In my ordinary course of life this sedentary principle of existence fits very well. But it is not good training for a jaunt with Douglas Fairbanks. I had no reason to know, when I adopted it, that I should ever be called upon to make a jaunt with Douglas Fairbanks, as that isn’t one of the contingencies that the average man includes in his list of things to be prepared for. So when, on the first morning out, I was awakened by my cabin door being flung open and a lithe form in gray flannels and rubber-soled shoes hurtling through the air onto my bunk, I was inclined to treat the whole thing as one of those strange nightmares that one has just before awakening, and turned over to face the wall with a deprecatory wave of the hand. But it was not to be so.
“Come on, you old son of a gun,” said America’s Male Force. “Time to get up for a workout!”
“Where’s my contract?” I asked through one eye. “Is there anything in my contract about workouts? I’m a writer.”
This designation of myself brought down a storm of derisive laughter, and I was placed upright on my feet and put into a tub of cold salt water. (I get sore even today as I write about it.) Mr. Fairbanks was accompanied on the trip by one “Chuck” Lewis, former All-American halfback and tissue-builder, and a hard man to haggle with over details. Mr. Milestone, being a director, stayed in bed and thought up camera angles.
The first “workout” on deck consisted of a brisk dash along the straightaway, a snappy hurdling of the bar at the end up on to the superstructure, and a monkey-climb finish up the ladder on the forward stack, leaping from there to the after stack and a sheer drop to the deck, followed by a pyramid formation and a chord from the orchestra, “Ta-da-a-a-a!”
I myself got as far as the superstructure and halfway up the first stack, at which point I stopped and gave the matter a little thought, did my drop right there, and ran and hid in a lifeboat. I should have stayed in that lifeboat. I see that now.
But I allowed myself to be dragged out, and the rest of the sea trip I spent trailing behind the pack. My shins took on the markings of two totem poles, my thighs turned an unpleasant blue from abrasions, and my one bad knee, which long since had ceased to be an excuse, was joined by the other knee in its infirmity.
Just before we landed in France we had what is technically known in movie circles as a “story conference.” A “story conference” is where various people responsible for a motion picture get together and tell stories. This conference, however, had a more practical angle, for we were to decide just what was to be done first in making this big travel film, for we couldn’t very well begin shooting without some general idea in mind. That would be just silly.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Douglas, leaping to the back of the sofa and swinging back and forth on a porthole casing. “We’ll go first to St. Moritz for the winter sports, skiing, bobsledding, breaking arms and legs, and all that. Then, once we are used to the cold, we can push on up into Russia, where I am sure they will let us jump around on the Kremlin and perhaps tear a few wolves to pieces. Manchuria may be a little bloody right now, what with the Sino-Japanese trouble, but we might be able to recruit a regiment from the vagabond Americans and English who are in the country and fight on one side or the other.”
“Is there a dental corps in this war?” I asked. “I know a lot about teeth.”
Douglas leaped from the porthole and landed on the bureau. “We’ve got you all assigned already,” he laughed, a mocking, sinister laugh. “You’re going to stick to me and do everything that I do, so that when we come to put the picture together you can write the dialogue. Funny cracks, you know. Making a gag of the whole thing.”
“I see,” I said quietly . . . .
On the return trip of the Europa, the man occupying Room 86 was surprised on the first night out to hear a scratching from his bureau drawer. On opening it, he was even more surprised to see me lying there; but being a man of considerable experience in traveling, he said nothing at the time. On the third day out toward New York, I emerged and told him my story. I even rolled up my trousers and showed him my shins.
“I think you were very wise to do as you did,” was all he said.
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PREV TOC INDEX NEXT
For the Entertainment
Committee
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As a general thing, the average citizen is a pretty good sort, popular superstition to the contrary notwithstanding. He may not be a mine of wise cracks, and he may get fooled about eight times out of five, but, in general, he has a vague intention of doing the right thing in as decent a manner as possible. With one exception. And that is when he is made a member of an entertainment committee. Henry W. Peak, let us say, has lived in his town for twenty years and has always respected property rights and had a fair amount of regard for the civil rights of his neighbors. That is, he wouldn’t think of going into anyone’s house at two in the morning and pulling him out of bed crying, “Get up, get up, you lazy head!” He wouldn’t even ring his door bell, unless perhaps the house was on fire.
And yet let Mr. Peak be appointed to the entertainment committee in charge of giving the visiting Shriners a good time and he becomes a veritable fiend. Give Mrs. Peak the task of getting up a benefit for the district nurses and you would never recognize her as the gentle, ladylike creature who presides in so patrician a manner over the Peak household.
A wild light comes into the eyes of a member of an entertainment committee which old friends of the family will swear they have never seen before. “Fanatic” would be a good word for it, if there were such a word. Let’s make such a word up! “Fanatic.”
