck chairs, on the stern piazza of Bill Sparra’s travelling summer home, admiring the ever-changing view slowly passing.
When Bill offered his houseboat for the week, we decided to hire some local character to tow us north up through the chain of lakes, and, in skiffs or canoes floated wherever we happened to tie up, fish new country it had never been our good fortune to have visited. I got up and walked through the kitchen, living room and bedrooms of the little floating cottage and looked through the front windows. The launch which had us in tow was heading leisurely into the summer breeze, and I could make out the wharves and roofs of the little hamlet where we were going to moor for a couple days, as long as our fancy dictated, before pushing on. What a sense of freedom and liberation it gave to be in a portable home – portable in the sense that you transported it whole!
I hailed Jim forward and we watched while our launch slowed and brought us alongside a nice rushy point of one of the wharves of the village. We stood on the small bow deck of the houseboat and lowered the anchor.
Do you want somebody to fetch a canoe now?” our man inquired, as we paid him the $4 towing fee.
“No,” said Jim, who was captain, “just arrange for somebody to bring us a canoe at 8 AM tomorrow, please.”
Swinging on our anchor rope in the soft evening breeze, we prepared supper of steak and tomatoes, and then sat out on the cool after deck or piazza, while curious tourists and villagers came in launches and small craft to view us at close range. Jim and I returned their salutations with the casual air of men who have come a long way from the Gulf of Mexico, maybe – up the Mississippi, through the heart of the continent, past Chicago, up through the great canals: though we had, as a matter of fact, only come nine miles.
During the night, a lively breeze built up, and I was awakened by the complaining of the anchor rope and the slap of the waves on our scow hull.
Again, at dawn, I was awakened again by a slight scraping noise. The wind had fallen, and I supposed the scraping was the sound of our anchor rope rubbing against the hull.
But finally, in broad morning sunlight streaming in our windows, I was brought wide awake and out of the bunk onto my feet by a loud and commanding voice roaring:
“Hulloooo!”
“Hulloooo to you!” I replied, thinking it was the canoe fellow we had ordered for 8 AM.
“All right, all right!” the voice outside bellowed haughtily. “Come, you’ve got to get this thing out of here….!”
Jim, who was half awake, sat up sharply.
“Do you hear, in there?” continued the important voice, more loudly. “Come out here till I have a look at you!”
“The town constable?” suggested Jim.
I went out through the living room and kitchen onto the rear piazza. And an astonishing sight met my gaze. We were not beside the marshy point. We were not moored near the village. We were beached on a large curving sandy beach. Ornamental stone benches and terraces graced it. Above the beach, partly screened by cedars and other artificially planted, trees, stood a handsome and elaborate summer cottage. One of those cottages that gets five pages in “Homes and Gardens”. And there, standing on the nearest terrace, was the gentleman with the commanding voice.
“Do you know this is a private beach?” he inquired icily, when I appeared.
“We must have drifted here,” I replied weakly.
“What’s the world coming to?” the aristocrat demanded wearily. “A man can’t have any privacy anywhere, what with riffraff coming and camping on one’s private beach. This is an island, sir! An ISLAND! And there are no public conveniences or privileges on it whatever. Do you understand?”
“I say,” I repeated, in a little better voice, “we must have drifted here. We must have dragged our anchor. We have no desire whatever to intrude on your beach.”
“Very well, very, well,” commanded the gent, who must have been at least a brigadier in the home forces, “don’t stand there talking. Get it off! Get it off, immediately, before my guests rise and see this monstrosity.”
“Excuse me,” I cut in, and Jim was now at the piazza door, backing me up. “But we have no power. This is a houseboat. It has to be towed. And we have no launch.”
The gentleman tightened his jaws and glared.
“A fine thing,” he declared. “A fine thing, when rudderless, powerless individuals can come drifting about at random, invading private rights and property… I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
“Look,” said Jim, stepping forward to the piazza rail, “can you call a launch for us? Have you got a telephone? Would you be so good as to assist us off your very unpleasant beach?”
The gentleman stiffened and swung on his sandalled heel. He walked elegantly along his terraces to a large boat house. There he shouted commands until a sleepy character named Joe – probably the gentleman’s old batman in the home forces – came forth and received his instructions.
This man backed a large speedboat out of the boathouse and came slowly alongside us.
