Last week, we considered a postcard showing a well-dressed young lady showing that she’d thought of you by holding up a finger with a string around it. Being of a basically guttertrending mind, I questioned the choice of finger for this, but had to admit the US Postal Service, historically very conservative about what it lets go through the mail, had postmarked it and sent it along. I have a few other postcards whose morals could be questioned. Take this driver. He knows he isn’t out of gas. His passenger knows he’s not out of gas. The MOON knows he’s not out of gas.
By the way, prior to the “out of gas” excuse, the go-to story, which extends back into the days when couples would go out bicycling together, was that there had been a bad puncture. Just to bypass any double entendres, this car does have a flat, which makes it all okay to be mailed.
What city couples did when they went out to the country is again left up to the imagination, though Walter Wellman has added “Do Not Disturb” signs (paying off the “No Trespassing” gag) and a few discarded shoes.
The moral here is obvious. When you get back from the country, you should not let your wife unpack your suitcase. The garment being brandished was not even allowed to be exhibited in shop windows in some communities, but the Post Office had no trouble letting this picture through.
I think the wife, like the Post Office, should be glad she’s showing just an ankle to prompt his memory.
This quite irreverent reference is found on postcards from the 1910s through at least the 1950s. The Post Office may have been grateful people were still familiar enough with their Bibles to get the joke.
The meaning of this joke depends on knowing what it meant when a woman “turns on the heat”, but in the heyday of the phrase, the scene of the scantily clad lady and the repairman was repeated on numerous postcards. (And comic books. AND movies.)
You can guess that what she REALLY means is a style of hat. So this is perfectly proper.
And speaking of rough sailing….
This was a wildly popular joke in wartime. Someone asked me whether it was the man or the woman who was being offered the management job. I had to duck after I said that obviously HER role was Labor.
Of course, the fact that she is pushing a baby carriage CAN be unrelated to the dialogue (despite the fact the Junior is thumbing his nose to reinforce the punchline.)
And this is really just my mind touring the gutters again. The gag of farmers shooting city slickers in the backside is ancient and non-controversial. I’m the only one who assumes this is the father of the hitchhiker above, recognizing the jasper from town, and aiming just a little lower than regular comedy calls for. Yeah, I can’t unsee it, so I’m passing it along to you, and NOT through the Post Office.
A sorry spot in serializing some of my non-fiction works in this space is a nagging refrain of “Remember how hard this was to research? Sure woulda been easier with the Interwebs”. Take, for example, my comparison of screen versions of “A Christmas Carol”, serialized herein not so long ago. It would easily have grown to at least double the size, with all the different versions of the movies which can now be found online, one or two of which were presumed lost when I was writing.
No, I am not tempted to go back and start over. Once was more than enough for the world, to judge by the rejections I had at the time and the wild excitement which did not greet each installment in this space. HOWEVER….
One thing that would have intrigued me very much at the time and which was almost inaccessible in my VHS days is the silent version of the Dickens tale. Not all of these survive, but enough do exist to fill a little space between now and my deciding what manuscript will come next n Mondays. (I wrote a sequel to The Sound and the Furry, for example, which apparently never went out to ANY publisher. I was waiting for all the royalties from the first book to be deposited, I guess.)
For example, when I was doing my original research, around 1999, only about fifteen seconds remained of “Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost”, the earliest known example of a film version of the story. It appeared in 1901, and gets its title because Jacob Marley is easily at least the second most important character in the show. It was one of the first films to have intertitles, pages of words between scenes to tell us where we are in the story. This comes back into OUR story later.
Footage is still missing at the beginning and end of the film, and what is left starts at the close of the first segment, with Bob Cratchit ushering someone (probably nephew Fred) out of the office of an angry Scrooge. Bob is one of the Cratchitiest Cratchits whoever Cratchitted, perfectly meek and gormless as Scrooge orders him around. (Scrooge is nowadays identified as Daniel Smith, after some fans, without a film to watch, thought it was Sir Seymour Hicks, star of the 1935 movie, who had started appearing on the stage as Scrooge in 1901.) After Cratchit departs for Christmas revels, Scrooge exclaims in shock about Bob leaving a candle burning and then puts on one of the most ridiculous hats ever worn by an Ebenezer to head home himself.
Scrooge’s house, obviously painted on a backdrop, and architecturally unlike any other Scrooge abode, is the setting for the one snippet available when I wrote my book: we watch as Scrooge pulls out his key, and a cutout appears over the doorknocker showing Jacob Marley’s face.
Now we can follow as Scrooge steps away in horror, the face disappears, and the miser opens the flimsy door to go inside. After jumping back in fear from his own curtains, he dons his bathrobe and cap and shuts the curtains, which are black so special effects can happen. Jacob Marley is mildly impressive when transparent against these. (Later, when he is shown solid, he looks like a man with a sheet over his head.) Marley is in charge of the visions of Christmas Past—young Scrooge being rescued from boarding school by his sister and then breaking things off with his fiancée–and, in part three of the film, visions of Christmas Present.
This is primarily the Cratchit Christmas, without much of a goose or plum pudding, but with a suitably limp Tiny Tim and a nice performance by Martha, whom her brothers and sisters hide UNDER THE TABLE until Bob gets home. ‘GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE” is on a banner over the door, but after a general genial toast to Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim does propose the blessing, to Scrooge’s despair. There is a very brief Fred party scene, and then we march outside to “The Christmas That Might Be”, the final chapter in the film as it now exists.
The now solid Marley shows Scrooge a wholly unconvincing gravestone right next to the sidewalk (putting the grave scene first in Yet To Come seems unique) and the briefest snippet of another scene: thanks to the intertitle card, we know this would have been at the Cratchits’ for the death of Tiny Tim. The film breaks off, so we do not get to see the next morning, Scrooge’s conversion, and so forth.
This movie gets a LOT of the story into what must have been a run time of about ten minutes (the longest version now online lasts about six.) The acting is perfectly reasonable, the special effects effective enough (producer and director alike were fascinated by such things , and the work of producer Robert W. Paul was cutting edge at the time), and withal, a credible effort, though it works a LOT better for people who have read the book and already know what’s going on. Scrooge spends most of his screen time simply reacting with hand wringing and fist pumping, but it’s not really fair to judge him without access to the big scenes at the beginning and end. And if Scrooge’s house and gravestone don’t convince, well, there are weirder sets in talkies two generations younger.
In our next thrilling episode, we’ll consider more silent versions which can be watched today, and a couple which can’t (and why that MIGHT be a sad thing.)
The joke archaeologist, digging around in bygone postcards, has turned up several which might or might not be a little naughtier than they look. Some of them I can help with, while others have confused me. Take the simple example above. Caption and concept were popular in cards around the start of the last century: women in their proper sphere showing men who was the weaker sex. But, um, look at the face of the woman on the right and tell me whether this is going somewhere…no, wait until I’m older.
This is of the same era and is one of a series with the same caption: different cards covered drinking, kissing, and modern fashion. But other cards from other companies used the same caption, covering the same ground. I have seen people explain this as a salute to boozing and/or canoodling. The line, though, became a catch phrase (or meme, as the kids were saying ten years ago) because of a wildly popular dance of 1909. The full quote is “Everybody’s doing it! Doing what? Turkey Trot!” The turkey trot, an extremely athletic dance which required hopping, jumping and scissor kicking, upset conservative souls. The Saturday Evening Post’s parent company fired employees for doing the Turkey Trot on their lunch break (excuse me?) and even the Vatican felt called upon to denounce such immoral antics. The Turkey Trot (along with the equally scandalous Grizzly Bear) fell out of favor as the Fox Trot, a less exhausting maneuver, took its place.
Seriously, who got fired over this? My own example, shown here, went through the mail, so maybe not everybody…. But that is definitely a hand gesture which goes back millennia, was repopularized in the nineteenth century (pre-Victoria, so your Regency lords and ladies would have understood) and now, I find, is considered by commentators to be especially associated with the music industry. The lady herself seems unconcerned, and maybe it’s flattering that she thinks of THAT finger when she thinks of…or maybe not.
Do people still use cloves (or Clove Gum) to cover the alcohol odor on their breath, or have we found something different? And has anyone done a dissertation on all the foods used to cover the aroma of this or that on their breath? A minor thug in Farewell, My Lovely uses cardamom, and kids in The Music Man were accused of using Sen Sen (licorice-flavored). It might work best as a video, without some neutral observer doing the breath-sniffing to evaluate results.
Here I am all at sea. I have been unable to trace the origin of this phrase, which seems to have been very popular in the first decade of the twentieth century, at least on postcards, where it always involves the beach and/or swimwear. Walter Wellman has turned it into something surreal, and I’m not sure I‘ve followed him all the way. Is the lady on the right just a contrast to the mermaids? Is the gentleman underwater, who does not seem to be wearing any breathing apparatus, a suitor or a disapproving parent? And is that…but we’re supposed to be looking at the mermaids, not him, so I just don’t know what all is going on. You tell me.
“So I get three wishes? Say yes or I’ll stick you back in the bottle.”
“Yes, my mistress, you are to receive, to the best of my ability, three wishes.”
“Good. I had to slaughter the entire Psiclysmian royal family, AND their horses and dogs, for access to the chest where they hid the bottle.”
“Yes, my mistress. I cannot, of course….”
“Skip it. I’ve worked a long time on my list and I don’t want you confusing me. I read up on you djinn while I was skinning princesses. No comments.”
“Very well, my mistress.”
“Now, I wish for an extended lifespan. Let’s say four thousand years with an option to renew.”
“That is no problem, my mistress.”
“And I wish for a tall castle on a remote mountain, furnished with all the luxuries I could want: a library with about a million different romantasy novels, a comfy reding room, an even comfier bedroom, and mute invisible servants who will bring me whatever I want to eat or drink, and tidy up around the place.”
“An excellent wish, my mistress.”
“And I want to be a gorgon.”
“I beg pardon, my mistress?”
“I figure if I have the reputation for being able to turn whatever I look at into stone, nobody’s going to come around and bother me while I’m trying to read.”
“The snakes will not be a problem, my mistress?”
“I wish to be a gorgon with the powers I mentioned and cute, cuddly snakes.”
“Here you are, my mistress. Being a djinn, I am immune to your gaze, so I can show you your reading room and then bid you farewell.”
“Excellent. Let’s see those invisible servants bring me a pot of hot Earl Grey tea and a plate of ginger snaps. Wow!”
“Yes, my former mistress. I shall now….”
“Wait! Did the cookies just turn grey?”
“You looked at them, Gorgon, and turned them to stone.”
“Well, that’s…. Wait! What happens when I try to read one of my books?”
“Farewell, oh Gorgon. Enjoy your first four thousand years. Don’t look at the comfy chair before you throw yourself…that’s going to leave a mark.”
Kerrin lived in the city of Sartain, and she liked it. She would write letters to her relatives who lived in the country, asking why they didn’t move to a nicer place.
“Everything in the city is clean and modern,” she wrote. “We have nice, solid rick buildings with none of your thatched roofs to let in the rain. We have gas lights in every room. There’s no need ever to walk out in the rain, for there are cabs pulled by strong horses to take you wherever you want to go. Our druggists have the newest pills and powders for fever, but I suppose your country doctors have nothing but tansy, sassafras, and pleurisy root. How can anyone live out in the middle of nothing, using dirt roads, with animals running every which where, when there are clean modern cities?”
A letter arrived one day to tell Kerrin that one of her relatives had passed away in Noverra, a village way out in the farmlands of Noverrashire. There was no question of Kerrin going that far out into the country to live, of course. But she thought she might just journey to Noverra to take a look at the house.
“People in the country are so backward,” she told her friends. “What can they know about buying and selling? I’ll tidy up the house and get a good price for it.”
Kerrin made most of the trip on a fast, powerful steam-powered train, but the train didn’t go to a town as tiny as Noverra. She had to ride some of the way on a crowded old-fashioned stagecoach. To get from the coaching station to the house, she had to ride with one of her new neighbors, a man named Lars, who had come to the station to meet her, bringing his wife, Joniel, and his six children in a farm wagon.
Kerrin wanted to be friendly. (Lars and Joniel might be willing to buy the house from her.) So she thanked them very politely for coming to fetch her, and set a handkerchief down on the board seat of the wagon before she sat down. Joniel asked if she had had a nice trip, and was obviously amazed that someone could travel that far from home and not be half dead from the excitement.
They spoke of this and that. Trying as she was to be nice, it was nonetheless not long before Kerrin had pointed out that the old-fashioned wheels of Lars’s farm wagon were broader and less elegant than those on city cabs. The city cabs moved faster, too, since their horses weren’t so fat from being overfed. A little later, she observed that children in the city wore shoes and certainly never ate apples which had fallen from trees by the road, with who knew what sort of dirt and insects on them.
“Oh!” she said, while looking at the trees. “What’s that? That sound?”
“Sparrow,” said Lars, who didn’t seem to say much.
“On that branch,” Joniel said, gesturing to one of the trees. “Do you see him?”
“My, he’s a little thing!” said Kerrin, looking the bird over. “In the city we have good, big healthy pigeons.”
Joniel and Lars listened to everything Kerrin had to say about the city, and the children listened to a lot of it. This was partly because they wanted to be polite (the lady from the city might be willing to sell them the house) and partly because not a one of them had ever been to the big city, and they wanted to hear all about it. Kerrin was more than willing to tell them, and she liked to be listened to. So she really had a nice ride, despite having to sit in an open cart with a dirty floor, until they reached her house.
“Oh, my stars!” cried Kerrin.
Aunt Malda’s cottage was just what she’d feared: a poky little thing with whitewashed walls of uneven stones, and a roof made of straw, The inside was worse: small and dark. There were no gas lights, of course: only a rusty amp that smoked and a few stubby candles. Things sat every whichaway on tiny shelves.
“And I’ll have to sweep all this dirt off the floor first thing!”
“I don’t like to tell you what to do,” said Joniel, who had come into the cottage with her. “But I believe I ought to tell you that this is a dirt floor.”
Kerrin stared at her neighbor in horror and then hurried to the back door. “They said there was a garden.”
It was no garden, so far as Kerrin was concerned. Gardens were neat little squares behind your house. This was much too big for a proper garden: it looked like an acre of plants or more. How had Aunt Malda managed such a thing?
At least it was tidy. The pants did grow in straight rows, or little squares, each plant in its proper place. Kerrin wasn’t sure what some of the plants were, but she had brought along a book on farm plants to read in the evenings. Yes, she thought: a very neat and pretty garden, if you overlooked the unsuitable size. All that spoiled the neat arrangement was one twisted little tree, standing by itself in the middle of everything.
“That will have to be cut down at once,” she said, pointing her parasol at it.
Joniel stared at her. “What? Are you serious? I….” Then she laughed.
“I don’t believe I said anything funny,” Kerrin told her neighbor.
“But….” Joniel stopped and took a quick look around the garden, though she could see very clearly there was nobody there. Then she leaned in toward Kerrin and whispered, “That’s the fair folks’ thorn tree.”
Kerrin frowned. “The what?”
“That tree belongs to the fair folk.” Joniel looked over her shoulder and, leaning in closer, whispered even lower, “The fairies.”
