READY FOR BUSINESS
We weren’t so fed up on business stuff that we had forgotten how to
be boys, with a liking for the kind of fun that is particularly boys’
fun. So, as it was still early in the afternoon, and there was nothing
special for us to do in Tutter, anyway, we headed for the river to do
the usual mid-summer “high-dive” and “who-can-bring-up-the-most-mud”
stuff.
Across the river we could see the high sandstone bluffs, in the ravines
and canyons of which are numerous caves, some of which are fairly good
size. It’s odd, in a way, that there should be any “wild” land in a
section so completely crisscrossed with hard auto roads as La Salle
county. But if you could see how deep and dangerous some of the river
canyons are you’d understand why so few people go there.
Dressing after our peachy swim, I got my eyes on an old log raft that
had lodged in the willows. There is only one thing that a raft is good
for, but when I tried to show my chum what that something was I had
the bad luck to skid into the river, clothes and all.
And what gave Poppy all the more chance to hoot at me was the smart gab
that I had dished out to him about “Washington crossing the Delaware.”
As a matter of fact, if I hadn’t acted the monkey with my “posing”
stuff I wouldn’t have ended up with a wet shirt-tail. And what was even
worse, my pants accidentally burned up when we built a fire to dry them.
But rather than stick around here until dark, I started for home in a
headless and bottomless barrel that Poppy had found on the river bank.
It was fun at first. That is, I tried to let on that it was fun. For
lots of times when a fellow does that he can take the gloom out of a
bad predicament. But with slivers puncturing me at every step I soon
got tired of it. Besides, this was no way for me to hit town. If the
Tutter kids spotted me they’d start rolling me around as sure as pop.
And how lovely for me without any pants on!
“I’m going back to Mrs. O’Mally’s,” I told Poppy. “And if I can’t do
any better I’ll borrow a nightgown.”
Suddenly we heard the muffled thump-thump-thump of an approaching
motor car. And having no particular desire to be act “A” in the free
vaudeville show, as it were, I frisked myself, barrel and all, into a
convenient cornfield.
Nearer and nearer came the auto. Then it stopped. Taking a guarded peek
I saw that it was one of the canning company’s trucks. And who do you
suppose was jacking up one of the hind wheels? No one but little cutie,
himself.
“Got a puncture?” I heard Poppy inquire pleasantly.
“Huh! Is it any of your business?” the hot-faced worker looked up with
a scowl.
“Makes you sweat, huh?” was Poppy’s further pleasant contribution to
the conversation.
“Aw, shut up.”
Having raised the wheel, the worker almost dislocated a lung trying to
loosen the rim.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll break it?” purred Poppy.
“I’ll break your neck if you don’t shut up.”
The rim loosening suddenly, sweaty-face landed on the back of his neck
in the dusty road. But he was up like a flash.
“If you laugh,” he screeched, grabbing a hammer, “I’ll soak you.”
“I don’t see anything to laugh at,” says Poppy as sober as a deacon.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Smarty’s eyes didn’t lose any of their hatred.
“If it’s time for you to go,” he shoved out, “don’t let me detain you.”
“I was just wondering,” says Poppy earnestly, “if I could get you to
haul my barrel to town for me.”
“What barrel?”
“It ran into the cornfield when it heard you coming. But it’ll come out
again if I whistle.”
Here was my chance to have some fun. Grabbing several big ears of corn,
and scrooching in my barrel, I sort of poked the new ears on top of me.
This made it look as though the barrel was full of green corn. Then,
taking short steps, with my feet out of sight, and one eye fastened to
a slit in the staves, I went out where the audience was.
Poppy almost fell over at sight of the “walking barrel.” As for smarty,
his eyes stuck out like warts on a squash. But not being completely
and hopelessly dumb, he caught on as I made a circle of the truck. And
_mad_! Say, when I did the jack-in-the-box stuff on him, with the same
kind of a hee-haw that he had handed to us at the bank, I thought he’d
peg the whole truck at me.
“He’s heading for Mrs. O’Mally’s house to get a load of cucumbers,” I
told Poppy, when the truck had gone on down the dusty country road.
“The dickens! Do you suppose he’ll take all she’s got and make us
wait?”
“We paid her for four bushels with the promise that they’d be ready for
us any time after four o’clock. And from what I know of her I don’t
think she’ll go back on her word.”
“Just the same,” says Poppy, “I’d like to make sure. For we need
those cucumbers. So, as you were going back there anyway to borrow a
nightgown, let’s follow him. We needn’t show ourselves.”
Winding up our legs, we soon were back within sight of the stone house.
And sure enough, as I had told Poppy, the canning factory truck was
pulled up beside the cucumber patch. Ducking into a cornfield that
skirted the big patch, we stopped at the sound of voices.
“No,” says Mrs. O’Mally, “them four baskets are sold. I can’t let ye
have ’em.”
“But I want all you’ve got,” insisted the important acting truck driver.
“I’m sorry. But the other two b’ys was ahead of ye.”