Jim and I, in the meantime, had explored and discovered that we had not merely dragged our anchor. We had lost it.
The hired man in the launch took our anchor rope and made it fast to the stern of his craft. And with hardly a scrape, we were drawn off the beach and towed free.
On shore, the gentleman, the king of his island, watched us intently. And when we were free, we waved a grateful greeting to him.
“I wonder,” said Jim, “is he anybody important, or has he just got money?”
The launch man was turned, watching to see how we towed. We shouted to him, and he turned his engine low and came aft to hear us.
“How far can you tow us?” we hailed.
“Just around the point,” he replied.
“Where to?” we bellowed.
“Just around the point,” he repeated, and went forward and speeded up his engine.
“He means to turn us adrift!” gasped Jim.
“He can’t….” I expostulated.
But that is precisely what he did.
A couple of hundred yards along the island shore was a point past which the early morning breeze was blowing.
Past this point was the wide open lake.
Sure enough, after we cleared the point, the launch man slowed down, and came aft and started to cast our rope free.
“Look,” said Jim, “won’t you tow us across to the mainland? It’s only a couple of miles. Two bucks?”
“Sorry,” said the launch man, “but I work for him. He told me what to do. I gotta do it.”
“Five bucks?” wheedled Jim.
“He’ll be watching,” said the launch man.
“What a stinker he must be!” I declared.
“Aw, no he’s not so bad,” said the launch man, “when you get to know him. He’s been worrying a lot lately about the Communists and stuff. He’s always being invaded.”
He waved and buzzed off.
And here we are, in our houseboat, really independent! Independent even of ropes, of anchors, of moorings, of the land itself. We are adrift in the largest sense of the word.
I am writing this on the dining room table. Jim is working at the cartoon on the living room table. We have hailed all craft in sight, but they just wave back. One old boy in a fishing boat passed quite close, and when we signalled frantically, he shouted back, above the racket of his engine, “sorry, boys, I’m a teetotaller!”
So we gave up trying to hail help. We have a week’s supply of pork and beans, luncheon tongue in tins, bread, two steaks and a basket of tomatoes.
The lake is about 17 miles long. The wind is light and variable. We are drifting about half a mile an hour. We have changed direction twice. If anybody comes to us, we will give them this story and cartoon to mail for us. Meanwhile, we will just enjoy houseboating at its best.
PS. – Two girls in a dinghy have just come alongside. We are giving them this to mail.
Toodle-oo!
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 3, 1947.
“What’s all this?” demanded Jimmie Frise indignantly.
“My fishing tackle,” I informed him.
“For Pete’s sake!” cried Jim. “Two packsacks, three haversacks1, a valise and what’s this?”
“That’s my rod case,” I said wearily, “and well you know it. You’ve seen it every year! Jim, do we have to go through this every opening day?”
“Look at my tackle,” said Jim proudly. “All in that one small haversack. Everything.”
“Skip it,” I assured him, as we loaded my gear into the car. “Some men are proud of how much tackle they’ve got. And some are proud of how little tackle they’ve got. So let’s skip it.”
“Holy smoke,” gasped Jim, trying various ways of getting my rod case into the car. “How many rods are you bringing in this case.”
“Four,” I informed him coolly. “I’ve brought my heavy Thomas rod in case it’s windy. I’ve brought that little three-and-a-half ouncer, in case we get calm weather and small trout. And then a couple of spare rods, just in case of breakage or anything.”
“Mm, mm, mm!” remarked Jim. “Four rods. And all I own is one that I’ve had for 10 years.”
“It’s quite all right with me,” I said loftily. “If a guy wants to spoil his own sport. If a guy wants to fish for little trout with a great big pole heavy enough for salmon…”
“My rod,” advised Jim, “is under five ounces and is delicate enough to handle the smallest trout it is legal to keep.”
“Fine,” I agreed, “if a guy wants to limit his sport to little tiddlers. But suppose we get strong winds or run into a flock of two-pound trout – a fine time you’ll have trying to drive a line into the wind with that stick of spaghetti…”
“With that rod,” snorted Jim, getting a little hot, “I can cast into a wind as slick as you can.”
“Ah,” I submitted, as we climbed into the car, “you’ve got an all-purpose rod, eh? Well, I never saw one. I like to have a set of rods intended for the various conditions we have to meet.”