“Well, of all the nonsense!” said Kerrin, and now she did laugh at her neighbor’s joke. “Aunt Malda may have been backward enough to have a dirt floor, but even she couldn’t have believed….”
But Joniel was not laughing. “Every house in this quarter has a tree for the fair folk.” Her tone was serious. “That way, they’ll not bother the rest of the garden. And it’s best to put milk on the back doorstep, so they don’t come in and upset the house.”
This was very foolish. Kerrin thought about finding an axe and cutting the tree down there and then. But she realized this was exactly the sort of thing she had expected from people who lived in the country. And, after all, if every cottage around here had to have a thorn tree for the fairies, she wouldn’t be able to sell Aunt Malda’s house without it.
“No, I won’t cut it down,” she told Joniel, who looked relieved. “It’s pretty enough, in its way, and it may have its uses.”
“It does have uses,” Joniel said, again looking left and right as if expecting a fairy to leap at her from the dirt. “But the fair folk are using it.”
“Mmmmm,” said Kerrin. She decided she would not tell this woman her opinion about leaving milk outdoors at night.
Next morning, Kerrin set to work putting Aunt Malda’s cottage to rights. It was not easy work, even for a woman like Kerrin, who liked to keep busy. Water had to be fetched from the creek at the far end of the garden, and all Aunt Malda had were two small buckets with rusty handles. In the city, he burned coal to keep warm, but Aunt Malda had not even used wood, just old-fashioned peat. The only wood in the house was the furniture, and Kerrin decided she probably shouldn’t burn that, though burning was all most of it was good for.
Joniel came over to visit nearly every day, bringing over some milk or a cheese, and chatting about what a lovely cottage this was, and what Kerrin might expect for it, should Kerrin ever think of selling it. She never stayed long, because she had her own cottage and garden to care for, not to mention all those children.
She dropped by very early one morning, when Kerrin had just finished doing the laundry. That turned out to be a horrible job, with all the water to haul, and then heat over peat in the fireplace. If Aunt Malda had at east owned a nice modern stove…but no, there was just the fireplace, with all kinds of hooks and metal brackets Kerrin didn’t recognize.
Hooks were set in the walls of the cottage as well, and there was a rope that was obviously meant for a clothesline. Kerrin refused to hang her clothes to dry inside. The cottage was still dusty and dirty, and she was sure something like bats or mice lived in the roof, making noise the whole night through.
Instead, she took the clothes outside. A light breeze blew through the garden, and this would likely dry the clothes in no time if they could be hung on something. The thorn tree, standing all alone, was perfect/ It was neither especially neat nor especially modern to be hanging laundry on a tree, but the clothes would not need to be there very long.
Kerrin had set the last of the garments on the tree when Joniel walked into the garden, saying, “I came to ask….” Then Joniel stopped, and stared.
“Is that safe?” she asked. “I’m sure the…the fair folk hang their own laundry there.”
“I decline to believe any such thing,” Kerrin informed her. “And in any case, why should your fairies have the same wash day I do?”
Joniel looked around the yard. “I’m sure they….”
Kerrin sighed. “Ket’s go inside for a cup of tea. I have any amount of hot water left over.”
“Oh, I can’t stay,” Joniel told her, “I only came over in case you didn’t know about the fair, and needed a ride into town.”
“Fair?” said Kerrin. “No, I didn’t know.”
“That’s why I’m dressed up,” said Joniel.
Was Joniel dressed up? All Kerrin could tell was that her apron and bonnet were a bit whiter than the ones she wore every day, while her face and hands were clean for a change, Her eyes were shining. The fair was something special to her.
Kerrin didn’t especially want to visit some little country fair where she would no doubt be surrounded by smelly chickens, goats, and pugs. If she did go, she didn’t want to ride in a dirty old farm wagon.
“I’ll wait ‘til my wash is dry,” she told Joniel. “You folks go ahead. I can walk to town.”
“Are you sure?” said Joniel.
“Oh yes,” said Kerrin. “You go ahead.”
“All right,” said her neighbor, and ran back to join the family in the wagon.
Kerrin walked inside and started the tea. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that, unpleasant as it might be, a fair was just the place to meet people who might buy Aunt Malda’s cottage and garden. Oh, she knew Lars and Joniel wanted it, but she didn’t suppose they had enough money. People with money weren’t so backward as to believe in fairies.
Supping her tea, she stepped out ito the garden to check her clothes. Nearly everything was dry; she had known the breeze would take care of this. Wind banged the shutters all nifgt olong on the cottage windows, but it was good for something, She gathered the garments and took them inside, to pick out the best things to wear to the fair.
She was sorry she had not brought her new hoop skirts from the city. But it would be wise, she supposed, not to look TOO much nicer than everyone else. People might be too impressed to come up and talk to her.
Still, she had to look her best with what she had brought. Kerrin picked out the whitest of her petticoats, and the green dress that went so well with her hair. She pinned the skirt and the outermost petticoat above her knees, to keep them from being soiled as she walked along the dusty country road. When she reached town, she could remove the pins to let skirt and petticoat down. Spying a little smudge on her right shoe as she was pinning the petticoat, she took out a handkerchief and wiped it clean, muttering “Dirt floors!”
Now she needed something for her head. The cottage was, as always, dark inside, but she spied a green bonnet on top of the clothes she’d brought in from the thorn tree. She could not remember this bonnet, but there it was, and the perfect shade of green to go with her gown. Picking it up, she could smell the country breeze in it.
Tying the strings of the bonnet under her chin, she stepped out of the cottage. What a glorious day! She took a deep breath. The wind blowing across the garden smelled all warm and green. As ever, the road was dry and dirty, but Kerrin liked it. And the breeze was beautiful. City breezes smelled of dust, brick dust from all those brick buildings, or coal dust from the chimneys/ There weren’t enough trees there for the breeze to pass through.
Noy far from the cottage, the road passed through a small grove of trees. Kerrin had never walked there before, for fear something would drop on her from the branches. Now, though, she skipped right on in, singing “La la la la!”
“What a great tree!” She stopped in the middle of the grove to look around, and patted the trunk. “Hello, tree!”
Looking up, she found a squirrel staring down at her. “Hello, Squirrel! Are you hungry? You look hungry. In the city, people throw food to the squirrels. Why don’t you come with me to the fair and I’ll throw you at the food!”
The squirrel did not answer, so Kerrin decided to climb up and talk it over. Climbing would be awkward with these shoes, so she sat down in the road and took them off and then, throwing them her left shoulder, she started up the side of the tree.
Of course, the squirrel was not on the branch when she reached it. She looked around, but there was no squirrel to be seen.
“If these untidy branches weren’t in the way,” she pouted, “I could see things.” So she set about braiding the branches to make nice, even rows. Before she had finished more than three, though, she spotted two birds’ nests.
“Now, look at that!” she cried. “One nest has three eggs and one has five. This is highly untidy!”
She reached into the second nest to take out an egg and add it to the other so the nests would be even. But before she could do that, she spotted a feather on the edge of that nest.
“Here’s the thing for wearing to a fair!” she squealed. She looked around the sides of both nests but there was only the one feather.
“It doesn’t matter,” she declared. “These leaves are very much the same shape.” At once she tore leaves from the branches, stuffing them into her collar and cuffs. Once she had as much as she could hold there, she tried sticking them to her sleeves and face and bright green bonnet.
Those leaves just fell off. “Now what?” she demanded, swinging her legs over the branch. “Oh!”
From up here, she could spy the creek that ran from behind her garden through the grove of trees. The water seemed quicker here, and possibly deeper. Tall banks of mud rose on each side of the stream’s course.
“Mud!” she cried. “Just the thing for leaf-feathers!”
