The Work of Greg Clark and Jimmie Frise

Tag: 1947 Page 2 of 4

Jingle All the Way

It was a raggedy little boy I found staring up into my whiskers … He had his teeth clenched and his jaw set.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, December 13, 1947.

“Let’s,” urged Jimmie Frise, “let’s go up and see Santa Claus!”

“Awff …!” I groaned.

We were wedged in the main-floor Christmas crowds of the big department store. Up on the fifth floor, Santa Claus was holding court for hundreds and hundreds of kids.

“Jim,” I puffed, as a large lady with bundles butted me aside, “we don’t want to get tangled up in that melee.”

“We can take the escalator,” persuaded Jim, “and we won’t get hurt.”

“What on earth do you want to see Santa Claus for?” I demanded, taking shelter up against a solid pillar.

“I always like to see Santa Claus,” said Jim cheerily. “I wouldn’t think I had done my Christmas shopping unless I’d gone up to the toy department and stood for a little while, watching those kids filing along past Santa Claus, with that lovely, innocent look of awe.”

“You’ve got two weeks till Christmas,” I pleaded. “You come up some other day – by yourself.”

“Look,” said Jim, bracing himself against the butting, shoving, trampling horde that stampeded around us. “We’ve got an hour with nothing to do. We’re here. Let’s get it over with.”

“I’ve given up believing in Santa Claus,” I submitted. “In fact, I find myself leaning a little in the direction of these new fangled psychologists who believe it’s wrong to teach children myths, like Santa Claus.”

“Okay, then,” declared Jim, taking me by the coat sleeve firmly. “Come and have one farewell look at the old boy. Every day from now on it will be harder to get in here.”

I permitted myself to be good-naturedly bundled through the mob toward the escalators.

The stupor of Christmas was already in full possession of the multitude in the big store. The stupor of Christmas. It begins to show itself even earlier than this. You can detect the first faint symptoms of Christmas stupor as early as the first of December, both on customers and store clerks. By mid-December, the stupor is such, that often you will see both customer and clerk standing staring absently at each other across a counter, the customer having forgotten what he just asked for, and the clerk having apparently lost consciousness for a moment.

You find Christmas stupor most evident in the actual traffic of the store. In the walking, shuffling, wandering throngs of customers and store employees, you note that expression in the eye that is characteristic of a herd of cows moving along a country road. A look of wonderment. A look of anxious preoccupation, as if the cow or the customer didn’t know where it was going, or what it was going for. And like a cow or a steer wandering along the road with the herd, the customer often takes a sudden idea to turn to the right or the left, without any particular purpose.

Christmas stupor, of course, is part of Christmas. I we didn’t get stupid, we would all stay home the month before Christmas. Thus business would get the biggest black eye in the biggest period of sales in the year. Business would fail. A slump would begin. We’ve all got to be stupid at Christmas.

Jimmie steered and propelled me ahead of him resolutely through the fighting throng. Being taller than I, he could set his course with greater advantage. Where he could see ahead of us a mass of young, middle-aged or healthy customers, he would make a quick detour or tack to the right or left, choosing children, feeble old ladies and unsuspecting women of the frailer sort, with their backs to us, whom we could butt, trample or ricochet off; making our progress much faster and more skilful than the average. I figure the average speed of a person in a Christmas crowd to be at the rate of 40 feet in five minutes, or one-eleventh of a mile per hour.

We reached the escalators and entered the crowd, jammed there awaiting their turn. We finally shuffled and inched our way on to the escalator and began the slow, rumbling upward journey of five storeys. One of the pleasantest places to be in the big stores at Christmastime is on an escalator. Nobody can really get a jab or a gouge at you there. About the only thing that can happen is to have your hat knocked off by the skis or the ironing board the lady in front of you is carrying.

“Ah,” I sighed with relief, as the pleasant ascent began.

“I’ll tell you another reason,” began Jim, in the conversational isolation of the escalator, “why I want to go up and see Santa Claus and the kids. It’s for my soul’s sake. It’s for my intellectual reassurance. In this day and age, when so many beliefs are toppling, it is mighty heartening to behold ONE belief that is standing fast against the rising tides of unbelief.”

“Even if it’s a myth,” I agreed, “like Santa Claus.”