“You go at fishing,” said Jim bitterly, “the way a mechanic goes to a job, with a whole litter of tools. You go at trout fishing the way a dentist goes at a patient, with trays loaded with all kinds of drills and picks, and pliers and toad stabbers…”
“Would you play golf,” I cut in, “with one club? Say, a number three iron? Jim, I’m tired of this holier-than-thou attitude of you guys who have a minimum of fishing tackle. Half the fun in any sport is the gear. Guns, golf, fishing – they’re all the same. The gear, the tackle, is half the fun. If fishing consisted of nothing more than catching a bagful of fish, then why are you a fly fisherman? Why didn’t you stick to a gob of worms on a two-for-a-cent hook, with a nail for a sinker?”
“People,” explained Jimmie, “are nuts.”
“Just because they buy fishing tackle?” I protested.
“Look,” set forth Jim. “I am told that the fishing tackle industry alone in Canada and the United States is capitalized at 300 million dollars.”
“It couldn’t be,” I declared. “Maybe you mean the sporting goods business – guns, baseball, golf, tennis.
“No, sir,” interrupted Jimmie. “Just the fishing tackle. Maybe my figures are wrong. I’m not too good at remembering figures and telephone numbers and that sort of thing. But you look at all the factories, the warehouses, the wholesalers, the retailers – it wouldn’t take long, when you consider all the cities and towns of North America, to run the capitalization of an industry into three hundred millions.”
“It seems an awful lot to me,” I muttered, thinking of my own collection a little guiltily.
“How many fishing tackle stores are there in North America,” pursued Jim, “from Boston to San Francisco; from Vancouver to Miami? How much is invested in the property itself, the store and the fixtures? How many thousand dollars worth of stock does each tackle store carry? You see? It soon mounts up.”
“Well, if that’s silly,” I countered, “how about the jewellery business? How many billions is the jewellery business capitalized at, counting the factories, the importing houses, the wholesalers and retailers? All of them full of diamonds and gold? Man, if you’re going to try to prove people are nuts, just start thinking about the billions that are invested in gewgawa2.”
“But fishing tackle perishes,” pointed out Jim. “I know people who spend $75 for a fly rod, $40 for reel, $12 for a LINE. The rod soon wears out. The reel gets bust. The line goes tacky in two seasons.”
“That’s true of everything we buy,” I protested.
“Not diamonds, not gold,” triumphed Jim. “If you spend money on diamonds and jewels, you can get it back any time. It’s a real investment.”
“Now, that,” I scoffed, “is one of the things I’d really like to debunk. It’s a pretty theory. But how does it work out? A man spends, in his life time, say, $2,000 on diamonds and jewellery for his wife. Rings, brooch pins, watches. He dies. Then she dies, an old lady. When they sell all the old-fashioned junk her loving husband lavished on her, would they get $2,000 for it? No, sir. The diamonds are cut in an outmoded fashion. The jewellery is out of date, but not out of date enough to be an antique. I bet they wouldn’t get $300 for it. Anyways they never do sell it. They divide the junk up among the children and grand-children, and it’s stuck in a drawer and scattered and forgotten. Over the years, it just dwindles and perishes away, all that $2,000 worth of diamonds and jewellery. Just dwindles and perishes away like everything else men waste their money on.”
“I suppose,” mused Jimmie, as he steered onto the open highway and hurrah for the opening trout season. “I suppose that’s true. Everything a man buys dwindles and perishes. He builds a great house, and day by day and year by year, it depreciates and diminishes in value until, in time, it’s just so much junk, to be torn down to make way for a factory or a block of flats.”
“All money is wasted,” I remarked, “if you look at it philosophically. The only thing money can buy is for USE of something. Therefore, as regards fishing tackle, all I say is – get plenty of it.”
“And use it,” added Jim.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Well, then,” chuckled Jimmie, “how many trout flies do you own?”
“Well… uh…” I explained.
“You’ve got,” accused Jim, “hundreds of trout flies. Maybe thousands. You’ve got aluminum cases full of them all in neat rows clipped inside. You’ve got plastic boxes filled with them loose. You’ve got tiny little size 18 flies that are no bigger than a grain of rice, with a hook so small you can hardly see it. And great big flies the size of a mouse. Now, my friend, how are you going to USE all those trout flies?”