“Who do you mean?--that Ott kid and young Todd?”
“Yes. They bought them four baskets an’ paid me for ’em.”
Smarty gave a mean laugh.
“Some more of their ‘Pickle Parlor’ stuff, I suppose. A bunch of junk.
_Them_ run a business and get away with it? Say, they couldn’t draw
a picture of a straight line and do a good job of it. Let me tell you
something, old lady: you’re crazy to sell pickles to kids like them
when you’ve got a big responsible company like ours to deal with. For
when we buy we buy big.”
“Yes,” the pickle woman gave the bragger a dig, “an’ at half the price
that other people pay me.”
“A dollar a bushel is a good price.”
“You wouldn’t think so if ye had to pick ’em. Look at me ould back.
’Tis bent like the twisted willows that ye see on the river bank.”
Smarty made himself as important acting as he could.
“As it happens you’re luckier then you realize to get even a dollar a
bushel from us. For at first the talk was in the office of paying you
only ninety cents a bushel this year.”
“Oh, indeed!” Mrs. O’Mally was getting mad now, as her words and
actions showed. “’Twas all decided in your office, was it? I had
nothing to say in the matter at all.”
“Buying cucumbers is purely a matter of business with us. To make money
we’ve got to buy right. Hence we set our own price.”
“An’ is it on the same plan that ye buy the bottles?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do ye say to the bottle man: ‘I’ll pay so much.’ Or does _he_ set the
price on his own goods?”
“That’s different.”
“Yes,” came bitterly, “the difference is that you’re dealin’ with a
firm as smart as yourselves an’ not with a helpless ould woman.”
Smarty didn’t like that.
“Say!...” he swelled up. “We aren’t trying to cheat you. They’re your
cucumbers, and you don’t have to sell them to us if you don’t want to.”
“You know I have no other place to sell ’em.”
“That’s your lookout. If you didn’t want to have them to sell you
shouldn’t have raised them.”
“The young smart aleck,” gritted Poppy, when the truck, with its small
load, had disappeared in the direction of town. “He ought to have his
mouth slapped for talking that way to an old lady.”
“I never knew before,” says I, sort of thoughtful-like, “that all Mrs.
O’Mally got from the canning company for her cucumbers was a dollar a
bushel. Why, after paying for the picking it’s a wonder to me that she
makes any money at all.”
Poppy took in the length and breadth of the big cucumber patch.
“I wonder how many bushels of cucumbers she’ll have to sell this year.”
“Six-seven hundred probably.”
“Gee!” and his eyes were like stars. “Wouldn’t it be slick, Jerry, if
we could buy the whole shooting match ... at two dollars a bushel?”
I gave a squeak.
“_Us_ buy seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? You’re crazy.”
“Of course,” he nodded thoughtfully, “we couldn’t sell that many
pickles in Tutter. I realize that. But why couldn’t we do business in
other towns?”
“If you don’t shut up,” I told him weakly, “I’ll die of heart failure.
_Us_ handle seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? Good night nurse! Old
Butch couldn’t can seven hundred bushels of cucumbers in seven years.”
Having borrowed a pair of big-waisted trousers from the scarecrow in
Mrs. O’Mally’s strawberry patch, I put on a clever little “Charlie
Chaplin” program going home. I thought I was rather funny myself. But
from Poppy I got about as much attention as a goldfish in a crowded
menagerie. I suppose, though, had I been a cute little cucumber it
would have gotten a loving smack on the forehead.
Cucumbers! That’s where his mind was, all right. He was completely and
hopelessly buried in cucumbers.
That night after supper my chum and I borrowed Dad’s auto and drove
into the country, getting our first load of cucumbers. As it had been
decided to establish our pickling headquarters at Poppy’s house, the
cucumbers were taken there. And the next morning the pickling began.
But before we let old Butch touch the cucumbers we led him over to the
kitchen sink and introduced him to the soap dish and a basin of water.
Poppy washed first, to show how it was done; then me; after which, of
course, the pickle expert had to follow suit. But he didn’t like it for
two cents.
“I swan!” he grumbled. “Anyone would think from all the pernickety
washin’ an’ wipin’ that’s goin’ on that we were gittin’ ready to give a
swell party. Don’t you know that if a feller’s hands is dirty he’ll git
’em washed clean when he messes ’round in the pickles? So what’s the
use of goin’ to all this extra trouble?”
“But you aren’t so liable to get chapped hands,” says Poppy, like the
tactful little piece of cheese that he is, “if you wash in warm water.”
The pickle maker gave a snort.
“Chapped hands in the summer time! I swan! You’ll be tellin’ me next to
wear woolen socks to keep from gittin’ the chilblains.”
“Here,” says Poppy, frisking out a stiff white butcher’s apron that his
pa had used on an earlier meat-market job. “Try it on and see how it
fits.”
Old Butch let out his neck at the curiosity.
“You mean,” says he, “that you want me to _wear_ it?”
“Sure thing.”
“But what’s it fur?”