“Well, most beliefs,” pointed out Jim, as we swung round and took the escalator from second to third floor, most beliefs contain a certain element of myth. Every generation, or at least every century, we see our beliefs shedding some of the mythical elements they used to contain. For example, my old grandfather used to believe that his ‘betters’ had the right to govern him. He was always referring to his ‘betters’. The preacher, the schoolteacher, the local banker, the owner of the sawmill – all these were his ‘betters’; and he frankly acknowledged them as such. Today, the guy who runs the elevator doesn’t look upon the president and vice-president of this store as his ‘betters’. He looks them bung in the eye. And the president and the vice-president say ‘Hi, Bill!'”

“Would you call that a myth?” I questioned. “That belief in your “betters’?”

“It’s the Santa Claus myth in adult form,” explained Jimmie. “For the kids, we have Santa Claus. For ourselves, we have had – until quite lately in human history – a mythical belief in our rulers, emperors, princes, lords, bosses, who would be Santa Claus to us and shower us with blessings.”

“The Santa Claus myth,” I pondered, “in adult form!”

“Sure,” pursued Jim. “There isn’t an employee in this whole city, who, this week, isn’t hoping and praying that Santa Claus, in the shape of their boss, is going to give them a Christmas bonus.”

“Er …” I argued.

But we had come to the top of the escalator at the fifth floor; and we knew by the different tone of the din, by the higher, shriller hum, that we were close to the toy department, with Santa Claus enthroned on high.

It is easy for adults to progress with fair rapidity in the toy department. By a judicious use of knees, feet, elbows and the flat of the hand, an adult can really push, kick and shove children out of the way with a freedom that is denied him in other departments of the big stores at Christmas.

We worked our way through the pandemonium to a position square in front of Santa Claus’s throne, where we could observe the pantomime at its best.

Santa Claus sat in a throne raised on a platform about 10 feet high. A ramp of planks, prettily painted, led up to and past Santa Claus, so that the little ones could file past him in endless queue.

“Ah,” sighed Jimmie, relaxing. “Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that touching?”

Santa Claus, dressed in scarlet, gold and white, with a mass of white beard and hair surrounding his ruddy face, reached down and lifted a darling little girl on to his knee. Up to him, she turned her trusting and adoring little face, her eyes ablaze with faith. We could not hear Santa, of course, because of the din of the toy department – electric trains rattling, horns blowing, dirty little boys playing tag with store detectives and maiden lady clerks, toy dogs yelping, mamma dolls mewing and disgruntled small children screaming while being yanked by their mothers through the press.

Nor could we hear what the little girl asked for. But we could see dear old Santa nodding his head emphatically to the darling little girl, and she went right on rapidly lisping her requirements, with bright upturned face, until Santa Claus laid her down off his knee and reached for the next supplicant.

“Greedy little brats!” I remarked.

“Oh, oh, OH!” protested Jimmie, anguished. “You miss the whole spirit of Christmas.”

“Just a minute, Jim,” I interrupted. “Look at Santa Claus, would you! Look at the way he’s twisting and turning…”

Santa, in between bending down to listen to the children on his knee, kept twisting and writhing on his throne, casting what seemed to be anguished glances to the right and to the left, back of the wings of the throne on which he sat.

“By golly, look at his face!” agreed Jim.

Looking narrowly, you could see, through the white clouds of whiskers, an expression of agony.

And at this instant, I heard my name being called!

“Oh, Mr. Clark… Mr. Clark!”

It was my old friend Bob Brittain, the assistant manager of the toy department, and he was clawing his way through the kids toward me, beckoning. He came up and stood breathless for a moment, controlling himself.

“Look,” he gasped, “I saw you in the crowd… how would you like… I mean… this is an extraordinary request… but you know…”

“What is it, Bob?” I asked cautiously,

“Santa Claus,” went on Bob, “has got an awful attack of indigestion. Tight indigestion. He’s simply got to get some baking soda and lie down for a few minutes… 10 minutes…”

Bob looked at me with intense meaning.

 “You…” he said, “you’ve got the build, the jolly red face…”

“You mean…?” I inquired stiffly.