To a man or woman trying to arrange an entertainment, no matter if it be only something to entertain the kiddies on a rainy afternoon, the entire world’s business becomes subordinate to their task. Not only do they neglect their own jobs, they demand that everyone else neglect his. International conferences, the production of steel for the world’s markets, the writing of the novel of the age, or the painting of an ocean liner, all must stop at a word from the entertainment committee and the people who have been busy at these minor pursuits must drop everything and “lend a hand” in order to make this just the best show that was ever put on in the Second Congregational Church. And anyone who doesn’t feel the same way is just a mean old thing.
Having served on entertainment committees, I know the procedure. The committee at its first meeting is a trifle lukewarm on the proposition, all except the chairman, who is quite likely to be a go-getter.
“Now, this thing has been put into our hands,” he says, “and it is up to us! We’ve got to get up just a bully show!”
Just what there should be in this speech that should arouse any enthusiasm in the members is difficult to say, but the fact remains that it does. Gradually the flush of excitement creeps into the faces of those present, and each becomes, for the time being, a crusader.
“Now, whom can we get to take part?” asks the chairman. With this the committee proceeds to shift the burden of the entertainment from their own shoulders to those of a half a dozen poor souls who don’t even know that they are under discussion.
“Well, there’s always Eddie Fripp,” suggests someone. “He’s got a peach of an act which he does with a screen and a pointer. It’s a sort of travelogue, and he takes you all around these crazy places and explains them on the screen. He did it at the Girls’ Friendly last winter.”
Then, before they have even asked Mr. Fripp if he can do it, there is a discussion as to whether or not it is the kind of act they want in the benefit. Mrs. Arthur Hamston inquires if it is clean. They don’t want any questionable stuff, you know. Yes, someone will vouch for its being clean, so Mrs. Hamston is satisfied. Will he charge money for doing it? Oh, no! Eddie will be only too glad to do it for nothing. Mr. Reiss will answer that. So. Mr. Reiss is delegated to get Eddie Fripp to do his travelogue.
Then Georgia Ranson is proposed as being a very nice singer. She makes her living by singing, but she will surel
y be glad to do it for nothing for Mrs. Matoon. So Mrs. Matoon is assigned the task of getting Miss Ranson, dead or alive.
“Arthur Meacham used to do an awfully funny imitation of different kinds of birds,” remembers Mrs. Pfaff. “He used to look like the birds, as I remember it.”
“He’s working in Chicago now,” says someone who keeps up with the times.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll get him. What’s a few hundred miles?”
This is said with quiet confidence by Mr. Tethrow. The latter is one of those business men who, when he sets out to do a thing, does it – whether it is worth doing or not.
And so it goes. The committee goes over the whole list of available entertainers in town and elects those lucky ones who are considered suitable for the occasion. It is decided that George Wesson will be allowed to do his card tricks, and that Arthur McKeag may do his song and dance act.
The idea never presents itself that perhaps George Wesson may have something else that he would rather do on the night of the benefit or that Arthur McKeag may not consider it such a favor to be allowed to contribute to the gayety. The malign spell of the entertainment is on them, and they expect every man, including England, to do his duty – and like it.
Once they have assigned the jobs of lining up the victims to various members of the committee the real dirty work begins. If you think that the zealots have been offensive in conclave, you ain’t, as John L. Sullivan used to say, seen nothing yet. Like a pack of hounds turned loose on the scent, they start off down the street after their prey. Go get ’em. Prince! Atta boy, Major!
First, Mr. Tethrow puts in a long distance call to Chicago for Arthur Meacham. To these big business men long distance calls are nothing when a thing like this is at stake.
“Hello, Meacham? This is Tethrow talking. William Tethrow. Want you to come on and do your bird imitations for benefit next Wednesday. . . . Now, now. . . . We won’t take no for an answer. . . . We’ve simply got to have you and you can’t squeal out of it. No, sir! We mean business. Now, don’t pull any of that stuff. . . . We’ll pay your railroad fare one way and put you up at the club when you get here. . . . Oh, ditch the other party. . . . You don’t have to go to that. . . . Oh, no, you don’t. . . . Remember, now, we’re counting on you. . . . Not another word now. . . . We’re counting on you. . . . Good-bye.”
So Mr. Tethrow reports that he has called Meacham in Chicago, and that, although Meacham said he had something else to do that night, “he’ll come all right, all right. I left it so he couldn’t help himself.”
The same tactics are used by the other members of the committee in their rounds of the entertainers. The theory they work on is that civilization has been striving all this time toward its culmination in the benefit next Wednesday and that the least that people can do is shut down their factories, close the schools, and declare a national holiday, with a special tax levied on each citizen as a contribution to the success of the affair.
In calling on out of town speakers or entertainers a member of the entertainment committee for anything – a banquet, benefit, or open forum – seems to consider the word “guest” a bait which the victim will be unable to resist.
“You will be our guest,” seems to hold within its ample significance all that any normal man could possibly demand of life, even though he gives up a couple of days of his time, uses up a dress shirt, and perhaps pays his own railroad fare. The lure of being a guest of the entertainment committee, together with the high honor of being asked to contribute his services to the amusement of the members of the Book-lovers’ Guild or the Every Thursday Evening Club, is counted on to bring speakers and entertainers stampeding from all sections of the country.
