by John Gould
Their first Maine winter wasn’t much one way or the other. We had some snow, but not much, and we had some chilly days. There came one magnificent morning when Pete and Mildred could hardly see the boats moored in the harbor for sea smoke. Sea smoke is a vapor that rises when cold air moves in over the warmer water, a kind of fog, and everything that morning looked like a fuzzy fairyland, softened to tease the imagination. And after a day of a magic casement opening on the forlorn, the wind shifted abruptly to southeast and a Bermuda air moved in to dissipate the sea smoke. Everything was clear again, and night settled over the quiet harbor. Then it rained warm water all night, taking away what little snow we had, and Pete and Mildred awoke to find everything had cleared and a dazzling sunrise commenced a rousing day that was just like July. But, you see, it was January. The way the sun set everything to shining and shimmering was incredible, and as they looked off during breakfast Pete and Mildred watched the fishermen push out in their skiffs, and in their shirtsleeves, to pump out their bilges after the rain.
So right after breakfast Mildred came from the kitchen to find Pete siting in the big chair, his feet on a hassock, looking entranced at summertime Friendship harbor in the depth of a Maine winter. He had a smile as if inwardly enjoying a private joke, and Mildred could see he was having deep thoughts. He looked like the cat that swallowed the canary.
“My, my!” said Mildred. “Don’t we look smug this morning! What in the world has you looking so pleased with yourself?”
Pete didn’t relax his smile one bit when he turned to look at her. He said, “I was just listening to the Boston radio.”
Mildred said, “So?”
Pete said, “Belmont got twelve inches of snow last night.”
That was the day I got that postcard from Florida, and as I say—sometimes they come on the wrong day.
Warm and Cozy
It would be tedious to enumerate all the reasons for holding the annual chimney fire precisely during the family Christmas festivities. Suffice one; we have established a tradition in this matter until this year everybody foresaw the holocaust when Uncle Terence tossed the wrappings from his new slippers into the fireplace, where our cheerful yule log was performing well and in no need of assistance. “Here it goes!” somebody said, and somebody else said, “The fire department number is on the red sticker!”
A chimney fire need not be a dangerous matter, and on Christmas it can be a jolly part of the program. Our chimney is new and sound, and the roof was covered with new snow that would help with a luster of midday to objects below except that the red glare was now mounting into the sky and alarming people all up and down the road. It was unlikely a spark would find a host and it was reasonable to suppose that in a few moments the soot would burn itself out and we could return to our gifties. “I think there’s no need to worry,” I said.
Then I telephoned to the fire department.
In more populated communities than ours, firemen remain in a nonsocial context, and when called arrive at many blazes where they have been not formally introduced. This is a shame, because a Christmas chimney fire offers a warmth that friends and neighbors can embrace better than strangers. On Christmas, it is better to cry Joyeux Noël! and hold the front door open for somebody you know and love. Now, the first fireman to arrive was accoutred and garbed with safety effects suitable for a space shot, and he could have been out of Central Fire Station in New York City. Had he been out of New York City I wouldn’t have known him. I would have felt shy about holding the door while he came in with his extinguisher. But here, he was Dougie Richards, one of the Richards boys, and he’d been in and out of our house in nonconflagration sociability time and time again.
“Merry Christmas!” I said.
Behind Dougie came Wesley Lash, boatbuilder and nautical philosopher, and then Buddy Jameson, plumber and neighbor. Holiday remarks having been given and answered, they spoke not a word but went straight to their work, and after peeping up the chimney they opinionated that the fire had burned itself out. As I had said, there was no need for alarm.
Then we made Christmas cheer and had the pudding. It is an ancient English bag pudding, full of plums, and in our family, along with chimney fires, has been the traditional Christmas dessert since before good King Wenceslas looked out upon the feast of Stephen. It must be piped to the table while the brandy flames, and everybody marches behind. Dougie stopped with the hard sauce, but Wesley and Buddy had some of each, hard and soft. Some old goo-ood.
The fire engine had been left in our dooryard, lights flashing, and this caused a few people passing to stop in and ask if there might be something they could do. When the firemen drove off we called Happy Noels after them and wished them hearty Christmas cheer. Our voices rang over the snow, and the Christmas lights twinkled on their neoprene weather gear. “See you next Christmas,” Dougie shouted, and then he wound up the siren. But he let it die when the engine came to the main road, and we heard the boys exclaim as they drove out of sight, “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”
Ice Cream Shot
Back when our Maine legislature was pondering returnable containers—a sensible idea that finally passed—the issue got foggy with all the paid performers. The lovers of tin cans came in droves to tell us that litter up and down the highways is a wonderful thing for a state that nurtures tourism, and they told us the nickel-back is an evil thing. Made me think of the ice cream bucket and the evil influence it had on the morals and honor of the State o’ Maine. The ice cream tub was a returnable, and it fostered an indigenous felonious tendency.