“It would be an unforgettable experience for you,” explained Bob Brittain eagerly. “Only for a few minutes…

“But the kids,” I protested, “the kids would be willing to wait a few minutes, if Santa Claus went and lay down…”

“Oh, you can’t do that!” cried Bob. “You can’t let the kids know Santa Claus gets indigestion. Besides, the department is jammed with kids wanting to speak to Santa Claus. Their parents are waiting impatiently. We can’t let them down, keep them waiting…”

“Isn’t there somebody on the staff of the store?” I inquired, though Jimmie was pushing me with little nudges.

“I’ve been all over the place, we can’t spare a single clerk. The department is rushed off its feet!” said Bob.

“Okay,” I condescended, with a chuckle. “Where’s the harm?”

Bob led us back of the scenery behind the throne. At a whistle, Santa Claus came staggering off the stage, holding his stomach.

In a jiffy, he had whipped off his costume, whiskers, wigs, hat and all. An anguished little fat man with perspiration on his face stood revealed.

Jim, Bob and half a dozen others stuffed me into the costume. Slammed the whiskers and wig on me. Helped me into the boots.

Just talk deep and hearty,” hissed Bob, “and laugh ho, ho, ho! And promise them everything.”

I was shoved on to the stage, where I hastily took my throne.

The queue of children were yelling, the mob on the floor were waving and screaming. I reached out genially and picked the first child in the lineup onto my knee.

“Ho, ho, HO!” I bellowed in a deep voice.

It was a raggedy little boy I found staring up into my whiskers. A raggedy little boy with a dirty face and gimletty gray eyes. He had his teeth clenched and his jaw set.

“Ho, ho, ho!” I repeated. “And what would my little man like…?”

“Yah!” screeched the dirty little boy, reaching and grabbing a handful of my whiskers. “This ain’t the real Santa Claus! He ain’t got a voice like that! He’s a fake… a fake… a fake…!”

And with a jerk, he had my whiskers, wig and beautiful hat off, and gave me a nasty kick in the shin as he jumped and ran.

I made a grab at him. It was to get my whiskers back. But Jim, who was watching from the wings, said it certainly looked more like a swift uppercut I aimed.

At all events, the next children in line apparently were chums of the dirty little boy. For they jumped me, yelling “fake” and even worse. And before Jim or Bob or anybody else could come to my rescue, the whole department full of children seemed to be piled on top of me, tearing and kicking and scratching.

“Just,” I huffed, as they undid me from my costume back stage, “just another myth exploded!”

Juniper Junction – 10/22/47

October 22, 1947

Juniper Junction – 09/10/47

September 10, 1947.

Juniper Junction – 07/09/47

July 9, 1947

Laying Down the Law

At 50, we spun, escorted, a short distance out the highway and then up a gravel side road.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 31, 1947.

“Are you nervous?” accused Jimmie Frise.

“You’re hitting 60!” I gritted.

“I’m barely doing 50!” said Jim, slackening speed to look at the speedometer. “Look: 52.”

“In the first place,” I announced, “the speed limit is 50…”

“We don’t average 50,” countered Jim, “what with slowing down through towns, and for traffic on the road.”

“The law,” I stated, “does not concern itself with your average speed. It says you can’t exceed 50…on your speedometer.”

“Personally,” said Jim, airily, “I think the law is a little more intelligent than most people give it credit for. Common law is nothing more or less than common sense. I think the speed limit of 50 naturally refers to your average speed.”

“Well, then,” I shifted, “I think you are showing very little common sense in driving this old rattle-trap at anything more than 40.”

“Rattle-trap!” snorted Jim. “Why, she’s just nicely broken in.”

“She’s 10 years old, Jim,” I reminded him.

“Just,” he said, accelerating slightly, “nicely broken in.”

At 30 miles an hour, Jim’s car is a lot noisier than at 40. At 50, the various clanks, clucks, hisses and hums all blend into a kind of high whine which is not entirely unpleasant. In fact, it lulls you.

He got it back to 50, and as I sat taut and tense watching the speedometer needle slowly rise to 53, 55, I heard a new and rather alarming sound rising above the normal whine.

It sounded like explosions: I gripped the seat in expectation of the whole engine flying apart.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what the new sound was.

It was a speed cop on a motorcycle, slowly forging alongside us, with one hand upraised.

“Cop, Jim!” I shouted above the din. “Pull over!”

