LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter16

     No one attempted to kill Matt that afternoon.  Outside the city building, a light snow gave the huddling, hustling crowds a bit of sparkle.  The sight lowered Matt’s blood pressure.  He slowed down to enjoy the array on the plaza: the big Christmas tree with perhaps too many snowmen hanging on it, the massive metal puppy by Picasso, and the stark, geometric menorah erected in the name of equal-time holidaying.  He looked back at the overdecorated tree.  Yes, he liked the sleek, stark lines of the menorah, but he wasn’t drawn to it.  He supposed he was just the type who would always prefer a baroque clutter of fripperies to something grand and solemn.  This would be a cause for rebuke one day at the gate of the Great Golden Ultimately.

     His mood was so much lighter as he waited for the bus that when it came he nearly let it go by, so he could take instead the one that would carry him to baroquely cluttered Water Tower Place (and Beth.)  But there was that party to be faced tonight, and Friday rush hour would make the chances of getting home in time for a shower and a change of clothes iffy at best.

     The spirit of the season seemed to be in all the drivers, though, and Matt made it in good time.  He was almost whistling as he unlocked the door and dropped the Christmas cards from George and the insurance company on the hall table.

     “I’m….”  His nose was confronted by an aroma his memory told the nose it ought to recognize.

     “Oh,” he moaned, the memory hitting him just before Ada Silberwetter stepped around a corner to hail him.

     “About time you got here,” she informed him, one hand on one hip.  “Come listen to our clue!”

     Matt set down his briefcase and ambled down the hallway.  He reached the dining room as Ada sat back down at the table, next to his mother.

     “Oh, hello.”  Mrs. Benz looked over the tops of her glasses.  “Are you home?”

     “Tell him what you were telling me,” Ada said, waving at the pages spread out of the table.

      The taller woman shrugged and looked, through the glasses this time, at the nearest page, which was cluttered with her handwriting.  “Well, it’s only a preliminary character sketch.  It’s a kind of psychological profile of Miss Skull.”

     She looked up.  Seeing her audience nod, she went on, “Miss Skull has a dirty mind, and is proud of it.  Miss Skull is creative—I don’t think ‘impudendum’ and ‘erotaerobics’ are really words—and she—or he, of course–likes to show off.  You’re  right to want to be sure this is actually murder, dear, and if I were you, I’d check among my friends first.  Or acquaintances who might play this kind of [rank.”

     Ada applauded.  Matt had heard nothing especially knew, and saw no reason for delight.  “Did you get all of that from the letters?  Or the envelopes too?”

     “Oh, yes.”  His mother picked up the page so she could read down to the bottom.  “Assuming Miss Skull stole the stationery and the envelopes, she’s not a scrupulously honest person.  And she works in either a very small or a very large office.  These are just plain white envelopes, so the place must be too small to spend money on envelopes that match their letterhead, or big enough to stock both letterhead and plain envelopes.”

     “If she works for the City,” Ada pointed out, “Then that’s no problem.”  She looked up to Matt.  “Can you shave a face that long in one day?  Cheer up!”

      “I’m not in the mood to cheer up.”

     “Aren’t you feeling well?” his mother inquired.

   “I’m allergic to murder.”

     “Oh, he’s just jealous that we’re getting ahead of him while he’s playing around having a job.”  Ada reached her feet under the table, hunting with her toes for her shoes.  “But we had to compare notes, you know.  You don’t catch murderers by sprinkling salt on their tails.”

     She found her shoes and stood up.  “I suppose I must toddle and let you take care of business.  There is that party, after all. You know.”

     “I know,” Matt sighed.

     His mother looked up.  “A party?  Is that where we’re going tonight?  I thought wee were just going out to eat.”

     “That was last night,” Matt told her.  “Tonight we’re….  I’m going to the office Christmas arty.  You remember.”

     His mother frowned, trying to remember.  “I’ll be there, too,” Ada put in.

     Mrs. Benz’s eyes slid all the way to the right to regard her son.  “You’re going…together?”  Her mouth jerked up at one side.

     Matt leaned forward.  “I….”

    “Oh, yes, we’ll be together,” Ada cooed.  “I guarantee it.”

     “Oh, then don’t let me keep you.”  Smiling, Mrs. Benz shuffled the pages together.  “Have a good time!”

     Matt ground his teeth.  “Mother, I….”

     “s that my other shoe Mrs. Benz?  Down there?  No, I see.  I gave them both on!”

     Matt faced Ada, a growl scratching its way out of his throat, not only because he’d been interrupted but also because he knew she had done it to avert whatever he had been about to snarl at his mother.  Guilt and embarrassment merged to become fury.

     Ada reached up to pat one blazing cheek.  “Now, now.  Be a good boy and I’ll bring you a Christmas present.”  She blew him a kiss and sauntered to the door, leaving Matt bubbling with anger and at the same time wondering why she put him so forcibly in mind of marshmallows.

     His mother walked to the window.  “Matt?  This place you’re going…is it far?  Maybe you should take the car.”

     They had sold the car four years ago.  “No,” Matt said.  “Not far.  You can see it from here.”  You could see a ways from the nineteenth floor, of course.  The joke was that when the light was wrong, you couldn’t see across the street.

     But she nodded, accepting his judgement, and left him free to get his shower.

     There was still time, even for Matthew Benz, once he had his good suit on.  He could leave now, he supposed, but rather than be the first one there, wandering around the rooms alone, he sat up to his desk and pulled down the looseleaf binder that contained the manuscript of the first section of “Ascent of the Ruby Slippers”.  Perhaps he could find a chapter or passage that he could work on while milling around at a party.

     At the unfinished end of the tale, his characters were busy falling into a trap laid by Mai Doon Izahn, the evil warlord obstructing their quest to save post-holocaust mankind from starvation.  The trap was fiendish and foolproof and, as far as Matt could determine, the heroes were stuck.  He flipped backward through the text, hunting for some early line that might light a lamp or ring a bell to guide him through this maze.

