"Greg and Jim"

The Work of Gregory Clark and Jimmie Frise

Tag: 1948 Page 1 of 3

Tempting the Unknown

by

On May 9, 2026

In Greg-Jim Story

“I’ve talked to Scotchmen,” assured Jim, “who have often done it back home.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 8, 1948.

Jim and Greg learn that guddling is not so much a sport as it is a hazard

“Let’s guddle them!” suggested Jimmie Frise suddenly.

“Guddle?” I questioned.

“Tickle,” explained Jimmie. “It’s the Scotch word for tickling trout. Did you never hear of tickling trout?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I admitted. “But I don’t believe everything I hear.”

We were standing on a wooden bridge, having met after a fruitless morning. We had been up at dawn, and had fished nearly a mile of a very beautiful trout stream without having connected with a single keepable fish. Being strictly fly fishermen, we had started together, wading the stream side by side. But after an hour had passed without any luck, we had separated; Jimmie turning downstream until he was out of sight. Whereupon, he rolled over a log on the river bank and got himself a good big fishworm. And I, being sure he was unable to see me, managed to catch a very small chub, which I sliced up with my knife, using its tail as bait. By such niceties – I mean, the care we take not to see each other or to be seen – are the fine old traditions of fly fishing maintained.

Jim drifted his gob of worm down under all the logs and into all the quiet pools. I dribbled my chub tail through all the riffles and rapids, and let it dangle far into the eddies and backwaters at the foot. But something was wrong. The trout were not in the mood. Nary a fish did we get.

“Guddling trout,” declared Jimmie, “is said to be no end of fun. And you get the biggest ones that way.”

I shifted my fly rod from one hand to the other, holding it so Jim could see it. Of course, all traces of chub tail had been removed. A march Brown decorated the end of my leader.

“Guddling,” I said, with dignity, “is hardly a thing that fly fishermen could stoop to.”

“Aw, you misunderstand me,” said Jim, easily. “Here we are, with nothing to do. The trout aren’t rising to the fly. Now, what would ordinary trout fishermen do in this case? Why, they would start bait fishing. They’d go and roll over a log and find a worm. Or they’d catch a chub and slice it up for bait.”

“But not us,” I stated firmly.

“I wasn’t suggesting that we guddle trout,” pursued Jim, “merely to capture some trout. I thought we could try out something we’ve often read about in the old fishing books.”

“Izaak Walton mentions it,” I admitted, “in ‘The Compleat Angler1.”‘

“Yes, and I’ve talked to Scotchmen,” assured Jim, “who have often done it back home in Scotland.”

“I doubt if you could do it here in Canada.” I suggested. “Conditions are different.”

“Not in the least,” cried Jim. “All you have to do, according to what I’ve heard, is find a place in the stream with a low bank where the water has cut under the bank, making a hole. That’s where the trout hide. That’s where the big ones go when they aren’t out feeding in the fast water. A trout has to have some repose. You don’t suppose a trout is going to spend 24 hours a day fighting the current out there in the fast water…”

“Then what do you do?” I asked.

“It’s really a poacher’s trick,” confessed Jim. “You have to be a poacher at heart to be a successful guddler.”

“If we got any,” I submitted, “we could throw them back. We’re not poachers. It would be just for the experience we’d do it. If we happened to get a big trout, even a two-pounder, we’d throw it back.”

“Certainly,” agreed Jim. “Well, as I was saying, you have to be as skilful as a poacher. You have to approach the low bank very quietly and cautiously, so as not to shake the bank with your footfall. Then you lie down on the bank, with your arm bared to the shoulder. You cautiously slide your hand down into the water, and in under the bank. If there is a hole, you explore it, barely moving your hand, as you feel for the smooth, cold sides of a trout.”

“At the sight of your hand,” I scoffed. “a trout would be a mile away.”

“No, it’s dark in those holes under the bank,” declared Jim. “According to what I’ve heard and read about guddling, the trout might move away from your hand, when it feels you touch it. In fact, that’s how you know a trout is in there, but THAT is where the guddling or tickling process begins. The minute you touch something that moves, you start your fingers moving delicately, as you grope around. And when you touch the trout, you start gently and delicately tickling its stomach. It stays perfectly still! It LIKES it! You continue tickling slowly along until your hand reaches its neck. Then you GRAB!”

Jimmie was demonstrating the system as he spoke, delicately waving his fingers in the air.

“Ugh!” I shuddered. “Suppose you guddled an eel! Suppose it was a mudcat you grabbed by the neck?”

“In a trout stream, like this,” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”

“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the ice cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”

“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.

“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here,” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered them. Flies, that is.”

“In a trout stream, like this.” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”

“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the lee cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”

“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.

“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here.” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered-them. Flies, that is.”

“Did you spot any really good big ones?” pressed Jim.

“I saw a real dandy, maybe a 15-incher,” I admitted grudgingly. “It was up at that pool where the wire fence crosses the stream.”

“Aha!” cried Jim. “The very place! I didn’t see any big ones this morning. I saw plenty of nice ones. But no lunkers. What do you say we go up to that fence pool?”

So we picked up our rods and went out to the pasture fields to save time. Rather than wade up, or push our way through the cedars and alders that border the stream, we went over the fields about one-third of a mile until we came to the wire fence which leads down though the woods and crosses the brook to keep the cattle from straying.

We parked our rods in the cedars and proceeded, very cautiously, through the thick underbrush, until we came to the pool. Up stream from the fence, the little river roared and rattled over a rapids created by boulders and gravel and old logs and roots that has accumulated over the years. Just before the fence crossed, the rapids gushed out into a long eddy. And this side of the fence, the eddy slowed into a beautiful narrow pool, three or four feet deep, and quiet and shadowy: a paradise for resting trout.

“Move like a cat!” whispered Jim, as we crouched in the brushwood.

I nodded. There is something that brings a lump into the throat of a fly fisherman in the sight of such a pool that lay before us. Though there were no leaves yet on the trees, there were enough cedars and a pine or two to shade the pool at all times of the day. The water, smooth and sparkling from its passage over the rapids up above, coiled crystal clear through the sombre pool.

It was secret, mysterious, curiously wild.

“Where did you see the big fellow?” murmured Jim.

“It came from downstream, there,” I pointed, “and he was poised in the middle of the pool. When he saw me, he darted upstream a little way and then turned in toward the bank.”

“Which bank?” hissed Jim.

“This one,” I whispered. “That’s the last I saw of him.”

“Easy now,” warned Jim. “We’ll stand up slowly, and take a look. If he’s visible…”

From our crouched position in the brush, we cautiously seated ourselves. Jim suddenly squatted, dragging me down with him.

“He’s there!” quivered Jim. “He’s two pounds, if he’s an ounce! My gosh! And he saw me…!”

“Aw!” I consoled.

“But he darted this way!” gloated Jim low, starting to remove his windbreaker. “Easy!”

He rolled up his shirt sleeve, right arm.

“Jim,” I warned, “do be careful, fumbling around…”

“Tempting the unknown!” whispered Jim. “The famous Henry Van Dyke2, remember what he said? ‘Nothing so attracts human nature as tempting the Unknown with a fishing line!'”

“Yeah, with a fishing line,” I muttered. But not your HAND!”

Jim had got his sleeve rolled as high on his biceps as it would go.

“Now!” he whuffed.

Crouching low, he began crawling on hands and knees toward the boggy bank. Six feet from its edge, he lay flat on his stomach and began inching himself forward like a commando fighter, barely moving. Three feet from the edge, he lowered his head until he was flattened completely. His right arm began to extend. His hand reached the grassy margin and disappeared into it. Slowly, he wormed forward and I saw his arm start to vanish over and down.

I could see he was now so completely advanced to the edge that his shoulder was over the bend and his whole arm must be immersed.

Suddenly, he turned his face toward me and it was lighted with an unholy glee. His mouth was open and his eyes were starting from their sockets.

“Easy!” I warned.

Jim’s eyes rolled as he felt cautiously at something unseen, deep in that shadowy depth. His body tensed.

I saw him suddenly convulse as he made a vicious grab.

“Watch out!” he yelled, heaving.

Then he really DID yell.

His arm was gripped and held. I rushed forward, seizing an old dead stick.

For, instead of pitching a two pound trout out onto the bank, he was grabbed and held by some implacable and unseen force. He struggled furiously, he writhed and whipped around on the bank, digging his knees in, yelling and thrashing.

His arm, well over the elbow in the water, was gripped and held. I rushed forward, seizing an old dead stick. But in his struggles, Jim had muddied the water of the pool, and the current was spreading the silt in clouds. I could see nothing but Jim’s white arm disappearing in the clouds.

“Jim! Jim!” I yelled. “What is it?”

“I don’t know!” gasped Jim, holding his arm still, while perspiration burst in beads on his face.

“Does it hurt?” I begged.

“Like fury,” choked Jim, biting his lip.

“Maybe a snapping turtle?” I cried, poising my stick. “Maybe a giant snapping turtle? Is it chewing?”

“No, it’s just got me…” collapsed Jim.

“Let the mud settle,” I gritted. “Keep still. I’ll get you out of this.”

I crouched on the bank, watching over the side, my club at the ready.

The mud and silt, wafted by the current, thinned, cleared. I had a swift vision of Jim’s hand. Something dark and terrible had hold of it, straight across.

The silt wafted thinner. I caught sight of what seemed be old rusty chain. It cleared more. Like glimpsing the moon through flying clouds, I saw Jim’s hand gripped by a dirty old muskrat trap.