“Of all the luck!” grated Jim, as he slacked speed and the cop shot past us and led towards the shoulder of the highway. “We’ll never get there now …”

We came to a steaming stop. The cop unlegged himself over the motorcycle and walked slowly back to us, feeling for his book.

“Let me see your driver’s permit,” he proceeded with the ritual.

He noted down Jim’s name: Took the car license number.

“What’s the trouble, officer,” inquired Jim humbly, with that innocent old Sunday school superintendent air we all assume in these situations.

“I paced you,” said the cop. “Doing 60. In this old crate. And on this piece of highway. Didn’t you notice this was a specially curvy stretch of pavement?”

“Officer,” protested Jim, very shocked, “I never go much over 40 …”

“You were going 60,” said the cop, “and we’ve had a lot of accidents along this stretch. We’re clamping down.”

He slapped his book and put it back in his pocket.

“Look, officer,” said Jim, can you give me any idea when this summons will be for? I’m going to be a long way off in the next couple of weeks…”

“Okay, I’ll take you before the magistrate right now, if you prefer,” said the cop agreeably. “It’s just in the next town, here.”

I nudged Jim sharply. We were going fishing right now. We were late as it was. This would delay us maybe half the afternoon …

“Fine,” exclaimed Jim. “How do I find the court house…?”

“Just follow me,” said the cop, walking to his cycle.

“Jim, you dope!” I hissed. “Here it is two o’clock. We’ve got a good two hours’ drive before we get to the trout pond. This ruins everything!”

“Do I want to come back,” snorted Jim angrily, “the middle of next week sometime, just to answer this summons…?”

“Maybe we could turn it into another fishing trip,” I suggested.

“We’ll get it over with,” muttered Jim, starting up the car, “and be done with it. It won’t take more than 20 minutes.”

“You’ll see!” I prophesied gloomily. “The fishing trip is ruined.”

“A fine fishing trip!” shouted Jimmie above the din, since the cop was leading us away at about 40, which is Jim’s car’s noisiest. “Bellyaching and back-seat driving all the way, and then … pinched!”

“All I say is,” I stated stoutly, “part of a fishing trip is the journey, the drive. A fishing trip should be leisurely, recreative, without stress or strain. If we drive like maniacs to get to the fishing spot, the trip is half ruined to begin with.”

“The evening rise will be over, at this rate,” ignored Jim.

“We present-day sportsmen,” I enlarged, in an attempt to take some of the sting out of the situation, “are destroying the very thing we seek. Fishing is called the contemplative man’s recreation. It is peace personified. Centuries ago, men wrote imperishable books about the healing power of angling. But never in human history more than now do we need the peace, the solitude and the escape of fishing.”

“If cops,” put in Jim, “would let us get any.”

“No, I declared, “we ourselves are destroying the virtue of fishing by pulling it into the hectic riot of the modern way of life. We GO fishing at 60 miles an hour, Izaac Walton WALKED to his fishing. Miles! And enjoyed the walk as much as the fishing. What do we do? After we get there, we insist on outboard motors, fast boats, expert guides to cut down the time wasted … WASTED we say! – in locating the fish. Hang it, locating the fish is more than half the mystery of fishing. Do you know what we have done, in recent years? We have, in the best tradition of efficient business, converted fishing into catching fish !!!”

“Hmmff!” said Jim bitterly.

“Business enterprise,” I philosophized loudly above the car’s row, “has taken the emphasis off fishing and put it on FISH.”

“Look at that cop,” cried Jim, “slowing down, so he can lead us in triumph through the town …!”

Glancing over his shoulder from time to time, as we entered the town limits, the cop slowed until he had us directly in tow. And thus we drove in to the court house.

He directed us where to park, then came and joined us.

“The magistrate,” he stated, “usually sits at two. It’s 2.20 now. If we haven’t missed him, okay. If we have, I’ll just forward the summons in the usual way.”

We walked into the court house, and in one of its dingy rooms we found the magistrate sitting at a desk with half a dozen prior customers.

We took the chairs indicated by the cop. And the magistrate glanced up and favored us with a nasty look.

He also gave the cop a nasty look.

The magistrate, in fact, was a pretty tough old customer. He was irritated, flushed and peevish. of maybe 60, with a weather-beaten face and wearing, to my way of thinking, pretty shabby old tweeds for a man of his rank and station in the community.