     “In the war between the Gibbelins and the Gnoles, there was little for humans to do.”  Matt had read the opening of the novel so many times it had become a cliché to him.  He flipped forward again.

     “At the verge of a mighty forest sat a castle.  It was a fine castle, but a bit imposed upon by the forest.  In any other location, it would have been a grand castle: indeed, one of the greatest works of architecture to issue from the human brain.”

     “It just wasn’t much of anything when compared to the forest.”

     Forest.  Imposed upon.  Dwarfed by the life around it.

     “Aha!”  Easy enough to make notes about that at a crowded City party.  He took a blank sheet of paper, folded it four times, and wrote “crowd” on the outermost layer.  If he needed more data than he experienced at the party, he could collect it while Christmas shopping.  Saturday would be perfect for that, and he had planned to get tp the library that day to research tombstones.

     He looked over the top of the looseleaf binder at the little yellow box on his desk.  Miss Skull had been lucky.  Putting such a small number of photos in a box meant to hold a hundred sheets of photo paper left a lot of empty space for the post office to mash in.  But the box was neither cracked nor dented.  He made a note on another sheet of paper.  He needed to find a box big enough for mailing away all the Christmas presents for his nieces.

     “Matt?” called a voice from the doorway.  “Am I going to a party tonight?  What should I wear?”

     Sighing, he set the binder back on the shelf.

FICTION FRIDAY: Red, White, and Ballyhoo

     “You around, Uncle Jack?”

     “Down here.”

     “So, Happy Quarter Mill…wow!”

     “Looks different, huh?”

     “What happened?  Your lab used to be filled to the walls with bins and baskets of spare parts and broken handles and….”

     “Got rid of ‘em.”

    “That must have been a truckload or two for the recycling center.  Except for the radioactive….”

     “Well, no.  I painted ‘em red, white, and blue.”

     “And sold them as Quarter Millennium collectibles?  I would have thought you were getting on that bandwagon kind of late.”

     “I know a trick worth two of that.  Labelled ‘em ‘Bicentennial’, so people would think they’re extra collectible, being fifty years old.”

     “Brilliant, as usual.  How much did you make on your Bicentennial bookcase studs?”

     “Not as much as I thought, considering the trouble the research was.”

     “Research?”

     “Wanted to make ‘em more authentic by tossing in some Bicentennial napkins and popcorn boxes and empty wrappers.”

     “I’m not surprised you had some of those around this lab.  I always wondered….”

     “Used that time travel bicycle I came up with a while back and headed to 1976 for Bicentennial discards.”

     “I thought you scrapped that bicycle because the controls were touchy.”

     “So they are.  Wound up shopping in 1876.  Saw some interesting Centennial souvenirs, but bell bottoms and three-button cuffs made me kind of stand out.  Luckily, they thought I was part of the entertainment.  Except for Great-Great-Grandpa Zeke.”

     “You met one of our ancestors?”

     “Bicycle doesn’t travel distance, just time.  So I was right here in the neighborhood.  Zeke was one of these crank Victorian inventors.”

     “I don’t know how you’d talk to somebody you have so little in common with.”

     “Lemme write that down.  Remaking my will next week.  We got to talking and he thought I had a great idea.  He offered to buy all my painted patriotic doodads for forty bucks.”

     “That doesn’t even cover the cost of the paint, does it?”

     “That’s what I thought ‘til I saw those two twenty dollar gold pieces in his hand.  It was a lot of trips, hauling all that scrap on the bike, but I did it.”

     “And now you can put those two gold pieces up at auction.  Are they in good shape?”

     “Sort of.  Not exactly right for auction.”

     “How do you mean?”

     “This is OUR ancestor, kid.  He took two quarters, painted ‘em gold, gave me those.”

     “Oof.  Can you get the paint off?  I mean, at least two silver quarters from 1876….”

     “I could see right away getting rid of the paint would get rid of most of the quarters at the same time.  So I did the next best thing.”

     “What’s that?”

     “Painted ‘em red, white, and blue.  Sold one of ‘em yesterday.  Got SOMETHING out of it, anyhow.”

     “Do you think you can still sell the other one once the Quarter Millennium is over?”

     “Maybe.  I can set the bicycle for 2076 and see what someone’ll pay during the Tricentennial.”

     “Happy Fourth of July, Uncle Jack.”

Where the Flavor Was

     Keep reminding yourself, as we move into the fifth episode of a series on smokers on postcards which began with a statement that there AREN’T that many, that entire books can be written on smoking in the movies and on television.  So there.  Some postcard smokers were celebrities who needed tobacco to complete their look.  Uncle Sam here is enjoying a smoke by the fireside (and using his legs to block the symbol of England from the British hearth.)

     Comedian Bobby Clark’s cigarette holder was as much a part of his act as those (painted on) glasses of his.  He appears without warning, AND without identification, on a number of unrelated postcards.  We may investigate this in some future nother blog.

     Mister Jack, another bygone comic staple, was a roue in late middle age who would have been lost without a cigar (or a comely female, even one his own age.)

     Happy Hooligan was not always in the money enough to afford a cigar, but he WAS a tramp.  And as noted hereintofore, such men were heavily associated with thick, solid stogies.

     All of this, I think, supports our original point: that the cartoonists bothered to draw in a pipe, cigar, or cigarette only if it was important to the gag.  But they took it for granted that just about everyone smoked.

     Even, as seen in our last thrilling episode, young boys.  This is related to the postcard convention that having a kid make a joke was funnier or less confrontational than the same remark might have been from an adult.

     When the young man who is smoking is understood to be genuinely underage, reaction can be swift and violent.  (The gentleman creeping up is a truant officer, and our hero is in trouble NOT because he is smoking but because he is playing hooky.  Our ancestors were convinced anyone who skipped school was doing it to pursue forbidden, and thus more interesting, pursuits.  Remind me to show you the one where the two boys are eating stolen raw eggs just because it’s forbidden.)

     Parents regarded smoking as a definite step on the road to perdition.  No one knew what might come next.  Drinking coffee?  Memorizing jokes from Cap’n Billy’s Whiz-Bang?