“Jim, you know as well as I do,” I protested, “that different weather conditions, different qualities of sunlight and shadow, different seasons, different types of water, whether small brook or big river…”
“Stuff and nonsense,” laughed Jimmie. “You know that the very best fly fishermen use only four or five patterns of trout fly, regardless of season, weather, and kind of water.”
“Aw, I admit,” I admitted, “that an expert fly fisherman restricted to half a dozen patterns of fly, can catch more fish than a dub fisherman with a hundred different patterns of fly…”
“Are you a dub3?” inquired Jim.
“No,” I asserted.
“Then,” crowed Jim, “what are you doing with all those bags full of trout flies back there? How many flies have you brought with you today, now? Be honest.”
“A few boxes,” I said.
“Five boxes?”
“About.”
“Ten boxes?”
“Possibly,” I muttered.
I LOVE trout flies. I have collected them for 30 years the way a stamp collector collects stamps. Or a butterfly collector collects insects. It’s a hobby. And a beautiful one. Nothing can be more artistic and delightful to the eye than fly boxes filled with row upon row of delicate, tastefully arranged trout flies of all sizes. In fact, I HATE to use them. I carry one old battered fly box with about five patterns of cheap commercial flies – Montreal, Par Belle, Grizzly King, Silver Doctor and brown hackle4 – and these I have used for years and years. But I wouldn’t DREAM of going fly fishing without almost my entire collection of beautiful, precious trout flies. They are for looking at. They are for show. They add a spiritual quality to fishing. They dignify it. Dignify an otherwise absurd pastime.
“Jim,” I said, “the day will come when you will be very glad of my trout flies. One day, we will be stumped. We’ll find the trout won’t rise to a single pattern we are accustomed to use.”
“Then I’ll go for a chub tail,” assured Jim, “or a worm.”
“No,” I smiled, “we’ll find what they WILL rise to among my beautiful collection.”
And that day came a lot sooner than I expected. It was, in fact, the minute we arrived at Duck Chutes. We drove off the highway, and the 12 miles into the village, and a mile down the bush road to Duck Chutes and were happy to find nobody ahead of us at this beautiful stretch of big, rapid water.
Jim got in first and cast with a McGinty squirrel tail, that is, a black and yellow-bodied fly with a wing of fur off a squirrel’s tail.
“WOW!” he bellowed above the roar of the rapids, and I stumbled down the bank.
“A two pounder,” he yelled excitedly. “And I missed him!”
He cast again. I watched intently. Among the rolling rapids, I detected that bulge of a big, shining body as it reached at Jim’s fly. Jim struck. The fly came through the air. No fish.
I waded a few yards down stream and began casting with two flies on my leader – a good-sized Zulu on the end and a claret hackle for a dropper. The team of flies hadn’t swung two yards down the rapids before I, too, saw the steely shape of a big trout arch and flick spray with its tail. I struck. The flies came flying back. No fish. But I too yelled WOW.
Jim shifted a few paces upstream. And I, a few down. About every second cast, we had the rise of a big, lithe trout. But not one of them connected.
So we waded ashore and changed flies. I changed to something lighter-colored and smaller – a Par Belle at the end and a Grizzly King for a dropper. Jim changed to larger and darker – a big streamer with a badger hackle and a crimson body,
Immediately we had results. Up slashed the big trout of Duck Chutes, arched and rolled at our flies, flicked spray with their tails. But did not connect.
“Okay,” I said to myself, wading ashore, “there is only the one answer. A polar bear streamer.”
This is a big fly, with glossy white polar bear hair for a wing, and a body of vari-colored wool.
I used it alone. I cast it across and let it swing down, tugging my rod tip lightly.
A trout struck it with that curious elastic thud with which a tennis ball strikes the racket.
I struck. The fly came loose. My line wobbled feebly back through the air, minus the fly.
I staggered ashore and sat down abjectly on a rock. Jimmie had seen the strike and hurried down to me.
“What did he take?” he shouted excitedly.
“A polar bear streamer,” I announced, already fumbling with trembling fingers through my fly box dedicated to streamers. There were only two polar bears left!
“Ah,” said Jim, bending.
So I gave him one and I tied on the other.
I waded out and cast. Before the fly had drifted one yard, the same huge pluck of the curving trout, the same inexorable drag of a heavy fish, the strike of my rod, and the same awful sensation of the leader parting and the line coming ragged and flyless through the air.
I went ashore and watched Jim.