This probably has a basis in fact. There are unquestionably people who are so fond of doing card tricks or making speeches that they would gladly walk to the place of amusement to do their stuff and ask no other recompense than an audience of halfway attentive faces.
But this type is not common enough to justify a generalization, and for every one of these eager entertainers, there are hundreds of poor souls throughout the land who, because they once did something on the spur of the moment at a Grange meeting or a club dinner which met with the approval of their colleagues, have become engulfed in a whirlpool of eleemosynary activity which is not only distasteful but very expensive for them. And, as they seem always to be concomitantly easy-going, soft-hearted goofs who can’t say “no,” they become in time the plaything of hordes of ravenous entertainment committees throughout the district in which they are unfortunate to live.
The remedy lies nowhere. Just so long as people insist on being amused there will be entertainment committees, and just so long as there are entertainment committees there are going to be efficient committeemen, which means that everything else is expected to go by the board until a “bully good show” or a “crackerjack dinner” has been lined up.
But don’t be surprised some day if you hear of an organization of hitherto charitable speakers, card tricksters, bird imitators, and singers, who, armed with machine guns, have taken up their position behind barricades in the city streets, waving aloft a banner bearing the defy: “Come On, You Entertainment Committee! Come On and Get It.”
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PREV TOC INDEX NEXT
The Return
of the Bicycle
A Conservative Huzza
* * *
With the complete collapse of the automobile as a means of transportation (I believe that I am correct in assuming that it has been a miserable fiasco and will soon be seen on our roads only in the form of heavy trucking vehicles or agricultural tanks), and with the failure to leave the ground of practically every airplane constructed in the last six months, thereby eliminating aviation as a factor in future travel, there remains but one solution to the problem of those of us who want to get from one place to another. We must go back to the bicycle.
We were fools ever to leave the bicycle. I remember being quoted at the time in Handlebar and Sprocket, the great bicycle journal of the day, as saying: “Mark my words, you horseless-carriage fiends and flying-machine bugs! The day will come when you will forsake your senseless toys, which will have not even the sanction of natural laws, and will come crawling back to the safety of the bicycle, begging to be given a ride, even on the handlebars.”
Well, the day has come, and it is going to cost those people anywhere from fifty to seventy-five cents apiece if they want to ride on my handlebars. A dollar if they want to ring the bell themselves.
It was obvious from the start that the automobile and airplane were impractical. Any agencies of propulsion which depend upon tricky outside helps as gasoline, heavy motors, slip covers, and radiator caps are, on the face of it, no good for general use. And as for being dependent on wind and weather, the old-fashioned sailing ship was discarded because of that very drawback. The bicycle calls for nothing in the way of accessories except a pair of sturdy calves and a wire basket to carry lunch in. Gas? No, sir, thank you! Fog? Ha-ha! Spark plugs? Head winds? Indeed! It was hop on and away the devil take the hindmost! It will seem good to have those days back again.
Of course, there will be some die-hards who will insist for a while on pushing their old automobiles out on the roadway and blocking traffic with them. Such reactionaries must be dealt with summarily. The new code of traffic regulations should make it obligatory for those who wish to chug along in motor vehicles to keep close to the right-hand side of the road and to draw over into the gutter whenever a bicycle club riding five or more abreast wishes to pass. (Bicycle clubs have already begun springing up all over the country, reviving their old charters and buying new blazers.)
All motors giving off a carbon-monoxide exhaust or in any other way interfering with the vision or comfort of cyclists who happen to be behind them should be confiscated and the owner obliged to wheel his chassis home across the fields. Any parking of motor vehicles which makes it impossible for cyclists to draw up to the curb s
hould be done away with. If motorists want to leave their “cars” anywhere, let them leave them at home where they will be out of decent people’s way. A set of rules along these lines would soon do away with what few automobiles may survive the debacle which is already drawing near.
I feel a more or less personal interest in this revolt against motor and air transportation because I have reason to believe that it is an ancestor of mine who is depicted in the oldest existing record of the cult of self-propulsion. In a stained-glass window in a church at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England, is shown the figure of a man astride a wheeled instrument, which students of bicycle pictures claim to be the earliest attempt by any artist to show self-cycling.
This man is apparently propelling himself by pressing his feet against the ground with a forward pushing movement, using the wheel more or less to lean against, with probably a little high-spirited coasting now and then. I have seen the window, and the man looks quite a lot like me, except for a full beard and a more nervous expression around the eyes. The name underneath the figure is in Gothic letters and very difficult to make out, but it certainly begins with a “Ben” and the rest seems to be something of a compromise between “wgaale” and “chhaalle.”
Now, my people originally came from Wales (which in itself would account for the spelling), and, for a man with a contraption like the one in the picture, a spin from Wales to Buckinghamshire would have been mere child’s play. As I figure it out, this man Benwgaalle or Benchhaalle built his bicycle, took along some lunch, and pushed himself along to Stoke Poges, at which place he became a sort of local hero, like Lindbergh at Le Bourget, and a stained-glass window was made in his honor. I rather imagine that he stayed in Stoke Poges all the rest of his life, as he probably was pretty lame.
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