It certainly is improbable that tasty, rich ice cream would nurture crime. It was a Maine man who first put ice cream on a commercial basis, with a factory to provide it in wholesale quantities. In a few years, by catering to summer hotels, he built a business that went nationwide when other people saw what he was doing and imitated. This was long before mechanical refrigeration, so his enterprise depended on pond ice, rock salt, and a motor to turn the cranks. The Maine summer hotel, or resort, called a sporting camp, always went for the elegant. Guests paid well and expected the best. Ice cream, churned at home by hand, had not become common otherwise, but the sporting camps grabbed the chance and soon ice cream was the big thing for Sunday dinner. It was on the Friday, accordingly, that the steel containers of ice cream were packed in rock salt inside these wooden tubs and shipped from the factory. The Friday train was the ice cream train. But the ice cream would arrive on Saturday, and a stage from each camp, or a boat where needed, would be waiting at the station. These tubs were heavy, and each had two strong metal handles. Each would be waltzed to the platform, loaded onto the stage, and taken posthaste to camp so fresh ice could be applied to hold the ice cream stiff until Sunday dinner. Choreboys would have dug a cake of ice from the icehouse, and chipped it. Ice renewed, the tubs would wait until cook opened them to serve dessert.
Resorts could be rated by the number of tubs of ice cream arriving each week. A single tub meant vanilla and a low guest count. Two tubs (vanilla and chocolate) meant an average season. A place that took a third tub was booming, that was strawberry, and only the high priced camps took a fourth, which was tutti-frutti.
Camps tried to return the empty containers and tubs on the Monday. So after Sunday dinner the potwalloper would wash the containers, and the choreboy would take the tubs to the edge of the woods and dump out the salty icewater. And this is where outrageous crime rears its ugly head. Salt attracts deer, and thus every camp had a dandy salt lick on the fringe of the forest, to which the sportive deer repaired. Every vacationist took pictures of these lovely deer, pawing the ground and lapping and cavorting around in fine fettle. And the ice cream tubs would return to the creamery so more ice cream could come on the next Saturday and more salt added to the deer lick. Eastman Kodak paid lavish dividends as the sporting camps sold film for deer pictures.
Which was never illegal. Ice cream tubs had to be dumped somewhere. What was illegal was the “i
ce cream shot” after the summer visitors had gone home and the hunting season opened. True, the ice cream shot was never looked upon with favor as a right thing to take, and was rightly reserved as a last-ditch chance to get a deer for a paying guest who had not shot his own. A man from Philadelphia who expected to go home without his deer would be awakened at dawn by a rifle shot, and after breakfast would find a deer ready to go with him. The choreboy deserved a tip for waking him up, of course. And it made him more cheerful about presenting his check in full at the lobby desk. “Good trip home, Mr. Prindle! And see you next fall!”
Nobody in Philadelphia was told about the ice cream shot. But it goes to show how returnable containers can nourish corruption, deceit, and crime.
The Free Seeds
Roddy Tomkins spoke to me in the post office Tuesday morning, and articulated as follows: “I was readin’ that pussyflage you wrote about plarntin’ gardins an’ how the volunteers would come, an’ I thought for sure you was about to say suthin’ about gittin’ free seeds from congressman.”
“Oh?”
“How come you di’n’t?”
“Trade secret,” I said. “If I tell you, you’ll blab it all over, and everybody in town will start being a writer.”
“Everybody in town is a writer,” said Roddy.
“All right. Reason I didn’t work in free seeds from congressmen is because I didn’t think of it—but if I had thought of it, I still wouldn’t of had if I did.”
“Have had,” said Roddy. “But why not?”
“Because it don’t pay to shoot off all your fireworks in one big bang. Free seeds from congressmen gives me another installment. I could sit down and write one piece that would cover every subject, and then what would I do for next time? So I’ve got free seeds in reserve. Thanks for reminding me.”
“My pleasure.”
“How long would you say it was,” I said, “that you got free seeds from a congressman?”
“Maybe about 1930. P’aps the depression had something to do with it. After that there Roosevelt got in we had a plague of Democrats, and I’m pretty sure I got my last seeds from a Republican. Name was Beedy, seems to me. Yes—Beedy. He was a lawyer, and worse than that—he came from Portland. I didn’t vote for him, as I never voted for nobody from Portland. Being from Portland, he prolly didn’t know a marigold from a banyan tree, but he sent me free seeds.”
“Were they any good?”
“Pretty good. They come in little packages marked ‘not for sale’ and instead of coming to boxholder-local they come with my name and address on ’em. After Beedy, no congressman ever called me anything except boxholder-local. The government stopped being folksy when it quit the seed business. They’s something about seeds makes everybody kin. I recall one year Beedy sent me some okra seeds. I di’n’t know what okra might be and I still don’t. Didn’t sprout. All else come good, but I was some disappointed when that okra failed. Always wondered what it was.”
“It’s a mallow, grown for its edible mucilaginous pods—used in soups. Never does well here in Maine.”
“Is that so? Don’t say! Well, give Beedy credit—he tried. And I tried. I watched for okra sprouts clear’n up to the time the cucumbers was done, and the next election I broke my vows and walked three miles in a rainstorm to vote for Beedy.”
I said, “I think Beedy served four terms in all.”
