Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

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  A great deal of thought has been devoted to the subject of how we are going to meet the problems of this winter; but I haven’t seen any attention being paid to the Coal Question. Of course, there has been some expert speculation on how to get any coal without twenty dollars, but no one seems to have written anything helpful on what we are going to do with it once we have got it. Or is that just my personal problem?

  I have been trying to get coal into a furnace fire box now for about fifteen years, and I should say that my average was about .002, or two pieces of coal to each half ton shoveled. I can get it anywhere else in the cellar – the ash cans, the preserve closet, the boxes behind the furnace, and even back into the bin again. But I can’t quite seem to hit the fire box in the furnace.

  It may be that there is something wrong with my aim or my eyesight, but I have always had a feeling that the coal itself had something to do with it. I think that my coal man sells me live coal; that is coal which lives and breathes and has a mind of its own. You can’t tell me that just ordinary dumb, inanimate coal could act the way mine does!

  1 would not tell this to many people, because they wouldn’t believe me, but I have actually seen pieces of coal which I had successfully tossed into the fire box turn around and fly back out on to the floor! Now, you can’t fight a thing like that. I have watched coal on a shovel which I was carrying from the bin to the furnace actually set itself in a state of ferment and bound about like corn in a popper in its attempt to get off the shovel and on to the floor. Things of this nature come under the head of the Supernatural. You know that, don’t you?

  I remember one night back in 1926 when I went down into the cellar to fix the furnace for the night (and what a misleading phrase that “fix the furnace” is! I’d like to fix a furnace just once. It wouldn’t pull any more of its tricks on me again, I’ll tell you. The only way the furnace can be fixed is with nitroglycerin.) Anyway, I went down to give the furnace its head for the night, and to this end I went over to the bin to get the customary three shovelfuls of coal.

  The bin was about half full (it then being about the middle of October and the fire about two weeks in operation) and I picked out my favorite shovel – which I had built like a dredge, with sides which closed up around the coal – and started for the opening. Remember, I could see the coal in there.

  I dug in the shovel, felt the coal settle on it, and pulled it out. There was no coal there! I then poked down from over the top of the bin with a long poker until I was absolutely sure that I felt great piles of coal descend, all the time saying to myself: “Come, come, Benchley! Pull yourself together! Of course there will be some on the shovel this time.” But no! I could not even get those black diamonds out of the bin, much less into the furnace. This was disturbing enough but wait!

  I turned to look at the open door of the fire box into which I had planned to toss at least six or seven pieces, and there, on the floor between the bin and the furnace, was all the coal which hadn’t come out on the shovel! It had come out by itself, possibly over my head through the air, and had strewn itself all over the cement in just the position it would have taken anyway, but without a sound! Some of it had even wound its ghostly way over into its favorite nest in the preserve closet and was lying there, looking up at me as if to say: “Beat you to it, old man!” Without another look I turned and fled upstairs, striking my head on the cellar stairs even harder than usual. I know enough not to monkey around with devil’s coal.

  This experience rather made me afraid to go down cellar again, and I hired a man to do it for me. He, however, seemed to have no trouble, and I used to hear the coal crashing into the furnace below (and what a lovely sound that is, to lie in bed in the morning and hear some other poor sucker downstairs putting on the coal, even if it is only your wife) and my pride became piqued.

  If an Italian who had got only an A.B. in a university could get coal into a furnace without spilling it, why couldn’t I, with my Ph.D., do it? Or better yet, why couldn’t I actually build the fire with my Ph.D.? This was, however, out of the question, as I had lost it that time when the Salvation Army took those old army blankets in which it had been tucked away. But I determined to try my hand at the fire at least once a day, and then, if it didn’t work, let Mike go on doing it all the time.

  The result of this was that Mike would build the first in the morning (I chose the evening service for my experiments) and I would put it out at night. Then Mike would build it in the morning again. He finally said that he would have to get more money for tending it just once a day than he did when he tended it twice, as he had more work to do, what with taking out the things that I had put into it the night before (I may not be able to get coal into a fire box, but I can get some dandy other things, such as hunks of larva, old bottles, and bits of the cement floor) and then rebuilding the whole business. So I gave it up entirely for the time being. But this winter I had to start in again; for because of the unemployment, Mike has too much work to do on public improvements to bother with us.

  I am now thinking of having a furnace built with the coal bin on top. Then, when it comes time for me to put on more coal, I can just open a chute and let the stuff dribble down into the fire box at any speed and to any amount that I want.

  As for the ashes and clinkers, I shall have a great cavern dug underneath the furnace, with perhaps a small boy who will stand down there with a searchlight and a rifle and who can shoot the clinkers to bits as they stick in the grate. When the winter is over I can have the house moved right off the cavern and the whole thing dug out.

  This, of course, is going to be pretty expensive, and I haven’t the slightest idea that it will work. But it will at least restore my self-respect by making it unnecessary for me to go at the thing with that shovel again. And a failure in a rather gigantic effort like that wouldn’t be half as humiliating as not being able to get a few pieces of coal into a fire box with my own hands.

