Stitch in Time Read online

  STITCH

  IN

  TIME

  BY JOHN GOULD

  Illustrations by Consuelo Eames Hanks

  W·W·NORTON & COMPANY

  NEW YORK LONDON

  In Memory of

  Robert H. McCauley, Jr.,

  and to his wife, Lois.

  Contents

  Where It Started . . .

  Talk About Stitching!

  Sweet Bells Jangled

  How About Snoods?

  Some Personalities

  Faulty Translation

  Except the Eggs

  Two-Horse Lalage

  Wrong Piece!

  Abed and David

  Leaping Lobsters!

  Up in a Sling

  And Salted Down

  Two Housekeepers

  She Starts,—She Moves,—She Seems to Feel the Thrill of Life Along Her Keel

  Gross Lots Only

  Passive Periphrastic

  Patriotic Peas

  Natural Ingredients

  Around the World

  Speed-Letters

  Not a Cane

  Hawks and Handsaws

  No Haulin’ Day

  The First Day

  The Lard Pail

  About Joe Toth

  Poor New York

  Granther MacDougal

  The Boss’s Camp

  A Silver Sixpence

  Always Knock First

  On Hand Mowing

  About Seeing Snakes

  Always Uphill

  The Noisy Woods

  Season’s Knell

  Putting Us On?

  Garden Surprise

  No Lady, He

  Only if Funning

  Cuddly and Happy

  With the Wind

  Before Television

  Mistreated Indians

  The Whonkeroo

  The Wrong Day

  Warm and Cozy

  Ice Cream Shot

  The Free Seeds

  Back River Hold

  Unbiased Survey

  Not All Pure

  Indian Massacre

  Beauty Aid

  Peter Partout’s Page

  Dear Mr. Editor: Mrs. Partout read this book before publication, and I think her opinion is all right. She said:

  “Dr. Gould’s gentle prose soothes and pleases me. His quiet fun is charming. His grammar and syntax precise, his selection of words amazing, his alliterative passages perfect, his allegory and metaphor delightful, and in every way I consider him our best master of the personal essay. He never abuses my finer sensitivities. Which is fine, because so many other writers these days make me want to puke.”

  (Signed) Peter Partout

  Peppermint Corner, Maine

  Venienti occurrite morbo.

  Persius Flaccus

  A stitch in time saves nine.

  Proverb

  Where it Started . . .

  Legend, not always reliable, says the poker game at the Adelman Brothers potato warehouse at Mars Hill, up in Aroostook County, Maine 04758, never ceases. If somebody excuses himself, somebody else sits in and the play goes on day and night. One morning the pot was right and Heem Blodgett was contemplating his pair of queens. Freddie Manter walked in and handed out the cigars.

  “Nine and a half pound boy!” he announced.

  “Big baby!” said Leslie Dunbar.

  Freddie says, “Eyah—Doc had to take nine stitches!”

  “Nine stitches!” says Heem. “Migod, Freddie, only takes six stitches to close a potato bag!”

  STITCH

  IN

  TIME

  Talk About Stitching!

  My wife was lately drawn for jury duty, thus becoming an expert on jurisprudence, and when the notice came it had a questionnaire with it so she could set down her qualifications, and also her willingness. She responded that she was more than willing to perform this civic duty, so off she went each morning, my lonely noontime sandwich cooling in the refrigerator. But she would soon be home again, sometimes before I had finished my sandwich, and she would lament that the lawyers passed her by. Day after day, case after case. I suggested she take the Dale Carnegie course and make herself more popular. For each attendance at the courthouse the county paid her a stipend established by the legislature in 1820, and we figured that on top of that it was costing us thirty-six dollars a day to support Law and Order. Then, one day, she stayed all day and came home happy. She had served. The lawyer for the defense had manfully made his plea, but the decision was unanimous—guilty. On that note she was dismissed, and I began getting hot lunches again.

