This was a popular postcard when I listed it for sale. I was grateful that potential buyers were interested, but mildly confused. It is not ESPECIALLY old (that it advertises cable available in each room makes it younger than I am, so it’s practically brand new). And then I spotted it.
It would be foolish to claim this is the ONLY swimming pool in the world shaped like a wooden shoe. But the shaped swimming pool is a source of fascination even for those of us whose experience is limited to rectangular public pools and circular swimming pools that had to be inflated before they were filled with water. As I understand it, most people who built swimming pools were limited to rectangles. Our ancestors used boards to build the pool or to serve as frames for the pouring of concrete and these tended to be straight and flat. (At least, no one told me about any pools shaped like boats or other things made by curving the wood.)
The earliest wild weird shape I could find was a pool shaped like the letter T, built for William Randolph Hearst for his elaborate home at San Simeon. (This was later replaced, so you can’t go look at it.) It was not until after World War II that changing the shape of the pool became easier (at least for people with deep pockets.) And even then, the new shape was simply described as “kidney-shaped.” (Which COULD lead us to the fine old joke about the man who bragged about having a “kidney-shaped pool that even has a stone in it.” But let’s ignore that.)
Apparently, we owe the explosion of shaped swimming pools to country singer Webb Pierce, who asked for a guitar-shaped swimming pool in 1952. No one explains where he got this idea, but once it hit the newspapers (and you can bet it did) the gates were open. Liberace countered with his piano-shaped pool. (Both of these were preserved and can be visited by pilgrims today.) Then Jayne Mansfield required a swimming pool shaped like a heart from her husband-to-be. Those three shapes became the most popular for people wanting something special. There is a “broken heart” swimming pool dedicated to Elvis Presley (the crack in the heart is a design on the floor of the pool), plenty of cellos and fiddles which developed from the basic guitar shape, and pianos which try hard to beat Liberace’s original (which had keys you could step out of the pool onto and a fence of piano keys around it.)
But we are not limited to these originals. There is a cat-shaped pool with little concrete islands for eyes. An airport not far from that has a pool in the shape of an airplane. There are diamonds, clubs, and spades to accompany hearts. I have seen a fish, a scallop shell, a buffalo, a yin/yang symbol, and a body part I shall not name, but if I were swimming in would be careful where I climbed out.
It was not until I saw a couple of pools shaped like the state of Texas that I realized my real mission. We cannot ALL have swimming pools shaped like musical instruments and, in any case, a flute isn’t going to impress a LOT of tourists. But in the name of civic pride, there ARE other possibilities.
“It may look like a square pool to strangers, Mister, but our pool’s shaped like the great state of Colorado.” “Yes, Ma’am, this was built so people addicted to chocolate can enjoy their exercise: we built ‘er in the shape of a Hershey bar.” “What do you mean, it doesn’t look like a Lord of the Rings swimming pool? It’s the same shape as the first edition of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’.”
Chambers of Commerce LOVE coming up with stories, so your town could spin out one about the pirate captain who founded the town and left money for a swimming pool shaped like the plank his prisoners had to walk. Or maybe the civic swimming spot is the splashy legacy of the town’s first librarian, who invented the 3×5 card.
Let other people spend their money building a pool shaped like a Volkswagen Beetle or a Hershey’s Kiss: you can buy inflatable pools nowadays shaped like THAT stuff. But YOU can declare you were inspired by swimsuit pioneer, scandalous actress AND champion swimmer Annette Kellerman, and built a swimming pool shaped EXACTLY like a swimming pool.
Coffey told his mother the whole story over lunch. The discussion of what the cat deserved as a reward went on all afternoon. Mistress Klotsch agreed that any cat who let them have a magic frying pan deserved something appropriate.
“Why don’t you take it a jar of applesauce?” she suggested. “We have plenty, and it’s very good this year.”
“That’s a good idea,” Coffey said. “Everybody likes applesauce. Even a cat must like applesauce.”
Early next morning, when Coffey was rested up from his ordeal and had washed all the dirt from his hair, they rolled back the coverlet which had protected the little beansprouts. Mistress Klotsch handed Coffey a large jar of applesauce, and watched in amazement as her son took hold of one of the beansprouts and disappeared into the ground.
“Fritters!” she exclaimed. “It may be quick but you’ll never get ME o travel on one of those things.”
Coffey dropped right into the tunnel, his arms wrapped around the jar so it wouldn’t break. Before he could catch his breath, he heard sounds from a dark end of the passage. A shelf was attached high on the wall, so he climbed up to hide on it.” The trells are so short,” he thought, “Maybe they won’t look up here.”
He did not find out where the trells would have looked, for it was the cat. “Do you know,” the animal sad, “That you look completely ridiculous?”
“I brought a gift,” Coffey said, jumping down. “It’s a jar of applesauce.”
“Applesauce?” said the cat. “Nnever heard of it, How do you know I’ll like it?”
“Oh, everybody likes applesauce,” said Coffey, pulling up the lid.
The cat sniffed. “Well, I’ll taste it. But this in no way obligates me.”
Coffey set the jar on the floor. The cat stepped daintily up and put its tongue down for a taste. It took a second taste, and then a third. After about sixty of these tastes, the jar was empty.
“A little too sweet,” said the cat, licking a stray blob of applesauce from one whisker. “No, that won’t quite do.”
”Oh.” Coffey picked up the jar. “I’ll, um, just take this back, then.”
“But you are a very honest young man,” the cat went on. “So come this way. I’ll showyou something.”
The cat set off down the hall, not even looking back to see if Coffey was following. Coffey did, as he had no plans for the rest of the day. The cat led him to a small door in the wall of the tunnel. Behind it was a little room stacked with bags, Little cupboards sat above these bags.
“This is where the trells keep their chicken feed,” the cat told him.
“How interesting,” said Coffey. “Our neighbor has a shed for that, just like this, only dustier. She keeps books there, to hold up some of the shelves, and the books get so dusty that….”
“The trells,” said the cat, its voice a little louder, “Have a chicken that won’t lay eggs any more. They cannot have a chicken eating their corn and not laying eggs.”
“Ah,” said Coffey, nodding. “Are they going to make soup, then?”
“Trells do not eat chicken soup,” said the cat.
“What do they ear?”
“You, if you don’t keep quiet Now, get into this bag.”
Coffey obediently climbed into the empty bag, and the cat drew the drawstring tight above him. Then, reaching out, it used a claw to tear a little hole in the side so Coffey could see.
Two trells walked into the room just a second later. One led a little red hen at the end of a string. The other walked to one of the cupboards, opened it, and took out a silver kettle filled with corn. She took two kernels of corn from the kettle and tossed them onto the floor in front of the chicken.
The chicken snapped up the corn at once. There was a sound rather like “pting” as the chicken shivered and became solid gold.
Coffey fund this sequence of events interesting, but it was not until the first trell picked up the gold chicken and took it to another cupboard to set it in with perhaps a dozen other solid gold chickens, that he said “ooh!”
The first trell slammed the cupboard door and leaned down to start sniffing the bags of corn. The other hurried over to open and check inside cupboards filled with gold chickens.
“Problems, ladies?” inquired the cat, who had jumped up to lie on the bag containing Coffey. “I don’t see any rats.”
The trells looked at each other. Then the first one, after checking a piece of paper in her pocket, said, “Fiddle Faddle Feedle Folk, I smell the blood of a human bloke. I don’t like humans—not at all: I’ll use his head for a volleyball.”
“Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear no,” said the cat. “You ladies KNOW how I feel about ‘bloke’.”
“Told you,” the second trell told the first one.
“And that feedle faddle business won’t do at all,” the cat went on. “I DO like that bit about the volleyball, though. You might work on that angle and see if you can’t come up with a really frightening poem. I feel you’re right on the verge of something truly terrifying.”
Nodding, the trells scurried away to work on their rhymes. The cat let Coffey out of the bag.
“Do you think….” He began.
“Yes,” said the cat. “All cats do. You’d better take that silver kettle home with you. Any corn you put into it will become magic feed corn, and will turn any chicken into gold. Keep it in a safe place, mind, or you’ll have golden rats and golden chipmunks into the bargain. And don’t forget my reward.”
“Oh, I won’t.” After a quick look up and down the tunnel,Coffey hurried to where he had landed, and reached up for another beansprout.
“What a fussy creature!” said Mistress Klotsch, after he had popped out of the ground and told her what happened this trip. “Imagine not liking applesauce! Too sweet? Still, it is a most generous cat, is it not?”
“We have to think of a good reward before we run out of beansprouts,” Coffey told her. “I counted, and there are only twelve.”
But the coverlet stayed over these for three days. His mother kept him busy, sending him out to buy cracked corn and chickens, quietly, just a chicken or two here and there, just as a neighbor doing business among neighbors.
“And don’t stand around talking about why we want chickens,” she told him. “Just say we’re going to make something out of them. If they go on asking questions, just talk about soup.”
After a dozen chickens had been turned to gold, Coffey reminded his mother that they had yet to reward the cat.
“Of course,” she said. “What was it the animal said about the applesauce? Too sweet? Take it a bag of the dried apple chips. Those are nice and tart.”
“Oh yes,” said Coffey. “I like apple chips myself.”
“Don’t you eat any of these,” his mother told him. “They’re for the cat.”
Once he had the bag, Coffey went out to the beansprouts. He took hold of one, and before he knew it, he was in the tunnel of the trells again. In fact, he nearly landed on top of the cat.
“Hello there,” the cat said.
“There aren’t any trells around here, are there?” Coffey whispered.
“No. I told them there were likely rats in this art of the tunnel,” the cat replied. “I thought you’d likely be back.”
“My mother really likes the golden chickens,” Coffey told the cat. “And she thought you might like these. They’re apple chips.”
“Apple chips? Sounds interesting. I’ll give them a try and tell you what I think.” Coffey set the bag on the floor, and the cat out its head inside.
“Crunchy. Not bad.” The cat ate every one of the apple chips, but when its head came out of the bag, it said, “No, not quite good enough. Very nice, but not really up to all those magic items But you’re a good fellow to try. Come along and take a look at a chicken coop.”
Coffey had already seen plenty of chicken coops this week, but the cat was already walking away. So he followed, just to be polite.
The cat led him to a big cave with chicken wire stretched across the opening. The cat showed Coffey where to slip inside, so as to be in where the chickens were walking around, or sitting around. There were roosts, nests, eggs, and one big old rooster who came rushing at them, making grumpy sounds. Instead of getting out of the way, Coffey stood and stared. Every time the rooster opened its beak, gold coins dropped out.
“Do you think your mother would like him?” the cat asked.
“Wow!” Coffey replied. Seeing an old bag against a nest, he grabbed it up and put the rooster inside, as gold coins dropped to the ground around him. The chickens, seeing what was happening to their rooster, dashed about, clucking and cackling and scolding.
“Quick!” said the cat. “Over here!”
Coffey heard the footsteps and hurried to climb inside the box the cat showed him. Through a crack between boards, he watched the trells make their way into the big coop. They did look hungrier every time he saw them.
And there were three of them this time. The largest one looked around the cave and, seeing the cat, demanded, “What’s upset these fowl? Have you been chasing their chicks again?”
“Certainly not!” said the cat. “I’ve been hunting rats: this is just the place to find them. No doubt they’ve been bothering the silly birds.”
The trells didn’t answer. They walked among the excited chickens, sniffing.
“Got a cold?” the cat inquired.
The largest trell cleared her throat and folded her hands in front of her. The other two looked from her to the cat, and waited.
“Villey valley volley voe,” she recited, “If human people come below, we’ll call them simply dreadful names and use their body parts in games.” She rolled her eyes down to the cat.
“Well, now, that’s showing real improvement,” said the cat. “Scary. Gruesome, even. But a little long in parts, isn’t it? I mean, you can probably remember all those words, buthat about your sisters? Something shorter and sweeter won’t tax their memories so much.”
The other two trells nodded and murmured to each other. “But it’s not bad?” said the first one.
“Oh, you’re definitely on the right track,” the cat told her. “If you keep working on it, I think you’ll have something really great.”
Clapping their hands, the trells hurried away. Coffey climbed out of the box with his bagful of rooster, and returned to the part of the tunnel with beansprouts in the ceiling. “Have a nice trip,” the cat told him. “And remember, that’s three magic things you had from me now.”
As soon as he was out in the beanpatch, the rooster clawed out of the bag and marched around complaining about being hauled all over creation. Gold coins spilled at Mistress Klotsch’s feet.
“What a lordly creature a cat must be!” she exclaimed. “I’ll bake it an apple pie1”
She and Coffey went into the house, pulling the rooster along, its complaints and the clink of gold coins making so much noise they did not hear someone say “Aha!”
Just down the road from Mistress Klotsch’s apple orchard lived Mistress Olsen, with a dusty chicken coop and a plot of per trees. She sold pear butter and pears and perry to people who passed that way. She had quick eyes, and had noticed Coffey moving about here, there, and all over buying chickens. It was obvious that Mistress Kotsch had quite a lot of money, but Mistress Olsen had not seen so very many people passing the pear orchard to go buy apples.
So she had taken to slipping out of her shop to hide in apple trees to watch and find out where Mistress Klotsch’s money was coming from. Now she thought she knew.
“They keep chickens down there to guard their gold,” she said to herself when she got home. “There’s a door in the yard, and Coffey opens it by pulling on beansprouts. The chickens make noise if they see a stranger. They have so much gold stored down there they must be pirates. Pirates don’t deserve all that gold.”
She went to her own chicken coop to get chicken feed for the guards she thought she’d find. “Mistress Klotsch must be the pirate, not Coffey,” she said to herself. “He’s a good fellow. He wouldn’t mind sharing gold with a neighbor. I wouldn’t really be stealing any, just taking my fair share. I don’t mind pirates if they share with their neighbors.”
As soon as the sky turned dark, she slipped out among her pear trees until she made her way to Mistress Klotsch’s apple trees. Then, walking even more quietly, she walked up to the house itself. Setting down her bag of chicken feed, she took hold of all the beansprouts under the coverlet, the better to open the treasure house door.
What happened next rather surprised her. She had just enough time to holler “Help!”
Coffey and Mistress Klotsch ran outside, but all they saw was a bag of cracked corn. “Someone must have been here!” Coffey cried, “To plant corn in our beansprout patch!”
“More likely trying to steal the beansprouts,” said his mother. “I bet it was that nosy Mistress Olsen. I’ve seen her sneaking around in the apple trees for days.”
“Oh, surely not,” said Coffey, who liked pears. “She’s too nice a person to sneak. But I’d better go down and help whoever it is. They won’t know about the trells, or the cat.”