Jumping up, she ran along the branch until she was nearly over the mud. When she reckoned she was close enough, she bent her knees and jumped. Branches tore at her clothes, and one of her sleeves came right off. Kerrin didn’t mind. She landed, sitting down, on the mud at the very top of the bank.
“Whee!” she cried, sliding through the mud right down into the stream. Putting her head under water, she took a long drink.
There was plenty of mud to smear all over her face and clothes. She found a big hole in the bank, and dug into that for a while. Nobody seemed to be at home.
She climbed through the mud back to the road. On the way to Noverra, she said hello to some very interesting snails, a friendly snake, some cheerful beetles, and, of course, a butterfly. A grey goose flew overhead, but she knew it was too far away to hear her.
After checking out another empty hole along the road, she noticed that most of her leaves had actually fallen off during her climb up the bank. “There’s only one thing to do about that,” she announced, and climbed another tree to get some more.
Swinging from branch to branch, she plucked a few leaves here and a few there, giving her a nice variety, until she reached the end of the woods. This was also the edge of the village. Kerrin jumped from the last branch, did a little somersault on the road, and sat up to look over the village.
The village was very pretty, and she heard music. She coughed. The dust of the road had a nice color, and looked striking against the darker mud, but there was a wee bit too much of it. If she could have some water…only the creek was way behind her in the woods.
Not far away, though, she spotted a huge trough where people who brought their horses into town could get them a drink. “Just the thing!” Kerrin cried. “I’ll get a drink and wash off some of this extra dust while I’m there!”
Several people came over to watch as she stepped up to the trough, unbuttoning her dress. She saw Lars and Joniel among them, and waved. “I’ll be with you in just a minute!”
Her hand brushed the strings of her bonnet. She undid those and took it off.
Kerrin stared at the bonnet in her hands. This wasn’t her bonnet. Was it one of Aunt Malda’s? She didn’t remember having a bonnet like this at all. Well, no matter. She needed to finish dressing so she could go to town. What else did she need to put on?
She glanced down at her clothes. “My heavens! What happened?” She was amazed at all the dirt: she’d have to get dressed all over again! WHY couldn’t Aunt Malda have had a nice, modern wooden floor> She reached to pull her dress from her shoulders. She paused.
This dirt was not the same color as the dirt of the old floor. But maybe that was because the sun was shining on it. The sun?
Looking up again, she saw the crowd of people watching her. In the same moment, she realized her dress was unbuttoned, and torn to scraps anyhow. Twigs and leaves and other garbage were stuck all over her. The only clean garment she had seemed to be this strange bonnet she still didn’t recognize. Where had it…. Oh, yes. It had been with the clothes she had dried on the thorn tree.
Her mouth dropped open. Turning, with a shriek she ran right back to the cottage, never slowing down for a second. Slamming through the front door, she sped out the back, and burst into the garden.
“Take it back!” she screamed, and hurled the bonnet at the thorn tree.
The bonnet flew into the sky and was gone. Kerrin looked around the ground to see where it had fallen. But it had vanished as if it had never been. Exhausted, she sat down on the back doorstep.
“Owww!” she cried, jumping back up. She had sat on an empty bowl. She knew very well she had not put a bowl on the doorstep.
In the end, Lars and Joniel bought the cottage and garden. Kerrin did not wait around to argue about the price. She left for Sartain the day after the fair.
“How brave of you to stay for so long in the country!” said her city friends. “Why, the people in that dreary little village probably can’t even read or write!”
“Maybe not,” said Kerrin. She shuddered. “But for all that, some of them know a thing or two worth remembering.”
Negotiating with an evil spirit is no joke. Not from the human side, anyway. The spirit stopped even attempting to hide its snickers as I went through the arduous and occasionally embarrassing ritual to make my request.
But at last I had it: one hour in my hometown fifty years to the moment before I activated the wish. The research on this was almost as much trouble as the ritual. Loopholes had to be anticipated and closed. Choosing the day, for example: it would have blasted the plan to smithereens if I hadn’t checked first to make sure that day wasn’t a Sunday, or legal holiday half a century ago. (No second chances: no way would I perform that sixth step of the ritual again, even if enough albino wasps were still available.) I had to be sure of events in the sky and in the town on the day selected: a hailstorm or a festival parade would have complicated getting through my LIST.
The LIST took weeks to prepare, which kept me busy all the days I spent in bed recovering from the ceremony. Buy this comic book. Deposit that much money in this bank under that name. Send a letter that should arrive in time to prevent a shooting, send another urging a politician to run in an election he opted out of the first time. Leave notes in a lawyer’s office, with an agreement that they should be sent out on schedule so my mother would avoid a certain intersection on a certain day, my sister would not go to a certain dance, and my brother would NOT buy that hat. I had to seek out stamps, unused, of a vintage which would not startle the post office, and provided myself with cash of the same era. That hour in the past had cost me plenty; it would NOT be ruined by technicalities.
Everything on the LIST was ranked, in case anything took longer than expected and I had to leave some items out. Be sure I left some minutes in the hour empty, to allow for my wonder at finding myself in a town I remembered so well (and for getting lost, in case I didn’t remember it as well as I thought.) Ridiculous haircut, vintage clothes that would pass: I had provided for everything. I checked that vintage pocket four times to make sure the LIST was inside. Then I spoke the spell.
Negotiating with an evil spirit is no joke. Did it KNOW I would forget to eat before I set off?
I flickered into being and knew the spell had worked. There was the Sugar Pit. My hometown still boasts a Sugar Pit, but it is tidy and clean and in another neighborhood. This was the original, a drive-in way out on Main Street with a couple of bleached and battered benches on one side. In lieu of a printed menu or even a sign with prices, pictures of every sundae and sugar concoction were plastered on every exterior wall, top to bottom, leaving a small space for the
order window. My childhood vocabulary experienced great growth when I listened to my father’s mutterings as we kids wandered along the walls, debating the merits of strawberry and pineapple and marshmallow before settling on what we always ordered. They also sold one type of hot dog and one type of hamburger. (I said this was fifty years ago.)
The prices staggered me, and I had allowed some extra time. I could certainly afford a hot dog, both in price and time spent, as I worked out where to go first from here in accomplishment of the LIST. I reached for my pocket change and then considered the hamburger. Hot dogs could be unpredictable. Then I saw the sign for that nickel cone. I walked around a bit, looking over the variations on what my grandmother called “ice cream on a stick”. I had time for dessert, if it came to that. Should it be what I had always ordered, way back when, or one of those I never tried, which might have meant risking fifty whole cents on an unknown quantity?
I had time, once I had made my decision, to order, sit down, and consume the hot dog, cherry Sugar Slosh, and pineapple sundae before I found myself back in the present.
Negotiating with an evil spirit: you try it. My brother can KEEP that stupid hat.
“How are we doing? Turkey’s started, cranberries cooling….”
“ Ma! Uncle Burt says he’s coming after all.”
“Okay, we’ll get one more blueberry pie out of the freezer, then.”
“That’s easy. Oh, for…. He’ll have Aunt Alyxxa with him, won’t he?”
“I suppose so. Just remember, when she asks you into the guest bedroom for a quickie, tell her you can’t before dinner.”
“But, Ma, after dinner….”
“Yes, dear, but you know what short attention spans dryads have. After dinner she’ll want to go out in the yard and talk to each tree and each dead leaf individually.”
“But what if I have to sit next to her? She always smells like mulch. And last year she had those squirrels in her hair and they ate all the mixed nuts!”
“I remember that, for sure. And they kept teasing Rover until he….”
“Just got off the phone. Cousin Linda wants to come.”
“Okay, then, go get in that extra chair from the back porch.”