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  Hiccoughing

  Makes Us Fat

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  So many simple little actions have been recently discovered to be fattening, there is hardly any move we can make, voluntary or involuntary, which does not put on weight for us. We have been told that laughing makes us fat, that sleeping after meals makes us fat, that drinking water makes us fat (or thin, according to which day of the week you read about it); and, although I haven’t seen it specifically stated, I have no doubt that it has been discovered that yawning and sneezing are in the class with all the rest of the fatty tissue builders (who, by the way, seem to be just the busiest little builders since the days when the pyramids were being thrown together).

  But, if you will notice, all of these fatty functions are rather pleasant ones.

  Laughing, dozing, and yawning are certainly lots of fun. Though there may be some opposition to sneezing as a pastime, I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life’s sensational pleasures. You may say, “Oh, darn it!” in between sneezes and try to act as if you weren’t enjoying it, but, as an old hay-fever sufferer, I know the kick that can lie in a good sneezing spell, provided you have the time to give to it and aren’t trying to thread a needle.

  In the midst of all these pleasures of life which are to be denied us if we want to keep thin, it seemed to me that hiccoughing ought to be proved fattening, thereby introducing something we don’t like to do. I don’t know of anyone who has a good word to say for hiccoughing. It is pretty easy to prove that almost anything makes people fat. All you have to do is drag out the old cells and gland secretions and talk about how they secrete fat in the blood and hide it away for the winter months. If you can get a dog or a cat in a cage and can make them do whatever the thing is you are studying, you ought to be able to prove your point in about fifteen minutes.

  They put a dog and a cat in
cages side by side the other day, and made them awfully cross at each other by telling the dog what the cat had been saying about him and the cat what the dog was telling his cronies about her, and, by testing the animals’ blood before and after the hard feeling began, they discovered that they were both quite a bit thinner by supper time. It wasn’t stated what their weight was after supper, or when the two had made up their little tiff, but it is safe to say that they both put on about three pounds each. I’ve tried those reducing gags myself and all that they do is make me hungry.

  However, as not many people know what hiccoughing really is – except that it is a damned nuisance – it will be perfectly safe to go ahead on the cellular theory for a starter. You must know that our wonderful Human Machine (wonderful except for about three hundred flaws which can be named on the fingers of one hand) is made up of countless billions of cells called “cells,” and that it is the special duty of some of these little body cells to store up fat. And I will say this for them: they do their duty.

  I have got a set myself which lean over backward in their devotion to their duty. They must have little mottoes up on the walls of their workshop reading: Do It Now! and A Shirker Never Wins.

  I sometimes think that they get other cells in from an agency to help them when it looks as if they weren’t going to get their quota of fat secreted by five o’clock, for they haven’t fallen down once on the job as yet. I wish I could say as much for the cells whose duty it is to destroy fat. I suspect that my fat-destroying cells drink, or else they don’t get enough sleep. Something is slowing them down, I know that.

  Now, let us say for the purposes of argument (not a very hot argument, just kidding) that the process of hiccoughing is a muscular reaction caused by an excess secretion of the penal glands (I made that one up, but there ought to be a penal gland if there isn’t). You have been sitting, let us say, at a concert, or have been trying to play the flute, and have become exhausted. This exhaustion sets loose a nervous toxin which, in turn, sets loose five homing pigeons which try to fly out of your mouth. This is what we know as hiccoughs, or “the hicks.”

  If it were not for these hiccoughs, the fatigue poison set loose by the exhaustion would act on the cells and destroy great quantities of fat, making it necessary for us to take in our clothing two or three inches. But the hiccoughs, or escaping pigeons, step in and relieve the toxic condition, thereby leaving the fat where it was – and you know where that is. In my experiments I had no cats or dogs to place in cages, but I used an aunt who was visiting us and who hadn’t been doing much around the house to pay for her keep. I placed her in a cage, and in the cage next to her placed a parrot which she insists on carrying about visiting with her wherever she goes. After testing the blood of both the aunt and the parrot and giving them some candy to keep them quiet, I tried to induce hiccoughs in the aunt. This was not so easy, as she didn’t want to hiccough.

  Now, hiccoughing is all very easy to fall into when you don’t want to, but there doesn’t seem to be any way in which to induce it out of thin air. I showed the aunt pictures of people hiccoughing, thinking to bring it on by suggestion. But she wouldn’t look. I tried giving imitation hiccoughs myself, but succeeded only in bringing on an acute attack of real ones which I didn’t want. (Unfortunately, I had neglected to test my own blood beforehand, so these were of no use in the experiment.)

  My own hiccoughing, however, got my aunt laughing, and that, together with the candy, set up quite a decent little attack of hiccoughs. This, in turn, excited the parrot, who was accustomed to mock my aunt to the point of rudeness, and he began a series of imitation hiccoughs which were as irritating as they were unskillful.

  Things went on like this for several days, when finally the parrot gave up the whole thing and took to singing instead. My aunt and I were spasmodically hiccoughing, but it was nothing to what it had been when the fit was at its height. In fact, I had plenty of time between hiccoughs to make blood tests of the aunt and to try to make one of the parrot. The parrot, however, would have none of it, and so I am unable to report on the effect of hiccoughing on the weight of birds. As far as my aunt goes (and that is pretty far) I have data to show that she gained four pounds during the seizure, owing entirely to the elimination of the fat-destroying poisons through the agency of hiccoughing.

