It isn't only Christmas that comes but once a year and when it comes it
brings good cheer; it's any festival that is worth a hill of beans, High
School Commencement, Fourth of July, Sunday-school excursion, Election'
bonfire, Thanksgiving Day (a nice day and one whereon you can eat roast
turkey till you can't choke down another bite, and pumpkin-pie, and
cranberry sauce. Tell you!)--but about the best in the whole lot, and
something the city folks don't have, is Firemen's Tournament. That comes
once a year, generally about the time for putting up tomatoes.
The first that most of us know about it is when we see the bills up,
telling how much excursion rates will be to our town from Ostrander
and Mt. Victory, and Wapatomica, and New Berlin, and Foster's,
and Caledonia, and Mechanicsburg--all the towns around on both the
railroads. But before that there was the Citizens' Committee, and then
the Executive Committee, and the Finance Committee, and the Committee
on Press and Publicity, and Printing and Prizes, and Decorations and
Badges, and Music, and Reception to Firemen, and Reception to Guests--as
many committees as there are nails in the fence from your house to mine.
And these committees come around and tell you that we want to show the
folks that we've got public spirit in our town, some spunk, some git-up
to us. We want our town to contrast favorably with Caledonia where they
had the Tournament last year. We want to put it all over the Caledonia
people (they think they're so smart), and we can do it, too, if
everybody will take a-holt and help. Well, we want all we can get. We
expect a pretty generous offer from you, for one. Man that has as pretty
and tasty got-up store as you have, and does the business that you do,
ought to show his appreciation of the town and try to help along....
Oh, anything you're a mind to give. 'Most anything comes in handy for
prizes. But what we principally need is cash, ready cash. You see,
there's a good deal of expense attached to an enterprise of this
character. So many little things you wouldn't think of, that you've
just got to have. But laws! you'll make it all back and more, too. We
cackleate there'll be, at the very least, ten thousand people in town
that day, and it's just naturally bound to be that some of them will do
their trading.
Thank you very much, that's very handsome of you. Good day. (What are
you growling about? Lucky to get five cents out of that man.)
The Ladies' Aid of Center Street M. E., has secured the store-room
recently vacated by Rouse & Meyers, and is going to serve a dinner that
day for the benefit of the Carpet Fund of their church and about time,
too, I say. I like to broke my neck there a week ago last Sunday night,
when our minister was away. Caught my foot in a hole in the carpet, and
a little more and wouldn't have gone headlong. So, it's: “Why, I've been
meaning for more than a year, to call on you, Mrs.--. Mrs.--(Let me
look at my list. Oh, yes) Mrs. Cooper, but we've had so much sickness
at home--you know my husband's father is staying with us at present,
and he's been in very poor health all winter--and when it hasn't been
sickness, it's been company. You know how it is. And it seemed as if
I--just--could--not make out to get up your way. What a pretty little
place you have! So cozy! I was just saying to Mrs. Thorpe here, it was
so seldom you saw a really pretty residence in this part of town. We
think that up on the hill, where we reside, you know, is about the
handsomest.... Yes, there are a great many wealthy people live up
there. The Quackenbushes are enormously wealthy. I was saying to Mrs.
Quackenbush only the other day that I thought the hill people were
almost too exclusive .... Yes, it is a perfectly lovely day....
Er--er--We're soliciting for the Firemen's Tournament--well, not for the
Tournament exactly, but the Ladies' Aid are going to give a dinner
that day for the Carpet Fund and we thought perhaps you 'd like to help
along.... Oh, any little thing, a boiled ham or--... Well, we shall want
some cake, but we'd druther--or, at least, rawther--have something more
substantial, don't you know, pie or pickles or jelly, don't you know.
And will you bring it or shall I send Michael with the carriage for
it?.... Oh, thank you! If you would. It would be so much appreciated.
So sorry we couldn't make a longer stay, but now that we've found the
way.... Yes, that's very true. Well, good-afternoon.”
The lady of the house watches them as Michael inquires: “Whur next,
mum?” and bangs the door of the carriage. Then she turns and says to
herself: “Huh!” Mrs. Thorpe is that instant observing: “Did you notice
that crayon enlargement she had hanging up? Wouldn't it kill you?” To
which the other lady responds: “Well, between you and I, Mrs. Thorpe, if
I couldn't have a real hand-painted picture I wouldn't have nothing at
all.”
The lady of the house bakes a cake. She'll show them a thing or two in
the cake line. And while it is in the oven what does that little dev--,
that provoking Freddie, do but see if he can't jump across the kitchen
in two jumps. Fall? What cake wouldn't fall? Of course it falls. But it
is too late now to bake another, and if they don't like it, they know
what they can do. She doesn't know that she's under any obligation to
them.
Mrs. John Van Meter hears Freddie say off the little speech his mother
taught him--Oh, you may be sure she'd be there as large as life, taking
charge of everything, just as if she had been one of the workers,
when, to my certain knowledge, she hadn't been to one of the committee
meetings, not a one. I declare I don't know what Mr. Craddock is
thinking of to let her boss every body around the way she does--and she
smiles and says: “It's all right. It's just lovely. Tell your mamma Mrs.
Van Meter is ever and ever so much obliged to her. Isn't he a dear boy?”
And when he is gone, she says: “What are we ever going to do with
all this cake? It seems as if everybody has sent cake. And whatever
possessed that woman to attempt a cake, I--can't imagine. Ts! ts! ts!