But because Mistress Olsen had grabbed as many beansprouts as possible, there were none left to be seen. Mistress Klotsch fetched a candle while Coffey ran for a rake.
Moving the dirt around very carefully, Coffey found just one tiny shriveled beansprout. “I can go down,” he said, “But I won’t be able to come back up that way.”
“Don’t go then,” said his mother. “Let her find her own way out.”
Coffey shook his head. “Maybe looking up from below I’ll find another beansprout,” he said, :Or maybe the cat can help.” He took hold of the beansprout and went flowing down before his mother could stop him.
The cat was waiting when he landed in the tunnel. “Did I tell you to send down your whole neighborhood?”
“Who was it?” asked Coffey, standing up. “Was it Mistress Olsen?”
“I don’t know any Mistress Olsen,” the cat told him. “Some rude young woman came down, pushed me out of the way, and went off grumbling about the dirt in her hair and where was all the gold.” The cat licked one paw. “The trells are going to eat her with garlic gravy.”
“We have to save her,” said Coffey, looking up and down the tunnel.
“I thought you’d say that,” sighed the cat. “You look like the type. Come along and keep quiet.”
The cat took Coffey down a side tunnel he hadn’t seen before. At the end was a big room where dozens of trells sat around big tables. Way back in this room was an immense fireplace. In this, tied to a long pole, was Mistress Olsen.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Turn me over! I think I’m done on this side!”
“When the trells are all listening to me,” the cat told Coffey, “Slip along the wall and untie the creature if you have to. Then run and hide in the chicken coop. You know where.”
Coffey nodded, but the cat had already sauntered into the dining room, where it jumped onto a table. “This isn’t much of a party,” it said. “Why doesn’t somebody give us a song, or a poem?”
“Oh, you never like any of our poems,” said one trell.
The cat looked surprised. “Why, your poems are very good. They could just be better: that’s all. It would be a great loss to literature if fine poets like you were to fail because of some little detail. Come on, let’s hear the latest.”
The trells looked at each other. Then, shrugging, one of them stood up and recited “Middle Muddle Maddle Moan: I wish they’d leave us all alone. If human people come down here, we’ll eat them with our evening beer.”
“There!” said the cat. “What did I tell you? That was lovely. Do you have that written down? Oh, that’s not a very professional manuscript: the margins aren’t wide enough. But it’s a good poem. Who else has one?”
The trells were all eager to recite to the cat. Coffey, with his back against the wall, slid into the room. No one shouted at him.
One trell WAS shouting “Feedle Fidle Fodle Fumble, human people make me grumble; if they come down here I’ll take their ears to use for breakfast flakes.”
“Well, now,” said the cat, after a second trell had recited her poem, “Would that be better, do you think, if you started with Meow Meow Meow Meow, why do they come here anyhow?”
“What does ‘meow’ mean?” the trell poet asked.
“I don’t know,” the cat replied, “It just seemed natural. What’s all that Feedle Fidle Fodle Fumble stuff mean, come to that?”
Even Mistress Olsen seemed to be paying attention to the cat criticism. As Coffey got close, she turned her head and opened her eyes wide.
“And if we saw ‘Why do they come here anyhow” we’ll have the words ‘come’ and ‘here’ two lines in a row,” a trell complained. “That won’t sound right.”
“You are perfectly correct,” said the cat. “How clever of you to notice that. Does ‘Why don’t they stay home anyhow?’ sound better?”
Coffey kept burning his fingers trying to untie the ropes around Mistress Olsen. Once she was free, she couldn’t walk. “I came down to steal the gold,” she whispered, “But all I found was this.” She opened an apron pocket to show him a solid gold rat with wings. He didn’t touch it; he knew it would be burning hot from being so close to the fire.
“How about ‘Dickle Dackle Dockle Dickens, they come down cackling like chickens?” asked a trell.
“That’s all very well, if you want to write poems about chickens,” said the cat. “I’d think you’d write about more impressive things, like trells.”
Coffey slid out of the room carrying Mistress Olsen. “Now where do we go?” she asked him.
“The cat said to go to their chicken coop,” Coffey told her. “Which I think is over this way.”
He moved down a tunnel and walked so long that Mistress Olsen finally cooled off enough to walk by herself. Suddenly, they heard shrieks and screams way behind them.
The cat came trotting up next to them. “I knew you’d go the wrong way.”
The screams grew louder. “What’s happening back there?” Coffey asked.
The cat sniffed. “They think I’m the one who stole their supper. As if I were some sort of DOG. They really are not the sort of people to appreciate cats, so I think I will come with you to the surface. You’d better hurry.”
He started off ahead of them. “If this is the wrong way to go to the chicken coop,” said Mistress Olsen, “Why are we going this way?”
“It’s too late for chicken coops,” said the cat, walking faster. Coffey and Mistress Olsen walked faster too.
A rat ran past them, going the other direction. Two more rats followed it. “Ugh!” said Mistress Olsen, kicking at them. “I hate those things!”
“Then don’t slow them down,” suggested the cat. “Hey, all you rats! You better hurry! They’re having a chicken feast back that way.”
Dozens of rats went by, paying no attention to the cat or the two humans. “That may convince the trells to turn around and go back,” said the cat. “Now, let’s get outside.”
“There’s a way to get outside besides pulling at beansprouts?” asked Coffey.
“No. I just say things like that when I want to be silly,” the cat told him. “Of course there’s another way outside: how do you think the rats get in? Come on.”
The rat tunnels were not all that big, and got smaller. The cat could get through without getting any fur dirty, but Coffey and Mistress Olsen kept bumping their heads on tree roots and low hanging rocks. “Come along, will you?” called the cat. “Don’t tell me you can’t do anything a rat could do!”
They came out at the base of a high, rocky hill down the road from the apple orchard. When he was a small boy, Coffey had always been told not to play there because the rocks were loose and might come down on him. “We’d better go,” he said.
“But what about those…those things?” asked Mistress Olsen. “Won’t they find the rat tunnels, too?”
“The rats may have convinced them to give up,” said the cat. “Listen and find out.”
Coffey leaned an ear toward the tunnel. What he heard sounded not at all like rats. Some voices were saying “Fiddle faddle” and some were saying “Middle muddle” and some he couldn’t understand at all because of the tooth gnashing. “It’s the trells! They’re coming!”
“Where can we hide?” exclaimed Mistress Olsen.
Coffey reached into her apron pocket for the golden rat. “Let me borrow this.”
“You’ve already got all the gold you need!” cried Mistress Olsen, even louder than before.
“Except this,” he told her.
“Oh, take it, then,” she sighed. “We’re all going to be eaten up anyhow.”
“I hope not.”
Coffey hurled the golden rat as high as he could up the slope. The heavy piece of gold started to bounce back down. Little rocks rolled with it. These little rocks hit big rocks and knocked them down, and these big rocks knocked down some bigger rocks.
“Don’t stand there watching!” called the ct, from up in a tree. “Get out of the way!”
Coffey and Mistress Olsen had worked their whole lives in orchards, so they knew about climbing trees. They were up sitting next to the cat when the whole hillside seemed to slide. Dust and rocks were flying all around beneath their toes.
When everything had settled, the gold rat was nowhere to be found. But neither was the opening of the tunnel.
“Not bad,” said the cat. “For somebody with only two legs.”
They climbed down from the tree and then walked all the way to Mistress Klotsch’s shop, where they told their story. By the time they had finished, the cat was curled up in Mistress Klotsch’s lap. Mistress Klotsch shook her head at it all and, stroking the cat, said, “And what now?”
