Chapter 8
Those two dollars counted a lot in those days, too. It looked like an easy income to us. All we had to do to earn it was to beg off from our employers for half a day, travel thirty miles or so by train, usually standing up and protecting our horns from the careless mob, march eight or ten miles over unknown streets, picking out dry places underfoot and notes from a piece of music bobbing up and down in the shadows above our horns, and then drive home across country after midnight, getting home in time to go to work in the morning. Why, it was just like finding money; I've never had so much fun earning it since. I started once to figure out how many miles our band marched during the first Bryan campaign, but I gave it up. We never felt it at that time, but it made me so tired counting that I quit with a distinct footsore feeling.
The most worrisome task about a Homeburg band was keeping it alive. I suppose all small town bands have the same trials. We worked against incredible difficulties. If city people had the same devotion to music which we displayed, you would have a ten-thousand-piece philharmonic orchestra in New York playing twenty-four hours a day for glory. We were always building up our band with infinite pains, only to have Fate jerk the gizzard out of it just as perfection was in sight. Talent was scarce, and the rude, heartless city was forever reaching down into Homeburg and yanking some indispensable players away. Of course there was always a waiting list of youngsters who would coax a few hoarse toots out of the alto horn, and we always had a bunch of kid clarionetists who would sail along grandly through the soft parts and then blow goose notes whenever they hit the solo part. But try as we would, we could never get more than two cornets. One of these was Ad Smith. He was a bum cornetist, but his brother Ed was a good baritone, and we had to have both or none. The other was usually some anxious young student who got along pretty well on plain work, but who would come down the chromatic run in the "Chicago Tribune March" like a fat man falling down the cellar stairs with an oleander plant.
As for trombones, there was a positive fatality among them; we were always losing them. Trombone players have to be born, anyway, and there was no hope of developing one. Besides, the neighbors wouldn't allow it. Young Henry Wood showed promise once, but after his father had listened to him for about six months, he took the slip end of his horn away from him and beat carpets with it, until it was extinct as far as melody was concerned.
For a year we had Mason Peters, who was a wonder on the slide trombone. But he was only getting twelve dollars a week in Snyder's Shoe Emporium, and Paynesville, which never tired of putting up dirty tricks on us, hustled around and got him an eighteen dollar job up there--after which they came down to Homeburg at the first opportunity with their band to parade Peters before our eyes. It would have been a grand success if they hadn't put Peters in the front row. He lived for his art, Peters did, paying no attention to anything but his trombone, and besides he was quite deaf. He got confused about the line of march, and when the band swung around the public square he kept right on up Main Street all alone, playing in magnificent form and solitary grandeur while the band swung off the other way. The whole town followed him with tears of joy, and he traveled two blocks before he became aware of the vast and appalling silence behind him; then he kept right on for the city limits on the run. It was a great comfort to us, and by the time we had gotten through apologizing to the Paynesville boys for following Peters under the impression that he was the real band, they had offered to fight us singly or in platoons.
We used to watch every new citizen like Russian detectives, only we searched them for horns instead of dynamite. Several times a trombonist came to town, and music revived noticeably. But none of them lasted. Trombonists seem to be temperamental, and when they are not changing jobs they are resigning from the band because they are not allowed to play enough solos. Our greatest bonanza was a quiet chap named Williams, who came to town to work in the moulding room of the plow factory. After he had been there a week, we discovered that he had a saxophone. No one had ever heard or eaten a saxophone, but we looked it up, and when we found out what it was, we made a rush for him. At the next practice he appeared with a bright silver instrument covered with two bushels of keys and played a solo which sounded like three clarionets with the croup. We wept for joy and elected him leader on the spot.
This caused Sim Askinson to resign, of course, and he took Ad and Ed Smith with him, and they remained in dignified and awful silence for two years. But we didn't care. One saxophone was worth five baritones, and while Williams was in town, we were an object of envy to all of the other bands around. We changed our name to the Homeburg Saxophone Band, and the way we rubbed it into Paynesville was pitiful. He was a little fellow, Williams was, and short of wind, which caused him to gasp a good deal during the variation parts. But he was willing. There was no shirk about him. After a year our program usually consisted of eleven saxophone solos and some other piece which could be done almost entirely on the saxophone, and the jealous Paynesvillains used to ask why we used nineteen men to play the rests when one man could have produced as much silence at far less expense.
Those were glorious years; but of course they didn't last. Williams got to resigning at the foundry just for the pleasure of having us come down and plead with the proprietor to raise his pay. Finally he resigned so much that the proprietor fired him, and then we had to take our caps in hand and wheedle the Smiths and Askinson back into the band. I haven't belonged for years, but they are still there. When I drop in at practice, as many of the alumni do, Askinson greets me cordially and takes some young cub's horn away from him, so I can sit in. It is just like old times, especially when Ed Smith lays down his horn after a slight altercation with some one and goes home never to come back--just as he has done for the last thirty years.