  Now, here’s the real story:

  Raoul Livernois and Roger Duplessis were members of two significant bodies—the City Council and the Club Rouge et Noir. The Club Rouge et Noir was a social society, a licensed drinking establishment where members could buy booze for less than at a pub and drink it in the company of congenial friends. Sometimes Raoul and Roger would visit the club on other nights, but they always went there after the City Council meetings on Wednesday nights. On the eventful evening now in focus, after City Council meeting, they arrived at the club in Raoul’s automobile, Raoul driving, and they had maybe t’ree-four. Ready to go home, they paid up and got into Raoul’s automobile, Raoul driving, and shortly the erratic progress of the vehicle drew the attention of Officers Benoit and Caron, in a police cruiser. When the flashing lights of the cruiser were turned on, Raoul pulled over to the curb, and Roger said, “Quick! Shift places! I know these cops and can fix things!”

  So they shifted places and Roger was now behind the wheel. He ran down the window and smiled pleasantly at the approaching Officer Benoit. But it was not Officer Benoit. It was a rookie policeman, and Roger didn’t know him from a crock of Morse’s sauerkraut. The consequence was that Roger, who was not the driver, was ordered into court on a charge of driving under the influence.

  Raoul, who had been the driver, wasn’t charged with anything, and he felt truly sorry at the way things had turned out. “Get a lawyer,” he told Roger, “and have him continue the case.”

  Of course, when Roger found a lawyer, he didn’t tell him anything about changing places. The lawyer told Roger the case wasn’t important enough to matter—to go and plead nolo and pay the fine. It costs money to continue a case, he said. Which makes sense, because the lawyer didn’t know that Roger was innocent. Raoul told Roger, “Don’t do it. Continue the case. Everything’s going to work out!”

  Meantime my wife was drawn for jury duty, and now Raoul came to Roger and said, “Go into court next Monday. Everything’s going to be all right.” So, shrugging his shoulders, the lawyer went to court with Roger on that Monday, and entered a plea of not guilty for him, and sat back to listen to the testimony of the rookie policeman. He told how the progress of the vehicle was erratic enough to attract attention, that it was being operated in a manner to endanger, that the operator was unquestionably under the influence, and that he had arrested him. The operator was, he pointed, the respondent.

  Roger’s lawyer offered a feeble defense, but shrugged his shoulders again as he sat down. But Roger smiled knowingly, and well he might—because Raoul was sitting up in the jury box beside my wife and, as he had said, everything was going to work out.

  The jury didn’t take much time. My wife said one juror asked, “Why would a lawyer take a thing like that into court anyway?” The vote was unanimous—guilty as charged. The jury returned to the courtroom, and Raoul didn’t even blink when the foreman announced, “Guilty as charged.” Roger was stunned. He was furious. His best friend had done him in! How could Raoul have voted guilty? Impossible!

  But he had.

  Roger took a deep breath, and before his lawyer could restrain him he jumped to his feet,
waggled his fist at Raoul in the jury box, and yelled to the judge one of the better remarks ever made in the sanctified presence of the Maine Superior Court.

  He shouted, “But—Your Honor! I’m the wrong son of a bitch—it’s him!”

  (Explanatory note: Asking the reason for this remark, the lawyer learned the truth, and the story came forth. Raoul said the testimony of the arresting officer was so convincing that he got carried away.)

  Sweet Bells Jangled

  Back before one of our recent Christmases, a newspaper piece told about these people who don’t want their children to sing Christmas carols in the public schools at Christmastime. The thought did cross my mind that Christmas is as good a time as any to sing Christmas carols, and that some people are awful hard to get along with. But my attention was diverted by the suggestion that “Jingle Bells” is all right for Christmas music—it’s the naughty old ones like “Hark the Herald Angels” that are destroying the vital American way.

  This threw me—a devout and persistent enemy of “Jingle Bells” at Christmastime—into a tizzy of confusion. How did “Jingle Bells” ever get accepted, even obliquely, as Christmas music? Sure, it’s singable, and jolly, and real ho-ho-ho, but it’s not a carol and never was—yet here it is about to be cited before the United States Supreme Court as the kind of Christmas music that doesn’t offend people who are offended by Christmas music. (Perhaps you’d better read that again!)