“Well, to keep the secret of the gold in the family,” said the cat, “I believe those two had better get married, don’t you?”
It took a certain amount of talking to convince everybody but, in the end, the cat had its way. There was a wonderful wedding with apple cake and pears under ice cream and cider and perry and so on.
“We owe everything to you,” Coffey told the cat on his wedding day. “And you still haven’t been rewarded yet. Isn’t there something I can give you?”
“Give me some time to think it over,” the cat replied.
And that is why, to this day, people who have cats give them the best things to eat, the best places to sit, and the warmest places to sleep. And still cats never seem to be satisfied. They will sit for hours, just staring and thinking of what else they should have as a reward.
Sometimes a cat will simply disappear for a few hours, or even days, and then come back as if nothing has happened. That cat has found a tunnel, and has gone slipping underground to check on the trells. Cats must still check to make sure the trells have not stocked up enough gold to come out and buy the world, to run it as they please.
For running the world, as everyone knows, is a cat’s job.
One of the saddest bits of joke archaeology is running across fossils: jokes which were once alive and kicking, quivering with excitement at the laugh that would be forthcoming when the audience heard it for the eighty-third time. Sometimes they do not realize they have been told for the last time, and wait in books, unaware that the passage of time has left them irrelevant, inapplicable, and inert.
This melancholy image came to me as I was leafing through a paperback book published during the years of my childhood, its cover tattered, its pages slightly brown. The jokes inside, which dealt with the life of a teenager (something I could only dream of back in 19…why talk math?) The jokes, frankly, were still pretty current: high school drama, wardrobe worries, feeding one’s date on a limited budget…. And then I ran into a picture of the heroine sitting in a posture impossible past a certain age, all wrapped up in the telephone cord.
Telephone cord? I had to check the copyright date to make sure this wasn’t a nineteenth century collection.
And a few pages later came another jape from days of yore. The phone was ringing and she was running to pick it up before anyone else in the family could answer. Jokes which require footnotes lose their punch. Modern readers need to be reminded that phones were once tethered in one spot, and that the vast majority of homes had ONLY ONE PHONE.
Not always, of course. I thought with some sadness of the sitcoms where someone was talking secrets on the phone, and another member of the family quietly picked up the family’s Other Phone to listen in, since all the phones were on the same line. Try explaining THAT scene to a Personal Phone audience.
Is there a paradise somewhere for aged jokes which must be explained? There’d be a special wing for gags from bygone technological marvels, a massive auditorium for telephone jokes of the past. There we would find the jokes about rural conversations on a party line, now relegated to the primitive past with the crowd of scenes where the postman reads you all the postcards your relatives mailed today. (Postcard jokes are a whole nother blog.)
Who was the last strongman to show off his muscles by tearing a phonebook in half. Among the useless information stuck in my brain is a tip on how to make sure that massive collection of pages, bigger than the Spring/Summer Sears Roebuck catalog (don’t ask: go consult your grandmother. She’ll google it for you.) will be sure to come apart just right. Who is the last surviving soul among us who sat on a phone book come Thanksgiving?
Once upon a time, watching Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent pausing to stare at a phone kiosk which had replaced the handy old phone booths got a huge laugh from the audience. Does this still get so much as a chuckle in a crowd which doesn’t remember phone booths?
Pay phone jokes have gone the same way as phone booth funnies. No more will we see the pictures of the man fishing in the coin return for spare change, or the scribbled recommendation of a local CALL girl who scribbled “For a good time, call Iphigenia at 555….” Ah, enough of this. I shall go off by myself wind up my Victrola, and mourn as I play that sad old country song “They washed the wall of the men’s room stall and I can’t call my sweetheart no more.”
I suppose it was inevitable. Now that Christmas shopping officially begins on Green Tuesday (the first Tuesday after October 12), it should not have surprised me to learn that Spooky Season begins September 1, which this year was less than a week after pumpkin spice officially returned to our latte. This being the case, it is time to shift our perception of cats, who spend most of the rest of the year being cute.
Come Spooky Season (a less specific term than “Halloween”: using that might provoke those grouches who snarl that “Christmas is supposed to be a day, not a quarter of the year”) we have no more kitties. There are only cats: aloof, self-possessed, and so superior to the mere bipeds they watch over with disapproval. And a deeply suspicious alien force occupying our houses.
Postcard artists understood the dual nature of cats. Dogs were domesticated early on, and remain eager to show how loyal and faithful and GOOD they are, but cats still seem feral, unwilling to compromise with their human servants. (A legendary cat litter company, in fact, claims that cats never really became house pets until their product was available. I dislike it when marketers make massive social claims. I don’t necessarily disagree—maybe Coca Cola IS responsible for Santa Claus always wearing that red suit—I just don’t like it. It makes me feel inferior to cats. THERE’S a new conspiracy theory, if you want one. Cats ae running our ad agencies, which may be the real reason Spuds M…where were we?)
Black cats, of course, get a lot of the Spooky Season business nowadays, but in the golden age of postcards, any cat could ne sinister. For one thing, it was still a major belief in parts of the customer base that black cats were GOOD luck. Just think: if we hadn’t swung the other way, we might all be buying chocolate cats at the corner store.
The menacing cat was well-represented, though, and sometimes that fierce creature happened to be black because black cats were dramatic from a graphic point of view. A dark, shadowy menace left you in no doubt about the situation. We are expected to sympathize here with the outmuscled mouse.
Adding to the sinister side of cat adventures was their readiness to make themselves look big, hissing and spitting. This is alarming at the best of times and downright threatening all the rest of the time. No good old-fashioned mystery movie or Gothic romance is complete without a hissing cat. Those of us who, as children, wondered if we couldn’t negotiate with a hissing cat have that memory engraved on our brains (and possibly hands and face.)
Postcard artists were also familiar with the propensity of those wild alley cats out back to get into a spat at the slightest excuse…or none at all.
While other Rembrandts of the postcard took issue with the way cats sometimes just sit and stare at you. What ARE they thinking?
However, we modern folk, free of superstition (if we do have these, we call ‘em conspiracies) can relax once the ghost’s high noon has passed. Our cats become kitties again just in time for a big family holiday. There’s nothing like a big old roast turkey to remind our feline friends that we ARE useful, and don’t need to be murdered in our beds. (For now.)
In the golden wage, when there were no cats, and geese occasionally laid expensive but inedible eggs, a woman known to her neighbors as Madame Klotsch owned a very successful apple orchard. She sold apple cider, apple fritters, apple chips, apple dumplings, apple pies, and, when the occasion arose, plain apples. And because Mistress Klotsch was the kind of person who liked things precisely perfect, her goods were good goods, and she did very well for herself.
She made so much money one year that she started in to think about moving into other areas of commerce. “I wonder,” she wondered to herself, “If a body fed apples to a cow, would one get apple butter?”
Mistress Klotsch resolved to send her son, Coffey, to the market in town to buy a cow. She could not do this herself because that would have left Coffey to tend the apple stand. Coffey was a good boy, but kind of worthless, really. He sat around a lot, reading books; when in charge of the apple stand, he tended to get so deep in his book that the neighbor kids would sneak up and swipe dumplings. Books and swiped dumplings were not what had made Mistress’s Klotsch’s Apple Stand the landmark it had become.