“I guess so, but he got trimmed the year he stopped sending seeds. I guess nobody nowadays can appreciate how important them seeds was. People were feet-up at the kitchen stove, daw-dlin’ away the depths of Febu-wary, and the mailman would jingle up with the Country Gentleman, the interest notice from the bank, and a batch of seeds from the congressman. Put new life into everybody. I’d shove an armload of wood into the stove and sit there fondlin’ them seeds and think about hoeing through a hot June. The country was in good hands. Congress was in touch with the farmer. Nawthin’s been the same since.”
“Don’t you suppose the free enterprise seedsmen ganged up and lobbied against free seeds?
“Prolly. But you got to wonder about the intelligence of a congressman that will vote himself out of a good thing, and let the seed people take over the seed business. Shouldn’t of done it.”
“Shouldn’t have done it.”
“You write it your way and I’ll speak it mine. Mucilaginous. So that’s okra. I prolly wouldn’t of liked it if the stuff did sprout on me.”
“Prolly,” I said.
Back River Hold
Deciding to spend some six hundred dollars for a new ten-inch bench saw, I telephoned the hardware store in the city and was put on “hold.” Mr. Bagshot, it seems, was on another line. So I laid the telephone on the table and went up to the garden to hoe peas, thinking it could wait for Mr. Bagshot just as well as I could. That afternoon a truck came from the telephone company to find out why my phone was out of order, and the boy put it back on the cradle. That hold cost Mr. Bagshot six hundred dollars.
Thus it is. Our telephone is at the house, and I am not usually. My wife is adept at parrying, and usually takes care of people who want to talk to me. You’d do well to listen to her. But now and then somebody wants to know if she can’t call me to the phone, and sensing some imminent amusement she sometimes says, “Well, yes—I suppose so.” “All right—I’ll hold!”
The game is afoot!
After she gains some control following the spasm of unlimited hysterics, she staggers through the front door to clang the ship’s gong we have on the front of the house. The town is thus notified that I am wanted on the telephone. Fishermen at sea look up and smile. Choppers up on the hill hear the bell over the roar of chainsaws and nod their hard hats. Some poor soul is on hold.
There are people who believe in Hope, Purity, Motherhood, the Constitution, and the Telephone. I should be ashamed of myself. But nobody has ever been put on hold from my telephone unless he asked for it, and that makes a difference. However he feels about it afterwards, he should respect the fact that he has contributed a great deal of mirth and jollity to the good folks in my miles around. When my wife pounds that gong, they chuckle and chuckle.
Unbiased Survey
Every so often somebody asks who got surveyed. These public opinion polls and surveys go on all the time, and nobody ever knew of anybody who got polled or surveyed. It is accordingly amazing that we can be persuaded and guided and beguiled by a consensus that derives from nobody. We go along placidly through the decades, influenced and happy, taking for granted that because there was a public opinion poll, somebody got polled. Well, the other day I was surveyed.
It didn’t happen just as I expected. I thought a gentleman with an identification button and a clipboard would push my doorbell and I would answer his questions while he put down Yes, No, and Undecided. I would do my best to give the American people the benefit of my amazing erudition. But no gentleman came—it was a questionnaire in my R.F.D. box that I was to fill out and mail back. It had to do with Oriental affairs. I happen to be a dedicated non-filler-outer of any printed forms that do not carry ten years in jail and ten thousand-dollar fine, and in addition I have no opinions about the Orient except that I agree with William Jennings Bryan that we should not establish coaling stations in the Philippine Islands. I did not answer this survey nor did I mail it back. I am still unsurveyed.
Years ago in the heyday of radio, I did a morning wake-up show from the farm. The radio station in the city ran in a “loop,” and every morning at seven I would push a button and devote fifteen minutes to piffle, trivia, and bosh. I had a big New Hampshire rooster that was always around the dooryard in the summertime, and with a few handfuls of corn I trained him to crow when I waved my hand. I’d liven up the radio patter by waving my hand. There was something about being a straight man for a rooster that I liked, and it wasn’t common for radio stations to broadcast roosters. Shows you the kind of programming that went on. After I had been doing this broadcast about a year, the radio station hired a surv
ey team to rate me and determine the extent of my “listening audience.” In due time a report came, and we had statistical evidence that I was reaching 78 percent of the available listening audience. I felt good about this overwhelming popularity until I wondered what other kind of audience there might be.
Not only might be, but definitely was. The biggest audience at seven o’clock in the morning turned out to be the nonlistening audience. Very few people, it seemed, cared to tune in at that hour to hear a rooster crow. And the pollsters who derive statistics for radio stations ignore these oddballs judiciously. Radio stations hardly care to offer nonlistening listeners to the advertisers. So instead of broadcasting to 78 percent of a million people, my rooster and I were reaching 78 percent of 2 percent of them. My rooster wasn’t so important as he thought. I decided any proper unbiased survey begins by deciding on which side it is best to be biased; that a pollster on his toes finds out first what his client wants to prove. This, snide as it was, led me to ask on the air that listeners who had been polled drop me a card or tingle the telephone. I repeated this every morning for two weeks, and got no response whatever.
It was at just that time that my congressman urged everybody to write to him or send him a telegram. He said, “We desperately need a strong expression of public opinion to offset and counteract the public opinion being generated by the opposition.”