    Cartoons that were blatantly opposed to smoking, however, are largely limited to recent postcards.  There were occasional anti-vice postcards for earlier generations, but these tended to be deadly serious, like this Dutch example from the free rack postcard tradition, “Death and Deadly Sins”, which labels the parts of the body tar and nicotine will attack.

   .  Because how many people would mail a Dangers of Smoking cartoon to a buddy?  (Well, yes, there are such people, but the rising price of postage has pushed them more into the realm of texts and forwarded videos.  Another drawback of advanced technology.)

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 15

     Not only had Matt had the joy of getting up late this morning, but in rushing to make a lunch, he had realized he had not picked up anything to replace the turkey he’d finally finished.  Today he had to make do with dry rye bread and even drier cheese.  The apple turned out to be mushy instead of crisp.  None of this would have happened to his brother George, who kept his refrigerator under in strict ranks, each package of cold cuts stacked in its proper pile according to meat.

     No notes for “Ascent of the Ruby Slippers” came out of lunch either, but this was only to be expected.  He was tired, and a bit jumpy about the way everyone called “Have a nice lunch, Matt” as he made his way out of Down.  Not every meal gave birth to deathless prose.  Sometimes he just sat with his chin on his fist, remembering that Danny Kaye was dead.  Anyway, Friday was always a bad day for productivity.

     With no reason to linger, lunch was over five minutes after he sat down.  He finished his Diet Coke and was pushing it and his sandwich wrapper into the trash when a voice called “Hi, Neighbor!”

     He turned to find himself being addressed by one of the two elderly regulars, the one everybody called “the Judge”.  The Judge called everybody “Neighbor”; he couldn’t remember names.

     Matt ambled back to where the man stood at one of the vending machines.  Yes, sir?”

     “This machine of yours isn’t worth shit,” the judge replied, with the easy familiarity of equals, one expert to another.  “I put my money in and nothing came out.”

     Matt came a little closer to study the machine.  “Put my money right there and punched this button,” the Judge told him.

     “What?  Nothing came out?” called his partner, already seated.

     “I’ll be right there,” the Judge called back.  “I put my money in here and nothing came out.”

     The machine was a new one, with a digital readout above the coin slot to indicate the item called for and the total amount paid.  The Judge was a dime short.  Matt shrugged, took a dime from his pocket, and dropped it in.  It was easier than explaining things and, with everything else going on, being out a dime didn’t add much.

     The Judge heard the sound and leaned in.  “Can you tell what’s wrong?”

     “I think that’s got it, sir,” Matt said.  “Try the button again.”

     The Judge punched the button with the second joints of two fingers.  A little envelope of maple-flavored Crunch-and-Munch dropped into the drawer below.

     “Say, you’re good, Neighbor,” he said, spanking Matt on the shoulder.  “You’re really good.”

     “No problem, sir.”  Turning to go, Matt nearly walked into Maryann, who had been waiting behind him for her turn at vendoland.

     “Sure,” she said.  “Sure.  Just run over me.  You’re too big to even see us little people, the way you run around with judges and famous authors.”

     Her smile was one of amusement, but Matt hastened to apologize anyhow.  “I didn’t see…authors?”  he frowned.  “Oh, Felicia Lowe: that’s right.  Heh.”

     “You probably go out with her so often you don’t think it’s even special these days,” she said, scanning the selection.  “She must like you pretty well for someone she just met yesterday.”

     Not knowing what else to do, Matt laughed, pretending he had entered into the spirit of this.  Besides, it was okay to head for the exit if you were laughing.

     “Hi, Judge.”

     “Hey, it’s Maryann!”

     Matt spent the afternoon mostly on chores that allowed him to hunker in the safety of his cubicle.  This strategy gave him no satisfaction whatsoever.  Hardly ten minutes could go by without Holly or Linda or Carleton Nairn accidentally walking past his door.  They had done this many times in the past, but today it struck them as perfectly normal to stop and chat: little innocuous Friday afternoon conversational fluff.  Had Matt had a good lunch?  How formal did Matt think dress would be for tonight’s party?  Was Matt sure he didn’t need a ride?  And how was old Matt these days, anyhow?

     Matt was not a social creature, but he was not unfriendly either.  So he tried to answer all these inquiries with a jocular remark and a chuckle.  That was not easy.  They were never looking at him, exactly, and he could tell they weren’t listening.  They were searching for something; there was an air of expectation about them.  It was like being back in high school, he thought, walking from class to class and you were the only one who didn’t know about the “Kick Me” sign.

     Not even half as stupid as Walter Prince thought him, Matt knew what the problem was.  Holly might say “Oh, I hope they’re wrong about mixed snow and rain tonight” or Linda could remark, “No, I don’t go out much at night myself these days”.  But they were really saying, “You were out with Marshall Silberwetter’s wife last night.  What are you up to?”

     At first, Matt was just annoyed.  Linda Szarkowski, at least, should have worked with him long enough to know he was never up to anything.  Then he recalled the possibility that someone at Down was Miss Skull: an extortionist at least, and possibly a killer, and might have serious reasons for wanting to know why he was dining with Ada Silberwetter, especially when she was flaunting that mystery author.

     He wiped his palms on his pants legs and checked his watch.  Two?  Hours more of this.

     Rummaging on his desk, he found half a dozen sheets of statistics he had meant to put in Maryann’s copy box.  There was no reason not to take them to the photocopy center himself.  That would get him out of the reach of prospective Miss Skulls for a while.  Maybe he’d have to wait to get to a machine: always a good bet on a Friday, with people restless and glad to get out of their cubicles for a while.  Maybe this could stretch to half an hour.

     Papers in hand, he tiptoed to the door of his cubicle and checked for obstacles.  The sight of two women at Maryann’s desk made him pull back at once; a second peek showed it was not investigating guests but Holly and Linda.  And they had their backs to him.  If he hurried, he could be out before they noticed him.  Especially if he was studying these pages as he walked.  That was it: preoccupied, busy.  He hadn’t even seen them, wouldn’t notice if they said something.  Busy, busy: work to do, you know.

     “And what do we get?” Linda was demanding.  “A poke in the pants!”

     Here came the tricky part.  Matt had to step lightly around, behind, just beyond peripheral vision, but not bumping into file cabinets either, and all while reading through these stats.  Fortunately, Holly seemed to be paying attention to whatever Linda was expounding.

     “I don’t see why seniority….”

     There!  Past the desk!  With his back to them, he had a clear shot at the door.

     “Going for a break, Matt?” Maryann called.

     The diatribe broke off; Holly and Linda turned to look.

     Matt couldn’t help himself.  Escape was right in front of him.  He could march on, pretending he hadn’t heard.  But he HAD heard, and a painful passion for accuracy made him want to explain this was not at all his motive.  Even as he slid up his sleeve to check his watch, preparatory to a reply, he knew he was lost.

   “Oh, ah, no.”  he fluttered the pages in his hand.  “Just, er, needed some copies.”

     Holly MacTaggart was closer than he’d thought.  She plucked the papers from his hand and folded an arm around them.  “I’ll do that, Matt.  How many do you need?”

     Maryann snorted.  Matt let his glasses slip to the end of his nose to study Holly while Linda grumbled, “Her grandfather.”

     “I was just headed out that way,” Holly went on, shrugging one shoulder just an inch too high.

     No one there believed this.  One of the signs of innate superiority at Down was the ability to have someone else make copies for you.  If nothing else, you dumped your documents in Maryann’s copy box before Walter Prince could catch you and remind you that Ms. Hoxey’s time, unlike yours, was of value.  Those who absolutely had to go make copies tended to do so by stuffing the pages under a garment and slipping out as if to the restroom.  Otherwise, the fiends lurking in the darkness, would intercept you, drawling, “As long as you’re going to the copy center, just make me a hundred of these, would you?”

     Holly MacTaggart knew this, but gave no sign of this as she repeated, “How many?” and added, without even blushing, “Maybe I could bring you back a cup of coffee as long as I’m out.”

     Matt’s face was burning.  “Um, no thanks.  That’s all right.  Just, er, one copy of reach.  No, er, rush.”

     “Oh, I’ll be back before you can say ‘knife,’ she replied, gaily waving the pages, more at Linda than at him.

     Shoulders sagging, he turned back toward his cell.  But Linda said, “Oh, by the way, Matt.”

     He clenched his teeth, unclenched them, and turned her direction.  She was smiling.  He had known she would be.  Holly, meanwhile, had reached the door of Down, but paused to look back.

     “I was just going to ask, Matt….” Linda rippled two fingernails along the edge of Maryann’s desk.  “Do you like music?”

     “Um,” said Matt.

     Linda blinked and went on, “I have two tickets to that concert next Saturday, in the afternoon, by the Early Music Consortium.  But now Tim says he can’t come.  Would you like his ticket?”

     Out of the corner of one eye Matt saw Holly’s knuckles whiten as she gripped the doorknob.  Her gaze spoke to Linda of death in its most protracted forms.  He tried to think of any possible excuse, any reasonable previous engagement he could plead for Saturday afternoon.

     “Oh.”  What a time to come up against writer’s block.  “I’m not sure….”

     “Why don’t I just give you the ticket?  Then if you can’t come, you could pass it along to one of your…friends.”  Linda took a step toward him.

     Matt took two steps back.  “Oh.  Okay.  Why not?  Thanks.”  A brittle little laugh came from the direction of the door before it slammed.  Maryann grinned.

     Matt wanted more than ever to creep back to his cubicle and hide under the desk.  He turned, and recoiled in terror.

     “Sure you don’t need a ride to that party, Benz?”

     Matt’s starting eyes were not on Walter Prince’s fixed smile but on the little pink pipe cleaner poodle attached to the pen in his boss’s lapel.

Blowing a Cloud, Taking a Puff

     Considering that the original premise of this series of columns was the relative scarcity of postcards showing people indulging in tobacco, compared to movies and TV shows of the same era, we have been showing off examples for a while now.  But I maintain my original opinion.  Joe Friday or Paul Drake probably lit up more times in one episode of their respective shows than I have postcards showing a similar scene.  If we had studied, say, drinking during the same era, the number of postcards might well have rivaled the examples on screen.  (My earliest cocktail joke on a postcard, for example, goes back to about 1907, and the…no, we will not start what would probably develop into a twenty-part series.)

     Smoking, in these scenes from bygone days, was a part of other experiences.  Men enjoyed a cigar after a meal, for example.  (Hey, remember when people smoked in restaurants?  How about when you could eat lunch in a joint with waiters and tablecloths and satisfy the waiter afterward with a single silver coin?  Yeah, me neither.)

     Even at home, a man might settle in after dinner with tobacco and something to read.  This was before we had phones where you could scroll to a saucy picture without your spouse noticing.

     And there is one part of the daily routine even more associated with a quick smoke.

     Maybe this was a remnant of places and times when smoking in public was outlawed.  Or perhaps it deals with what was sometimes the only moment of peace during a long workday.

     Certainly, a fellow could smoke all the time while on vacation.  (Hey, are these the same two chaps who were second and third in line at the outhouse, after they retired and headed for the beach?)

     Children did not have the same nine to five jobs, so one is a little startled to find them pausing for a puff.  In this case, of course, it’s a cultural thing, as mentioned hereintofore.  The Dutch (and/or Germans; American didn’t always distinguish) had to have their pipes.

     The cultural disposition to tobacco might even apply in this case, where the protagonist is much younger.  A cigar just went with a top hat in the minds of many cartoonists.

     But, as we shall see in our next (and possibly final) column on the subject, not everybody was a supporter of the “Nicotine Fiends”.  Why does this postcard demonstrate our point?  Well, you remember the old joke about the locomotive who denied up and down that HE smoked tobacco.  “I choo,” he insisted.

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That CIgarette

     Now, as you’ll recall, in a blog titled “And Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women,” we examined the use od cigarettes on postcards.  Although cigarettes are everywhere in mid-century movies and television, we argued, on postcards they were primarily used to indicate a young woman who, like the one shown on this Seventies poster of a Twenties postcard, was advertising availability.  If you don’t remember all this, do not go back and read it (June 12) right now.  I just summarized it for you so we can move on.  I need to get this taken care of so I can set out to find a UPS store where I can return a garment which, like a lot of modern clothing, was advertised as being the same size I usually wear and turned out to be much smaller, somehow, than I expected.  The twentieth century’s dependence on AI is no doubt to blame.  That and maybe the metric system and the modern inclination to…where were we?

     But the cigarette does appear, less frequently, in other roles on postcards.  This, from a dozen decades ago, may seem at first to be the same old plication about the young lady with the cigarette.  But if you can tear your eyes from her, look at HIM.  (No, I don’t know why there’s a paper lantern on his cane.)  And check out the little birdie.

     A cigarette could also, for a couple of generations, be seen as part of a dreamy utopian scene.  In a perfect world, it is suggested, life is low on responsibilities and high on harmless pleasures.  (That’s the catch.  Your pleasures are harmless ONLY in a perfect world, which we ain’t got.  But this “illegal, immoral, or fattening” philosophy does not sell postcards.)

     Advertising of the time, of course, said the same thing more overtly.  REAL fun required nicotine, calories, and alcohol (or caffeine.  Or both.  Kahlua was still largely in the future during mid-century, but there was Irish coffee.)

     Any sort of joy could be enhanced by lighting up a slim shaft of tar and nicotine.  These travelling men who, by tradition, should be smoking cigars (one of LAST week’s blogs; are you keeping up?) but here have added cigarettes to their enjoyment of the beauty of a sunset.

     True, this cowboy is not getting the same enjoyment out of dusk, but the cowboy life was known for its freedom and excitement, often augmented by a hand-rolled smoke stick.

     When over-indulgence is depicted on postcards, it almost always involves the alcohol part of the equation.  This chap did not wind up sleeping in a crate because of his excesses in the tobacco line.  (There are plenty of postcards dealing with people over=indulging in FOOD, but besides being a whole nother blog, they are always shown enjoying it very much.  And over-indulgence in caffeine also came much later in the century, starting roughly at the same time Kahlua hit the U.S. market.  Coincidence?)

     So were there NO postcards exhibiting a negative side to all this nicotine?  Well, yes, but I need to get this box to UPS while I can still exchange for a much larger size.  (Maybe it’s social media; maybe social media makes your clothes—even the ones you just bought—get smaller when you’re not looking.  Another nother blog.)

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 14

     Matt was late for work the next morning, for which he blamed Ada Silberwetter.  It was not her fault; he knew that.  He was so exhausted after an evening of conversational combat that he should have taken to his bed as soon as he and his mother got safely back to the apartment.  Instead, he had sat up until four, plotting the next section of “Ascent of the Ruby Slippers” so as to fit in all the notes he’d taken during dinner.

     And he wasn’t technically late: just the last one to reach Down.  Walter Prince, watching the last duckling rush in, had seemed about to comment.  There had been a change of mind for some reason, and, after a nod to Matt, had slammed his cubicle door shut in place of bellowing.

     Just as well, Matt thought, barging into his own little box.  He had enough to occupy his mind, with crazy women, murderers, AND plot devices, that being civil to Walter Prince might have been beyond his capacity.  He flipped his briefcase up onto the desktop and sent his desk calendar flying off the other side.

     Snarling, he stormed around to retrieve the calendar and, stooping, watched the pens and pencils slip from his shirt pocket to clatter next to the skinny cardboard with December facing out.  That sailed from his foot to the wall.  No sense trying to kick pencils, so Matt threw himself back into his chair and nearly toppled over backward.

     As usual, fury was followed by remorse and then despair.  Leave the pencils!  What difference did it make?  All this fuss and bother just t stay alive and make a mark on the world, so it would not forget you when you died.  Why?  Matt knew no one would forget him when he was gone.  No one thought about him all that much NOW.

     From death, his thoughts turned lightly to those of tombstones, and the box of pictures inside his briefcase again.  He decided not to bother with them, either.  He’d looked at them twenty-seven times during Ada Silberwetter’s little game of Clue in the restaurant.  He was sick of them.

     Still….  He got up and collected his pens, pencils, and calendars, and then walked over to look out the door of his cubicle.  Maryann was on the phone.

     “Open for business in a moment,” she told Matt, who reached her command center just after she hung up and was reaching for her memo pad.

     “N rush.”  He attached the teddy bear pin to his lapel.  “Just need some more, er, paper clips.”

     “That I can get you,” she said, kicking her chair back toward the supply cabinets,  She leaned over in her seat, her blouse riding up just far enough above her belt to expose one quarter inch of skin.

     Matt cleared his throat.  “Er, what do you know about tombstones?”

     Maryann paused, blinked, and caught up a box of paper clips.  “They’re expensive,” she said, coming forward again.

     “What’s expensive?” asked Linda, on her way past the combination supply depot and staff lounge.

     “What do you know about tombstones?” Maryann demanded, before Matt could head her off.

     Linda shuddered.  “I know it’s too early in the morning to be talking about them.  Why?”

     “Just morbid small talk.”  Maryann shook out her hair in back with one hand while surreptitiously pulling her blouse back into place with the other.  “Matt was asking about tombstones.”

     Matt shrugged a response to raised eyebrows. “And skulls,” he said.  Might as well take it from snout to curly tail.

     “Halloween’s over, you now,” said Carleton Nairn, clipping some pages into his clipboard as he walked up.

     “Halloween?” Maryann demanded, placing one index finger in the center of her chin.  “Oh, I remember!  That’s the holiday when they start putting up the Christmas decorations.”

     “Skulls.”  Linda shuddered again.  “We had enough of that yesterday, with that mystery writer and her Miss Skull.”

     Something hit the floor.  “Oh!”