He was not holding court. He was simply in his office, settling certain matters out of court. The case in hand, when we entered, was a citizen charged with keeping chickens within the town limits in contravention of a by-law.

He was fined a dollar.

Next case: A man charged with keeping a vicious dog.

“Bring this up,” snapped the magistrate, “at the regular session of the court.”

“But Bill,” protested the accused, “you know as well as I do I can’t come in the morning!”

Bill was the magistrate.

“I want evidence,” chopped the magistrate. “Bring this up in the morning!”

“Well, doggone…” said the accused, flushed and angry. “At this season of the year, there’s no justice in this town …”

He jammed his hat on his head and stamped out, the magistrate following him with a malevolent look.

Two more cases presented their summonses, and with an air of fury, the little old magistrate jerked and rattled at the papers and burst into invective as to the type of people who can’t be content to appear in court in the normal course.

Jimmie and I exchanged glances. The cop sitting beside us leaned over and whispered:

“I guess we made a mistake, eh?”

I showed my wrist watch to Jim. 10 to three!

“Why didn’t you let the thing ride?” I whispered to Jim. “You’ll get the limit.”

“Silence!” roared the magistrate. “How do you expect me to attend to these things with everybody jabbering…!”

Jim gave me a reproving look.

At exactly three o’clock, by the town clock bell, the magistrate finished the business in hand, waved the defendants on their way and turned to us with indignation:

“Now, what do you want?” he demanded acidly.

“These gentlemen,” explained the cop standing up, “are charged by me with travelling at a rate in excess of 50 miles an hour, to wit 60. And as they will be out of the country in the next few weeks, they requested I bring them before you immediately. As not to have to come back later in response to the usual summons.”

“Indeed!” said the magistrate bitterly. “INDEED? For your convenience, I am to spend the whole day here fiddling… Constable, have you got a charge made out”

“Yes, your worship,” said the cop, sliding forward form he had filled out.

Jim stood up.

“Sixty miles an hour, eh?” grated the magistrate. “Do you plead guilty?”

“I would like to say,” began Jimmie …

“Unless you admit the charge,” roped the old gent, “you can’t settle it here. You’ll have to appear in court. Later.”

He tossed the charge sheet on the table and half rose, reaching for his hat.

“I admit it,” hastened Jim.

“H’m! 60 miles an hour?” said the magistrate. “You were in a hurry, eh? Well, so am I! 10 dollars and costs.”

“14 dollars,” said the constable promptly.

And he led us along the corridor to the clerk’s office.

“3.20, Jim,” I said gloomily, as we waited for the receipt. “And 60 more miles to go. There’ll be little fishing for us this trip.”

“Come on,” growled Jim.

We hustled down the hall and collided in the doorway with another hustling figure.

It was the magistrate.

“Hang it!” he howled, as we stood aside to let him pass out first. “You people still in a rush?”

He paused outside to adjust his hat and gave us an appraising stare.

He fixed his eyes on my hat.

“Hello?” he said, stepping up and lifting my hat off.

He examined the half dozen battered old trout flies I stuck in the band.

“Too big,” he said. “And too gaudy. I never use anything larger than size 12 at this time of year. And all drab, like the Greenwell’s Glory or a March Brown. Spider preferred.”

He put my hat back on my head, and reached up and took Jim’s hat off.

“You fellows are wasting your time,” he snapped, “using big loud flies like these. Hey! You two going fishing? Is that why you were in such a rush?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jim hollowly.

“Yes, sir,” I echoed.

“Well,” he said, “what do you suppose I’m in a hurry for? How far are you going?”

We named our destination, 60 miles off.

“You’ll never make it,” he cried, glancing up at the town clock. “The farmer who owns my pond phoned me an hour ago that the trout were rising like mad. You’ll never make it. It’ll be over by the time you go 60 miles.”

He opened the court house door again.

“Sam!” he bellowed.

The cop appeared.

“Jump on your bike,” he commanded, “and clear the road for us, out to the farm!”

“Yessir!” said the cop.

“Now,” yelped the old gent, “where’s your car? Make it snappy …”

And we ran for the car.

“My tackle’s out at the pond,” puffed the old boy, throwing himself in the back seat.

At 50, we spun, escorted, a short distance out the highway and then up a gravel side road.