“Look!” I commanded, heavily.

Jim looked. We reached down and pried the trap loose. His hand was red, but not skinned.

“Some poacher,” I snarled indignantly, “abandoned that old trap there…!”

Jim was nursing and rubbing his hand.

“Fly fishermen,” he growled, “have no business…”

“Guddling,” I concluded.

Editor’s Notes:

  1. The Compleat Angler is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653. It is a celebration, in prose and verse, of the art and spirit of fishing. ↩︎
  2. Henry van Dyke was a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. ↩︎

Pigeon Peril

by

On February 28, 2026

In Greg-Jim Story

Jim and Greg learn something themselves while trying to teach someone a lesson

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, February 28, 1948.

“What’s eating you?” demanded Jimmie Frise.

“Pigeons,” I informed him dully.

“Ah, those beautiful creatures!” cried Jim, enchanted. “Symbols of peace and serenity! From the earliest times, doves and pigeons have been beloved of mankind as the inseparable harbingers of happiness and good fortune.”

I cocked a lack-lustre eye on him.

“Pigeons!” mooned Jimmie. “I used to keep them as a boy. In ancient days, every home that was a home had a dove cote1 or pigeon loft as an integral part of the house structure. The pigeon…”

I interrupted him bluntly.

“How would you like,” I demanded, “to have a bunch of pigeons come every morning, at daybreak, and start yelling outside your window?”

“Yelling!” protested Jim.

“It’s the worst kind of yelling,” I yelled. “It’s subdued yelling. When you’re sound asleep, at the break of day, busy with the loveliest sleep of all – those couple of hours from dawn on – you suddenly become aware, through your dreams, of a horrible and mocking sound. It sounds like demons moaning. It sounds like lost souls, half a mile away, yelling in torment. It sounds like somebody starting to throw up.”

“Oh, what a horrible misrepresentation of the cooing of doves!” cried Jimmie, shocked.

“Jim,” I stated desperately, “for the past 10 days, a gang of rowdy pigeons has adopted my house. Somebody in the neighborhood, I suppose, has got sick of them and driven them off their premises. And they’ve squatted on mine. I won’t have it.”

“You’ll get to love them,” assured Jim.

“To me,” I glared, “those last couple of hours of morning sleep are precious beyond anything else I can possess. By daybreak, I’m really coasting in sleep. I’m deep, dark, down in such a bower of lovely sleep that I… I…”

I took a deep breath and went on:

“Jim, they not only yell and gobble and quack…”

“Not quack!” corrected Jim doggedly.

“They not only emit,” I declared, “the most insidious, penetrating and disturbing sounds with their beaks, but they scratch with their toenails. From the crack of day, they all start waddling restlessly around, back and forth, back and forth, like the feeble-minded creatures they are, just scratching their toenails on the galvanized iron eaves, on the raspy roof shingles. What’s the matter with pigeons? Why don’t they sit down and relax like anybody else?”

“It’s their nature to be active,” submitted Jim.

“Active!” I sneered. “Not only do they keep up this endless mooing and gagging, not only do they keep endlessly scratch-scratch-scratching back and forth on the roof: but every few minutes, they jump up and take a short fly, of about five yards, with a lot of whistling and whooshing of wings, only to settle right down again and start that lunatic toenailing back and forth, back and forth… And a poor guy trying to sleep…!”

“Look: why don’t you get up and shoo them away?” asked Jim kindly.

“I do; and they come right back!” I groaned.

“What are you going to do?” asked Jim – quietly, for he could see I was a desperate man.

“Jim, I’ve done it!” I informed him. “I’ve got a trap made. With slats and chicken wire. I’m going to set it up tonight, on a little shelf sort of place above my window. I can reach it from an attic window. I’m going to bait the trap with dried peas. And when I hear the fool “things in the trap, I pull a string. And bingo! I’ve got the pigeons!”

“And then?” inquired Jim, sternly.

“Well, they’re trespassers,” I asserted. “I could wring their necks. Or I could cart them down to the Market and give them to one of those poultry butchers.”

“Pardon me,” said Jim coldly. “But do you realize that pigeons come under the heading of livestock? How do you know that those pigeons aren’t the prized possession of some pigeon fancier in the neighborhood?”

“Any pigeon fancier,” I retorted, “who can’t feed his birds enough to keep them around home isn’t entitled…”

“Oh, yes he is!” assured Jim. “At this season of the year, the pigeons are beginning to feel the first faint notions of spring. They get restless and explore around. All I want to do is warn you that maybe those pigeons on your house may be racing pigeons, worth hundreds of dollars.”

“Oh, nonsense!” I said.

“I’m telling you!” insisted Jim. “You’ve got to be careful fooling with pigeons. There’s a lot of law involved…”

“Okay!” I announced. “You come with me. You know so much about pigeons. You come and help me trap them. And then, if I keep them a couple of days maybe the owner will come hunting them up. You know how kids will spread the news. If he wants them, he can have them: after hearing an earful from me. Otherwise, if nobody claims them..!”

Jim, shaking his head, got his coat on and we went over to my place. In the yard, I showed him my trap; an arrangement made out of an old box and some slats and bits of chicken wire. It had a simple flap front that fell when pulled by a string.

It was no trick at all to carry it to the attic and put it out on the ornamental shelf above my bedroom window. No trick at all to set the front flap to fall, by a yank of cord from my window below. And just as I said, all the kids in the neighborhood were gathered to watch the installation. Both girls and boys, they clustered from far and wide below while Jim and I worked out the attic window.

“What’re you gonna catch, Mr. Clark?” yelled one of the nosiest little girls of the neighborhood. “Pigeons?”

“What’re you gonna catch, Mr. Clark?” yelled one of the nosiest little girls of the neighborhood.

“No, muskrats,” I replied disagreeably. “Now, run along; beat it!”

Which brought all the more.

“Anybody who owns pigeons around here,” I muttered, “will know about this before tomorrow.”

When the trap was set, I sprinkled a handful of dried peas on its floor.

“Now,” I said, “at the crack of dawn tomorrow…”

“You won’t have to wait until the crack of dawn, interrupted Jimmie.

For like vultures wheeling came a flight of seven pigeons, their wings V-ed, floating and flapping overhead while they came to peer at the new contraption under my roof edge.

“Why, the blame things!” I ejaculated, as we ducked in the attic window. They can even hear the rattle of a few dried peas!”

We hastened down to my bedroom, where, leaning out the window, I reached the dangling cord of the trap and drew it tenderly within.

“They’re very trusting,” said Jim, “when it comes to food. Give them a little time. Let one in the trap. The rest will follow.”

The seven landed on my roof and came and peered, their heads bobbing as if on rubber necks, over the eave trough. True to their character, they anxiously and aimlessly waddled this way and that; bobbing, peering.

“Grrrr!” I growled, my hand trembling on the trap cord. “Listen to their toenails! See what I mean?”

“Those are fine birds,” commented Jim, as we crouched behind the curtains.

Without much delay, the leader of the flock, or its most foolish member – I don’t suppose there is much difference – flipped lightly off the eave trough down into the trap.

One, two, three – the rest followed. And slam fell the front flap. Seven startled, indignant pigeons were flapping frantically inside the box.

Jim and I galloped to the attic, reached down and secured the flap. And the wild yells of kids up and down the block spread the news that Mr. Clark had trapped 100 pigeons.

We lifted the crate in through the window. We carried it down to the back cellar, which is cool yet not cold; the ideal place, in Jim’s opinion, in which to keep the birds prisoner until such time as their owner was located.

We set the trap on an old washtub bench and I turned on the lights. The birds were still flapping and fluttering in bird-brained irresponsibility. The more tenderly we approached them, the more panicked they became.

“They’re so…” sighed Jimmie, “… so gentle, so timid, so childlike. Of all birds.”

As we sat, they quieted; though they kept twisting and turning among themselves. I had never bothered much to look closely at pigeons. They were things seen mostly, you might say, out of the corner of my eye.

“Man,” I said, “look at the colors on that one!”

He was not merely lustrous. He was opalescent. For all the indignity of his situation, he stood with a proud look: his breast high; his eye like a jewel. Over his beak there was a tiny white ruff like a comb.

“Jim,” I claimed, “he’s beautiful.”

“More than that,” amended Jim, “he’s valuable. See that ring on his leg? That’s his registered number, I bet. He’s probably a famous racing pigeon. Maybe worth $200.2“

“Holy smoke!” I muttered, getting around the side to look at some of the others. They were all characters. They were blue and gray and white. They were plump, strong, compact. They ALL had rings on their legs.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “maybe I ought to release them this once, after a warning…”

We heard the buzz of the doorbell overhead in the kitchen; heard footsteps answering; and then a male voice – a loud male voice.

Then footsteps across the kitchen and the cellar door opening.

“You down there, Dad?”

“Yes.”

“A gentleman to see you.”

And down the stairs came large legs followed by a large bully, if ever I saw one.

He was a stranger to me, though I believe I had occasionally seen him around the corner drug store.

“Ah!” he barked, halting on the bottom step. “My pigeons!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I retorted promptly, being a great believer in taking the offensive with large men. “These birds have been trespassing on my…”

“Trespassing, eh?” sneered the bully. “Fine. That’s fine! Well, your dog has been trespassing on my verandah. So I’ve got him outside in a crate, too!”