     Holly was dressed conservatively.  For Holly, for Friday.  True the blue tights obviously deserved their name, but a little silver skirt covered part of them.  When she bent over to retrieve the thick folder that had escaped her grip, Matt found the window which had been cut in the back of the skirt to display the tights.  Everyone turned back to Maryann’s desk at the same moment.

     “Skulls, eh?” said Carleton Nairn.  “And gravestones?”

     “What about Miss Skull?” Holly demanded.

     Matt hadn’t intended to set up a panel discussion, but before he could say anything else, a booming “Good morning!” turned everyone’s minds from graveyards to a less pleasant subject.

     Walter Prince advanced on the conference, shaking a sheaf of paper.  “The latest studies of office procedure, people, proves that jobs take longer if you stop in the middle.”

     Heads turned in the direction  feet were taking them to the shelter of the cubicles.  Everyone at Down was habitually in the middle of something at any given time.  It was better to move out of range while Walter Prince was still dealing in general terms and hadn’t gotten down to specifics.

     Matt stood his ground; it was his job to take the brunt while others took shelter.  But Carleton Nairn didn’t know this, and the papers now rattled in the rookie’s direction.  “Did you read this report after you wrote it?” demanded Walter Prince.  “Or even while you were writing it?  I’m only asking, Nairn, in hopes of uncovering some reason that any sane individual would report these figures on page six.”

     Carleton Nairn was none too large to begin with, and seemed to shrink.  But he swallowed hard and replied, manfully, “I take full responsibility, sir.”

     Matt’s heart sank as that “Oh, do you?” expression spread across Walter Prince’s face.  But Carleton Nairn went on, “I should have double-checked the data Mr. Benz gave me.”

     Matt tried to recall any data he’d given Carleton Nairn.  Yesterday morning: elementary data Nairn would have found without aid had Nairn worked at Down a whole week.  Straightforward stuff, as far as he could remember: names and phone numbers.  He tried to angle around to get a look at the report.

     But this was twisted now between Walter Prince’s hands.  “Benz gave you these figures?”

     “Well, yes, sir.”  Carleton Nairn’s head drew a little between his shoulders.  “But I certainly should have taken time to be sure….”

     Walter Prince waved a hand at him, just missing his nose.  “Never mind, then.  They’re probably okay.”  His eyes flicked toward Matt and then away.

     Now Carleton Nairn frowned.  “Oh, sir, I really ought to….”

     Brows came down and forward.  “When I want more out of you, Nairn, I’ll light a match!”  Walter Prince’s voice was so fierce that the usually unflappable Maryann looked up in wonder.  Her eyes went rounder as the chief went on, “You may trust anything Mr. Benz comes up with, Nairn.  He looks slow, but he is diligent, hardheaded, and thorough.  If you have any aspirations to competence, you would do well to take a lesson from him.”

     Linda was leaning out of her cubicle, her mouth hanging open.  Carleton Nairn backed away, his hands raised in  a “Hey, hey” position.  Walter Prince stalked away, detouring around Matt with a grumble and a mutter.

     Even allowing for “He looks slow”, the attack was not Walter Prince’s style at all.  It lacked sarcasm, it lacked bite.  If Matt hadn’t known his superior better, he would have suspected Walter Prince of trying to inflict a compliment instead of an injury.

     “Um.”  He leaned toward Carleton Nairn.  “Do you have another copy of that report.  I could….”

      A Prince-like glare stabbed at him from the rookie’s eyes.  Matt gave up and hurried back to his cubicle to take shelter with the box of paper clips.

He Called For His Pipe

     As we have, in this space, considered the place held in postcard cartoons by cigarettes and cigars, it is only logical to move to the pipe.  (I dislike to throw spoilers into my text, but those of you who were planning to come around next Wednesday to read about snuff, snoose, or other similar products can cancel those pipe dreams right now.  Despite being stalwarts of humor in their various roles, their role in society had been so sidelined during the golden age of postcards that I have found no hint of them.  Oh, and, by the by, the phrase “pipe dreams” has nothing to do with tobacco, despite the best efforts of advertisers.  While as for vaping, this, of course, comes…where were we?)

     In some postcards, we see the pipe smoker as a man of leisure, as unhurried in comparison to the cigar smoker as the cigar smoker was when compared to a cigarette fiend.  The cigar box, humidor, and cigar cutter could not compete with all the machinery and accessories used by the pipe smoker, while the whole process of loading, lighting, and drawing on the tobacco in the pipe was not intended for men of haste.  (Part of the reason so many go-getters and live wires in twentieth century movies were shown as cigarette folk.)

     Somebody who sits down and lights up a pipe is someone who is planning to hang out for a while.  This kind of leisure has nothing to do with their financial status: like cigars, pipes could be exceedingly expensive or amazingly cheap.

     That being said, the postcard cartoonists largely gave us pipe smokers who were socially and ethnically outside the mainstream.  Folk from way back in the hills frequently had their corncob pipes clenched in their teeth.  Note that women, absent entirely from our cigar postcards, have returned.  This adds to the comic effect; loke the chamberpot, the housewife’s pipe was something mid-century Americans liked to forget ever had anything to do with THEIR families.

     Oh, and the outhouse.  Nearly forgot.

     Mid-century America’s fascination and glorification of the hillbilly, which existed before Li’l Abner really spread it across the comics pages and continued even after the cancellation of The Beverly Hillbillies, does not seem to have been studied properly, and what with needing to get to the store this afternoon for chicken nuggets shaped like the numerals 6 and 7, I don’t have time to go into it now.  Suffice it to say that postcard cartoonists certainly played along with the trend.

      But the hillfolk are not the only ones who found their cultural identity tied up with pipes on postcards.

     Are these postcards evidence of ancestral recollections of the migration of the Scotch-Irish to the hills and valleys of America?  Let’s move along; that way lies dissertations.

     And in any case, there are OTHER groups which found themselves identified by their pipes.  Yes, we are back among our friends from the Dutch postcard craze of the early twentieth century.  Their accessories ranged from the small, cheap clay pipes of common commerce….

     To elaborate and luxurious Meerschaumery.  (How DID he get that across the ocean unbroken?  Another example of Dutch ingenuity.)

