By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan Macpherson, November 12, 1949.
“Hey, look at this!” exclaimed my neighbor, Gibbs, resting on his rake.
He was helping me rake leaves; and our pleasant Novemberous task was interrupted by the crescendo whine of an automobile coming down the street at breakneck speed.
“It’s Parker!” I cried.
Sure enough, it was our rebellious neighbor Parker. At 50 miles an hour, down the quiet street he drove madly, jamming on his brakes with a squeal and, whipping the wheel around, made a very bad and bouncy turn into his side drive, where he jerked to a stop.
“Well, well, well!” chuckled Gibbs.
Parker burst out of the car and slammed the door with violence.
“Nice day?” I called across, very neighborly.
Parker stood with jaw outthrust, staring back up the street. Then he stood glowering at the ground a moment.
“Aaahhrrfff!” he said, finally, and came slowly across the street to us.
“Look,” he grated, “three-quarters of an hour ago my wife sent me up to the corner to get a half a dozen lemons and two cans of sardines.”
“So?” encouraged Gibbs.
“I,” enunciated Parker, backing up to get room to roar, “have been THREE-QUARTERS of an hour trying to find a place to park my car a minute!”
“You should have parked,” I reproved, “up a side street.”
“Side street?” yelled Parker. “I’ve driven around six blocks of side streets. Bakers, milkmen, department store delivery trucks, not to mention a car in front of every home, instead of up the side drive, where it should be…”
“A little patience,” suggested Gibbs, “and you would have nabbed a place on the shopping street. Somebody is always moving on…”
“Somebody,” gritted Parker in a low voice, “is always moving on! I tell you, the storekeepers all along those shopping streets arrive at 8 am and park their cars in front of their stores for the WHOLE DAY!”
“They’d hardly be silly enough,” I soothed, “to do that.”
“Well, then,” shouted Parker, “why is it impossible for a casual shopper, like me, to find a parking spot for blocks and blocks around the dopy little grocery store I want to visit? Why IS it?”
Gibbs leaned his rake on the tree, and took a deep breath. This was Gibbs’ meat. He is my bright businessman neighbor.
“Look, Parker,” he said, calmly. “You are demonstrating, as you stand here, that the problem is you yourself. It isn’t traffic. It isn’t business. It isn’t economics. It’s just you. You’re an impatient, hot-tempered guy. And you are out of step with the times.”
Parker was too outraged to speak.
“The ever-changing world,” pulpitted Gibbs, “requires of mankind an ever-changing personality. The day the automobile was invented, a new type of man was called into being – a man alert, accommodating, patient and co-operative.”
“Are you suggesting…?” snorted Parker.
“The day the automobile was invented,” pursued Gibbs reverently, “the individualist, the selfish, old-fashioned, egocentric, dog-in-manger1 type of man became an anachronism. You are an anachronism.”
Parker had never been called that before and could not think of the proper retort.
“You are a hot-tempered guy,” concluded Gibbs, “who wants to drive up to the corner for half a dozen lemons and two cans of sardines, and have everybody get out of your way so that you can attend to your insignificant business without delay.”
Parker fairly shrank with exasperation.
“Look,” he pleaded, weakly, “all I want to do is stop people – the storekeepers themselves, mostly – from parking for hours on shopping streets. And I want people on the side streets, who have side drives, to put their cars IN their side drives, instead of leaving them parked out in front, where they prevent casual shoppers from finding a few minutes’ haven. How would they like it if people like me, unable to find a place to park, drove into their idle side drives?”
The way you came tearing down the street, a minute ago…” accused Gibbs.
“I was peeved,” muttered Parker. “That’s all.”
“To participate in modern life,” charged Gibbs, “you aren’t allowed to be peeved any more. The privilege of being peeved is one of he nice, old-fashioned vices we’ve got to give up, in exchange for all the wonderful advances that technology has made on behalf of humanity. You compare the comfort, speed, security of life today with that of even 50 years ago. Wouldn’t you be willing to surrender some of your little vices and failings, like impatience, for all the incomparable benefits of technology?”
“Technology,” ventured Parker, “be damned.”
This was blasphemy to Gibbs, and he showed it.
“It’s going to take a little time.” I put in, amiably, “for people to get used to the automobile. There are still enough of us old individualists around to ball up traffic. I imagine the younger generation will adapt itself to all these problems as naturally as new generations, from time immemorial, have adapted themselves to such things as wearing clothes, instead of running around naked, or eating three meals a day, instead of merely eating whenever Poppa killed a mammoth.”
Parker began to swell up.
“I’ll tell you two radicals what I think!” he bit. “I think human society is slowly and steadily going on the rocks. I think technology is foreign to nature and foreign to human nature. I think human beings are going to be human beings all the way to eternity. Individualists in the beginning, and individualists to the bitter end. And, by golly, the automobile is showing us up every minute of every hour in the day. We’re getting meaner and trickier every year. Less co-operative, instead of more. It’s helping, along with all your other technological wonders, to develop all the worst selfish characteristics of the natural animal, man.”