So she counted out the money carefully, tied it up in a handkerchief, and handed the bundle to her son. “Sin,” she said. (She always called him “son” in the hopes this would make him brighter.) “Son, take this to the market and buy a cow. Get a nice brown one to match the trunks of our trees, and be sure to ask for a good milker. I’d try at Tattersall’s first. They’ll likely cheat you less than anyone else. And don’t talk to strangers.”
Coffey set off down the road, carrying a book to read on the way, as this was the golden age before cracked sidewalks and traffic lights. He was just getting to an exciting part in the story when a voice called, ”Howdy, son! Off to market?”
Looking up from his book, Coffey saw a tall smiling man who was walking the same direction. “Yep,” said Coffey.
“My name’s Dave,” the man said. “I’m walking that way myself. You going to market to buy, or to sell?”
Coffey remembered he had been warned not to talk to strangers. But this was not a stranger. This was Dave, for Dave had told him so. And Dave had called him “Son” which was what his mother called him.
So he said, “I’m off to town to buy a cow.” After all, for all he knew, Dave might have a cow somewhere to sell, which would save him the long walk to town in bare feet.
Dave nodded. “Cows cost a pretty penny,” he said. “Lots of pretty pennies. Are you sure you have enough money?”
“Oh, yes,” said Coffey, and untied the handkerchief to show him.
Dave looked at the money and whistled. “Is that all you’re going to buy? Just one cow for all that money?”
Coffey had known his mother his whole life, and knew her pretty well. She would have given him just barely enough to buy one cow, and little enough that he’d probably have to do a lot of talking to get a cow for that much. So he said, “That was what we had in mind.”
Dave shrugged. “Well, I’m not from around here so I don’t know how people do business in these parts. But I can’t see how someone would just buy a cow when, for the same amount of money, they could buy they could buy houses, hotels, fine food, land, aldermen, elderberries, gems, jewelry, jerseys, fish, fruit, flugelhorns, clothes, coaches, pumpkins, pearls, plums….” Dave had to stop for a breath. “AND cows!”
By this time, Coffey knew that Dave had no cow to sell, and was just having a little joke. So he laughed in a polite way and opened his book to read some more.
Dave reached out a hand and set it on the page. “I mean it. Why walk all the way into town and put that money down for a cow when you could stop right here and buy some magic beans?”
Coffey stopped in the middle of the road. “Magic beans?”
“Magic beans,” said Dave.
Magic beans! Why, that was one of Coffey’s favorite stories! You took the magic beans home to your mother, she threw them out the window, and the next day you climbed into the clouds and brought down all kinds of gold and goodies! Dave was right! Coffey could buy all kinds of things once had the magic beans. There was a giant involved, to be sure, but this was a detail which could be taken care of later. You just needed to keep an axe handy at the base of the beanstalk in case of emergencies.
“Just supposing I might think of buying magic beans,” said Coffey, “How many magic beans would I be getting for this much money?”
“Well, now,” said Dave, with a shrug, “It depends on the beans. Some beans are just a little magic, and some are a lot magic. Now, I have some nice magic beans, and I’d trade you a handful of them for that, if you really wanted to buy and I really wanted to sell.”
“A handful!” said Coffey. “Why, there’s two handfuls of money right here!”
“Well, seeing as how it’s you,” said Dave, “I could sell you two handfuls of beans for two handfuls of money.”
“All right,” Coffey said. “That’s better.”
Mistress Klotsch was not entertained to find two handfuls of beans where she expected to see a cow. “Beans1” she said, “Beans! I suppose you’re going to get up first thing in the morning and milk these now! Shame on you: a young man as old as you are and so empty-headed. Why I had a son when pigeons are so much smarter, I’m sure I have no notion!”
None of this bothered Coffey, because he knew all along she’d say these things. And when she took and threw the beans right out the window, it was all he could do to keep from cheering. Now the beans would land in the dirt, grow into the clouds, and lead him to excitement and treasure. He went off to finish his book, to give him something to do while he waited to be rich.
So he did not realize that his mother was so upset she forgot what she was doing and let a whole pan of grease for the apple fritters burn. The grease was ruined, so she threw all of it right out the window as well.
So when morning came and Coffey strolled outside to get rich, there was nothing to be seen in the dirt outside the window but row upon row of broken, shriveled beansprouts, killed by the hot grease just as they were poking their heads above ground.
“Oh dear,” said Coffey. “I’ll never be able to buy Mother all those cows now.”
Vexed, he flopped down in the dirt and pulled at one of the shriveled beansprouts. He was more than surprised when it pulled back. Coffey found himself being pulled right down through the dirt, without even a chance to yell for help unless he wanted his mouth filled with mud.
“I had no idea beans had such long roots,” he thought. “To be sure, these were magic…oopf!”
He had landed hard on a stone floor. Looking up, he saw soft green moss on tall walls, and small white chairs on the floor. It was a tunnel, and rather a comfortable tunnel, though when he stood up, he decided that the ceiling was rather too low.
“Something lives here,” he thought, walking along among the chairs. “I wonder if it’s friendly.” He walked until he saw a tall white clock between two chairs, at the same time he heard footsteps. He slipped quickly behind the clock, just in case whatever lived here did not feel like being friendly.
A little old woman with blue hair was making the footstep sounds. Coffey thought at first that she was walking with a cane, but then saw the sharp point at one end, and realized it was a spear. There were sharp points on her teeth, too, and the way they stuck out below her chin on both sides of her mouth made him hope she was friendly, and not hungry.
It seemed for a moment that she would walk right past the clock and Cogffey, because she was looking at the floor. But as she came to the clock, her head came around. Great glowing eyes met Coffey’s eyes. Coffey knew at once everything he wanted to know about this woman, and he ran.
The woman had very short legs, and Coffey had long ones, so he could run faster. But since he had no idea at all where he was going, he realized this wasn’t helping.
After running for some time, he found himself in a kitchen full of bright blue stoves and dark green cupboards. This was not where Coffey wanted to be. It was some comfort that he wouldn’t be eaten raw, at least, but still, he felt the situation left something to be desired. He spotted a table with a long, hanging tablecloth, and slid underneath. If he rested here for a while, he thought, he might see something that could help him escape.
Coffey was not alone under the table. Resting in one corner he saw a furry orange creature with slanted green eyes, and hair sticking out on both sides of its nose. Coffey had never seen anything like this creature. It was not so very big, and it had no spear, but it looked so calm and comfortable here that he thought it best to be polite.
“May I sit here and not be eaten?” he inquired. “If I’m not in your way, that is?”
“All right,” said the animal.
Coffey would have said more, but he heard the little footsteps again. He peeked out from under the tablecloth and saw not one but two little women with blue hair, sharp teeth, and spears. They hinted through the kitchen, poking their spears into various cupboards, but did not bother the table. Coffey sighed with relief when they walked back out g the kitchen.
He turned to the animal, which had sat quietly while the women searched the kitchen. “My name is Coffey,” he said.
“Oh.”
This was not very helpful. Coffey tried again. “Er, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to pry into your personal business, but what…who are you?”
The animal blinked. “I am a cat. Have you never seen a cat, then?”
“I’ve never seen one in the village,” Coffey admitted. “But it is a very small village.”
The animal yawned, showing it, too, had very sharp teeth. “To be sure. Well, I am a cat, and I watch the trells.”
This sounded perfectly reasonable, but after a moment’s thought, Coffey inquired, “What are trells?”