Jim struck. His rod arched. He staggered backward towards shore. The line parted. The rod straightened. And there was Jimmie fallen limp and heart-broken on the boulders, moaning.
I went and stood over him.
“It was a three-pounder,” he hissed.
“So was mine,” I agreed.
“Any more polar bears?” he asked, looking up at me haggardly.
“Not one,” I muttered.
“Anything else like it?” he begged. “Among all those hundreds and hundreds of flies?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We could look through them. But…”
And then I saw Jim’s head shining at me, silvery, gleaming, glittering…
Well, gentlemen, it wasn’t a matter of minutes before we both had a new fly, the nearest thing to a polar bear you ever saw. We christened it, rather artistically, I thought, the Cheveux de Frise. With my fly-tying wallet, we did up a couple of flies with wisps of Jim’s hair.
They were sensations. The first trout, logically enough, fell to Jim, a two pounder. Mine was a three- pounder. Then Jim got a three-pounder and I lost my fly in a bigger one still. Naturally, Jim had to come ashore while I trimmed him for a new one.
Well, between catching trout and wading ashore to provide either Jim or me with a new fly, a very happy two hours of Duck Chutes fishing was enjoyed until we reached our legal poundage of fish and Jimmie looked like a leper.
But it just shows you, you can’t have enough fishing tackle.
Editor’s Notes:
- The deference between packsacks and haversacks are usually just the amount they hold. ↩︎
- Also “gewgaws”, known as worthless trinkets. ↩︎
- In this case, “dub” means “a fool or incompetent person”. The same as a “duffer” in golf. ↩︎
- All different kinds of flies. Greg was so into flies and fly fishing, that he even has a fly that he developed named after him, Clark’s Deer Hair Nymph. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, March 8, 1947.
“Dickie,” announced Jimmie Frise hollowly, “is sick.”
“Dickie who?” I inquired, alarmed.
“The canary,” explained Jim. “He hasn’t uttered a peep for a month.”
“How long have you had him?” I asked.
“Six years,” said Jim. “Six happy, cheery years.”
“Well, heck,” I submitted, “you can’t keep a canary forever. Probably he’s just come to the end of his time. He’s about to pop off.”
“Don’t say that!” snapped Jim indignantly. “That little bird is practically a member of my family.”
“You people,” I scoffed, “who carry sentimentality for animals and birds to silly extremes make me sick. If all the love and affection lavished on dogs and cats and birds were directed to the human race instead, this world would be a far warmer place for a great many neglected people.”
“Dickie,” stated Jim as if he hadn’t heard me, “is a great little fellow. He’s brought music and gaiety into the house, winter, summer, fair weather and foul. He doesn’t shut up shop, like common birds, as soon as spring’s gone. He sings the whole year through. Until now!”
Jim gazed gloomily out the window.
“Aw, for Pete’s sake!” I cried cheerfully, “you can replace him for six bucks. You can get another so like him that you can’t tell the…”
Jim whirled on me angrily.
“Kindly don’t talk,” he grated, “about something you know nothing about. Some people are color blind. Some people are tone deaf. And there are people in this world who are incapable of true, affection for small and helpless creatures.”
“I like dogs,” I protested, “but I don’t elevate them to human stature. I keep them in their place, I’ve seen people hugging dogs. I’ve actually seen people KISS dogs!”
“I’ve often felt,” said Jim sadly, “like kissing Dickie. Often, when he’s in one of his frenzies of song, I’ve been so lifted out of myself that I’ve jumped up from reading or whatever I was doing, and gone over and put my arms around his cage.”
“Huh!” I laughed. “Cage! You love Dickie but you keep him in jail. A pitiful little prisoner…”
“Now, look here!” snarled Jimmie.
“Of all the muddled and perverse forms of affection I ever heard of,” I pursued relentlessly, “loving a canary that you keep imprisoned every day, every hour of his poor little life!”
“We don’t keep him a prisoner,” declared Jim hotly. “Every day he is let out of his cage and he flies around the house in complete freedom. But would he leave us? Never!”
“Probably,” I suggested helpfully, “while you’ve let him fly all over the house, he’s picked up something that has poisoned him. Maybe he’s swallowed a pill, or possibly a needle.”
“Good heavens!” gasped Jim, jumping up.