     However, none of these groups were consistent in the typecasting of their tobacco.  Like the Scotsman with the cheap cigars in our last thrilling adventure, the Dutch could not be tied down.  (Anyone else thinking of Dutch Masters Cigars right now?)  The hillbilly is sometimes seen with a cigarette, but the reliance on pipes in their case may be related to their use of other tobacco forms which have been largely, by postcard cartoonists at least, been snuffed out.

But a Good Cigar is a Smoke

     Last week, in this space, we considered what the cartoonists who worked on postcards had to say about the smoking of cigarettes.  The subject is a little larger than we could cover in one column (which gives us an excuse to return to it later) but we did see how often a woman who waved a cigarette in one hand (especially if that cigarette was in a holder) was available for, um, romance.  (One unpaid advisor said I should have pointed out that a cigarette holder, ironically, hides her butt.  I do not dignify such jokes with a reply.)

     Cigars carry a similar weight in postcard cartoons.  A rich man, for much of the twentieth century, was hardly ever depicted without one.  A generation passed between the card at the top of this column and the next one, and yet the implication is clear.  This is someone who can afford to buy the good tobacco.

     As well as the attention of a good-looking young woman.

     AND, apparently, trousers with loud checks.

     But the cartoon cigar is versatile (as are the pants.)  Tough lowlife characters in cartoons and comic strips frequently sported cheroots.  The cigar was available in all qualities at all prices.  Vice President Thomas Marshall’s remark that what this country needs is a good five cent cigar is frequently taken as an observation on the rising cost of commercial goods, but ALSO refers to the wide availability of really bad five cent cigars.

     Of course, the tramp, hobo or bum of popular cartoons (see our long-distant blog discussing the differences between these chaps) depended on luck (the rich man tossing a half-smoked stogie away), charity (that nickel didn’t necessarily go for beer), or, er, other happenstance for what he smoked.  He sort of had to take things as he found them.

     For cartoon purposes, a bum without a cigar would have been as unrecognizable as one without stubble and a snub nose.

     So was the cigar always a sign of one extreme of wealth or the other?  Did no one in the middle class smoke cigars?  Postcards don’t give us enough evidence here.  THIS chap might be in a typical mid-century bungalow living room.  On the other hand, he is wearing a smoking jacket.  WITH a checkered collar.

     The best we can do is admit that occasionally someone with an actual workaday job can be seen smoking a cigar.  However, again, this gets us back into the line of tough guys who inhale robustos.

     The hard-working man was felt to be capable of dealing with the labor of cigar smoking, a more elaborate process than simply lighting a cigarette.

     As well as being tough enough to cope with the fact that the cheapness of tobacco was immediately detectable in the aroma and flavor.

     A man who smoked cigars was tough, a man who had proved he could take it, whether he wore a top hat,  a derby, checkered trousers, or overalls with his name on them.  A man, we must say, with a certain air about him.  (No, I MUST say that: it’s in the joketeller’s handbook.)

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter Thirteen

      Three meals had been spoken for; the bonbon in the gold wrapper had departed, perhaps to return one day.  Ada announced there would be tie enough to solve five murders before anything like food arrived.  The dim light of a candle and gold-shaded globes in the ceiling fell now upon the body of evidence: ten letters and the box of tombstone photographs.

     “Gracious!” said Mrs. Benz, holding one letter almost to her nose.  “I’ve never seen my eyes in this condition!”

     “It isn’t your eyes,” Matt told her.  He sipped a watery Diet Coke and deciphered one letter on a tombstone at a time.  This brought him no more satisfaction than reading the extortion letters, but he had to blush less.  The descriptions of Ada Silberwetter showed fine range and creativity, but concrete details about the threatened murder were sparse.

      “I suppose you’re sure it was murder,” Matt said, glancing over the top of a tombstone.  “And not coincidence?”

     Ada shifted in her seat and adjusted cloth that clung to one hip.  “I’d want to be pretty sure it was coincidence,” she said, reaching for her glass.

     Matt nodded.  So far, she’d been pretty cool about it all, considering the obvious vituperation and offered violence.  In her place, he’d have arranged for a bodyguard and cowered in his bedroom until the police had taken care of things.  But he had pretty solidly decided that he had very little in common with Ada Silberwetter.

     “They’re all signed ‘Miss Skull’,” he said next.  “So the picture of that skull must mean something.  There are skulls on most of the tombstones, too.  Does that tell you anything?”

     Ada shrugged.  “I know people with all kinds of nicknames.  But no ‘Miss Skull”.  That would be too easy.”

     “Oh, yes,” said Matt’s mother, most of her attention still on the letter at the end of her nose.  “The reviewers would jump on something like that in a story in no time.  Even an editor would notice.”

     Matt picked up one of the letters again.  “The envelope isn’t much help.  If the postmark showed the whole ZIP code we could tell what part of the city it came from, but otherwise….”

     Mrs. Benz looked around the page she held.  “Well,” she said.  “There’s a coil.”

     She had the envelope of the letter she held tucked behind the page, pointing at it while trying to pick up another. “That’s a stamp,” Matt told her.  “A flag stamp.”

     His mother blinked at him.  Yes, dear.  But see how it’s flat along the top and bottom, and perforated on the sides.  That means it came from a coil of stamps, and not a sheet or book.  This one’s a coil, too.”

     Each envelope featured a coil stamp.  “And they only sell whole coils,” said Ada, softly clapping her hands at thus feat of detection.  “So it could be some guy who swipes his stamps at the office, or just buys them a hundred at a time.”

     “Or one at a time at stamp machines,” Matt put in.

     Both women frowned at him, but he went on, “If he stole them at the office, he probably did the letters there, too.  So that eliminates our chance of identifying him by his typewriter at home.”

     “Maybe,” said his mother, adding another letter to her handful.  “But whoever did this typed the letters on one machine and the envelopes on another.  See?  The w in Silberwetter is tilted in the letters but not one the envelopes.  On the envelopes, the b drops a little below the line.”