H-well. Oh, put it somewhere. Maybe we can work it off on the country
people. Mrs. Filkins, your coffee smells PERfectly grand! Perfectly
grand. Do you think we'll have spoons enough?”
The Tournament prizes are exhibited in the windows of the leading
furniture emporium at the corner of Main and Center, each with a card
attached bearing the name of the donor in distinctly legible characters.
Old man Hagerman has been mowing all the rag-weed and cuckle-burrs along
the line of march, and the lawns have had an unusual amount of shaving
and sprinkling. Out near the end of Center Street, the grandstand has
been going up, tiers of seats rising from each curb line. The street has
been rolled and sprinkled and scraped until it is in fine condition for
a running track. Why don't you pick up that pebble and throw it over
into the lot? Suppose some runner should slip on that stone and fall and
hurt himself, you'd be to blame.
The day before the Tournament, they hang the banner:
“WELCOME VOLUNTEER FIREMEN”
from Case's drugstore across to the Furniture Emporium. Along the line
of march you may see the man of the house up on a step-ladder against
the front porch, with his hands full of drapery and his mouth full of
tacks. His wife is backing toward the geranium bed to get a good view,
cocking her head on one side.
“How 'v vif?” he asks as well as he can for the tacks.
“Little higher. Oh, not so much. Down a little. Whope! that's .... Oh,
plague take the firemen! Just look at that! Mercy! Mercy!”
The man of the house can't turn his head.
“Oh, I wouldn't have had it happen for I don't know what! Ts! Ts! Ts!
That lovely silverleaf geranium that Mrs. Pritchard give me a slip of.
Broke right off! Oh, my! My! My! Do you s'pose it'd grow if I was to
stick it into the ground just as it is with all them buds on it?”
The man of the house lets one end of the drapery go and empties his
mouth of tacks into his disengaged hand.
“I don't know. Ow! jabbed right into my gum! But I can tell you this:
If you think I'm going to stick up on this ladder all morning while you
carry on about some fool old geranium that you can just as well fuss
with when I'm gone, why, you're mighty much mistaken.”
“Well, you needn't take my head off. I feel awful about that geranium.”
“Well, why don't you look where you're going? Is this right?”
“Yes, I told you. I wish now I'd done it myself. I can't ask you to do a
thing about the house but there's a row raised right away.”
People that don't want to go to the trouble of tacking up these alphabet
flags on the edge of the veranda eaves (it takes fourteen of them to
spell “WELCOME FIREMEN”), say they think a handsome flag--a really
handsome one, not one of these twenty-five centers--is as pretty and
rich looking a decoration as a body can put up.
Tents are raised in the vacant lots along Center Street, and counters
knocked together for the sale of ice-cold lemonade, lemo, lemo, lemo,
made in the shade, with a spade, by an old maid, lemo, lemo. Here y' are
now, gents, gitch nice cool drink, on'y five a glass. There is even the
hook for the ice-cream candy man to throw the taffy over when he pulls
it. I like to watch him. It makes me dribble at the mouth to think about
it.
The man that sells the squawking toys and the rubber balloons on sticks
is in town. All he can say is: “Fi' cent.” He will blow up the balloons
tomorrow morning. The men with the black-velvet covered shields, all
stuck full of “souvenirs,” are here, and the men with the little canes.
I guess we'll have a big crowd if it doesn't rain. What does the paper
say about the weather?
The boys have been playing a new game for some time past, but it is
only this evening that you notice it. The way of it is this: You take
an express-wagon--it has to have real wheels: these sawed-out wheels
are too baby--and you tie a long rope to the tongue and fix loops on the
rope, so that the boys can put each a loop over his shoulder. (You want
a good many boys.) And you get big, long, thick pieces of rag and you
take and tie them so as to make a big, big, long piece, about as long as
from here to 'way over there. And you lay this in the wagon, kind of in
folds like. Then you go up to where they water the horses and two of you
go at the back end of the wagon and the rest put the loops over their
shoulders, and one boy says, “Are you ready?” and he has a Fourth of
July pistol and he shoots off a cap. And when you hear that, you run
like the dickens and the two boys behind the wagon let out the hose (the
big, long, thick piece of rag) and fix it so it lies about straight on
the ground. And when you have run as far as the hose will reach, the boy
with the Fourth of July pistol says: “Twenty-eight and two-fifths,”
and that's the game. And the kids don't like for big folks to stand and
watch them, because they always make fun so.
In other towns they have Boys' Companies organized strictly for
Tournament purposes. There was talk of having one here. Mat. King, the
assistant chief, was all for having one so that we could compete in what
he calls “the juveline contests,” but it fell through somehow.
Along about sun-up you hear the big farm-wagons clattering into town,
chairs in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and
Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's
named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now,
framed and hanging up over the organ. But for all the wagon is so full,
there is room for a big basket covered with a red-ended towel. (Seems to
me I smell fried chicken, don't you?)
I just thought I'dt see if you'd bite. You've formed your notions
of country people from “The Old Homestead” and these by-gosh-Mirandy
novels. The real farmers, nowadays, drive into town in double-seated
carriages with matched bays, curried so that you can see to comb
your hair in their glossy sides. The single rigs sparkle in the sun,
conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred
features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should
wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows
run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are
almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their
clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember
that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and
there is such a thing as a mail-order business in this country, even if
you aren't aware of it.
All the little boys in town are out with their baskets chanting sadly: