I made a map. It isn’t much good and it doesn’t show all the streets in
our town, but it shows the streets that old track crosses. On Main
Street, almost opposite the station, is Bennett’s. I put that in because
I thought maybe you’d like to know where it is. It hasn’t got anything
to do with our adventures in this story, but it’s in the story a lot,
just the same.
When that old track was new I guess there wasn’t any Willow Place; I
guess Main Street didn’t amount to much either. There wasn’t any
building where Slausen’s is, that’s sure. And Tony’s Lunch Wagon wasn’t
there, that’s sure. They didn’t have any big grammar school in
Bridgeboro then. Those were the happy days.
[Illustration]
Now the first night after we got home after our wild ride, we had a
troop meeting to see if we could think up any way to get our car from
the station over to Van Schlessenhoff’s field. Because what’s the use of
having a home if you haven’t got any place to put it? Be it never so
humble, you’ve got to have a place to put your home.
We had that meeting right in the car near the station. Pee-wee said that
he’d be a committee to go out and look at the tracks. All he wanted was
a chance to go over to Bennett’s.
I said, “This is no time for ice cream cones with the transportation
problem staring us in the face. It’s bad enough to be put out of your
home, but to have your home put out, that’s worse. You don’t suppose the
railroad is going to leave this car here, do you?”
“We’ll be convicted,” Pee-wee shouted. He meant evicted.
“We won’t leave our home, we’ll take it with us!” two or three of them
began shouting.
“Those tracks are good all the way across Cat-tail Marsh,” El Sawyer
said, “because I walked the ties right down to the river.”
“If they held you they ought to hold the car,” I said. Crinkums, that
fellow weighs about a ton. Then Hunt Ward (he’s in the Elks) began
singing:
I love, I love, I love my home,
But what’ll we do with it?
Ralph Warner (he’s in my patrol, he’s got red hair), he said, “I
promised my mother I’d never run away from home.”
“But you didn’t promise her that you wouldn’t run away _in_ your home,
did you?” Doc wanted to know.
“That’s a teckinality,” Pee-wee shouted; “they use those in courts.”
“You mean technicality,” I told him; “shut up unless you’ve got a
suggestion to make. We’re here to decide how we’re going to get
somewhere else. There are a lot of obstacles. I move——”
“How are we going to move, that’s what I’d like to know?” Dorry Benton
shouted.
“Maybe Mr. Bennett will be able to give us a suggestion,” the kid
shouted.
“There you go again,” I told him. “Will you forget about Bennett’s and
get down to business? How are we going to get this meeting place over to
Van Schlessenhoff’s field?”
“I was the one who made him say all right!” the kid piped up. “I made
him laugh!”
“You’re enough to make a weeping willow laugh,” I told him. “You secured
the field and it’s nearly a half a mile away.”
“All we’ve got to do is to get the car there,” he said.
“Sure, that’s all,” I told him.
“The track is good,” Westy said.
“How about motive power?” Doc wanted to know.
“How about which?” they all shouted.
“I make a motion——” Pee-wee began screaming.
I said, “If you don’t keep still a minute, I’ll make a couple of motions
and you’ll land under one of the seats. I want suggestions. If we can
only manage to get this old car across Willow Place, the rest will be
easy. It’s down hill all the way across the Sneezenbunker land right
down to the marsh. If we get her as far as the marsh we’ll get her
across all right.”
“The track down there wouldn’t hold a locomotive,” Westy said.
“We should worry about a locomotive,” I told him; “there are other ways.
But how are we going to get her by Tony’s? And how about Slausen’s on
Willow Place? Do you think they’re going to get out of the way if we
toot a horn? Tony’s lunch wagon is all boarded up underneath, and you
know what an ugly old grouch he is.”
“Maybe if we bought a lot of frankfurters from him,” our young hero
said, “maybe then he’d—kind of—— That’s what you call diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy is what governments do,” Connie Bennett said. “Do you mean to
say that England would do anything for the United States just because we
bought a frankfurter for King George?”
“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shot back at him. “Diplomacy is when you’re very
nice and polite so as to get something you want.”
“Like two helpings of dessert,” I told him.
“But anyway, I know something better than diplomacy,” he shouted; “and
that’s strategy.”
I said, “All right, as long as everybody’s shouting at once and we’re
not getting anywhere, let’s go over to Tony’s and if we can’t dip him
maybe we can strat him.”
So that’s the way it was, the first thing we did to get that car moved
was to go over to Tony’s and each buy a frankfurter. There were
twenty-four of us in there at once. Twenty-four frankfurters are a good
many for one fellow—I don’t mean for one fellow to eat, but for one
fellow to sell.
After that we asked Tony if he would just as soon let us take the boards
away from underneath his wagon so that he could move the wagon away from
over those old sunken, rusty tracks, just about seven or eight feet or
so.
He said, “No mova. Gotta de license. No mova.”
Gee whiz, if that’s what you call diplomacy, I like arithmetic better,
and that isn’t saying much.