“My dog?” I inquired lightly. “Oh, no. My dog doesn’t trespass on anybody’s verandah. Besides, she’s not a him. She’s a her. And she’s never out of our garden.”

“I think I know your dog when I see it,” declared the big bully. Advancing truculently and seizing the cage full of birds, he lifted it in his arms.

“You can come and see,” he glowered, marching up the cellar steps.

We followed. We went out the drive. In the open trunk of his car was a crate. And in the crate, very dejected, sat Rusty, Jimmie’s Irish water spaniel.

“Why,” cried Jim hotly, “that’s MY dog!”

“I always thought…” protested the bully, “I always took this for HIS dog!”

We hastily lifted Rusty and crate out of the car trunk and the bully set his pigeon crate in its place.

“When the children,” declared the bully, agitatedly, “told me about my pigeons being trapped, why, I just thought…I just… well, you see, this dog is always trespassing around my place…”

He paused, and took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“No, by Jove, he doesn’t trespass!” he declared loudly. “He’s as welcome as the flowers in May; and has been for years! Many’s the time I’ve come near to making you a proposition for this dog, Mr. Clark. Many’s the fine visit we’ve had together and many’s the fine walk. I live ’round on the other block…”

“Well, now, Mister… Mister?” I replied.

“Hoogenbeck,” he supplied. “Joe Hoogenbeck.”

“Well, now, Mr. Hoogenbeck,” I said warmly, “about the pigeons. In the last few days, they’ve been coming onto my roof at dawn and waking me…”

“Pigeons,” said Mr. Hoogenbeck, with dignity, “can’t wake you if you’ve got an easy conscience. That’s an old saying.”

“I don’t think,” cut in Jim, hoisting Rusty out of the crate, “they’ll wake Mr. Clark after this.”

So Mr. Hoogenbeck and Jimmie shared Rusty for a few minutes while I went and peeked in at the pigeons.

Editor’s Notes:

  1. A dove cote is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in the Middle East and Europe and were kept for their eggs and dung. ↩︎
  2. $200 in 1948 would be $2,725 in 2025. ↩︎

Relativity of Dollars

by

On November 27, 2025

In Miscellaneous, Other Story

Gibbs was out to champion a cause, seeking election to the town’s school board.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan MacPherson, November 27, 1948.

“I’m running,” announced my neighbor Gibbs, “for school trustee.”

“Good man,” I congratulated. “I didn’t realize you were interested in education.”

“Actually,” said Gibbs, “I’m not. But I’m interested in business. I’m interested as a taxpayer. It’s time we put some hard-headed business men in as trustees, to keep control of those visionaries.”

The word visionaries suddenly brought me back to earth.

“Visionaries?” I laughed. “You’d hardly call our neighbor Peters a visionary.”

Peters, who lives across the road, has been a school trustee for fifteen years or more.

“It’s him I’m after,” confessed Gibbs, in a low voice.

I looked earnestly at Gibbs.

“You’re picking yourself,” I warned, “a pretty tough old customer to beat.”

“He’s a crook,” stated Gibbs flatly.

“Aw, not a crook,” I protested. “He’s shrewd. He’s sly. He’s cunning. But you can’t call him a crook.”

“He’s crooked,” insisted Gibbs.

“He may be a poor neighbor,” I admitted. “I grant you, he’s a crusty old crab…”

“He’s crooked,” asserted Gibbs. “Suppose you are in the stationery business, and you’re a school trustee. Suppose you quietly deflect all the plumbing contracts for the schools to one plumbing contractor. Wouldn’t you expect to get all that plumbing contractor’s stationery business?”

“Peters isn’t in the stationery business,” I reminded.

“No, but you see my point?” pursued Gibbs. “You call him shrewd. I say he’s a trustee for the business he gets out of it.”

“I imagine he’s a pretty good watchdog,” I submitted, “over any visionaries on the school board.”

“Imagine,” cried Gibbs, “the education of this great city in the hands of characters like Peters!”

“I’ve always voted for him…” I recollected.

“He’s small, he’s mean,” said Gibbs, “he’s petty. He’s hardly spoken to anybody in this neighborhood for twenty years. I’m told by collectors for charity, the community chest, Red Cross and so forth, that they never in their lives got a ten cent piece from Peters…”

“I admit he’s tight-fisted,” I regretted, “but in certain cases, that’s a virtue.”

“I’m running against him,” stated Gibbs.

“Have you announced it?”

“Yes,” said Gibbs. “At a meeting of the home and school club last night, over at the school, I announced I was running.”

“You’ll never beat him,” I confided. “You’ve only got about five weeks to campaign. You haven’t got any organization. He’s got fifteen years’ experience in electioneering.”

“With the help of a few characters like you,” smiled Gibbs, “I might give him the surprise of his life.”

“Not me,” I said hastily. “I wouldn’t touch politics – even school politics – with a ten-foot pole.”

“Our argument will be,” explained Gibbs, “that it is high time fresh blood was infused into the school board. Goodness knows what skulduggery is going on there, with the public funds. The same old gang in office year after year…”

“A whispering campaign, eh?” I reflected.

“That’s it!” cried Gibbs, eagerly. “Spread suspicion. Spread doubt. That’s the most powerful political weapon of all. Dynasties have fallen, as the result of whispering campaigns. Powerful ministries have tumbled in the dust, all from a few dirty rumors…”

“I’ll have nothing to do with it,” I informed Gibbs, firmly.

“Oh,” chuckled Gibbs, “I’m not going to spread unfounded rumors. Not me. I’m going to play a TRICK on Mr. Peters. I’m going to frame him.”

“How?” I queried.

“Childishly simple,” gloated Gibbs. “And I need your help. If I can prove to you that Peters is a cheap little crook, will you help me campaign against him?”

“If you could,” I doubted.

“Here’s all there is to it,” revealed Gibbs. “It’s a trick as old as the Caesars. You know how old Peters peaks behind the curtains in his front living room windows?”

“I’ve noticed him there,” I admitted, “smoking his pipe. It’s the way he relaxes. He sits there, thinking.”

“Relaxes my eye!” scoffed Gibbs. “He sits there to catch kids running across his lawn. He sits there hiding behind his curtains to peek and pry at his neighbors kids.”

“Aw,” I reasoned.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” snickered Gibbs, excitedly. “I’m going to walk past Peters’ house tomorrow afternoon. It’s Sunday. And as I pass, I’ll drop my wallet accidentally, when I pull out my handkerchief…”

“Oho,” I admitted.

“First,” explained Gibbs, “I’ll make sure nobody else is coming along the street, and I’ll make sure the old skinflint is sitting at his parlor window, peeking. Now this is where you come in. You’ve got to be the witness that he picks the wallet up.”

“He’ll run to his front door,” I asserted, “and he’ll go after you…”

“I’ll bet you,” declared Gibbs, “five bucks that he comes to his door and watches me turn the corner, and then pops out and snitches my wallet.”

“Look here,” I took up the bet, “I’ll do more. If Peters does that, I’m your man! I’ll stump the district making speeches for you…!”

“Good egg!” exulted Gibbs, wringing my hand.

Right after Sunday noon dinner, Gibbs called at my side door and I let him in.

Gleefully, he produced the wallet.

“Look!” he hissed. “Six bucks1, a five and a one. Eight street car tickets, see? Then, look at these.”

Gibbs held up two snapshots of girls in skimpy bathing suits, very skimpy…

“I borrowed these,” gaggled Gibbs gleefully, “from a friend of mine who collects leg art. Isn’t that the finishing touch…?”

“Aren’t you putting in your driver’s license and stuff…?” I asked.

“Oh, no, that would almost compel him to return the wallet,” explained Gibbs. “Nothing in it but six bucks, eight street car tickets, some snappy snap shots and my name and address in two places, see? Here’s the usual wallet identification card; and here’s an empty envelope with my name and address on it, too.”

“Now, what?” I requested.

“I’ll go and sit in my front window,” said Gibbs, “and I see the old stinker take up his usual location behind his living room curtains, I’ll watch until I see nobody else on the street. Then I’ll telephone you, and proceed with the operation.”

“I’ll watch from my front window,” I agreed.

Gibbs went back into his house.

It was that after-dinner Sunday hour when the streets are quiet. The grown-ups are home from church; the youngsters aren’t yet starting for Sunday school.

The phone rang.

“He’s all set,” cried Gibbs’s voice.

“Okay,” I replied, and went to my front window. Gibbs came out of his front walk and stood gazing up and down the street for a moment, like a gentleman contemplating a nice Sunday afternoon stroll.

Then he crossed the street and started for the corner. As he passed Peters’ house, he reached back and drew his handkerchief from his hip pocket, from under his topcoat.

His wallet flipped out and dropped onto the pavement.

Gibbs, blowing his nose, proceeded on.

My eyes leaped to Peters’ parlor window, where I grieved to behold the shadow of Mr. Peters standing. He had sprung to his feet and was alert back of the curtains.

As soon as Gibbs disappeared around the corner, I saw Peters’ shadow disappear. An instant later, he opened his front door, took a quick look up and down the street and around at the houses about. Then in his slippers, he tippy-toed out, picked up Gibbs’s wallet and hastened back into his house.

Then in his slippers, he tip-toed outside and picked up Gibbs’ wallet

“Hm, hm, hm!” I groaned, dropping into a chair.

From the drug store, three blocks away, Gibbs telephoned a few minutes later.

“Well?” he enquired breathlessly.

“I owe you five bucks,” I muttered, and then gave him a play-by-play description of the whole affair.

In five minutes, Gibbs appeared.

He walked slowly down the street, looking this way and that on the ground, as though he had lost something. He took a particularly long time right in front of Peters’ house. And to make the tragedy complete. I could see the shadow of old Peters, as he sat, calmly smoking his pipe, behind the curtains of his parlor window.

Gibbs went into his house: and immediately popped out his side door into mine.

“We got him!” shouted Gibbs, tremendously elated. “We’ve got the so and so!”

“What do we do?” I begged.

“We wait,” propounded Gibbs, “forty-eight hours, at least, until tomorrow night. Then, with you for witness, and with half a dozen reputable citizens of this neighborhood I’ll get together, we will call upon Mr. Peters.”

“It’ll ruin him,” I muttered.

“We’ll inform him,” gloated Gibbs, “that we are going to spread the story all over town. I think he’ll resign. I think he’ll withdraw from the election. If he doesn’t…!”

“Isn’t that intimidation?” I protested. “Isn’t that’ threatening…?”

“It’s,” rejoiced Gibbs, “politics!”

We spent the evening drawing up campaign plans for Gibbs. Lists of names of leading business men in our ward who might join committees. Lists of meetings to be called, in the various schools in the ward…

Monday, we had trouble keeping our mind on our jobs. Gibbs telephoned me three times with new ideas for his campaign. We drove home together, after work.

As we pulled up in front of Gibbs’s, Mrs. Peters came to her front door and called across.

“Oh, Mr. Gibbs?” she yodelled. “My husband asked me to give you this wallet. He picked it up yesterday on the street…”

“Damn!” gritted Gibbs.

He walked slowly across and took the wallet from Mrs. Peters, thanked her, and she immediately shut the door.

Gibbs started back across the street, a look of chagrin on him, and opened the wallet.

He halted.

He lifted his eyes unbelieving from the wallet and stared wide-eyed at me.

Then he hurried.

“Come on in,” he commanded in a low voice.

I followed him into his house.

“Look at this!” he cried, when we got inside.

He held up four fifty-dollar bills2!

He also held up the five and the one dollar bill he had baited the wallet with. And the snazzy snapshots.

“What the…!” I croaked.

Gibbs fingered the four fifty-dollar bills feverishly.

“The old fool,” he cried. “I bet he’s put this wallet in his pocket. And then, absent-mindedly mistaking it for his own, stuffed this money into it…”

“Run right back with it!” I commanded.

“Probably ill-gotten gains,” ruminated Gibbs, lovingly rubbing the bills together. “He’ll probably never know what happened to them…!”

“Gibbs!” I exclaimed.

“You take a hundred,” said Gibbs, “I take a hundred. That’s fair…”

 “Gibbs!” I groaned, “the old devil was probably sitting at his window, watching, when his wife handed you that wallet…”

“Oh, my gosh!” yelled Gibbs, turning for the door.

We went together. Old Mr. Peters himself answered the bell.

“Thanks a million,” cried Gibbs, heartily, “for rescuing my wallet. But look here, Mr. Peters, there’s something wrong. I only had six dollars, and I find two hundred.”

“Okay, okay,” soothed Mr. Peters, reaching deftly and taking the four fifties in his hand and secreting them in his vest all in one smooth motion. “To tell the truth, Gibbs, I heard you were running against me for school trustee? Is that so?”

“I was thinking of it,” admitted Gibbs. “But…”

“I just wanted to assure myself,” said Peters, blandly, that you were an honest man. I stuck those four fifties in your wallet, just to… sort of…”

“Why, MR. PETERS!” gasped Gibbs, scandalized.

“Oh, well, in public life,” asserted Peters, morally, “you’ve got to be alert. You have to watch the kind of men who try to get elected. Now, for one thing, anybody can be honest about six bucks. But where $200 is concerned, that calls into play an entirely different brand of honesty. See?”

We thanked him again, heartily.

When we re-entered Gibbs’s vestibule, he turned to me.

“The old crook!” he quivered. “I wouldn’t demean myself, running against him!”

Editor’s Notes:

  1. $6 in 1948 would be $82 in 2025. ↩︎
  2. $200 in 1948 would be $2,725 in 2025. ↩︎

Juniper Junction – 1948/07/14

by

On July 15, 2025

In Comic, Juniper Junction

July 14, 1948

Juniper Junction – 1948/06/02

by

On June 3, 2025

In Comic, Juniper Junction

June 2, 1948

The Making of History

by

On May 31, 2025

In Greg-Jim Story

“French coins!” I whispered excitedly. “Spanish coins! Gold, I think!”

Jim and Greg on the trail of missing links find that, as archeologists, they make bad gardeners.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 29, 1948.

“Why all the industry?” inquired Jimmie Frise, heartily.

“Past!” I hissed, laying aside my spade and signing to him to be quiet.

I led him over to the garden bench, where a small clutter of dirt-caked, corroded little treasures lay spread out.

Glancing cautiously around to see if any neighbors in adjoining gardens were within earshot, I directed Jim’s attention to my hoard.

“French coins!” I whispered excitedly. “Spanish coins! Gold, I think!”

“Holy smoke,” said Jim, picking them up one by one and peering at them in the evening light.

“I was just shifting some old tulip bulbs,” I informed him excitedly, “down there at the foot of the garden, when I heard a clink. And glancing down, I saw this little coin.”

Selecting the correct one from the collection of half a dozen coins of various shapes and sizes, I showed it to him.

“See?” I gloated. “I’ve scraped off enough old dirt and corrosion to see the word – look! – ‘France.’ And on the other side, you can make out the faint outline of one of the kings of France, maybe Louis XIV.”

Jim held the coin in the last beams of sunset.

“By jingo,” he admitted. “Sure enough. But it looks and feels like copper.”

“Maybe so,” I assured. “But it isn’t the gold I’m interested in. And it isn’t even the value of these coins as collectors’ items I’m interested in. Jim, do you realize where you probably are standing?”

“On a buried treasure?” suggested Jim eagerly.

“On the site,” I corrected impressively, “of some early French encampment! On historic ground. Right here in my garden, my boy, Champlain may have camped. Maybe right here, some party of explorers of the 16th century may have had their winter quarters. Possibly the Jesuit Fathers may have staged a last stand right on this spot!”

Jim glanced around him with startled interest.

“The history of this great Dominion,” I declared, remembering to lower my voice again, “is for the most part lost in obscurity in its earliest phases. All over the country, parties of archaeologists and historians are digging and delving, looking for the sites of Indian villages and French explorers’ stockades.”

Jim leaned down to the garden bench and stared reverently and curiously at my lucky find. There were a variety of coins. Some looked like silver, but were green and caked from their long burial in the damp earth. Others were copper or possibly gold and, with the exception of the one I had managed to scrub and wipe clean, all were undecipherable little medallions of metal.

“Let’s go inside,” suggested Jim, “in the kitchen and scrub them to see…”

“Go and get that rake,” I commanded, pointing, “and lend me a hand while there’s still some daylight. I’ll dig and you break up the clods with the rake. We’ll sift every pound of it.”

“It’ll keep,” pleaded Jimmie.

“I wouldn’t sleep a wink,” I protested, “with the thought of what we might find here, Jim! Maybe some ancient kettles, axes, weapons. Maybe we might come upon some bones. Possibly some little object or ornament that might identify this as the site of one of LaSalle’s of Champlain’s encampments. Good heavens, man, do you realize what that would mean?”

“I’ll get the rake,” cried Jim, striding off.

“Ssssh!” I warned.

“What’s the matter?” murmured Jim, halting.

“I don’t want,” I whispered vehemently, “all the neighbors in on this! If we find anything, I’ll keep it quiet until we can get some official body to take over the discovery and make a proper scientific excavation. And we’ll get the credit.”

Jim got the rake and joined me, coat off.

“I suppose,” he said quietly, “there would be considerable credit in a find like this.”

“Credit, man!” I exploded, seizing the spade, “But it’s fame! We’ll go down in history! It will be the subject of books and historical sections in great museums the Clark-Frise Discoveries! The Clark-Frise Excavations! Definite proof of the route Champlain took in his exploration of the Great Lakes.”

“He was the first white man…?” recollected Jim.

“Well, maybe not,” I grunted, digging. “Who knows what we’ll find? Maybe an ancient copper kettle scratched with a last message by one of the Jesuit martyrs as he was being carried off by an Iroquois war party. Come on! Sift that!”

Jim attacked the chunk of dirt I threw up, with the rake. Having broken it into dust, he squatted and sifted it with his fingers.

“Maybe the best part of the encampment,” I explained in a low tone, “is on one of the neighbor’s gardens. I don’t want everybody in on this. We’ll find enough to justify a public announcement. And then the government will declare all excavations off until the professional historical and archaeological authorities can start work.”

“That looks after the Clark-Frise angle,” chuckled Jimmie.

“Oh, don’t laugh!” I said. “Men have spent their lives in a thousand ways trying to go down in history. But nobody remembers them inside of 10 years. But if we make a historical find like this, and you’re in history for all time.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Jim, suddenly catching up something out of the crumbling dirt and resifting intently. “Hey, look!”

I bounded over beside him. In the gloaming, he had dug up a curious ring. A ring about an inch in diameter. It was thick with corrosion and rust. It was ready to crumble with antiquity. I seized it delicately from Jim’s fingers.

“The Clark-Frise Excavations, 1948!” I announced quivering. “Jim, we’re made men!”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said, holding it up against the darkening sky to see it better, “maybe the ring off the cross of a martyr. Maybe part of a sextant or a compass or some instrument belonging to an intrepid explorer in the dawn of this country’s history.”

I hurried over and laid it with the other treasures on the lawn bench.

“Dig carefully, my friend,” I cautioned. “Sift cunningly! We are in communion this hour with the ancient past and future. We are fortunate links in the story of mankind!”

“You’re trampling all over the verbenas!” warned Jim.

“They’re doomed,” I replied, trampling. “Come on.”

“Slow down till we get a lantern,” pleaded Jim.

“And have the whole neighborhood nosing around? I scoffed.

“We’ll say we’re digging fishworms,” suggested Jim.

“Say…! I reflected.

“Look: a week ago, you were bragging about the verbenas,” reasoned Jim. “If we had a light, we could work around them.”

“Not a chance, Jim,” I countered. “I struck that first coin at about a depth of a foot, when I was gouging out those old tulip bulbs. For years, we’ve been scuffling over the top six inches, planting the garden, never dreaming that a few inches deeper, lay these historical treasures. We’ll have to dig the whole place up. In fact, even the lawn will have to go.”

“Have you got a lantern?” demanded Jim.

“My gasoline camp lantern,” I revealed.

So we suspended operations for a few minutes while I found the lantern and set it going. In its light, at the foot of the garden, we were able to see what we were doing and what I had already done.

Man, you’ve been digging!” marvelled Jimmie, as the lantern beams revealed the wreckage.

The verbena bed was entirely uprooted. Five lovely delphiniums – including a couple that were expected to be practically jet black when they bloomed: champion stock – had been torn loose. And I had stepped on a couple of them.

“A week from now,” I said easily, “this will be nothing. When the nature of the Clark-Frise Excavations is fully realized, this whole district will be torn apart. And all the householders will be proud to be in it. Famous scientists and historians from all over, from Harvard, maybe from Oxford and the Sorbonne in Paris, will be here…”

“Before we start,” begged Jim, “just let’s shift what is left of these verbenas over to the side border. And those delphiniums. We can save them.”

“This is no time,” I stated firmly, “for sentimentality, Jim.”

I bared my arms, seized the spade and drove it deep. Jim squatted down: and to every carefully delved spadeful I laid reverently before him, he gave his reverent attention, breaking it with the rake and crumbling it between his fingers, minutely.

We dug the whole verbena bed. We uprooted and cast aside the entire delphinium bed that borders, at the back, the verbenas. Just as we neared the last of the 16 delphiniums, Jim, with another gloating cry, held up still another coin. This time, a large one, as big as an English penny. It too was corroded and caked. I added it to the rest on the garden bench. And it inspired us to fresh ardor.

From the verbena bed, we advanced upon the small terraced rose bed where about 14 dwarf rose bushes of rare bloom had just begun to open their buds.

“Now, look,” pleaded Jimmie resolutely. “We don’t have to be crazy! Let’s take a little time, and transplant these rose bushes. They’re lovely. They’re just coming into flower. You treasure them…”

“Who knows,” I cried, “what treasures are entangled in their roots!”

“What I say, is,” insisted Jim, “let’s leave the roses until morning. I’ll come over – yes, at six o’clock! – and we’ll start early on the roses, transplanting them. Meantime, we’ve got enough to start with. Let’s take what we’ve found in to the kitchen and clean them and see what we’ve got. Let’s make the preliminary investigation…”

I looked long and hungrily at the rose bed in the exciting glare of the gasoline lantern. I heard a muffled cough over the fence, started, and discovered my neighbor’s pallid face peering at us.

“Lost something?” he inquired.

“Aw, no, just digging fish worms,” I replied easily, giving Jim a warning nudge.

“Lost something?” he inquired. “Aw, no, just digging fish worms,” I replied easily.

I realized the wisdom now of quitting for the night. Doubtless my neighbor’s suspicions were already roused. We picked up the coins discreetly off the garden seat, and took them tremulously indoors.

On the kitchen drain board we laid them. With hot water, we swished them free of caked earth, mud and loose verdigris. They began to shine. I took the potato brush and some scouring powder1 and scoured the copper coin already partly cleaned: the one with “France” on it.

With bated breath, we dried it and held it clear under the kitchen light.

“Napoleon III,” it said. “Empereur. France. 1862.”

On the other side it said:

“Un sou,” with a large “I”.

“Not,” coughed Jim, delicately, “Champlain?”

I took the next one, the large coin that looked like an English penny. It was an English penny; 1895.

Some of the smaller ones were English sixpences, American dimes, French francs, Spanish 10-centavos, German pfennigs. One read: “Good for one ride: Ferris Wheel: Chicago World’s Fair.”2

And they each and all had small holes bored in them, near the rim.

While I was forlornly cleaning and de-rusting the ring we had found, the kids came clattering in from the movies.

“Why,” said the oldest of them, “that’s that key ring, Dad, the one you used to have in that drawer in your desk, with all the old coins on it.”

“How,” I growled thickly, “how would that key ring of coins get down at the foot of the garden, buried?”

I clearly remembered the old key ring now. Pride of my own boyhood many a year ago. Gift of an old auntie.

“Why,” blushed the lad, “I guess we kids, when we were small, might have taken it out to play with.”

We walked out of the kitchen and left them to their sandwich-making.

We sat down heavily in the living room and turned off the radio.

“Well, it was nice,” sighed Jim, wistfully, “To have belonged, for a little while, to the ages.”

“I was wondering,” I said, modestly, “Jim, if you would care to come over, after all, in the morning, around six, say, before the sun is up, and help me see how much of those verbenas and stuff we might save?”

Editor’s Note:

  1. If anyone finds old coins, do NOT attempt to clean them with any cleaning solution as they could be damaged! ↩︎
  2. The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 had the original Ferris Wheel. So the coins would have been dated from 1862-1895. So still up to 86 years old in 1948, but not very old from when Greg was a boy (he was born in 1892). ↩︎

The Stag Party

by

On January 4, 2025

In Greg-Jim Story

“But when they send you a BARREL… they expect you to do something about it in a style befitting the occasion.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, January 3, 1948.

Jim and Greg disagree over the most fitting method to dispose of a 50-pound gift of Maritime lobsters

“Hurray!” yelled Jimmie Frise, waving a letter aloft.

“From the income tax department?” I inquired sweetly.

“Lobsters!” exulted Jim excitedly. “Good old Joe Havelock down in New Brunswick has shipped me a 50-pound box of lobsters. They’ll be here Saturday.”

“Fifty pounds?” I suggested. “That’s a lot of lobster. They won’t keep. You’ll have to divide them up among your friends.”

“To heck with that!” cried Jim. “I’ll give a stag party.”

“Whenever you get a barrel of oysters or a box of sea food from your Maritime friends,” I protested, “the tradition up here is to scatter them around among your friends.”

“Tradition be hanged!” enthused Jim. “I’ll stage a stag party. Fifty pounds of lobster! Man, we’ll put on a party that the gang won’t soon forget.”

“Lobsters,” I pointed out doggedly, “are a delicacy, Jim. You don’t want to stuff anybody with lobster. The best thing to do would be to keep what you can use in your own family, then distribute the rest around among your immediate friends.”

“I’ll get the womenfolk,” interrupted Jim, “to crack up about 10 pounds of them and make a nice lobster salad, with mayonnaise, on lettuce, in a great big salad bowl. Then the rest…”

“Nobody,” I pursued firmly, “wants to be surfeited with lobster, Jim. You invite five or 10 of the gang here…”

“Five or 10?” scoffed Jim. “I’m going to invite 20. Maybe 30. The whole gang. Everybody we know. We’ll have Skipper and Bumpy and young Art, and Bill Sparra and Billie Milne…”

“Some of them may have ulcers,” I pointed out. “Maybe they can’t EAT lobster. Now, my idea, if you want my advice, would be to keep a few pounds for yourself and make a nice little holiday season gift to…”

“I’ll have that big salad, with mayonnaise,” ignored Jimmie, “and then, whole lobsters on platters, trays, cake plates. Every dish and platter in the house, I’ll have spread out all over the dining room table and on the buffet and on side tables. Lying on big lettuce leaves, whole lobsters by the dozen, with little pots of mayonnaise scattered handy, to dip the delicate morsels in, as they crack them.”

“Crack them?” I pointed out. “How many tools are you going to have lying about? Eh? Have you thought of that? How are your 20 or 30 guests going to crack their lobsters? Have you got 20 or 30 sets of nut crackers, pliers, wrenches, hammers?”

“They’ll be cracked in advance,” said Jim triumphantly. “You and I will spend the afternoon, preparing the whole lobsters the way they are done in restaurants. We’ll crack the shells just enough so as not to spoil the looks of the whole lobsters, but enough to let the boys get at them. Man, there is no way to eat a lobster except right in your hands, breaking it open and extracting the luscious meat.”