“Ah, you see?” I followed heartily. “Possibly the poor little thing has swallowed a sharp glass bead. Or maybe has taken a sip out of a dish of cleaning fluid or something…”
“I’m going straight home!” declared Jim, “I’m going to rush him up to a pet shop I know. There’s a specialist there…”
“This is what comes,” I hung on, “of trying to make a human being out of a dumb animal. You let the helpless little thing have the run of your home. Sure! You love it. But what kind of love is it to expose a defenseless creature to all the perils of the modern home?”
“I’ll take him straight to the specialist,” muttered Jim, getting into his overcoat.
“There’s probably little can be done,” I sympathized, “for a bird that’s been poisoned. They’re so fragile and small. If it hasn’t sung for a month, as you say, it’s probably too far gone. If you look around the pet shop while you’re there, you will likely find the exact replica of Dickie…”
“You’re not coming, are you?” demanded Jim, seeing me up getting my coat on too.
“Certainly,” I said. “I’m not the kind that would ignore a friend in trouble – even a trifle like a sick canary.”
“I’d prefer…” said Jim, hurrying out the door.
But I could see the poor chap was really perturbed. And I followed on his heels.
“The beauty about canaries,” I pointed out, as we strode down to the parking lot, “is, they are all very much alike, you can’t tell one from the other. Now, if you lose a dog…”
“I’m not losing Dickie,” asserted Jim, lengthening his pace.
“Dogs,” I went on, just to take his mind off his worries, “are individuals. No two dogs are alike, in temperament. When you lose a dog, I can understand a certain amount of personal grief. But canaries, don’t you see, are much lower in the scale than dogs. A bird has practically no brains at all. Therefore it can’t have personality. A bird, for example, is incapable of feeling affection…”
Jim swung the car door open and flung himself inside. I joined him.
“Look,” said Jim, quietly, “I’ll tell you about Dickie. The time we got him, we had a lot of sickness in the house. A lot of sickness and a lot of trouble. It was gloomy. Now, I forget just how we happened to think of the bird. But somehow, Dickie took up his stand by the living room windows of the house. And I tell you – it wasn’t a day, it was hardly an hour, until that bird had transfigured our house. They say new birds don’t sing for a few days, until they get accustomed to the new environment. You say birds have no brains?”
“Everybody knows that,” I agreed.
“Well, then,” demanded Jim fiercely, “how did that bird know, the minute he got into my house, that he was needed, that he had to sing…!”
“Just coincidence,” I murmured.
“Ah,” ignored Jim. “He started to sing. And the sick ones started to sit up and take notice. And the tired and weary ones began to smile and cheer up. And Dickie sang and sang and fairly yelled. He hopped around, cheering through the bars as if he were trying to single each of us out for a special song…”
“What imagination can do!” I chuckled.
“In two days,” cried Jim, “he had sung us all into happiness again. In a week, he was the treasured darling. In a month, he was the king of the house. THAT’S the bird you say you can pick up three for a dime!”
“A dollar apiece, wholesale, probably,” I corrected.
“Let’s not talk about it,” muttered Jim.
So we reached his house and went in. Dickie was in his cage. A kind of a dowdy looking yellow bird, with random dark markings. Just a tired, aging canary to my eye. But I decided not to air my opinion at the moment.
“I’ll take him,” said Jim, “in a paper bag. That will be warmer than the cage.”
He got a paper bag of the size half a dozen oranges come in. Dickie made no resistance when Jim reached into his cage and picked him off the perch. He emitted one hoarse cheep as Jim slid him into the bag, and wrung the paper around to make a sort of neck. The bag ballooned out with the air in it. Dickie fluttered around inside.
“The air in there,” explained Jim, “will stay at the house temperature for the time it takes us to reach the pet shop.”
We went back out to the car and I offered to hold Dickie on my lap.
“No,” said Jim, “he’ll be less, frightened right back there on the back seat.”
And he placed the bag tenderly on the cushions.
“This specialist,” said Jim, as we drove off, “is a wonderful man with birds…”
And he regaled me with a lot of optimistic details about some gnarled little Englishman, an ex-sailor, who ran the pet shop.
We were just nicely into the business district when I happened to hear, behind me, a curious thrrripp- thrrripp! of wings. And I turned in time to see Dickie, loose in the car, flit out the slightly opened window.
“Jim!” I bellowed. “Dickie’s loose…!”