“And she’s still engaged to Prince Ilvesakker.”
“Ma! He’s even worse than Aunt Alyxxa!”
“Listen, honey, you’ve got place cards to make. Let’s sit them next to each other.”
“What? They got in a fight last year about some guy they both knew during the Trojan War, and his spell broke the dining room ceiling light.”
“And her spell gave us squeaking mushrooms in the cookie jar. Remember, Ma?”
“Yes, but they were at opposite ends of the table. I betcha if they sit next to each other, they’ll get that mad at each other that she’ll take HIM to the guest bedroom.”
“Ha! Ten to one, they’ll head out under the spruce tree.”
“Well, it’s not as if the neighbors have any room to talk. They’ve got their own family troubles. Remember when Mrs. Gallant’s brother-in-law….”
“Hey, Ma, maybe that’ll make Uncle Burt and Cousin Linda break up with them so next year they won’t….”
“You don’t read enough otherworldly romances. I hope there’s enough room for the four of ‘em under the spruce tree.”
Stug’s eyes went all round, and nearly rolled down his pale cheeks at the sight of Creston putting the big jeweled hat on. It just sat on top of Creston’s head, being the type of crown that wasn’t designed to come down over the ears.
“Hmmmm,” said Creston, “I guess I’ll have to pin it on when I’m King.”
Stuf was mad enough to spit. All the time the king was so sick, Stug had ruled the country. In fact, he thought he could have gone on ruling it, without any king. But if anyone deserved to be king, with crown and robes and orb and sword and all the other regalia, he felt he was that one. And here stood this kid out of the country who thought he could be king just by picking up the crown, simply because the old king had said anyone could be king by picking up the crown.
There had to be some way to get the young man out from under that hat. So Stug bowed and said, “What wonderful news, sir!”
Creston frowned. “Shouldn’t you have said, ‘What wonderful news, Your Majesty’?”
“Oh, in good time, sir, in good time.” The prime minister bowed again. “But there are, er, four traditional tests you must pass to show you are worthy to be our king.”
“I would’ve thought picking up the crown proved that,” said Creston.
“It does, sir, it does,” said Stug, taking Creston by one arm and leading him out into the palace. Of course, it does. But there are these little traditions involved in becoming a monarch, you see: part of the fussy business of royalty. I don’t know why anybody would want the job, myself. I hope you pass the tests, sir. Otherwise I’ll have to be king myself, and I simply don’t have the time.”
“It would be very difficult to be two important people at once,” said Creston. “What’s the first test?”
“Oh, um, the tests are of earth, air, water, and fire,” Stug told him. “But it is, er, late, and I need to look up the books and forms for the proper order of the tests.”
“Somebody should have done that by now,” said Creston, “When I am….”
“And it is late, sir,” the Prime Minister went on. “And first we should really celebrate your victory over those demons. How did you manage to get past them, sir?”
Creston shrugged. “Oh, I just asked if they’d go somewhere else for a bit, and they did.”
The prime minister’s eyes went wide, and then went narrow. He wasn’t quite sure he believed this story. But since he hadn’t thought of asking the demons to leave, he couldn’t be sure that wouldn’t work. So he just led Creston to a great banquet hall, where many of the kingdom’s nobles ate, some with burned fingers, and waited to find out what would become of their country.
“Rejoice!” Stug shouted, entering with Creston. “This young man has defeated the demons and picked up the crown! Once he has passed the four great tests, he will be king!”
There was a great deal of applause from those people who didn’t particularly care who was king as long as those demons were out of the castle. A few who had wanted to be king themselves grumbled. (Those with burned fingers couldn’t have applauded much in any case.) A young duke near the door scratched his head and asked, “What four great tests?” But Stug kicked the young duke in the ankle and called for the servants to bring extra food and drink for a celebration.
Though Creston was hungry, he had some diffficulty eating, with so many people coming over to shake his hand. He supposed he could get used to that, and it was certainly nothing to be afraid of. He had a good time.
After the banquet, Stug himself escorted Creston to the royal bedroom for a good night’s sleep. “I have had time to check the books, sir,” the Prime Minister said. “The first test is to lock you in the highest tower in the palace and see whether you can get down again without using the stairs. I’ll take you there first thing in the morning.”
“Why, I’m much obliged to you,” said Creston. “Thank you.”
“It is my duty and my pleasure, sir,” said Stug, smiling. “I hope you are not afraid of heights, sir?”
“I never have been before,” said Creston. “Burt perhaps you have higher heights in the city. We shall see.”
“Yes,” said Stug. And, not smiling now, he left the bedroom, his mind turning over ways to make tests as difficult as he could.
The royal bedroom was not what Creston was used to, being rather large and bright with glowing jewels and shiny ornaments. But eh supposed je could sleep anywhere. Hanging his clothes, and the bagful of demons, on a bedpost, he climbed under the rich blankets.
“Four tests aren’t bad,” he told himself, “As long as none of them involve the one thing I’m afraid of. That would be an unpleasant way to find out what it is.”
He had just set his head on the pillows when he heard a gurgling sound. Looking over at his clothes, he saw a flicker of red from the magic bag. A head with flared nostrils popped out of the opening.
Creston did not think this was worth getting up for. “Don’t you dare come out of that bag without my permission.”
“No, Master,” said the demon. “Sorry, Master. Just checking, Master, to make sure you hadn’t died or something.”
“Now how should a demon care what becomes of me?”
“Why, the Chief, he gets into a real snit if one of us has some tiny little accident like getting put in a bag,” said the demon, laughing a little. “Perfectly understandable thing, of course, but it upsets him no end. So it would be a pity if anything happened to you before we got to do it.”
Creston could not immediately see why one of these would be more of a pity than the other. “A pity for whom?”
“Us, of course.” The demon showed long slick teeth. “He won’t be nearly so mifty about it if we bring you back with us, all torn to shreds.”
Creston yawned. All the walking and waiting and talking of the day had left him extremely tired. “Well, you can relax. I think I am more likely to be king than dead soon. I need only pass four tests.”
“Tests?” said the demon. “What kind of tests?”
“I’m not sure about them all yet,” said Creston, yawning again. “But first thing in the morning I have to get down from a high tower without using the stairs.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“It’s traditional,” said Creston. “The man who told me about it is named Stug, I think. I wasn’t introduced to too many people tonight for me to remember all the names.”
“Stug,” murmured the demon. “Stug. I think I’ve seen him. Tall fellow? Blue hair? Kind of a nasty look in one eye?”
“Maybe” said Creston. “Which eye?”
The demon shook his head. “I think he may try to trick you, Master, so that he can be king himself. You’d do well to call on me for help when you find yourself in that tower.”
“I suppose a demon would think a demon’s help would be useful,” said Creston. “I wouldn’t know. But if I can’t think of anything myself tomorrow, I’ll give you a call. What’s your name?”
The demon’s nose twitched. Creston could barely hear him answer, “Puppy.”
Creston didn’t laugh. It wasn’t that he was afraid to laugh; he was just too polite. “Very well, Puppy. I’ll call you tomorrow if I need you. Now get back into that bag and let me sleep.”
And the demon did, for as is well known, demons have very little power over people who are not afraid of them.
Stug knocked on the royal door very early the next morning. “So sorry, sir,” he said, “I thought you might like to take care of these little tests right away, so as to have the rest of the day free to be king.”
“That sounds good,” said Creston, getting dressed. “The first test is at the top of the tower, isn’t it? What’s the weather like today?”
“A little chilly, sir,” the Prime Minister replied. “You might wish to wear your cloak. If you didn’t bring one, I will happily lend you mine.” A cloak was a small price to pay for getting rid of a tiresome country boy.