“To keep you from getting your pants dirty. And here’s a nice little
white cap to go with it.”
That was more than Butch could stand.
“I come here to make pickles,” says he stiffly, “an’ not to be made a
monkey of in a dunce cap.”
“I thought you’d like the cap,” says Poppy. “For all professional
pickle makers wear white caps. So let’s put it on, anyway, and see how
it fits.”
“I feel like a fool,” grunted Butch, squinting with shame at the
reflection of himself in the kitchen mirror.
“Now,” says Poppy, “we’re all ready to go to work.”
Old Butch started across the run and stopped.
“By the way, you hain’t up an’ spent all your money, be you?”
“I should say not.”
“Um.... An’ it was to be three-fifty a day, you said.”
“Three dollars and fifty cents a day,” nodded Poppy. “And you get your
pay every night, if you wish.”
“In cash?”
“Cash or check. Whichever way you say.”
“Well, I think I’ll take the cash. Fur I kain’t make it seem right in
my mind that they’s anything sartin ’bout my pay in workin’ fur two
boys.”
The first step in pickle making, we learned, was to wash and sort the
cucumbers. So we took out those that we thought were too big or too
small. I helped to scrub the cucumbers with a hand brush. Then we
rinsed them in several changes of water. Having bought two metal tubs,
we scrubbed these as clean as a whistle and filled them with salt
water, after which we put the cucumbers to soak in the “brine,” as the
pickle maker called it.
This was on Saturday. Nothing happened on Sunday. And on Monday the
pickle maker took the cucumbers out of the brine and soaked them in
different changes of fresh water. I never dreamed that you had to give
a cucumber so many different kinds of baths before it was a pickle--my
idea was that you put the cucumbers on the stove to cook and when they
had cooked an hour or two they were pickles. But Butch seemed to know
his business. So, much as we hated to let the work drag along, we
didn’t try any hurry-up stuff with him.
On Tuesday he had us buy a whole list of stuff--alum, sugar, cider
vinegar, celery seed, allspice and stick cinnamon. And don’t imagine,
either, that we bought a dime’s worth of each, or anything like that. I
guess not! The junk cost us exactly eleven dollars and forty-five cents.
To put the Tutter people wise to how good our pickles were, Poppy had
worked out a sample scheme, and having for this purpose bought three
hundred drug-store bottles, just big enough to hold four pickles each
with the cucumbers packed on end, he and I were deep in the job of
washing and scalding these bottles when who should come into the house
on the tear but old Mr. Ott.
“Poppy,” he says, ripping off his coat and giving it a throw, “why
didn’t you remind me that this is the day?”
“What day?” says Poppy in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Why, this is the Thursday my nepher in Rockford gits married. An’ to
git there in time fur the weddin’ we’ve got to catch the eleven o’clock
train. So hurry, now, as it’s twenty minutes to eleven already.”
“Oh, gee, Pa!” Poppy objected to being dragged away from his beloved
pickles. “Do I have to go?”
“You most certainly do. Fur they asked me special to bring you along.”
“But I ought to stay and help Jerry. For see the work there is to do.”
“Go git your Sunday clothes on like I tell you an’ quit arguin’ with
me. Fur Henny is the only nepher I’ve got. So it’s our family duty to
be there when he gits hitched up.”
Twenty minutes later old Butch and I had the house to ourselves. But
now I was ordered to clear out of the kitchen by the secretive pickler,
who had no intention of letting me see how he mixed up the liquid dope
that gave the pickles their swell taste. That, he said, was the secret
part of the work.
The following morning I got a telegram from Poppy. His father, he
wired, having eaten too much wedding cake was sick in bed. “Go ahead
and distribute the samples,” the telegram instructed. “I’ll surely be
home to-morrow or Sunday.”
Some of the pickles were in pint and quart jars. But the most of them
were in a barrel that we had gotten at a grocery store. They sure were
swell-looking pickles, all right. But--oof!--I couldn’t bring myself
to eat any of them. Even to handle them in packing the sample bottles
almost gagged me.
One thousand and two hundred pickles having been put away quartet style
in the three hundred bottles, I did the corking and label sticking,
after which I borrowed a neighbor’s pushcart and set out, leaving a
sample bottle and a handbill at every house in our end of town. I
think you’ll agree with me that Poppy’s printed handbill was pretty
slick. Here it is:
AUNT JEMIMA’S PICKLES
Every housewife knows how good Aunt Jemima’s pancakes are. And now we
have cucumber pickles of the same wonderful quality--Aunt Jemima’s
pickles--home-made, with a taste you’ll never forget.
Here at last are the perfect pickles you long have dreamed of, the
kind of pickles that you never could quite make in your own kitchen.
And the secret, of course, is in the secret recipe!
We know that when you have sampled these marvelous pickles you will
want more. And the only place where you can buy them--in the bulk at
20¢ a dozen, and in sealed-tight glass jars at 35¢ a pint and 65¢ a
quart--is at
POPPY’S PICKLE PARLOR
“The Green and Yellow Store”
224 South Main Street