“There is no way to eat a lobster except right in your hands…”

“You want my help,” I accused, “But you don’t want my advice. I assure you, Jim, that the traditional way of disposing of one of these wholesale gifts from our friends and relatives in the Maritimes, a barrel of oysters, a crate of lobsters, is to distribute them around among our intimate friends. Just a few of our closest, most intimate friends…”

“All right,” announced Jim. “I’m starting a new tradition, right now. From now on, when I get a load of oysters or lobsters, I stage a party and serve the whole business at one swoop. It’s the only proper, decent thing to do. It should be a celebration. If your friends down east wanted you to have a taste of oysters, they’d send you a dozen. If they wanted you to have a little lobster for supper, they’d send you a couple in a candy box. But when they send you a BARREL or a 50-pound crate of lobsters, they expect you to do something about it in a style befitting the occasion. If those Maritimers knew what we did with those barrels and crates, they’d never send them. Puh! We either hide the barrel away until half the contents spoil, or else we hastily call up our friends to come over and get a dozen oysters or a lobster. Not me! I’m staging a celebration, in honor of the great Canadian Lobster!”

“Well…” I sighed helplessly: I had done my best to get a half, a quarter or even an eighth of that box of lobsters.

Without more ado, Jim sat down and began writing out a list of the gang he was going to invite: It did not take him long to write 10 names. The next five, bringing it to 15, took a little more time and thought. To get it to 20, he had to rumple his hair and stare out the window. Not many men have 20 friends. Friends, that is, close enough to come in on a Saturday afternoon, at 4:30 and crack lobsters.

But he got it. And then started phoning.

“Saturday!” he said to them all. “Come around 4:30. Just a stag party. I got a whole crate of lobsters from NB. Yes. Fifty pounds. Okay! Around 4:30.”

So, one by one, I saw those lobsters vanishing into thin air.

Saturday morning, as soon as we got to the office, Jim telephoned the express company and inquired if there was a box of lobsters for him from the Maritimes.

After a lot of delays and being shifted from one department to another, Jim finally got hold of a man who said that the express from the East hadn’t been sorted yet. He would look up the manifests and call back. Jim gave him our number.

By 11 o’clock, Jim was in a tizzy. He telephoned the express company again. And after another long delay and after being shifted again from department to department, he at last got hold of the same guy, who said he hadn’t had a chance to examine the manifests yet. But he’d call back. Jim had the good sense to get the man’s name and branch telephone line.

“You’ll call me back?” pleaded Jim. “It’s very important.”

“You should have waited,” I explained, after he hung up, “to invite your stag party AFTER you got your lobsters.

“Joe Havelock SAID they’d be here Saturday,” declared Jim hotly.

“Aw, you know the express,” I comforted.

When there was no telephone call from the express by 12:15, Jim telephoned again, direct to the man. And a stranger informed us that the man had gone for the day. He quit at noon. So, after a lot of recapitulation, repetition and backtracking, the new man said he’d look up the manifests and see if there was a package addressed to Frise. And call us back.

“If it’s come,” he explained to Jim, “it will be out in the delivery now.”

“That,” Jim informed him, “is exactly what I have been trying to avoid. Goodness knows when it’ll be delivered.”

We took turns going out to lunch, so one of us would be in when the express man telephoned. But there was no call. And at 2 o’clock, Jim telephoned again, and here was NO answer.

So we got in the car and drove down to the express company warehouse. It was 2:45 when we found the correct department of the warehouse. It was 3:10 when we found the right official to deal with.

He led us on a tour of exploration.

“What’s that over there?” demanded Jimmie, pointing to a pile of gloomy boxes.

“Oh, that’s fish,” explained the express man.

“Might lobsters not be among the fish?” inquired Jim wanly.

We looked. We shifted 20 boxes of fish. And there, right as a dollar, was our box, addressed in bold large characters to Mr. James Frise.

“Aw, it just got mixed up with the fish,” explained the express man.

It was 3:45 when we hoisted the box of lobsters into the back of Jim’s car. It was 4:20, due to the icy streets, when we pulled up at Jim’s house. And already three cars were in the driveway.

“Gosh!” chuckled Jim. “The boys must be hungry!”

They were enthusiastic, anyway. For half a dozen of them, Bumpy, Skipper and Sparra among them, came tumbling out of the house to help us carry the big box into the back kitchen.

“Leave it here,” commanded Jim. “We’ll open it here in the back kitchen, so as not to get ice and water all over the linoleum.”

“They’re well packed,” remarked Skipper. “The box, isn’t leaking at all.”

No wonder it wasn’t leaking! Jim got the hammer and screwdriver, and started prying the lid off.

“If it hadn’t been for this express mix-up,” grunted Jim, “Greg and I by now would have had these all cracked and on the platters.”

“Don’t fret,” consoled Old Skipper. “It will be all the more fun. Every man cracking his own…”

With a squeak, the top board came off.

But instead of cracked ice, we beheld to our astonishment a soggy mass of dark purplish brown.

“Seaweed!” remarked Old Skipper promptly.

Jim pried off another board.

We stared down at the sodden mass.

And it MOVED!

“Live!” shouted Old Skipper. “Live lobsters!”

I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. And at that moment, the front door bell rang.

“Here they come,” muttered Jimmie dully. We lifted the top layer of seaweed off.

There, slowly waving a huge, vicious olive green claw with yellow ruchings, emerged a great big five-pound lobster.

Skipper gingerly reached in and picked him free of his encumbering weeds. He was a beauty. His long whiskers moved mechanically. His bulging claws, tied together with a chip between them, waggled and twitched. His eyes – on stems – clicked to right and left.

Skipper gingerly reached in and picked him free of his encumbering weeds.

As the gang poured in from the front of the house, we unearthed a dozen large and several small lobsters; not pretty red, packed in ice; but dark sea green, olive green, packed in dank seaweed.

“I thought,” announced Jim to the gathering, “I thought they’d be boiled lobsters. It never occurred to me…”

“We’ll boil ’em!” encouraged Old Skipper heartily.

“What in?” demanded Jim hollowly. “What can we boil all those great big things in?”

“Get the cook book,” I suggested.

Jim read from the cook book: “Take a large cauldron and fill with sea water…”

“Sea water!” he halted. “See?”

“Aw, don’t boil them,” put in Bill Sparra, anxiously. “It’s horrible! Every time you drop a lobster into the water, it screams.”

“No!” denied Old Skipper.

“Yes!” insisted Bill Sparra. “A little high scream. You can hear it all over the house.”

“Utter nonsense,” protested Bumpy, hotly. I’ve seen dozens of lobsters boiled…

“Broil them!” I suggested brightly. “Broiled live lobster? It’s a feature on the best sea food menus.”

By now the back kitchen, the kitchen and the hallway, were filled with the stag party guests.

“What on earth…” muttered Jim, helplessly, “… do I do? What’s in the house to eat?”

Well, there were ham and eggs in the house. I skipped over to the corner and bought another three dozen eggs and two pounds of ham.

And Jim and I functioned as chefs and did the cooking.

We had the stag party on ham and eggs; and it was pronounced a great success by all.

The lobsters we took down Monday to our old friend and restaurateur, Arnold Taylor, who got his fish chef to boil the lobsters for us.

And Jim divied them up Monday evening among a few of his closer, more intimate friends.

Editor’s Note: A stag party might now more commonly refer to a party for the men in a wedding party, but it can also mean any party where only men are invited.

Buy Low, Sell High!

by

On April 20, 2024

In Greg-Jim Story

He looked Old Maud over, with one lightning glance, the way David Harum1 used to look over a horse.

Jim, with the help of Greg and a few friends, works out a plan to beat the used car dealers at their own game. But…

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 24, 1948.

“I’ve decided,” announced Jimmie Frise, “to sell my car.”

“Jim, you’re crazy!” I exclaimed.

“No: I’ve just decided I’m smart,” he declared. “I’m going to cut the price of my new car by $6002.”

“But you told me last night,” I protested, “that the car dealer said he couldn’t get you a new car until August or September.”

“Precisely,” agreed Jim. “The fact that summer is almost here, plus the extreme shortage of new cars, is what accounts for the fact that I can get $600 more for my old car than it’s worth.”

“You mean,” I cried, “that to make $600 you are going to do without a car all summer?”

“With a little co-operation from you,” admitted Jim, “that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Co-operation?” I queried.

“Yes,” said Jim. “You see, you are away at your summer cottage for two weeks in July, during which time your car stands idle in a tumble-down old rented garage up at the Landing. I figure you wouldn’t mind letting me have the use of your car during those two weeks…”

“Jim,” I interrupted. “There’s May, June, July and August…”

“Correct,” said Jim, “I’ve telephoned three or four others among my friends, checking their holiday schedules. There’s Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox. They’re all taking their holidays at different times through the summer. And it so happens they are going to summer hotels up the lakes, where they abandon their cars, at the end of the highway, having to pay rent for garages…”

“Jim, look here,” I cut in sternly. “Use your common sense. How are you going to run all over the country, borrowing people’s cars?”

“It will be fun,” assured Jim. “It will be sort of like a holiday in itself. For example, when you go up to your cottage, I’ll go with you and drive your car back here and use it for the two weeks, bringing it up to the Landing the Sunday you are coming down. See?”

“But…” I began.

“You’d far rather,” cried Jim, “leave the car in my care than leave it in one of those baking summer resort garages, where anybody can break in!”

“I suppose that’s true,” I grudged.

“At any rate,” he announced, “if I sell my car now, at top prices, I get the new car for hundreds of dollars less, don’t you see? I bet I wouldn’t get $300 for it next September when my new car is ready. Yet I saw the same year and model as my car up at one of those used car lots for $900.”

“Surely not!” I scoffed. “Nine hundred dollars?”

“It’s a fact,” cried Jim. “I’ll drive you up and show you.”

“Still, to be without a car all summer,” I brooded, “is a pretty serious matter, Jim. In a sense, it’s really for summer – for the five months from May until October – that we own cars, most of us.”

“Exactly what has created the present market for used cars,” pointed out Jim. “The way to make easy money in this world is to take advantage of the weaknesses and needs of your fellow man. You’ll never get ahead in this world if you just work for wages or salary all your life. My new car next fall is going to cost $1,700. By taking advantage of the present market, as well as the good nature of half a dozen of my friends, I will buy that car for only $1,100. That’s what you call business.”

“You run certain risks,” I reminded him. “Suppose you crack up one of your friends’ cars?”

“I run that risk driving my own old jalopy,” countered Jim. “In fact, I will be far more careful driving your car and Bill Sparra’s and Harry Wilcox’s than I would my own. Every way you look at it, it’s a wise and shrewd move on my part.”

“Jim,” reflected, “there is a moral aspect to this business. If you did without a car all summer, that would be the price you pay for that $600 you are going to make. In other words, to earn $600, you sacrifice your car for the summer.”

“Are you hinting,” inquired Jim, “that you don’t want to lend me your car, when it’s lying idle anyway?”

“No, no!” I hastened. “I just feel there’s something immoral about this used car racket, selling old jalopies at outrageous prices, just by taking advantage of the widespread desire to drive cars in summer. If you were going to do without a car for the summer suppresses that natural desire, why, the $600 you would make would look quite so… so…”

“What I say,” declared Jim, “is, make use of every advantage in this world. Among the advantages we possess are a number of fine friends who would be glad to lend me their cars for a couple of weeks, partly for the sake of friendship, partly to see me make $600; and partly to save them the rent on those tumble-down summer resort garages where goodness knows what might happen to your car…”

“Okay, okay,” I surrendered. “And it will be $600 that won’t show in your income tax, Jim. I suppose the smartest guys in this world are the traders who make deals like this all the time. We salary and wage earners are the suckers.”

“I’ve been a sucker long enough,” said Jim, rising and pulling down his vest and lighting a cigarette with a very big-executive flourish. “It will give me a new self-respect, next fall, to be driving around in a car that cost me 600 bucks less than those of all the suckers I pass in traffic. Do you want to come up with me while I shop around and make the sale? Do you know any of these used car lot pirates?”

“The fact is,” I replied, “not only do I not know any of them, I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve looked at hundreds of used car lots in passing, but now that I come to think of it, I’ve never in my life seen anybody around them. Just a great big corner lot packed with motor cars sitting there. And no human inhabitant in sight.”

“Oh, they’ll be there, all right,” assured Jim. “They hide at the back, somewhere.”

So we went out to Jim’s garage and took a last look at Old Maud, Jim’s faithful schooner for more than 10 years. Many’s the thousands of miles it has carried us on fishing trips and hunting trips. Many’s the $10, $20 and $50 it has cost to have its engine overhauled, its brakes relined, its clutch repaired. Many’s the thousands of dollars’ worth of gas its rusty old engine has inhaled in our service.

“I’ll just get a pail of water and a rag,” said Jim, “and give her a wipe.”

While Jim was sponging off the exterior of Old Maud, he had me, with a whisk-broom, tidying up the interior, from the trunk compartment, I removed sundry personal odds and ends, such as a set of rusty chains, an old shovel and an accumulation of ancient car tools that had shaken themselves into out-of-the-way corners of the compartment.

“No wonder she’s rattled,” remarked Jim, as I passed him carrying an armful of salvage toward the garage. Jim sponged off the body, fenders and windows; and I took the hose and tidied up the wheels and spokes. Little by little, Old Maud took on a genteel if shabby expression. We hadn’t seen her so clean in years. But just the same, her scars showed more clearly.

“It’s better, perhaps,” pondered Jim, as we stood back and surveyed the old schooner, “not to tidy up an old car too much. It only accentuates its age, like cosmetics on an old woman.”.

“Anybody,” I stated, “who would pay $900 for an old crock like that is nuts.”

“Not nuts,” smiled Jim, patting the wobbly hood, “just summer madness.”

“Do you feel any twinges of sorrow on bidding goodbye to an old friend and faithful car like this?” I asked.

“Aw, no,” said Jim, lightly. “Some cars, like some people, can live too long. Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

“You won’t sell it right tonight!” I protested.

“If I get a decent offer, I’ll sell right now,” said Jim.

“But what about the family? Are they reconciled to being without a car?”

“I’ve explained the whole deal to them,” said Jimmie. “And they all are in complete agreement. I’ve promised to allow them $5 a week for taxis, in special cases of emergency. Then I figured you wouldn’t mind lending me your car once in a while, for special occasions…”

“Mmmmm,” I reflected.

“I’ve suggested the same to Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox,” went on Jim. “The family figure we’ll be a lot better off, for a while, than we’ve been with Old Maud here.”

Jim waved me into the car and stepped on the starter. Old Maud’s starter whined and whimpered, and finally the engine exploded into life, and the usual fumes belched up through the worn matting on the floor boards.

“I’ll take you first,” shouted Jim, “to the place they have this same model at $900.

A few blocks away, we arrived at the large used car lot of McGrigor, Mortis & Co. A big banner over the entrance bore the company’s name and the legend: “Highest Prices Paid.”

Along the front of the lot, there was an array of the handsomest new cars you would see even at a motor show. Resplendent, shining, glittering, none of them showed the slightest sign of having been used at all. But as we drove in the lane, we saw that back of the glittering cars were close-packed ranks less glittering cars. And farther back still, were rows and rows of cars that didn’t glitter at all. These most backward ranks of cars all had prices painted on the windshield with whitewash. $375 or $500 or $625. Only the shabbiest cars had the indignity of prices painted on them.

Sure enough, as we drove down deep into the lot, a man emerged from a little shack and came toward us cautiously.

“Mr. McGrigor?” inquired Jimmie heartily, out the car window. “Or Mr. Mortis?”

“Neither,” said the gentleman. “They’re both in Florida. What can I do for you?”

“I was thinking of selling this car,” said Jim, as though in doubt.

“You might get somebody to buy it,” agreed the gent.

“What would you give me for it?” inquired Jim.

“How much do you want for it?” countered the used car man.

“Well, you’re the buyer,” smiled Jim. “What would you offer?”

“No, I’m not the buyer,” smiled the used car man, “I’m only interested in selling cars. How would $250 catch you?”

Jim was stunned.

“Two,” he croaked, “fifty!”

“That’s all it’s worth to me,” said the used car man.

“But…” sputtered Jim, “right over there is the same model as this offered at $900!”

“Aw, sure,” said the used car man, “but that car has a new engine in it and only two years ago it had a new transmission and rear end. We’ve put a lot of work on that, the same as we would with this if we bought it.”

“Two fifty!” fumed Jim. “Why, I’ll sell it privately, I’ll advertise it…”

“Sure, sure,” laughed the used car man, “and in about a month, the buyer will be back with it, saying you misrepresented it; and he’ll sue you unless you give him back $400.”

“Do they sue you?” demanded Jim bitterly.

“Aw, no,” explained the used car man. “We do a lot of work on the cars we take in. And in the contract of sale, we make mention of all the work done, see. How about $250?”

Jim did not answer. He backed Old Maud out the lane, and in silence we drove back home.

As he turned off the ignition in the side drive, Jimmie spoke for the first time.

“Imagine,” he said tenderly, “imagine selling a faithful, wonderful old car like this for $250!”

He patted the seat affectionately. He ran his hands lovingly over the steering wheel.

“Next fall, when the new car is ready,” he said. “It will break my heart to part with her.”

“At that price,” I added.

“You have no sentiment,” accused Jim.

Editor’s Notes:

  1. David Harum references a movie (and book) about a businessman and a horse he purchased. The story is known more today for the racist stereotype played by the black actor Stepin Fetchit. ↩︎
  2. $600 in 1948 would be $8,480 in 2024 ↩︎

Juniper Junction – 1948/03/10

by

On March 12, 2024

In Comic, Juniper Junction

March 10, 1948

Grab a Sandwich

by

On June 10, 2023

In Greg-Jim Story

“Jim,” I hissed. “Krieghoff! Krieghoff!”

Bargain hunters Jim and Greg discover that honest folk are always getting gypped

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, June 12, 1948.

“We’ll stop,” announced Jimmie Frise, “in this next town and grab a sandwich.”

“Jim, we haven’t got time!” I protested vehemently. “We’re half an hour late now.”

“It won’t take five minutes,” reassured Jim. “I’m hungry.”

“Jim,” I groaned, “please be reasonable. The auction sale starts at 2 pm. It’s nearly one o’clock now, and we’ve got a good 50 miles yet to go.”

“Won’t take five minutes,” said Jim, comfortably patting the steering gear.

“It’ll take more than five minutes, just to find a parking space,” I growled.

“Not in this next town,” declared Jim. “They’ve got parking meters. Plenty of room.”

“Do you want those Krieghoffs, or don’t you?” I demanded bitterly. “How do you know those paintings, won’t be the very first thing auctioned off?”

“Aw, you don’t know country auction sales,” com- forted Jim. Things like paintings and ornaments come last of all. In fact, we’ll probably have to sit around. on the lawn until six or seven o’clock tonight before they get around to the junk.”

Junk!

Last night, an old auntie of mine had telephoned me to read a little notice of an auction sale being held on the old Masterton farm back near the village where she had spent her girlhood. The little country weekly paper reported the notice of the action sale of the implements and household effects of the Mastertons, the last of whom had died.

Among the items listed were “framed pictures.”