That's the worst of music. One's art, you know, has so much influence over one's temper. To see our band soaring majestically down Main Street and playing "Canton Halifax" in one great throbbing rough-house of melody you would never believe that anything but brotherly love existed between the players. As a matter of fact, we never wasted any harmony among ourselves. We didn't have any to spare. It took all we had to produce the music. For twenty-five years the Smiths and Cooney Simpson, who plays first clarionet, have been at swords' points, each with a faction behind him. Cooney says it's a shame that a good band must limp along with a cornetist who always takes three strikes to hit a high note, and Ed Smith says Cooney wants to be leader and will not be satisfied until he can play the solo and bass parts at once on his clarionet. I can see Ed Smith now, after the band has run aground in practice, taking his horn down and glaring around at Cooney.
"What you gobstick players need is a time-table," says he, "instead of notes. Come in on the A about eight-fifteen. If you can do that well, we'll try to struggle along."
"Don't get forte," Cooney replies cheerfully. "If you'd try to follow both those cornets instead of rambling along by yourself, you'd split, sure."
"Better play cornet, too, Cooney," says Ad Smith, whirling around. "You've got enough mouth for both."
"Well, we ought to have a cornetist," says Cooney, "it's what we've needed for years."
This riles the scrub cornet player, whoever he happens to be, and he gets up excitedly. "We'd get along a lot better without one or two human calliopes--" he begins.
"Set down, set down," says old Dobbs from the coils of his tuba. "Let 'em fight. They know it all between pieces--"
"Who asked you to horn in?" says Ed Smith, getting up preparatory to going home with his baritone horn and leaving a broken and forlorn world to grieve his loss.
Of course this is a crisis. But we never bust up. The Paynesville Band busts up about twice a year over the division of profits and the color of their new uniforms and the old question of whether the cornets or trombones shall march in front. But we never go entirely to pieces. This is largely because of Sam Green. He is our peacemaker and most faithful player. He has played second alto in the band for thirty-five years without a promotion, and is by all odds the worst player I ever saw, being only entirely at home in the key of C; and he can't play three-four time to save his soul. But his devotion is marvelous. He is always the first man down to practice. He lights the lamps, builds the fires, and when necessary goes out to Ed Smith's home and persuades him to come back into the band for just this night. And whenever the dispute between the factions gets to the point where Ed Smith begins gathering up his doll things, Sam interferes.
"Come on now, boys," he pleads, "we've got to get this piece worked up. You're all good players. Why, if Paynesville had you fellows, she'd have a band. That was my fault that time. I'll get this here thing right sometime. I'll sit out in the trio now and you fellows take it."
And pretty soon, as he argues, Ed's proud heart softens, and he comes back with a glare at Cooney. Then Sim Askinson raps on his music rack and says: "Gentlemen and trombone players," as he has for a quarter of a century; and a minute later the band is tumbling eagerly through its piece once more, all feuds suspended in the desperate effort to come out even at the end with no surplus bars to be played by some floundering horn.
Some time during the evening, as a rule, the various sections get together on some passage and swim grandly through, every horn in perfect time, and the parts blending like Mocha and Java. All differences are forgotten, and the band breaks up with friendly words, Ed Smith and Cooney going home together. Music has charms to soothe the savage beast, and it also has a wonderful power of taking the temper out of the grocer and the painter and the mahout of the waterwork's gasoline engine.
I never stepped so high or felt so grand as I did the first time I marched out with the boys and went down the street in the back row of the band next to the drums, a member in good standing, and dodging every time I passed under a telephone wire to keep from scraping my cap off. I never expect to feel that grand again. But I have an ambition. If ever I should become so famous and successful that when I went back to Homeburg to visit my proud and happy parents and stepped off of the 4:11 train, I would find the Homeburg Marine Band there to meet me, I would know that I had made good, and I would be content. The only thing that encourages me in my ambition is that the band didn't come down to play when I went away. Do you know, Jim, it's the funniest thing--the fellows we played out-of-town in a blaze of glory never happened to be the chaps we came down to the train to meet afterward, somehow. But I imagine we weren't the only poor guessers in the world.
IX
THE AUTO GAME IN HOMEBURG
_It has Driven out Politics as a Subject of Debate_
Wait a minute, Jim. I want to look at this automobile.... Yes, I know it is the sixth machine I've walked around in seven blocks, but what's time to a New Yorker on Saturday afternoon? This nifty little mile-eater has an electric gear shift, and I want to ask the chauffeur how he likes it. Promised Ad Summers I would.