  Thus we find that all fattening pastimes are not pleasurable. This is going to revolutionize the science of weight reduction, for the whole thing has been hitherto based on the theory that we mustn’t do the things we want to do and must do the things we dislike (I mention no names in this latter group, but certain forms of lettuce and green vegetables will know whom I am referring to). Now, if we are to keep from doing even one disagreeable thing, like hiccoughing, the whole tide may turn, and by 1933 it may be so that the experts will tell us not to do the unpleasant things (and then where will you be, my fine lettuce?) and to go in strong for everything that gives us pleasure.

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  “Abandon Ship!”

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  There has been a great deal of printed matter issued, both in humorous and instructive vein, about ocean travel on those mammoth ships which someone, who had never ridden on one, once designated as “ocean greyhounds.” “Ocean camels” would be an epithet I would work up for them, if anyone should care enough to ask me. Or I might even think of a funnier one. There is room for a funnier one.

  But, whether one calls them “ocean greyhounds” or “ocean camels” or something to be thought up at a later date, no one can deny that the ships which ply between this country and foreign lands get all the publicity. Every day, throughout this “broad” land of ours, on lakes, rivers, gulfs, and up and down the coast line, there are plying little steamers carrying more American passengers than Europe, in its most avid moments, ever dreamed of. And yet, does anyone ever write any travel hints for them, other than to put up signs reading: “Please leave your stateroom keys in the door on departure”? Are colorful sea stories ever concocted, or gay pamphlets issued, to lend an air of adventure to this most popular form of travel by water? I hope not, for I had rather hoped to blaze a literary trail in this tantalizing bit of marine lore.

  There are three different types of boat in use on our inland waterways and coastwise service: (1) Ferries, which are so silly that even we won’t take them up for discussion. (2) Day, or excursion, boats, which take you where you are going, and, if you get fascinated by the thing, back in the same day. (3) Night boats, mostly in the Great Lakes or coastwise service, which have, as yet, never fascinated anyone to the point of making a return trip on the same run. And then, of course, you can always row yourself.

  There is one peculiar feature of travel on these smaller craft of our merchant marine. Passengers are always in a great hurry to embark and in an equally great hurry to disembark. The sailing of an ocean liner, on which people are really going somewhere and at considerable expense, is marked by leisurely and sometimes haphazard arrivals right up to the last minute. But let an excursion boat called the Alfred W. Parmenter announce that it will leave one end of a lake at 9 A.M. bound for the other end of the lake and return, and at 6 A.M. there will be a crowd of waiting passengers on the dock so great as to give passers-by the impression that a man-eating shark has just been hauled up. On the other hand, fully half an hour before one of these “pleasure” boats is due to dock on its return trip, the quarter-deck will be jammed with passengers who evidently can hardly wait to get off and who have to be restrained by the officers from jumping overboard and beating the boat in to shore. At least a quarter of the time on one of these recreation trips is spent in standing patiently in a crowd waiting for a chance to be the first ones on and the first ones off.

  Just why anyone should want to be the first one aboard an excursion boat is one of the great mysteries of the sea. Of course, there is the desire to get good positions on deck, but even if you happen to be the first one on board, the good positions are always taken by
people who seem to have swum around and come up from the other side. And then there is the question: “What is a good position?” No matter where you settle yourself, whether up in the bow or ’way aft under the awning, by the time the boat has started it turns out to be too sunny or too windy or too much under the pattering soot from the stack. The first fifteen minutes of a trip are given over to a general changing of positions among the passengers. People who have torn on board and fought for preferred spots with their lives are heard calling out: “Here, Alice, it’s better over here!” and “You hold these and I’ll go and see if we can’t get something out of the wind.” The wise tripper gets on board at the last minute and waits until the boat has swung around into her course. Then he can see how the sun, wind, and soot are falling and choose accordingly.

  Of course, getting on a day boat at the last minute is a difficult thing to figure out. No matter how late you embark, there is always a wait of twenty minutes before the thing starts, a wait with no breeze in the broiling sun to the accompanying rumble of outbound freight. I have not the statistics at hand, but I venture to say that no boat of less than 4,000 tons ever sailed on time. The captain always has to have an extra cup of coffee up at the Greek’s, or a piece of freight gets caught against a stanchion or the engineer can’t get the fire to catch. The initial rush to get on board and the scuffle to get seats is followed by a great deal of tooting and ringing of bells – and then a long wait. People who have called out frantic good-byes find themselves involved in what seems to be an endless and footless conversation over the rail which drags on through remarks such as “Don’t get seasick” and “Tell mother not to worry” into a forced interchange of flat comments which would hardly have served for the basis of any conversation on shore. It finally ends by the relatives and friends on the pier being the first to leave. The voyageurs then return dispiritedly to their seats and bake until the thing sails. Thus, before the trip has even begun, the let-down has set in.