     “Great!” Ada smoothed her hair without much effect.  “So the guy types the letters at home and then sneaks them to the office to swipe the stamps and envelopes.” She paused for an ovation and failed to get one.  “Are you listening over there?” she asked Matt.

     “Didn’t you see me yawn?”

     “Well, let’s not outline the plot before we get our notes in order,” said Mrs. Benz, briskly.  “You didn’t tell me much about the victim yet, except how he was just sitting at the table and fell into his soup.”

     “Facefirst,” said Ada, nodding.  “He wasn’t much of anyone.  His name was Nathaniel DiName and he was a high school volleyball coach until he married one of Marshall’s nieces or grandnieces and got into government.  He was, oh, sixty or so.  I don’t think he got picked for any particular reason.”

     Mrs. Benz took out a little notebook Matt had seen thousands of times.  “Well, that’s one of the things we need to find out.  First you need to figure out what you know already, and then you decide what you need to find out.  Now then.”  She straightened in her seat, released the handful of letters, and reached for a pen.  “Do you have any personal enemies?”

     Ada dimpled.  “I hope I don’t have any impersonal enemies.”

     Mrs. Benz, nodding, wrote down “Enemies”.  “Any ex-boyfriends who might still be upset?”

     Matt listened as his mother pursued this line of questioning, despite an absolute lack of straight answers to her inquiries.  Her persistence and method impressed him. She was lifting her method bodily, even to the line about what you already knew and what you needed to know, from her 1978 Barbara Chang mystery Palmer’s Guitar.

     Her subject, utterly and eternally self-possessed, insisted she had no enemies who would bother with threats.  “When I make somebody mad,” she said, “I make them mad enough to take action.”  Matt believed this.

     It seemed as though what they had to work with were these documents.  Matt looked through them again as the women continued their game of cat-and-mouse.

     There were nine letters with envelopes, one letter that had been folded into the box of photographs, and the brown paper that had been wrapped around the box.  These were postmarked at roughly one week intervals: September 30, October 9, October 13, October 21, October 28, November 2, November 10, November 17, November 24, and December 2.  The envelopes were plain white business envelopes with no return address, and one stamp each.  The brown paper had four stamps on it, but had arrived postage due, to Ada’s annoyance.  “This was a bit too much,” she had said, when she brought it out.  “An extortionist should show a little more class.”

     The letters had been typed on onionskin paper which had had some kind of letterhead cut away.  All ran to just one page, and each was signed “Moss Skull” in a broad, florid style with swirls and decorative dingbats.  Not until the November letters was there any mention of money, with rather specific anatomical suggestions of how Ada could raise these amounts.  Matt wondered if these were the reason she hadn’t gone to the police at once: until her stepgrandnephew died, she’d been having too much fun reading the correspondence.

     After the Thanksgiving demise, threats ad warnings were replaced by specific arrangements about payment.  Mrs. Silberwetter was enjoined to place one of three messages in the Personals column of the Reader.  Message A—“Miss Skull’s got no teeth”—meant Ada didn’t believe a word of it and would risk the consequences of nonpayment.   Message C—“Will pay to pull Miss Skull’s teeth”—indicated that Ada would pay a reasonable amount if Miss Skull sent am invoice.  Message B—“Let’s have a look at Miss Skull’s teeth”—meant Ada wanted more proof that Miss Skull was the person responsible for the accident at Thanksgiving.

     Limited light made all of this hard to read, but single-spaced lines crammed together on onionskin paper made things all but impossible.  It wasn’t until his hostess noted, “I knew all along he did it.  He’s trying to burn the evidence” that Matt realized how close the letter had come to the candle.

     “Ack!” he exclaimed.  But a genuine crisis never flustered him as much as mere awkwardness.  He dipped the flaming corner of the letter into his Diet Coke.

     “That might improve the flavor,” he said, checking to be sure he hadn’t destroyed any of the text.  “It looks….”

     He glanced up into the white bottoms of a pair of rolled eyes.  The head with the eyes in it turned away, and the body underneath hurried away.

    Matt reached out for Ada’s hand, nodding at the retreating figure.  “Oh, him,” she sniffed.

     The departing visitor was more worrisome to Matt than the brief fire, but it did his heart good to hear Walter Prince dismissed as “Oh, him! In just that tone.

     “Should he be on the enemies list?” he inquired.

     Ada shrugged.  “I never liked him and he never liked anybody.  But I wouldn’t say we’re enemies.  Besides, I don’t believe he’d be able to spell ‘voluptuary’.”  She pointed to one of the letters in front of Mrs. Benz.  “Not to mention ‘autofornication’.”

     Matt took up a dry letter.  “Well, if you hold it up to the light, you can see all the corrections.”

     Mrs. Benz, meanwhile, had finished writing up her notes and raised these, squinting at the large text.  “There.  With a list of what we know and what we don’t know, all we need to do is figure out the best way to learn everything on the second list.”

     “What do we do?”  Ada bounced forward in her seat.  Matt winced, disapproving of such active enthusiasm.

     “Never start unless you’re sure you can stop,” he muttered.

     Neither woman paid any attention.  His mother stuck her pen between her lips and then took it out again, waving it like a cigarette holder. “We need data.  A detective can’t detect without data.”

    Ada nodded.  “We just want the facts, Ma’am.”

     “Not necessarily facts.”  Mrs. Benz shrugged.  “But we do need data.  And that takes good, solid legwork.”

     “And for that,” Matt injected, “You need good, solid legs.”

     His mother admitted that with a rueful sigh.  “Let’s see.”  She pulled the letters together.  “Let me take these.  Maybe I’ll see something more when there’s enough light.  Matt, this weekend you need to go to the library and look up tombstones.  For now, dear, you work on the list of possible suspects.  Put down everything; I won’t tell.  It’ll be the Antisocial Register.”

     “Sure!”  Ada wriggled back in her seat.  “I’ll list all my ex-boyfriends in alphabetical ardor.”

     Matt winced.  Ada reached out to pat his hand.  “You’re allowed to applaud,” she whispered.