Well, sir, it was quite a chase. We got parked and ran back. And sure enough, there was Dickie perched up on a swinging signboard over a shop entrance. Three or four ladies were stopped watching.
“Dickie!” called Jim in a high, falsetto voice. “Pffft! Peeeep! Dickie!”
He held his hand up toward the scared and chilly looking bird.
But Dickie just hunched himself, and turned his head sideways to look in a dazed fashion at the enormous wide moving world around him.
“Oh, he’ll perish!” cried one of the ladies.
“Jim, get him moving,” I commanded. “Keep him on the go, or the cold will finish him.”
Jim threw his hat up at Dickie, who immediately flew to another hanging signboard; a higher one.
“There,” snarled Jim. “You’ll drive him up to the roofs and that’ll be the end of him…”
“I didn’t do it!” I protested hotly.
By now, a dozen ladies, half a dozen men and 20 kids had gathered around us.
“I’ll get the people who live above the shop,” offered a lady, “to scare him down.”
Heads came out of the windows above Dickie a moment later and away flew the little bird in fright. He went straight at a brightly lighted Neon sign.
He struck it.
And fluttering, he fell to the pavement.
I was on him like a flash, and had my hat on top of him before you could say Jim Frise.
“Good!” yelled Jim, shoving through the moiling crowd. “Let me reach under…”
“No, no!” I cried. “You’ll crush every bone in his poor little body. You go and get the bag out of the car and I’ll just guard him right here…”
“Okay,” puffed Jim, shoving through the crowd.
Now, if there is anything that excites a crowd, it is the sight of a gentleman squatted down on the pavement with something hidden under his hat.
What had been, to start with, a couple of dozen idle passersby became, in an instant, a shoving, heaving crowd. From stores up and down the street they came on the gallop. Everybody behind shouted to know what the- excitement was. And those in the inner circle shouted that it was a man with a canary under his hat,
But all THAT did was make those in the outer circumference fight all the harder to get inside the crowd until I was in danger of being crushed to death. I had to bellow at the top of my lungs and take a few sharp jabs at the legs nearest me, when I heard the voice of authority.
It was the police.
“Here, what’s this?” he demanded. “Break it up! Break it up!”
But when a policeman joins a mob, that only attracts more. The fact is, traffic began to be tied up. I heard car scrape to a stop. Horns began to toot impatiently, both above and below.
The cop got through to where he could look down on me.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’ve got a canary” I explained up. “If you can make a lane through this mob, my friend with a paper bag can…”
At the moment, a sound rose loud and fierce above the noises of the crowd. It was the savage horn of a car, some little distance up the street, coming at a furious clip. And almost simultaneous with the roar of the horn came the screech of brakes, cries of fright, the furious racing of an engine – as though the car were backing – and then a loud, thunderous crash.
The cop burst his way through the crowd toward the racket. Another car, and then another, came roaring down the street.
My crowd melted as though struck by a tornado. I heard strong shouts.
“Grab them! Grab him! Gunmen! Hold-up men.”
Occupied as I was, I did not see what was transpiring. But Jim, freed of the crowd, came puffing; and he had Dickie in the bag in a jiffy.
“It’s gunmen!” Jim gasped. “They were driving hell bent down the street until our crowd stopped them! The cops have got them…!”
“Why, Jim!” I cried. “Maybe there’s a reward for them! Maybe they’re desperate characters and a thousand dollars reward for them! In that case, it was me that created the crowd. It was MY crowd that blocked their escape and enabled the cops to capture them. Wait till I get in there and see the cops…”
“It was WHOSE crowd?” demanded Jim, stepping in front of me. “It was WHO created the crowd?”
“Why… me!” I gulped.
“It was DICKIE!” shouted Jim, clutching the paper bag to his bosom tenderly.
So we drove a block farther to the pet shop where we went in and found the little gnarled Englishman. We revealed Dickie to him from within the paper bag, at the same time telling him, with great gusto, the story of how Dickie had been instrumental in the capture of two fleeing bandits.
“Well, well, WELL!” said the little old sailor, picking Dickie up in his knotted hand, feeling him roughly over the wishbone and giblets, and then tossing him in the air.
Dickie flew frantically about the shop, past all the cages full of singing birds, the budges, the parrots. He took up his stance on the topmost row of cages, leaned back and burst into ecstatic song.
“There y’are, see?” said the specialist. “All ‘e needed was a little excitement!”