  The chap who wrote “Jingle Bells,” name of Pierpont, lived in Medford, Massachusetts, suburban to Boston, and he didn’t have a piano. It makes a story pretty nigh as good as that of the Austrian priest who did “Silent Night” in a snowstorm. In those days there was but one piano in all of Medford. Things are much better now, and I’m told Medford has three of them. But this Pierpont could set a note down on paper and sort of hear it with his eyes, so he didn’t need a piano and he wrote “Jingle Bells.” Then he took the sheet of music across town to a piano teacher who owned the piano, and he asked her to play it and see what she thought. He called it a “sleighing song,” and he never had the slightest suspicion that it would become a Christmas carol preferable, to some people, to “O Holy Night.”

  Ah! Humankind might have learned valuable lessons in this respect as far back as the days of Herod the King, but nobody heeded, and we’ve gone along with persecutions and inquisitions, lopping off of heads of Charles the Firsts and baiting Quakers, hoorawing Cotton Mathers and nit-picking Christmas carols. The great religious freedom has been the right to shove your ideas down other peoples’ throats. All on the “Jingle Bells” level. Makes me kind of proud that in my youth I was infused with understanding by the good Father Sean Skerry, who taught me the catechism. An unredeemable Black Protestant, I had a playmate who was the opposite, and every Saturday morning his mother would give him a nickel and he would go to the rectory of the Church of St. F. Xavier, where Father Skerry would “hear” his catechism lesson. My chum and I couldn’t indulge in the frivolities of a no-school Saturday until after this lesson, so I would tag along and sit on a chair in the corner while Father Skerry officiated. Afterwards, my chum and I would go to the brook for a swim, to the beaver flowage for trout, to play scrub, to swipe apples, to pelt somebody’s laundry, to fly kites, to pick blackberries, and to do any of the pleasures reserved for good Christian boys who are not encumbered by doctrinal differences and theological disputations. My playmate was a slow study, so by exposure I mastered his catechism long before he did, and I never handed Father Skerry a red cent. I used to repeat the catechism to my Jersey cow during the ceremony of lactation, and it soothed her. She also liked “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “Young Lochinvar.” It was to be years before I would wonder what Father Skerry would think of that, had he known. There is wisdom in tolerance and virtue in understanding. Cows are not spiritually selective.

  The folly of differences was demonstrated by the two Free Will churches in our town of Orland. Orland is not a large place (eight hundred registered voters) and it seemed curious to many people that it would support two churches of the same persuasion, each across the street from the other. The answer was sheer jingle bells logic. Back along, there had been but one Free Will church, and the members had worshipped harmoniously. But there arose a difference of opinion, a schism in doctrine, a dispute, and a separation. Half the congregation had gone across the way and built a second Free Will church. It seems one faction believed that Balaam’s ass turned and spoke to him like a man. The other group believed that Balaam said his ass turned and spoke to him like a man.

  The acceptance of non-Christmas “Jingle Bells” as Christmas music suitable for non-Christmas programs at Christmastime reminds of the atheist community out in Oregon. In the early days of Oregon a group of atheists came and settled an atheist village. In the years that followed some Christians came to join them, and before long the population was about fifty-fifty. Then the little atheist children began to come home to ask their parents why they couldn’t have a Sunday school. All the little Christian children went to Sunday school on Sunday mornings, and the atheist children didn’t have any place to go.

  So an atheist Sunday school was established.

  How About Snoods?

  Some kind of a Swedish research team with nothing better to do has announced that the chef’s white cap is altogether too high. Snob symbols of cookery’s caste system, the pileated billycocks range from the modest pretense of the humble fry cook to the lordly prominence of a full half meter for the executive busby of an Oscar. Kitchens have been built to accommodate these capotic high-rises and this, say the Swedish statisticators, is wasteful. Ventilation fans must be placed so high that efficiency is impossible, and valuable heat is exhuasted along with the effluvia of gastronomic philogistication. We’re blowing dollars away. So we can be grateful that affairs in Sweden permit attention to such important matters, and once we put beanies on all the cooks we may again see Delmonico steaks at thirty-five cents.