At 4 pm, we lurched to a stop in a farm yard.

At 4.10, we were back of the barn, clambering into a punt.

At 4.12, the old boy had a half pound trout on.

At 4.12½, we all three had a half pound trout on.

At 4.12, we all three had a half-pound trout on.

It lasted until dark. And at dinner, in the farm house … (speckled trout and hashed brown potatoes) … the old magistrate laid down the law to us.

“In fishing,” he pronounced, “never, never be in a hurry!”


Editor’s Notes: Izaak Walton wrote one of Greg’s favourite books, The Compleat Angler.

$14 in 1947 would be $212 in 2022.

Juniper Junction – 02/19/47

February 19, 1947

This is the first Juniper Junction comic published.

Southward Ho!

February 1, 1947

This was the last Birdseye Center published, before Jim moved to the Montreal Standard and renamed it Juniper Junction.

Juniper Junction – 12/24/47

December 24, 1947

Mad Dog Loose

There was an instant’s hush and then a riot. “Mad dog! Mad dog loose!” came the yells…

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, November 22, 1947.

“Never,” counselled Jimmie Frise, “go to a dog show at night.”

“Well, it’s the only convenient time,” I submitted.

“We’ll be trampled to death,” declared Jim. “Let’s go in the morning, or even in the afternoon. The judging goes on from 10 am to 10 pm. We can find out what time the retrievers are being judged.”

“Or the hounds,” I checked. “Especially the beagles, the dear little beagles.”

“The last time we went to the Winter Fair dog show,” recollected Jim, “we had sore feet for weeks. We got trampled, stamped on, butted, biffed, shoved, dug in the ribs…”

“Jim,” I announced, “I regard that tremendous crowd at the dog show as only fitting. I think it is the proper and just tribute of human beings to the oldest and noblest companion of humanity across thousands and thousands of years.”

“But my feet …” complained Jimmie.

“Personally,” I pursued, “I prefer to get caught in the jam at a dog show. I prefer to go at night, when all the crowds are there, so as to be a part of this annual celebration in the honor of the dog. Do you realize that it is just possible that there would be NO human race if it hadn’t been for the dog?”

“How do you make that out?” demanded Jim in surprise.

“Before the introduction of agriculture,” I informed him, “what little wandering bands of human beings there were, scattered sparsely over the earth, had to live on what they could find in the perilous and monster-filled wilderness. They had to be warned of the approach of tigers and other savage creatures. They had to hunt game, their only meat. In both those profoundly important factors in the survival of these poor, trembling human beings, the dog played an immense – in fact, an absolutely essential – part.”

“Big dogs?” inquired Jim.

“Big dogs and little dogs,” I assured him. “The astonishing thing about dogs is that, either big or small, they are to be found, in the most ancient times, all over the world – Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America – everywhere but in a few Pacific islands. And wherever they were, big or small, they were the companions, the helpers, the guardians and warners of men!”

“Well, by golly….!” exclaimed Jim.

“Yes, SIR!” I warmed up. “The first actual historical record of dogs goes back to carvings and paintings of ancient Egypt, on the tomb of King Amten, in the year 4000 BC. Hunting dogs, hounds.”

“You mean,” calculated Jim, “6,000 years ago?”

“And that,” I assured him, “is only yesterday in the history of the dog. Because in the most ancient diggings in the cave men era, in all parts of the world, we find the bones of dogs mixed with the bones of men.”

“You mean,” said Jim, “that back in the days before there was any possible communication between the human tribes, say, in Europe and China, or Africa and North America, men and dogs had already got together?”

“Exactly,” I insisted, “There has been a mutual affinity between men and dogs all over the earth and from the very beginning of time. In South America, they were little dogs. In Asia they were mastiffs, giants. But they all helped man hunt, they all warned man of his monstrous wild enemies, they all shared man’s bed and board.”

“Well, this explains,” suggested Jim, “all the various and wholly different breeds of dog; yet all dogs?”

“A little Mexican chihuahua,” I recollected, “can weigh one pound. A mastiff can weigh 175 pounds. But they are both dogs, and definitely related.”