“Whoa!” commanded Gibbs.
“The scientists and engineers,” ignored Parker, “forget that we are animals. They imagine we can be converted, like machines, into a newer model. It never has happened. It never will happen.”
“Whoa!” ordered Gibbs, more loudly.
“It seems to me,” I submitted, genially, “that the average man today is a more humane animal than he was a 1,000 years ago.”
“You can’t prove it,” countered Parker. “And if he is, machines didn’t help.”
“We’re getting a long way,” said Gibbs, “from the six lemons and two cans of sardines Parker is still in need of. There is no use arguing with some people. You’ve got to show them. You’ve got to demonstrate. Now, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll all get into Parker’s car there, and I’ll take the wheel. We’ll drive right back up to the shopping street. We won’t be in any rush. Because, after all, in an automobile, we are going much faster, even at 15 miles an hour, than our grandfathers could go either on foot or in a wagon.”
“I’m telephoning for the lemons,” declared Parker.
“No, I’ll show you,” insisted Gibbs. “As an optimist, as a believer in the steady, ceaseless advance of human society, I’ll take the wheel and we’ll drive up and, with all decent consideration for others, with a normal, everyday awareness of the principles of modern society I’ll guarantee to park you, within five minutes, near the store you want to buy your lemons in…”
“Heh, heh, heh,” said Parker.
Gibbs was already walking off my lawn to cross the street to Parker’s car. So Parker and I followed.
“You’ll find out,” chuckled Parker, as he got in the back seat with me. Gibbs took the wheel happily and backed us out
“I’ve been through this so often,” he smiled. “I must confess I have to take myself in hand occasionally. The antiquated, individualistic attitude dies hard. But all I do, when I feel the old impatience welling up, is to remember I’m a unit in a mechanism. Human society HAS to become a mechanism.”
In one minute, we reached the head of the street where it crosses the car line and the shopping avenue. Although it was not yet the rush hour, traffic was dense and active. Street cars and buses barged along; automobile traffic was in two speeds – those wanting to pass straight through and those desirous of stopping. This created a sort of bucking and jerking in traffic that is familiar on all shopping streets. Despite large signs hanging from the telephone poles forbidding double parking, in each block the soft drink delivery trucks and wholesale grocery trucks were double parked. Not to mention a few husbands, leaning anxiously to watch for their wives – to indicate that they were merely double parked for a minute: which isn’t really double parking, in their view.
“Where’s this store you want?” demanded Gibbs, cheerily.
“Next block,” replied Parker, happily.
The next block was a dandy. There were three trucks and two cars double parked. And besides, there was a car just ahead of us going so slowly that it was obvious its driver was also looking for a parking spot – another gentleman in quest of six lemons, probably.
“Heh, heh, heh,” said Parker, mildly, from the back seat.
“Okay, you watch!” laughed Gibbs, slackening speed and going into low gear to crawl.
We crawled half-way through the block when suddenly, from the curb, a car stuck its nose out. Gibbs speeded up sharply and drew up short, just back of the impending opening. The car preceding us tried to pull up, too. But Gibbs sounded the horn sharply. And since a woman was driving the other car, she moved obediently on.
The car coming out from the curb took its time. The driver craned his neck and watched around, as he forwarded and backed. At last he cleared, and Gibbs slid ahead, in low gear, so as to back into the opening.
As he halted and turned around to watch his step, a sudden blast of a horn sounded right under our tail.
Another car was behind us, already partly turned into the opening. Its driver was glaring and tooting his horn belligerently. Gibbs turned very red and shook his fist. The other driver edged slightly forward and bumped our rear fender, still tooting.
Gibbs, in a sudden rage, stepped on the gas and backed Parker’s car violently against the interloper.
Crash!
Out jumped the man behind. Out leaped Gibbs.
“Get out of there!” shouted the stranger. “I’ve been five times around the block…”
“I’m ahead of you,” said Gibbs, coldly. “I get the space.”
“How many times have YOU been around the block?” demanded the stranger, angrily.
“I’ve a good mind to punch you in the nose,” said Gibbs, icily.
“Yeah?” said the other, hitching up his coat sleeve.
Gibbs reached back for a punch.
The stranger punched first. He got Gibbs in the midriff, just far enough above the belt not to be a foul blow, but enough to cause Gibbs to bend sharply forward. The stranger took Gibbs by the available coat collar, turned him and shoved him back into the driver’s seat of Parker’s car. Then he slammed the door on him.
“Come on!” he snarled. “Get moving!”
“Are you fellows going to sit there…?” gasped Gibbs, furiously, still catching his breath.
“It’s your demonstration,” said Parker, mildly.
So Gibbs grabbed the gear shift, stepped on the gas and jolted us out into the tangle of traffic, all hoots and snorts of indignant horns.
And because his fountain pen was broken – he could feel the ink trickling inside his vest – we drove home.
Parker telephoned for the six lemons and two cans of sardines.
Editor’s Note:
- Dog-in-the-manger refers to a person who spitefully prevents others from having something for that they also do not want. ↩︎