“They are.” The cat yawned again, rolling its tongue out and back. “My job is to make sure they don’t grow to rich because they would then buy the world and run it to suit themselves. When they have too much gold, I take some out to the leprechauns.”
“Gold?” said Coffey.
“Metal stuff,” the cat said. “Those who go on two legs seem to like it, so it….”
“I know what it is, though I’ve not seen much,” said Coffey. “The…trells have a lot of it, do they?”
“They have all kinds of it,” said the cat. “On the stove there you can see their magic frying pan. It fries normal eggs into gold.”
”Ah.” Coffey peeked from under the tablecloth again and saw a frying pan on one of the stoves. He thought this over and turned to the cat again.
“Of someone were to take that frying pan away, the trells would not have so much gold.”
“Very likely.” The cat yawned again.
The cat didn’t seem to be getting the idea. “Can you help me escape with it?” Coffey inquired. “I wouldn’t bother you, but I don’t know the way out.”
The cat studied Coffey for a long moment, and then said, “What’s in it for me?”
Coffey studied the cat right back, but since he’d never seen a cat before, he couldn’t think what to offer it. “What do I have that you want?”
The cat blinked. “Good question. Since you’re in a hurry, I’ll help you now and we can talk about payment later.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” said Coffey.
“No?” The cat looked past Coffey at the tablecloth. Coffey peeked out again and found one of the blue-haired women had come back, and was poking her spear under the kitchen counters.
The cat yawned and stretched, and, rising, heading for the tablecloth. “Won’t she hurt you?” whispered Coffey.
“No, I chase the rats away from their chickens.” Not in the least hurry, the cat stretched again and passed under the tablecloth.
The trell glanced down as the cat rubbed against her ankles, but said nothing, continuing to jab the pointy end of her spear under the counters and stoves. “What’s the matter, Baba?” asked the cat.
The trell turned fierce eyes on the cat. “Cheedle, Chidle, Chadle, Choke: I smell the blood of a human bloke. Human people make me shudder: I’ll grind his bones to peanut butter!”
The cat’s face crunched up. “Oh, please.”
“What’s wrong?” The trell’s voice was like rocks grinding together.
“What kind of talk is that?” demanded the cat, upper lip curling into a sneer. “Cheedle, Chadle…oh, I can’t even say it. And ‘bloke’? Nobody says ‘bloke’ these days.”
“I thought it was kind of cute,” growled the trell.
“Well, you’ve got to do better,” the cat told her. “You’re going to be running the world one day, right? You should come up with something more elegant than that cheedle choodle whatever it was. Anyhow, you need peanuts to make peanut butter.”
“I’ll try.” Grumbling, the trell stomped out of the kitchen.
Coffey hurried out from under the table and grabbed the frying pan. “Now, how do I get out?”
“How did you get in?” yawned the cat.
It sounded so silly, Coffey hated to talk about it. “Well…I grabbed a magic beansprout and it pulled me down.”
“Where?”
“Well, it was back this way.” Coffey walked back up the hall, watching for trells. Soon, he recognized a rough patch of ceiling. “Those are the beansprouts.”
“Take hold of the root of one beansprout,” the cat told him, “And you’ll be pulled back up. But you can use each beansprout only once, so be careful. You have to come back, remember, with my reward.”
“I will,” Coffey promised. He set the frying pan down, but remembered in time that he wanted to take it with him. He took it in one hand, and jumped on a chair to grab a beansprout with the other. Sure enough, soon he was shooting through dirt as he had before, only in the other direction.
His head whanged against his mother’s rake. Mistress Klotsch had come to tear the unsightly beansprouts out of the yard. “Land!” she exclaimed, amazed not only to see her son up that early but to find him percolating up through the dirt. “Where have you been?”
“I was pulled underground by a magic beansprout,” Coffey explained, kicking his legs free of the dirt, “Down where the trells live. And this strange animal called a ‘cat’ helped me steal this magic frying pan and told me how to get out.”
Mistress Klotsch looked from her muddy son to the hole in the ground. “Magic beansprout,” she said. “Trells. Cat. Magic frying pan.”
Coffey took her hand. “Here, I’ll show you. Where’s an egg?”
He set the pan on the stove, and let it get hot. Mistress Klotsch added some grease and THEN handed Coffey an egg. Coffey cracked it into the pan. Mother and son stood watching the egg fry.
“Um,” said Coffey. “The cat didn’t tell me exactly how to….”
The egg jiggled, shook, and changed color, looking for all the world like a solid gold fried egg. Coffey reached for it, but then let go.
“We’ll let it cool first, I guess,” he said, turning it out onto a plate. “But anyway, Mother, you see….”
Mistress Klotsch was nowhere to be seen. Coffey searched the kitchen, not neglecting to look under the tablecloth, but found his mother outside, spreading her best coverlet over the shriveled little beansprouts. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to our little magic garden, would we?” she said.
I do not, as I believe I may have mentioned hereintofore, write a food blog. But I was feeling nostalgic for my parents’ kitchen (which had, among other glories, cupboards and refrigerators I was not responsible for refilling.) I was thinking back to the Add-Ins: the ingredients added to prepared foods, which came out of a box or can ready to cook but which needed a few touches to make them our own. Sauerkraut, for example, came out of that little green can but had to be warmed first in a saucepan with chopped onion and a few tablespoons of grease poured off the cooking roast. Baked beans came out of a reddish-brown can and were often given a quick lacing of molasses in that same little saucepan. (NO, we did not cook them together. What meal requires both baked beans AND sauerkraut? Every main course had its traditional vegetable sidekick: canned corn was served so often with pork chops that my father dubbed them cornchops. And it was good.)
Now, you understand, this was the Midwest. And nothing in the Midwest has things added to it like Jello. A cousin of mine, brought up in the South, did not understand until she attended her mother’s high school reunion, and found a potluck meal including a dozen different casseroles, an array of dessert bars heavy on sweetened condensed milk, and FORTY-SEVEN different salads consisting of Jell-o and whatever was in the kitchen at the time. She accepted it with a chuckle on learning that these are known in some circles as Congealed Salads, but she never really converted.
Furthermore, she never understood that despite the demands of novelty and variety, there are certain salads congealed into tradition. This applies not just to the main additive, but the Jello itself. Color is very important in Jello presentation, and you don’t want to make a mistake.
Tradition demands that a can of mandarin oranges is added only to ORANGE Jello; people who choose some other Jello are just looking for attention. (And yes, you can also add orange sherbet for that extra layer of foam. My mother thought this was a waste of sherbet, but there were Cub Scout banquets and church suppers where we got our share.) Bananas are for RED Jello (people claim that there are different flavors of Jello that are red, but we knew better. Red was red, it was red-flavored, and that was that.) Red Jello can also be used for fruit cocktail, though SOME iconoclasts will you Orange or Lime for this. Again, just people looking for quick notoriety. Lime Jello CAN be used for chopped-up canned pears, but we liked canned pears on their own, or, as Dad taught us, under a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
My mother was also something of a pioneer in our neigborhood, and most of the world, I find, in liking to pour milk on a bowl of red Jello and stir it around. People look at me in shock when I explain this, but it is one of those rare viands you should not knock until you have tried it. (My mother was also an expert at mooshing ice cream. You can take a scoop of vanilla and stir it in your bowl until it starts to thaw just a little and assumes a sort of soft-serve consistency. This is VERY good, and you must not be discouraged in doing this with vanilla ice cream and Hershey’s syrup results in something the color of packaged slices of bologna. “Don’t look at it, just eat it,” as my mother said so often, generally to no avail.)
Even in the Midwest, however, I get walleyed glances when I speak of one of my father’s favorites, a side dish it has taken me years to make my peace with. I will pass it along so you can try it (unless you are one of that strange tribe which has been making it for years and doesn’t know what the fuss is about. Greetings, neighbor. Do you actually eat it, or just serve it?)
Carrot Jello is simple. Get your vegetable grater and grate three or four good-sized carrots, using the smallest opening in the grater. Prepare your lemon Jello as directed on the package, pour it into that little white bowl which is just the right size, toss all those carrot shreds on top, and allow to chill thoroughly. That’s it.
I didn’t eat any lemon Jello WITHOUT carrots in it until my grownup years, and I was surprised to find it refreshing and pleasant. That’s what I mean when I say I have made my peace with carrot Jello. I like lemon Jello and I like fresh crispy carrots and if someone insists on turning the carrots into a floating nest, have at it. I do not SEE Carrot Jello the way I used to, but if I was served some, I honestly believe I could eat it without scowling (a talent which might have saved me trouble back in the day.)
At any rate, if anyone would like to give me backing for my billion dollar restaurant chain plan, which will duplicate the potluck dinner of yore with all its casseroles, sheets cakes, and amazing cookies, I WILL include Carrot Jello on the buffet. You can always get some to throw at Cousin Thurgood, who mixes his beans and sauerkraut.
Of course, Labor Day was Monday, but we were busy with the serialization of one of my somehow unpublished novels. The NEXT serialization will be a collection of long fantasy stories which was rejected several times in the 1990s by publishers who suggested the world didn’t need more fairy tales, or, if it did, did not need any from ME.
In any case, there should be time yet to show off how postcards back in the day were just as inclined to explain how dignified good honest labor was, just as my real or prospective employers always did. The golden age of postcards, remember, was also the great day of motivational poetry, and an age when writers urging you to give your job the effort it deserved could sell their pamphlets by the millions to eager readers. {postcard artists since have not neglected their historic role in promoting the proper image of labor.
Looking back, we see the worker explaining what a joy it was to be gainfully employed, to be given a chance to shove off their skills in an effort to bring a company’s ideals to fruition.
And everyone knew top management shared the concerns and worries of the rank and file. Unless everybody worked together with equal commitment and sacrifice for the success of an enterprise’s aims—be that a major manufacturing firm, a farm, or a law firm, there could be no progress or achievement.
The need for constant effort was omnipresent. The world of competition which drove innovation and production allowed for no break from giving at least one hundred percent of one’s potential to every task, mental or menial.
Vacations were accepted as a necessary evil: one did not, as mt band director often told us, drive a nail without pulling back on the hammer now and then. But the truly dedicated employee yearned not for such things. The opportunity for hard work and achievement offered by one’s employers was too exhilarating to stay away from for long.
The goal of all this labor was the culmination for which every staff member strove; small gratifications offered by idleness or freedom from labor were transitory, and counterproductive. The job was what mattered.
After all, every employee had an equal chance to achieve, through unremitting attention to work, promotion and improvement. Postcards reminded you of everything that could be learned from the “lives of great men”.
In fact what would one do with one’s life if one didn’t have the intense joy of working with your colleagues on a back-breaking, panic-inducing, sweat-producing effort? The greatest reward in life was that pat on the back from one’s superiors, and the knowledge that the constant effort had resulted in a success which you would be expected to repeat every day until finally forced into retirement. (And those editors back in the 1990s claimed I didn’t know how to write fairy tales!)
Two of the crew sat crosslegged on the floor of the Dragonshelf. Nubry, having donned a white Maintenance jacket, was reconnecting the console that would monitor pursuit, of which there had been strangely little so far.
“Pass me the rakwet diagnostic.”
“Racquet,” said Bott, pronouncing it “racket”. He handed her the small white instrument.
Nubry plucked it from his hand and shifted her hips to present more of her back to him. The control room was very quiet, lacking all the little beeps and blips you never paid attention to until they were missing. The Klamathans had taken the first sleep shift, quaered in long unused crew cabins at the ship’s core. Nott doubted they were sleeping yet; There were too many things Chlorda and Louba had not yet done to Bassada.
Nubry’s actions were abrupt, almost fierce. Bott did not think this entirely strange. Despite what had no doubt been a grueling day, she had volunteered to take the first shift here in the control room. He doubted the Emperor’s hospitality to his prisoners would make anyone less than edgy.
And there was something rather too good about this escape: that was a cause for worry as well. A quick check had shown that only this room had seen damage from Imperial demo crews: the books were safe. Perhaps the Emperor and the Sheriff had set up new bets on the pursuit, and wanted good odds. A surprising number of messages, detectable but not interceptable under current conditions, showed they must be up to something.
Nubry propped the console with one shoulder. “Do you have the…Artchonistic Prospondor?”
“Arkonistic.” Bott handed it over.
She took it, but her eyes were still on him. Her upper lip had drawn back, displaying gritted teeth. He waited.
Her eyes narrowed. “Is this still my ship?”
He remembered how sensitive she could be—how any captain WOUD be—about who was at the helm. Nut he did feel he had more of an excuse this time. “Do you think you could fly it when it’s in this condition?”
“I can fly anything when I’m sober.” She sniffed and tossed back her hair. “And I don’t drink.”
Before he could reply, she had shifted again, turning her back to him again as she applied the prospondor to the console. After a few ferocious twists with it, she leaned back. The console stayed in position. She rose, and pressed a small tab. A square green screen above it blinked on.
“Now we can see where we’re going,” she murmured.
“Good thing, too,” Bott told her. “Nice job.”
She didn’t turn around. “Where are we going?” her voice was even quitter now. “Or is that none of my business?”
“I….”
“Or do you even know where you’re going?”
“Of course,” Bott told her. “I checked the book.”
She turned around now; her face told him she was not really in the mood for that. Well, he hadn’t divulged any of his plan yet—no one had asked him—but she had a right to know. “Actually, I was thinking of setting a course for Kamath.”
Her shoulders were very high and stiff as she turned her back on him again. “Yes. Mm-hmm. Of course.” She sniffed again. “And what will you do there?”
“Drop off as much of the crew that wants to go back there.” He shifted both sets of wires in his left hand. “After that, I thought I might try for Near Shloggina.”
She came around to face him, frowning now as if HE was the one mispronouncing his words. “Near…. The Library Planet? Why? What’s there?”
“A big, empty library.”
The frown deepened; she shook her head, trying to understand. “But they don’t…they DESTROY books.”
“There must be more librarians down there like Wanure, who DO want books. We help them take over. And then we refill the library.”
Her chin came forward. Her frown was now one not of doubt but of open distrust. “This collection was meant to stay aboard the Dragonshelf. The whole existence of the university fleets was arranged because having libraries and schools on stationary locations was too dangerous.”
“Of course,” Bott said, “But we….”
A small wrench bounced as Nubry stamped one foot on the floor. “I don’t care what the four of you decided to do with the Dragonshelf when it’s empty. I can’t let you….”
Bott held up both hands. “We have the Emperor’s copy machine! We can use it to copy your collection, for the Library Planet and any other empty libraries!”
“Oh.”
The librarian’s foot slid back and forth across the place she’d stamped it, as if trying to erase the place. “No. No, we can’t.” She swallowed hard. “Things fade out after a number of copies.”