Stug conducted Creston all the way through the palace and up a long winding staircase to a high tower. Over the edge of the low wall, Creston could see most of the city and quite a lot of forest beyond it. The view might have frightened some people, but Creston said, “My! Am I going to be king of all that?”
“That and more, sir,” said Stug. “If you get down, of course. So that you don’t forget and accidentally use the stairs, sir, I’ll just nail this door shut.” The Prime Minsiter stepped backward to the stairs and slammed the door. Creston heard hammering.
The wind swept across the tower. Creston, walking back to the wall for another look, was nearly knocked off by a strong gust.
“That would be one way to get down,” he said to himself. “But I can’t say I’d get much pleasure out of it. I wonder how the stone in the floor got so very greasy.”
He thought about it, wrapping the cloak the Prime Minister had given him a little tighter. “Surely that Mr. Stug is too polite, and too important besides, to be greasing stones. But I surely can’t climb down the tower, with this grease all over my boots. Like as not I’d slip and find out that falling from the tallest tower in the land is the one thing I’m afraid of.”
Unslinging the bag from his waist, he opened it and called inside. “Puppy? Puppy? Here Puppy, Puppy!”
“That’s not funny,” said a steaming demon head, rising from the bag. “What do you want?”
“Come out here and help me, if you can,” said Creston.
The demon cheerfully jumped from the bag and looked around. “Well, you are in a pickle, Master. Aren’t you afraid I’ll just run off and leave you here?”
“Nope,” said Creston.
“What will you do about the tower, if I go?” asked the demon, rather annoyed.
Creston shrugged. “If you lied about helping me, maybe you lied about me needing any help.”
“Oh, very well,” sighed the demon. “Let me have your cloak.”
“It’s Stug’s cloak,” Creston said, taking it off.
“So much the better,” Puppy replied. “Hold the four corners, just like this. That’s fine, Master. Hold it right there.”
Puppy crouched and breathed steam up into the cloak. “Wait!” said Creston, hanging on, “I’m supposed to go down, not up!”
“Well, of course, Master,” said the demon, hopping onto his shoulders. “But we have to get off this tower first.”
The steam inside the cloak lifted it like a balloon. Creston, with the demon on his shoulders, drifted with the wind, over the castle and over the city. As the wind blew the cloak away, it also cooled the steam inside, so Creston and Puppy eventually came down in some trees north of the city.
“What fun!” Creston had enjoyed the ride and the view very much. “You did a fine job, Puppy. You can go home now.”
“Just like that?” said the demon. “You’re letting me go free?”
“You did me a good turn,” Creston said, shaking some leaves from the cloak and then putting it back on. “Go where you will.”
Puppy jumped up into the sky. “Very well, Master,”” he said. “Until we meet again.” With a nasty wink, the demon disappeared. Creston supposed that wink meant the demon would come back at some future time to do him an ill turn. But he had other things to think about.
A big head had poked itself out of the bag at his waist. “Brother Puppy’s been gone a long time,” said this demon. “Where is he?”
“I sent him home,” Creston replied. “He did me a good turn.”
The demon’s face twisted up at Creston. “Um, Master, if I did you a favor would you let me go, too? This bag has rocks in it, and I hate sleeping on rocks.”
Creston heard coach wheels rumbling furiously along the road. “It could happen. Do you know much about tests of earth, fire, and water?”
“Master,” said the demon, blowing a little flame from his nose, “I know everything. Ask me anything!”
“I will, then.” Creston thought the coach wheels sounded closer. “What’s your name?”
The big round cheeks blushed. “Well, it’s Bunny.”
“Very well, Bunny,” said Creston. “I will call you if I need you. Now, hide your head.”
The Prime Minister was whipping the coach horses to greater speed. He pulled hard on the reins when he saw Creston at the side of the road.
“So!” he cried. He seemed to have trouble breathing for a moment.
Then he jumped from the coach. “How happy I am to see you, sir! You’re ready for the trial of fire, I suppose? The place isn’t far from here. Not afraid of fire, are you, sir?”
“I never have been,” said Creston. “But maybe you have hotter fires in the city.”
“We shall see,” said Stug, leading him to the coach “We shall see.”
He drove Creston to a big field of hay with a tree at the center. Using a bit of rope, he tied Creston to this tree, and said, “Wait here, sir.”
“Wait here,” Creston repeated. “Is that all there is to this test?”
“You’ll find it’s enough.” The Prime Minister jumped into his coach and drove back the way he’d come.
“He didn’t mention how long I should wait,” Creston thought. It did not take very long, though. Soon he saw a pillar of smoke rising from where Stug had driven. He smelled the smoke, too.
Being a strong young man, it did not take him long to free himself from the rope tying him to the tree. Now, though, as he looked around, he saw smoke on every side.
“I wonder what one does about this sort of thing,” he thought. Flames were now showing under the smoke around the burning field. “Well, if anyone should know, it’s a demon.” He opened the bag and called, “Oh, Bunny!”
That big head popped up at once. “What is it, Master?”
“Someone seems to have set this field on fire,” Creston told him, gesturing at all the smoke. “What should I do about it?”
“Burn, most likely,” Bunny replied, climbing out of the bag. “Perhaps I shall just run off and enjoy watching that from a distance.”
“Perhaps I can think of something,” Creston told him. “If you can’t.”
“Who says I can’t?” demanded the demon. “Did Puppy say that? Did he? You just watch this, Master.”
Binny squatted a little and began to shoot flames from his nose. Then he ran all around the tree, setting the hay alight all around them.
“If this is your idea of help,” said Creston, coughing from all the smoke, “I don’t believe I care for it.”
“Wait and watch, Master,” Bunny told him. Puffing up his cheeks, he blew on the flames, which rushed into te fields, burning everything in their path. Soon, they ran into the flames coming from the other direction and, finding there was nothing interesting left to burn there, went out together.
“Now what, Master?” asked Bunny, who had been hopping around and applauding all the smoke and flames.
“Why, I see now that you helped quite a bit,” said Creston, coughing and wiping soot from his face. “You may go.”
Bunny frowned. “I thought you were going to kick me in the head and throw me back into the bag.”
“No,” said Creston. “Didn’t I say you could go if you helped me?”
“Yes, but…oh, I shall never understand humas! Until we meet again then, Master!” Bunny hopped up the side of the tree, winked at Creston, and disappeared. No doubt, Creston thought, looking over the ruined field, this demon was planning to come back and do something wicked later. He shook his head.
“Master?”
“Is that you, Bunny? No, I see it is not.” Another head had poked its way out of the bag. “How do you do? How are the rocks?”
“Delicious,” said the demon. “Nut ow I’ve eaten them there’s nothing left for me to eat in here. May I go now?”
“If you help me with my next test.” Creston had realized that whether Stug was trying to hurt him or not, these tests were certainly not very healthy. “If I need help, I’ll call on you. What’s your name?”
The demon wrinkled its nose. “Kitty.”
“Ah!” said Creston. “And you’re a good eater, are you?”
“Master,” said the demon. “I can eat anything. And then I can spit it out and eat it again while it’s still crying for mercy.” Kitty eyed Creston’s leg with interest.
“Get back in the bag,” ordered Creston, not at all frightened by the demon’s long teeth. “When I want something eaten, I’ll let you know.”
The demon had just disappeared when Creston spotted a coach being driven very quickly through the smoking field. The Prime Minister pulled the horses up just a few feet from the tree, and stared at Creston, eyes and nostrils wide. Then he showed his teeth in a really wonderful smile. What fascinated Creston was the way the Prime Minister could smile and smile and still never look very happy.
“I am so glad to see you passed the test, sir!” Stug cried.