“We don’t see many mastiffs nowadays,” reflected Jimmie,

“That’s a funny thing,” I admitted. “Because we owe the very word ‘dog’ to the mastiff. When the Norman conquerors invaded Britain, they found the country full of giant mastiffs. These were the popular dogs in Britain. Every little baron, every knight, had a house full of them. Every farmer owned a couple. They were called tie-dogs. That is, tied up by day; loose by night.”

“Brrrr,” shivered Jim.

“The Norman French word for ‘mastiff’,” I explained, “was ‘dogue,’ It still is the French word for mastiff. And we poor dopey British, as so often happened to us whenever we were conquered by the Romans or the Vikings or the Saxons and so forth, had a foreign word shoved down our throats. The word ‘dogue,’ which meant ‘mastiff’ to our new bosses, came at last to mean ‘dog,’ meaning any little peewee.”

“Man, I hate to think of those early days,” murmured Jim, “when they had all those mastiffs turned loose every night.”

“Oh, the mastiff was a good many thousand years here before the Normans landed in England,” I advised. “The Romans found him in Britain, also the giant Irish wolfhound. They took ’em home and fed Christians to them in the Colosseum. The ancient kings of Persia had mastiffs. It’s only in quite recent times that men have gone in for the smaller dogs.”

“Thank heavens,” said Jim.

So, with our heaviest boots on, we went to the dog show, in the evening after all. In honor of the dog.

And just as Jimmie had predicted, it was a jam. You see, at the dog show, they have long aisles of small benches on which the show dogs recline. And the public wanders up and down these aisles, viewing the various and beautiful creatures. It could not be any other way. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. But a dog show is capable of traffic jams beyond the wildest dreams of Piccadilly or St. James street and McGill. Certain of the aisles are occupied, say, by one particularly popular breed, like the cocker spaniels. And naturally, everybody pushing along is looking for the cockers. And everybody who is already in the cocker aisle is holding firm. It takes quite a little time to look at a cocker spaniel.

Then, of course, there are the social gatherings. Mrs. Gotrox, who raises Pekingese, is sitting right on the bench, in sporty outdoorswoman costume, among her darlings. And what more natural than that all Mrs. Gotrox’s social friends, with numbers of others who merely like to bask in the obviously social atmosphere surrounding Mrs. Gotrox, should form a traffic jam in front of the Pekingese which is impossible from either direction?

But it is all very fine-tempered and smiling. People who come to look at dogs are a special breed of people. They are probably the old-fashioned kind, the ones not entirely dehumanized by civilization. They have inherited from the long past some memory of the dog that was not a friend merely, but an ally against the encircling darkness. At a dog show, you find yourself looking into the eyes of crowds of people who might easily be your brothers or sisters.

Jimmie wanted to turn left and start with the terriers. I wanted to turn right and start with the Great Danes. Either way, we would be going against the traffic. At dog shows, traffic moves in all possible directions.

“Gosh, what stallions!” gasped Jimmie, as we came in front of the Great Dane exhibit. There were 20 or 30 of them, fawn, black, brindled and harlequin – incredibly striped and blotched in black and white. Their giant jaws agape, their tiny ears pricked up, their stern gaze staring into the multitude looking for one, ONE friend.

So we edged along, passing the chows, the toys, funny balls of knitting called Pekes and Italian greyhounds so tiny and so slender that you might think the Italians got the idea of spaghetti from looking at their diminutive little greyhounds.

We came at length to the dogs Jim was looking for: the retrievers, especially the golden retrievers; although Jimmie isn’t finicky. He will look at any dog so long as it is a retriever – a Labrador, a curly-coated, flat-coated, a Chesapeake Bay. So long as it is half the size of a moose, with a coat like a duck, and with dark wise eyes that suggest it would know exactly what to do both before and after a gun barks.

Now, my fancy is hounds; and the smaller the better. Thirteen-inch beagles, for instance.

But before we got to the hounds and after Jimmie had created a half-hour traffic jam around the retrievers, with his duck-talk to them and his measuring of

But before we got to the hounds and after Jimmie had created a half-hour traffic jam around the retrievers, with his duck-talk to them and his measuring of them at the shoulder and the loin, and his picking the bored creatures up to guess their weight, and stroking their otter-like ears that lie so snug and waterproof against their heads, we had to fight our way into and through a traffic jam in front of the English bulldogs.