Bott shrugged. “Then we do it the way they do making those bootleg recordings at the Neybil Shop: make a dozen master copies, and then just copy those copies, to keep the originals secure.”
Nubry’s lower lip slid under the upper as she thought this over. “Ye-es.”
“It’ll take space, and a lot of helpers,” Bott said. “On Near Shloggina, we should be able to get all of that, if we can get the book librarians to overthrow the administrators. The place is nice and private, and the Emperor would never suspect we’d go back there. They can hang on to the master copies and keep copying while we deliver copied copies to planets all through the Free Imperial State.”
“That would take time, and be dangerous.” Nubry licked her lips. “When would you be making your profit? How would you….”
Bott slid a hand down the front of his father’s jacket. “Undermining the Free Imperial State would be profit in itself.” He jerked his head toward the screen she had brought to life. “I think I might be getting tired of being a pirate. Maybe I could become a crusader. Or a Dangerous Rebel.”
The librarian’s mouth slid up at one side, and she nodded. Then the frown came back, and her lips rolled in on each other. “You seem to have a lot of plans for my books,” she said. “Ad y ship.”
Bott looked down at the threads he was holding, and shrugged. “I guess I have.”
Her shoulders rolled back; her chin rose. “And do you have plans for me as well?”
His eyes came square up to hers. “Oh, I think so.”
Nubry pulled her maintenance jacket closed; Bott hadn’t noticed it was open. “And what are they?”
Bott found a stray clip on the floor and brought it up to bind the threads he was holding. “Well, I can be some use in this project, but not enough.” He smoothed a wrinkle in his father’s jacket and looked up again. “Do you think you could teach me to read?”
Her mouth dropped open. No words came out.
Bott got a leg under himself to rise. “Do you think so?”
Her eyes were huge. “Do I? Yes, I do!”
The Dragonshelf bounced a little as Bott let go of the clip and stood up. But it was still locked on course. It was headed for a future that mixed universal literacy with a plethora of books and a shortage of Emperors into a system that was willing to risk the threat pf the printed word.
None of this registered on the monitor of course, and Bott was only vaguely aware of it as the floor bounced and he fell toward the librarian. She caught hold of him, and this was more tangible than the ship’s course, certainly more reasonable that what seemed to be a ghostly whisper of “Kiss her, you lummox!”
It seemed a good way to start. Bunny Bunk could wait.
“Magic Mirror on the Wall, are you that most famous mirror of all?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“And you answer truthfully every question I ask?”
“Been doing it so far, Mistress. That’s two of two.”
“Just a plain straightforward truthful answer? No ifs or hidden….”
“Let me tell you about that, Kiddo Socko.”
“What happened to ‘Mistress’?”
“Well, if you want plain unfiltered truth, you don’t look like you’d be anybody’s mistress.”
“I’ve always wondered why the Wicked Queen didn’t throw you out a window.”
“She wasn’t big on windows, that Queen; the castle looked scarier without ‘em, she said. But if we can get back to the subject, I WILL tell you the truth, Mistress-or-Not. In the way that makes for the most interesting story.”
“What’s THAT mean?”
“The phrase ‘fairest in the land’ is open to interpretation. Depending on your standards, there were lots of people fairer than the Queen. Or not, especially if you went by her personal standards. Though at night, when she doffed the Goth rags and put on that powder blue teddy….”
“Never mind about that. Tell me the truth about truth…in your interpretation.”
“Snow White, now, had all the makings of the heroine of a really dramatic story. Of course, once I mentioned her, it was up to the Queen to decide what to do, so I couldn’t be sure if it would be a tragedy, a comedy, a multi-volume romantasy series, or what have you. I never could have predicted the whole huntsman thing, and the dwarfs and their cabin weren’t on my radar at all, but I knew SOMETHING exciting would come of her.”
“Is any of that in the best interests of your owner?”
“It’s really up to my ‘owner’ to inquire into the rules and restrictions. Which—my compliments—you’re the first one to do. There was this one guy who wanted to know the best way to become famous. I never told him he HAD to strip naked, paint himself blue, and dance his way into the Bubble Day Parade juggling swords. But he WAS famous in a matter of seconds.”
“And dead?”
“He was less lucky than that when the swords landed.”
“I don’t want to know more about him.”
“Then there was this milkmaid who asked to know how she could be really valued by men.”
“This isn’t another dancing naked in the streets story, is it?”
“No, but it worked out about as well. You should have seen the reward they offered on the Wanted Posters.”
“O-Kay. Well, my first question was going to be about where I could make my fortune, but….”
“Miles from here, under the ice in a secret polar lair, lives a cult whose hoard of gold no living man knows is there.”
“I see. Polar lair. No sword juggling. And there’s no easier way to make my fortune?”
“Oh, sure. But do you want something mundane like ‘Stop talking to mirrors and get back to work’ or do you want a really great story?”
It has been a while since we have considered the motivational verse found on postcards of yore. Why should we bother to look again? I don’t know whether that’s any of yore business.
I wish I had talked an acquaintance of mine, who had read every motivational classic of the last century, to go ahead with a project of constructing a sort of family tree which would show which writer got his ideas from which predecessor. He was a great believer in these self-help heroes, though he admitted you could probably boil them all down to a few basic principles: optimism, perseverance, and self-reliance. Every generation picked out its favorite preachers of such virtues, and every generation as well saw the same principles available on postcards for those who couldn’t pause in their daily grind…perseverance to read a whole book.
Each of these principles, by the way, has had its critics. Thorne Smith spoke of a businessman determined to show his grit and smile the Depression away (and nearly smiled his firm into bankruptcy, but for unsmiling underlings who worked overtime.) Optimism and perseverance were served, or parodied, in a little booklet I used to see donated all the time about a boy who lost a foot in a bicycle accident and forced himself to work out and try to walk every single day, confident that as long as he believed in himself and kept working, he would grow a new foot. (I think he won the big football game for his high school and went on to be elected Senator, but never did grow another foot. My impression was that the author was taking the mock, but other people said they found the story a guide in times of trouble and passed it along to their grandchildren…which may be why so many copies were donated to the book fair.)
In any case, postcard artists tried to provide guidance to their fellow travelers, urging the value of the popular ideals of the day (along with, in this case, horse sense, I guess. Unless the point is that this is all a matter of good breeding.)
My personal brain prefers it when the poets get more specific. This poet is, more or less, presenting the ideal of self-reliance, only applied to the case of one’s financial habits. I know I speak with the benefit of hindsight, but the poet’s ow finances would probably have been better served with a children’s book. “Don’t Be a Billy Borrow” sounds as if it would have sold thousands of copies to doting grandparents.
This poet takes up the cause of making sure young ladies remain demure and mindful. Chewing gum was considered a great evil because it got in the way of one’s accomplishments. People were urged by advertisers to buy something that had no nutritional value, looked bad, contributed nothing to society beyond the profit made by uncaring industries. (There was a similar campaign against cigarettes at the time. Remind me how that one worked out.)
Speaking of the profit made by producers of addictive products, THIS is one of the numerous verses written to remind people that their friends were yearning to get a postcard. But we have discussed this phenomenon hereintofore.
Let us conclude with this work by a poet not known for contemplative moods (Milton Berle). I thought about writing an article about the school of motivational verse whose moral was “Well, anyhow, he tried.” But I’ll have to put that off while I run to the store. I just realized I’m all out of chewing gum.
Blogsy Babbles 