“When I was a girl, Greg,” said my old auntie, “old Mr. Masterton – that’s the grandfather of the one who died last month used to be famous for the paintings he bought. All over the county. And I distinctly recall that four of his paintings were by this fellow with the Russian name…”

“Krieghoff?” I cried.

“That’s the name,” said my auntie.

Which accounts for Jimmie and me being en route, in the middle of the week, to a remote village to attend an auction sale. Kreighoff was a Polish artist who made Canada his home in the 1840s and painted the rural Canadian scene. Today, little paintings of his a foot square sell for $1,000 and $2,000. His larger paintings can’t be bought for any price. They go to National Galleries.

“Jim,” I warned, “you’re a very foolish guy to set a sandwich up against four Krieghoffs.”

“If they are Krieghoffs,” said Jim, “there will be buyers from all over North America there. And we’ll have about as much chance of getting them as of flying to the moon. Those guys will bid thousands.”

“Look”: I reasoned grimly. “My old auntie just happens to remember something from her girlhood. Do you suppose any of the Mastertons know what they’ve got? There hasn’t been a Masterton interested in pictures for three generations. I bet those paintings have been up in the garret for two generations, to make way for Varga calendars and Petty girls.”

“There’s always a chance, of course,” agreed Jim. “Krieghoff painted an awful lot of pictures. Some of them are lost. Others keep turning up now and then.”

“Look, Jim,” I pleaded. “Get cracking. Put on some speed. Let’s whip through here…”

“Sandwich,” said Jim.

We were coasting into the outskirts of the small town.

In a moment, we were entering the main street business section, and the neon sign of a cafe shone redly ahead in the bright noon day. The street was pretty solidly lined with parked cars. But I noticed at once the parking meters. A car length distant from one another, the meters were sturdy small poles, four feet tall, on the top of each of which was a meter, the shape of a piece of pie. In red, the word “Violation” showed on the meter until, on your parking your car opposite a vacancy, you put a nickel in the slot, turned the knot and the word “Violation” disappeared. And you had one hour to park for your nickel.

Not far from the cafe, on the opposite side, Jim found a vacant space and whipped into it. I put the nickel in the meter and turned the knob.

“You didn’t need to put a whole nickel in,” admonished Jim. “You can put one cent in, and that’s good for 10 minutes. We’ll only be 10 minutes.”

“I’ll gladly pay a nickel,” I assured him, heading across the street, “for this five minutes!”

We dashed into the cafe. We found two seats at the front counter, and by a special way of smiling at the waitress, we caught her eye and gave our quick orders, a ham sandwich and a glass of milk each. She hustled away.

“Those parking meters,” said Jim, relaxing, “are great idea. They have revolutionized the whole parking problem in these small towns. In the old days nothing could deter the local merchants from parking their own cars in front of their shops. Then, all the kids used to park half the day. And farmers from out of town come in for one of those rambly, easy-going, long, chatty shopping trips; and park all day: smack in the busiest part of the street.”

“They’re a good idea, all right,” I agreed, glancing back in the cafe to see if the waitress was in sight with our sandwiches. We could hear sounds of laughter and gay conversation from behind the kitchen partition.

“There’s quite a racket to them, too,” said Jim. “When you see two or three vacant spots, get out and glance at the meters. Some of them have still half an hour to go. Somebody else put in a nickel and only parked half the hour. So you pop in there for free!”

“Heh, heh!” I said. “What some people will do for half a nickel.”

“You don’t get rich any other way,” assured Jim. “Look out for the nickels and the dollars will look after themselves.”

“Unless,” I suggested, glancing up at the cafe wall clock, “you buy Krieghoffs at five bucks and sell them for 2,000!”

The clock said 1:12.

Our waitress came swishing from the kitchen, but with no sandwiches.

“Look,” I called, “we’re in a terrific hurry…”

“We just run out of ham,” explained the waitress soothingly. “One of the girls has just popped across to the store for some.”

“But, look, what else have you, ready!” I cried. “We’re late for a very important…”

“Now, now, the ham’ll be here in a minute,” scolded the waitress prettily.

It was exactly 1:17 when the sandwiches and the milk were slid before us.

It was 1:21 when we faced the cashier. It was 1:22 when we bounded across the road to our car and found a parking ticket summons fastened to our windshield wiper.

“What’s this?” exclaimed Jim, examining it.

“For violation of the parking limits,” I read aloud. We looked at the meter. In red, the word “VIOLATION” stared at us.

“But look here,” expostulated Jim. “We haven’t been 15 minutes…”

“Come on, come on,” I snorted, opening the ear door. “Argue about it later, but let’s get cracking.”

“Now, hold your horses,” backed Jim. “We’ve got to look into this. How do we pay it? How much are they going to soak us in this gyptown?”

A passerby, in best small town spirit, overheard our heated discussion and came to Jim’s aid. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“We put a nickel in this meter, not 20 minutes ago…” began Jim.

“Is this the meter you parked in front of?” asked the townsman. “Sometimes the local smarties, when they want to park, just push a car a little way ahead and so occupy a paid-for space…”

He nimbled back one car and looked at the meter.

This one,” he smiled, “has 40 minutes still to go.”

“You mean the guy who owns that car,” I gritted, “just shoved us forward and took our space?”

“And then the town cop,” explained the local, “comes along and sees you parked in front of a violation meter.”

“What’s this ticket going to cost me?” demanded Jim.

“A dollar, I think,” consoled the townsman.

“Where’s the cop?” shouted Jim indignantly.

I was starting to perspire all over.

“Jim!” I commanded sternly.

But Jimmie was off down the street to the corner, where he could see the town constable in conversation in the shade.

It was 1:30 when Jim returned to the car with the policeman. He was a very genial policeman.

“I know the man who owns this car behind you,” he said, “and he’s a very honorable man. He wouldn’t do a trick like that.”

“Is his wife honorable? Are his kids honorable?” countered Jim. “How do you know who’s driving the car?”

“I don’t think anybody would do a trick like that,” said the cop. “Not in this town. What I think is more likely, you gents were a little longer at your lunch than you imagine.”

“We were not!” I declared hotly. “We are both witnesses to the fact that shortly after one o’clock, we deposited a nickel in this parking meter…”

“In A parking meter,” corrected the constable.

“Jim,” I hissed. “Krieghoff! Krieghoff!”

“If you want to be rude,” said the cop, “you can come up to the town clerk right now.”

“Can we pay you?” said Jim reaching to his pocket.

“I don’t accept fines,” said the policeman stiffly. “Go up that side street half a block, and you’ll see the municipal offices. Go in there…”

“Can’t we mail it?” I wailed.

“Yes, you can mail $1 with the ticket. It says so, if you’ll read it,” snorted the constable.

“I HATE being taken for a sucker!” said Jim, sliding in to his seat beside me. “I’m going to run around and fight this out with the town clerk or the JP.”

“Not now, Jim,” I pleaded. “On our way back.”

“This town will be closed up by the time we pass down,” said Jim firmly.

And despite my sighs, groans and muttered curses, Jim drove around to the side street, spent five minutes finding a parking spot on this non-metered street: only the main street is metered. And it was 1:40 when he left me to go into the municipal offices to fight the good fight for human rights and justice.

It was 2:10 when Jim came out, red and exhausted, to find me white and exhausted, glaring in the car.

Jim had lost. The clerk had said that Jim should have put his brakes on and locked the car, if he didn’t want to be shoved ahead from his paid meter.

“What kind of a world is this?” begged Jimmie.

“Anything for a nickel,” I muttered.

Which reminded me of the Krieghoffs.

We arrived at the Masterton farm at 3:15. The auctioneers were still out in the barnyard, working on the implements and barn fixtures.

Out on the lawn were piled all the domestic treasures of the Mastertons of three generations. Chairs, sideboards, tables, mattresses, beds, chinaware. Ladies of the county were circulating amidst the piles, appraising. There were about 15 pictures, including oval framed enlargements of gentlemen in sidewhiskers and ladies with set jaws. There was a steel engraving of “The Stag At Bay.” But there were none that even remotely resembled Kreighoffs.

I asked a knowing-looking lady if there were any Mastertons in the crowd. She took me over to an aged gentleman who was a brother of the late owner of the farm.

“Yep,” he said, “there was a bunch of oil paintings once. Stacked up in the attic they was. Pretty dim little things, about so big. Dim, and dark. Not much to look at. Dirty, I guess they was.”

He held his hands out to show how big they were. Exactly Krieghoff size.

“What happened to them?” I said hoarsely.

“A feller selling patent medicines came by here, Oh, maybe 15 years back,” said the old-timer, “and my brother traded him all them pictures – there must have been a dozen of ’em in the garret – for two large bottles of sciatica liniment.”

“The pictures,” I swallowed, “for liniment.”

“Yeah, ye see,” said the old timer, “when you get sciatica, you ain’t much interested in art.”

“Somebody,” said Jim, as we headed for the car, “is always getting gypped.”

Editor’s Notes: Cornelius Krieghoff is best known for his paintings of Canadian landscapes and outdoor life.

“Up in the garret” is slang for “up in the attic”.

Alberto Vargas and George Petty were well known in the 1940s for their pin-up art, often available in calendars.

The parking meter was invented in 1935, but must have been not well known enough in 1948 requiring Greg to explain what they were and how they worked.

5 cents in 1948 would be 68 cents in 2023. $2000 would be $27,250.

Sciatica is pain going down the leg from the lower back.

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