“I’m glad to hear that you’re glad to see that,” said Creston, climbing in next to him. “What’s the next test?”
Stug turned the coach around and whipped the horses to a run through the smouldering hay. “This is the test of earth, sir,” he said, as he drove into a graveyard. “I hope you are not afraid of graves, sir.”
“I haven’t been before,” said Creston, jumping down from the coach and walking over to look into a hole in the ground. “But perhaps your graves are deader in the city.”
Stuf smiled some more. “Jump in, then, sir.”
Creston shrugged and jumped into the deep hole. “Nope,” he called back up. “I can’t say I’m afraid of this one. Is that all there is to the test?”
Two men with shovels were standing next to Stug. “Not quite, sir,” said the Prime Minister, smiling so as to show even more teeth. “Just count to one hundred and then climb out.”
Stug turned to the two men. “Fill it in,” he said.
Holding his borrowed cloak over his head, Creston was able to keep most of the dirt out of his mouth and nose. But he was covered completely before he had counted to fifty-four, until he could see nothing and hear nothing. The last thing he thought he heard was the Prime Minister saying, “Let’s see you pass this test, country boy.”
Creston was not quite out of breath when he reached one hundred. He was able to put one hand on the bag at his waist and call “Here, Kitty, Kitty!”
Flickering light showed at the opening of the bag, and the demon looked out. “Not much room in here, Master,” it said. “How about if I go home now and come back later?”
Creston shrugged. “If you like.”
The demon stared. “Aren’t you afraid of being left buried here?”
“Well, now.” Creston shrugged again. “If you can get out, perhaps I can follow.”
“Ho ho ho,” said Kitty. “I can swim through earth, Master, but the only way for you to get out would be if I ate all the new dirt they’ve shoveled in.”
“Do that, then,” suggested Creston.
“I might as well,” the demon sighed. “I am so hungry.”
In no time at all, sunlight was pouring on Creston’s face, and he had to cry, “Stop! Leave something for me to climb out on!”
“That was a marvelous appetizer,” said the demon. “What shall I have now for my next course?”
“I suppose,” said Creston, not the least impressed by the way Kitty was eyeing his leg again, “You’d better go home and find something.”
Kitty sneered. “Everything there is too well done. But very well, Master. Until we meet again.” With a nasty wink, he dove into the ground and disappeared.
Creston was looking around for the best place to climb when another head popped out of the bag. “When is it my turn to leave, Master?” asked this demon.
“Soon, I expect,” said Creston. “What is your name?”
“Cubbie Bear,” said the demon. “Do hurry, Master. It’s so cold in here.”
“Cold?” said Creston. “How could it be cold?” But Cubbie Bear, shivering, had pulled back into the bag. Creston shrugged and started to climb the side of the hole.
Outside, he saw Stug several yards away, handing money to the two men who had filled in the grave. “Hello there!” he called, “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long!”
The workmen jumped back, raising their shovels. Stug’s eyes grew as wide as platters—with roast turkeys on top of them—as Creston climbed back up on the coach.
“I’m ready for that fourth test,” Creston called.
“We shall see,” muttered Stug, snatching the money back from the two men.
The Prime Minister drove his coach at a furious pace all the way back to the palace. A crowd of people who had heard about the country boy picking up the crown had gathered for a look at the person who might be their next king. Creston recognized the woman who had been ahead of him in line, and waved. She waved back, and nearly fell into the moat.
Creston, busy thinking about the crown and the demons the night before, had not paid much attention to this moat. He had simply crossed it as the line worked its way into the palace. But Stug pointed to it as the coach came to a halt.
“All you have to do now, sir,” he said, “Is go all around the palace without touching the ground, Can you think of a way to do that, sir?”
“Well,” said Creston, “Since we’ve had the test of air, the test of fire, and the test of earth, which leaves only the test of water, I suppose I could think of something, yes.” He stepped down from the coach and took off the cloak, which would slow his swimming.
He stepped to the edge of the moat, and stopped. “You’re not afraid of water, are you, sir?” Stug inquired.
“I never have been before,” Creston replied. “But maybe your water in the city is wetter.”
He looked up and down the moat, and saw nothing wrong. But as he was certain by now that Stug did not want him to be king, there had to be something wrong. Pity if he was to jump in and only then find out that what waited in the water was the one thing he was afraid of.
He reached into his pocket, and drew out his last penny. “Do not hesitate, sir,” Stug told him. “We’re all waiting to see you be king.”
Creston flipped the penny high in the air and watched it land in the water. At once he saw the long snouts and sharp teeth of strong, muscled fish all snapping at what they hoped was a snack. He’d seen such fish before, and knew they could snap off his hands or feet as quickly as he could snap the meringue off the top of a piece of pie. This did not frighten Creston; he just realized there was very little point in trying to swim with your hands and feet snapped off.
He looked at Stug and then at the crowd. Then he shrugged and unslung the bag from around his waist. “Cubbie Bear!” he shouted.
The crowd gasped and stepped back as the last demon jumped out of the bag. “What can I do for you, Master?”
Creston pointed at the water. “Is there anything a demon can do to make this moat safe?”
The demon studied the snouts in the water. “It would be safe for everyone if I tossed you in and the fish had enough to eat.” He put a hand on the bag at Creston’s waist.
Creston nodded. “If you feel that’s the right answer, they might well like the taste of demon as well. But is there no other way to make the water safe?”
“Safe enough for you, Master.” Cubbie Bear squatted at the very edge of the moat, and blew on the water. Ice crinkled straight to the other side. The demon blew some more, and soon the entire moat was frozen, thick and strong. Creston jumped down and skated or slid all the way around the palace, not once touching any of the bank until he had finished.
“Thank you, Cubbie Bear,” he said, when he had returned to his starting point. “You may go now.”
The demon leapt into the sky, with a wink and a holler, just like the others. “Until we meet again, Master! It shouldn’t be long now!”
Creston had no time to wonder what that meant. Stug came forward, shaking a finger at him.
“A man who carries a bag of demons is not fit king!” the Prime Minister declared.
People in the crowd shouted, “No! He’s no fit king!”
But a young duke who had been waiting on the drawbridge shouted out, “Isn’t a king who can tell demons what to do a useful king?”
And people in the crowd shouted, “A useful king! A useful king!”
“Listen!” Creston raised his arms. “Listen to me! I have picked up your drown and passed all your tests! The demons are not mine; they were here when I came to town. Even this bag was only a gift.”
“A rental, actually.” Gasping, the crowd made way for a newcomer. “I’d like to have it back now, Your Majesty.”
The tall old man Creston had saved from burning had appeared out of nowhere. Crawling next to his feet were the four demons, Puppy, Bunny, Kitty, and Cubbie Bear, all rubbing tear-filled eyes as if they had been soundly scolded, or switched, or both.
Creston held out the bag. “Thank you, sir. It has been very useful to me, but if you need it, here it is.”
The tall man frowned, but took the bag. “Yessss,” he said. “Thank you. It has made you king, has it not? Are you not afraid you will fail as king without it?”
“Nope,” said Creston.
The tall man sighed. “The bag shall be part payment for the good it has done you, then.”
“Part payment? Very well.” Creston looked from the demons to the tall man. “What else do you want? I just now threw away my last penny.”
“Not much,” the man replied. “Not much.” The man’s eyes were cold and hungry. The demons rolled their big eyes up at Creston, and these were hungry as well. “I want just this bag and one other thing.”
Creston’s eyes met those cold hungry ones, and he was not afraid. “Fair enough,” he said. “I am not king yet, so I can’t give you just anything in the kingdom. But if you want something I can give you, take it.”
The lips of the tall hungry man went in a bit, as if he was disappointed. “I can see I can’t have what I want the most,” he said. “So I’ll have to take something I like almost as much. No one needs it now, but I have a place for it.”