  The hat, in general, is ancient, but nothing from away back has been preserved for our inspection. From statuary we know that cooks did have an identifying tiara in early times, but seemingly it was not graduated in altitudes to identify abilities—it served all who wrought with victuals, chef to scullion. From the hat he wore, you couldn’t tell the stew man from the jelly roll. So we know the ancient kitchen was democratic and the haute cuisine was never in contention over plateaux of hauteur, so to speak. We don’t know when the altitude of the bonnet began to distinguish skill and rank, but today the Cordon Bleu believes the béchamel boy should not beat the béarnaise in the bain-marie, and the height of the respective hats is important. Nev-vaire the twain shall beat! And this costs us beaucoup dough in lost energy.

  To me there was always an element of pretense in the chef’s cap. Put one on anybody, and he looks like a chef. And, how would anybody ever become an acknowledged expert on crépi-nettes d’agneau if he’s wearing a beany? Further, I knew a whale of a fine cook who never wore a hat in his kitchen, but because he disliked the feel of new dough he always kneaded his bread with his mittens on. He cooked at the Rappalonsis Lumber Camp for King Lacroix. I knew some other lumber camp cooks that would please the Swedish researchers. Such as Jerry Latouche, whose sartorial frippery at the range was a Kaybecker toque with a tassel in which he kept his money, his pipe and tobacco, his rosary, a deck of cards, and a photograph of his wife back in St. Prosper whose name was Harry. And Mike Borsak, who cooked in a “kossuth” that had gilt letters on the band saying, “I’ve been to Atlantic City.” Mike had never been south of Bangor, and won the hat throwing baseballs on the midway at Northern Maine Fair. Neither Jerry nor Mike related headgear to cooking. They wore hats because their heads were bald as two eggs. Mike was the one everybody called Curly.

  The Swedish research would like the snood. An interesting derivation. In the beginning a snood was a net worn by ladies to restrain the hair. When the hermetically sealed tin can was perfected for food processing, which came about
here in Maine, women who worked in the factories were required to wear hairnets. Consumers disliked to find a stray wisp in the fish chowder or the applesauce. The “snood” thus became associated with food, and was a synonym for net. Along the Maine coast, the “twine” of fishing came to be called “snoodin’.” A man who was stringy—lanky—might have the nickname Snood. And in the Maine lumber camps, any cook who wore a snood was sure to be called Snood, and sometimes Snoody. And what the Swedes need to know is that a kitchen staffed by snood-wearing cooks requires a very low ceiling, and has a high efficiency.

  This is a good thing to know.

  Some Personalities

  At the end of the year, allowing two weeks for judgment, preparation, and scheduling, the TV brought us a review of the most important personalities. The show came on at 7:30 P.M., which is after my hibernal bedtime, so I didn’t see it, but Bunny Bradstreet sat up for it and says none of my favorites was mentioned. Here are the important personalities of my year:

  Hastings Littlefield of Outer Razor Island, who came to the mainland on December 23 to do his Christmas shopping. He keeps his automobile in Zeke Edgerley’s barn, and as the battery was down he had to call Porter’s Garage and it cost him $35.00 just to get started. Then he spent $878.95 in the Rockland stores, getting something for everybody, and came back to find his automobile had been tagged by the police for a traffic violation. The tag stuck behind his windshield wiper had places to check off fireplugs, crosswalks, restricted zones, overtime, and so on, and Hastings looked to see what it was he did wrong. The policeman had checked off, “Other,” so Hastings went to the city office and paid $2.00.

  Merton Munjoy, sixth-grade genius, who finally combined science and culture by programming the school’s computer so it composed, “A Sonnet to the Gross National Product.”