And the cause of this particular jam was one particular bulldog. He had the most sinister face I have ever seen, including the great Lon Chaney AND Boris Karloff. He was white, with brindle markings. He weighed well over 40 pounds. His massive brow was not only wrinkled, it twitched into new wrinkles every time he blinked his eyes, which were terrible. And under his mushed snout there protruded two white fangs, upward, bared and ready.

The traffic jam stood respectfully well back from his bench. Because, on the back of the partition of the bench was tacked this sign:

DANGEROUS

DO NOT HANDLE!

“WHAT a brute!” breathed Jimmie.

“He’s beautiful,” I stated.

And the brute looked up at me, from his squat stance, with a sudden, alert expression.

“Bee-yeautiful!’ I repeated rather cautiously,

And the brute chopped his terrible toad jaws at me in a fiendish grin, waggled his broken twisted tail ecstatically and wriggled his massive, bowlegged body into a regular fandango of friendliness.

“By golly,” gasped Jim, “he likes you!”

And a little murmur of applause rose from the silent traffic jam all around.

“Hi, Beautiful!” I said carefully.

The brute leaned out of his bench and strained on the heavy chain that held him.

“Don’t get fresh with that baby,” warned a voice behind me. “He’s a bad actor!”

I glanced to see a tall, raw-boned character in the crowd who had a know-it-all air about him.

“I know something about bulldogs,” he said wisely. “That one is a killer, A BAD dog!”

But the brute was now shimmying in a monstrous and grotesque fashion, straining on his chain in my direction, his eyes wide with friendliness and his terrific pie plate of a mouth in a wide gape of chumminess.

“Careful!” muttered Jim.

But I took a chance. I put my hand out on his head. I slid it firmly down his neck and scratched.

The bulldog snuggled right up to my thigh. And he sat down with a sort of a dump and emitted a great sigh of joy.

“He’s a fool!” said the character in the crowd.

But the traffic jam was entirely charmed by the spectacle and their murmurs rose to little cheers of delight. I sat down beside the brute on the bench and put my arm heartily around him. He fairly pushed me over, he was so happy. He licked my face and panted with brotherly love.

He fairly pushed me over, he was so happy.

The crowd closed in nearer.

I noted that the chain which held the brute was I caught under his hind leg. I tried to hoist him free of it, but he just snuggled tighter to me. I took the snap off the chain and undid it from his collar to pass the chain under him —

With bound, the massive bulldog leaped free and down into the crowd among their fast-moving legs …

The character, who had been so loud in warning me, let go in a stentorian voice:

“Look out! Bad dog loose!”

There was an instant’s hush and then a riot.

“Mad dog! Mad dog loose!” came the yells and squeals from every direction.

And you never saw a traffic jam melt so fast in your life. Not only in our particular vicinity, but in all the adjoining aisles. Out on the main exit, &a veritable stampede.

But above the tumult, I could hear one voice scolding.

And down our aisle came a man in a white sweater, lugging the brute by the collar. He hoisted him summarily into his place on the bench.

“How’d he get loose?” he demanded, seeing I was sitting on the bench.

“I’m sorry,” I confessed. “His chain was caught under him. I unsnapped it for an instant …”

“Didn’t you see that sign?” demanded the handler grimly. “Dangerous! Do not handle!”

By now the crowds were coming sheepishly back.

“That dog isn’t dangerous,” I scoffed, “The friendliest…”

“The friendliest dog in this here whole show, bar none!” said the handler to me in a low voice. “I just put that sign up to make people keep their dirty hands off him. They carry infection from one dog to another.”

“He’s a beauty,” I agreed.

“That’s his name: Beautiful,” revealed the handler. “That’s what we call him – Beautiful.”

“Ah, that explains it,” I said.

And I went ahead through the much-thinned crowd, and joined Jimmie at the beagles.


Editor’s Notes: McGill and St. James would be a busy intersection at the time in Montreal (and would be used as a reference since this was published in the Montreal Standard). Though English speakers would call it St. James, it is officially Rue Saint Jacques.

Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff were well known horror actors, playing the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Frankenstein’s monster respectfully.

Brindle markings is a coat pattern that is described as tiger-striped, though the variations of color are more subtle and blended than distinct stripes.

A stentorian voice is very loud and strong.

Juniper Junction – 10/29/47

October 29, 1947

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