The tall man opened his bag, and, leaping over the heads of the crowd, grabbed Prime Minister Stug by the blue hair. Before Stug could shout, the Prime Minister was in the bag. At the old man’s whistle, the four demons jumped into the bag as well. The old man tossed the bouncing, jerking bag over one shoulder and leapt into the sky.
“One thing before you go, sir!” Creston shouted. “Do you happen to know what is the one thing I’m afraid of?”
The old man paused between clouds. “Of course. You’re afraid you’ll be afraid of something some day.”
Creston was glad to have that cleared up. He waved as the old man disappeared among the gathering clouds, and called to the people as thunder rolled and rain fell.
“Let’s get inside, shall we? I imagine there’s some sort of crowning ceremony to get done.”
They all moved into the banquet hall where the party had been held in Creston’s honor the night before. This party was even bigger. At the height of it, the young duke from the drawbridge turned to Creston and said, “It’s a lot of responsibility, you know, being king. Aren’t you afraid you won’t be able to handle it?”
Creston thought it over. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t believe so.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be,” sighed the duke. “But haven’t you heard that most of the kings who ever lived finally died?”
In our last thrilling installment, we were discussing collectibles, and how collecting said collectibles, especially those which are produced as collectibles, is subject to change without notice. And it occurred to me that I have a few examples of what was once the hottest collectible in the market: the trade card. Not to be confused with “trading cards”, these were largely postcard-shaped advertising pieces which went from being a cheap way of advertising your goods to the burning rage of collectors and then forgotten scraps of paper in the 19th century. These must not be confused with the advertising postcard, seen above, which was mailable.
The trade card, see, predated the days when mailing cards was as simple as pasting on a stamp and dropping one in the mailbox. They began somewhere in the distant reaches of time (some of the ephemera printed in the fifteenth century might count) but until the 1870s or thereabouts were primarily simple printed cards with text (which your ardent trade card collector considered mere business cards). Then, new cheaper color printing made it possible to do something that was pretty on one side.
And contained your ad on the other.
These ranged from highly expensive, thoroughly colored embossed items to cheaper ones like this one, which has obviously been cut from a larger sheet. Some businesses bought these printed sheets and then put their business’s ad on the back (this variant appears on the back of a card with the same picture. Going straight to the child was NOT an idea limited to the twentieth century. Asking kids what kind of coffee they like seems to be a nineteenth century thing, though.)
Any business that could scrape up a couple of bucks to print cards went into the trade: funeral homes, baseball teams, laxative makers….everyone wanted in on it. Because Victorians, it developed, were fanatics about pasting things in scrapbooks. So many people yearned for the pretty little cards that companies completely flipped their ad strategy. Trade cards started as handouts to advertise your wares: at the height of the craze, you advertised your wares by letting people know you were giving out trade cards. Savvy sellers put trade cards INSIDE the package (leading to the development of cigarette cards and bubblegum cards.)
Businesses willing to put more money into the cards began to publish series (gotta catch ‘em all)–pictures of the Presidents, illustrations of famous poems–often having nothing to do with the product. Some, on the other hand, were like Fairbank Lard, which went fully into trade cards featuring cartoons and verses to show how badly pigs wanted to become QUALITY lard.
Some cards did feature calendars or coupons on the back, but the trade card had become something produced solely for collecting and pasting in scrapbooks. (The trade card itself was merely the tip of the scrapbook iceberg. Thousands of scrapbooks were assembled, and, going the trade card one better, some printers simply advertised packages of “Scrap”: pretty pictures for cutting and pasting. A museum out east boasts a set of scrapbooks believed to be haunted by the original owner, who may still be trying to add more scraps.)
The fad died at roughly the same time as Queen Victoria, and the culprit is an old friend of ours. Postcards were moving in: unlike trade cards, postcards could be MAILED to your friends in distant places without putting them in an envelope, making the swapping and scrapbooking even more alluring. Kids scorned their parents’ manias and flocked to the newfangled collectible. So did businesses. The advertising postcard continues to this day, though the postcard collecting craze of the early twentieth century was itself succeeded by other collectibles (Dixie Cup lids, say.)
However, if you look around, you can still find things shaped like postcards which are not made for mailing but for picking up and putting in a safe place.
So if the last thrilling blog made things sound hopeless, remember: Old collectibles never die. They just collect dust for a while.
***
(Fair’s Fair note: the alternate—second—flipside of the Midlands Coffee card, which features the same little girl and St. Bernard, is offered for sale by Obscura Postcards, while the alternate message from Hatchet Baking Powder, which is on the back of another picture entirely, is currently on sale by Emeralds Books and Treasures. Everything else here can be found for sale by the author, at time of writing.)
A. Edward Newton, one of the great American book collectors suggested, when people asked him how to buy books as an investment, that they buy the best of whatever they happened to like. That way, he said, if the market didn’t behave as expected and that collection did not appreciate, they’d at least have things to read.
I like him in that mood much better than when he wrote articles warning collectors against buying a lot of trash. There were actually people, in his later days, who were collecting (shudder) mystery novels, and other current fiction. It made him sound like an old goat, but that is not why I thought of him in connection with this particular postcard.
See, one of the side effects of a misspent youth (which went on for some fifty years) reading whatever I liked, is that I felt this postcard could be dated fairly certainly. The canned beer as we know was introduced to the American consumer somewhere around 1935. The reason that factoid is stuck in my head is that I read a number of books on collectibles in my younger days, which DID exist, and which coincided with the massive fad for beer can collecting. I devoured all those pictorial guides to what collectors needed to buy, and though I have never so much as spotted a can of Billy Beer or any of the James Bond series of cans, the information is stuck forever in my brain.
Some people still DO collect beer cans, just as some people collect glass insulators, but somehow, these collectibles don’t get the same attention nowadays. If I could find a nice set of the Encyclopedia of Collectibles (read repeatedly) it would be nice to go through and find out which of these collectibles turned out to be fun but no bonanza.
I bethought me of comic books. Sure, people still collect comic books. But it’s not the same. Famously, the comic book industry took note of investors and nearly put itself out of business. Even today, comic books have not quite escaped the LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION phenomenon. So many companies brought out SPECIAL FIRST ISSUES of comic series (because everyone knows that first issue is going to be worth millions some day) that many collectors just gave up the too volatile comic book market and sensibly put their money into pogs instead.
I have seen people burned by investing in Beanie Babies, collector plates, baseball cards (Sports Trading Cards, to you young’uns), and, well, anything advertised with a variation on the words LIMITED EDITION COLLECTIBLE. Of course there are Barbies and Beanies and Beer Cans which are worthwhile investments. But these are outnumbered by the sheer product produced to take advantage of you for thinking so. Real rarities are few and far between (it’s why we call them rare) and were almost never advertised as being a great investment. They were advertised as things that were exciting, or pretty, or just fun. (And that is what made them rare: people had so much fun reading them or playing with them or hanging them on the wall that a majority were used up along the way.)
Another cantankerous old goat who was fun to talk to told me that a truly valuable collectible needs to meet three criteria. It must have been fun enough to be bought by everyone, then thrown away or destroyed as people found other interests, and only THEN have a collectors’ price guide published. You may argue about individual collectibles, but you see his point.
So if I may bring this to some conclusion (Who just shouted “Please do”?) I think both of these gents had the right of it. Collect something and do it well: do your research and get the good stuff. Enjoy yourself doing it. Maybe you’ll make a profit, but if not, at least you’ll have stories to tell and trophies to show.
And everyone knows how profitable your podcasts on the subject will be. (Note to self: see if any of those pog collectors are now doing pogcasts.)
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