... Says it hangs a little if his voltage is low. That's what I'd be afraid of--Gee! there's a new Jacksnipe with a center searchlight. Never would do for rutty roads. How do you like the wire wheels, Jim? Bad for side strains, I should think. Look at those foxy inset lamps. Listen to that engine purr--two cycle, I'll bet. Say, Fifth Avenue is certainly one great street! I could walk up and down here for a month. There's a new Battleax--wonder if those two speed differentials are going to work out.
All right, Jim, I'll reluctantly shut up and focus my attention on the salmon-colored cloaks and green stockings for a while. I forgot that you don't take any deep, abiding interest in automobiles. All they mean to you is something to ride in, but to me they're as interesting as a new magazine. I've spent about four days in the sales-rooms since I've been here, and when I get home I'll be the center of breathless attention until I've passed around all the information I've dug up. I could go back without any information about the new shows, or the city campaign, but if I were to come back without a bale of automobile gossip, I'd be fired for gross incompetency from the League of Amateur Advisers at Gayley's garage.
You thought I said I didn't own a machine? I did say it and I can prove it. But do you suppose that makes any difference in Homeburg? Here the other fellow's car is his own business. But in Homeburg an automobile is every one's business. It's like the weekly newspaper, or the new minister, or the latest wedding--it's common property. Since gasoline has been domesticated we're all enthusiasts, whether we are customers or not. The man who can't talk automobile is as lonely as the chap who can't play golf at a country club. About all there is left for him to do is to hunt up Postmaster Flint and talk politics. Flint has to talk all our politics; it's what he's paid for, but it's mighty hard on him because he just bought a new machine last spring himself.
No, you guessed wrong, Jim. Automobiles aren't a curiosity in Homeburg. How many are there in New York? Say eighty thousand. One for every sixty people. Homeburg has twenty-five hundred people and one hundred machines, counting Sim Askinson's old one-lunger and Red Nolan's refined corn sheller, which he built out of the bone-yard back of Gayley's garage. That's one for every twenty-five people. Figure that out. It only gives each auto five members of the family and twenty citizens to haul around. We're about up to the limit. Of course another one hundred people could buy machines, I suppose; but that would only allow twelve and a half passengers, admirers, guests, and advisers for each car. That isn't anywhere near enough. Why, it wouldn't be worth while owning a machine! As it is, we are all busy. I've ridden in twenty new machines this year and passed my opinion on them. It has taken a good deal of my spare time. I've thought sometimes of buying one myself, but I don't believe it would be right. If I had a car myself, I would have to neglect all the others. It wouldn't do. Besides, I like to be peculiar.
Is every one in Homeburg a millionaire? Goodness, no! Our brag is that we have less people per automobile than any other town, but then that's the ordinary brag with an Illinois small town. We're not much ahead of the others. Automobiles don't stand for riches out our way. Blamed if I know what they do represent. Mechanical ingenuity, I guess. Country town people pick up automobiles as easily as poor people do twins. And they seem to support them about as inexpensively. If you were to take a trip around Homeburg at seven A.M. on a Sunday morning, you would find about eighty-seven automobile owners out in the back yard over, under, or wrapped around their machines.
In the city you can only tell a car owner these days by his silk socks; but in the country town the grimy hand is still the badge of the order. The automobile owner does his own work, like his wife, and on Sunday morning, instead of hustling for the golf links, he inserts himself into his overalls and spends a couple of hours trying to persuade the carbureter to use more air and less gasoline. The interest our automobile owners take in the internals of their cars is intense. That is the only thing which mars the pleasure of the professional guest, such as myself. More than once I've sat in the sun twenty miles from home while some host of mine has taken his engine down clear to the bed plate, just because he had the time to do it and wanted to see how the bearings were standing up.
I've lived in Homeburg all my life, but I haven't yet solved the mystery of how some of our citizens own machines. It's a bigger mystery than yours because our automobile owners pay their bills, and the mortgage records don't tell us anything. There's Wilcox, the telegraph operator. He makes seventy-five dollars a month. He works nights to earn it, and he spends his days driving around the country in his runabout. He's thirty years old, and I think he invested in an auto instead of a wife.
You can get a good meal in our local restaurant for twenty-five cents, and when some painstaking plutocrat comes in and tries to spend a dollar there, he has to be removed by kindly hands in a state of fatal distension before the job is finished. A thousand dollars would buy stock, fixtures, and good will. But a thousand wouldn't buy the restaurant owner's automobile. He began with two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of rubbish and a monkey wrench four years ago, and has pottered and tinkered and traded and progressed until he now owns a last year's model, staggering under labor-saving devices.
Our oculist, who does business in a tiny corner in a shoe-store and never overcharged any one in his life, was our pioneer automobile owner. He bought a homemade machine and a mule at the same time, and by judiciously combining the two he got a good deal of mileage out of both. He would work all morning getting the automobile down-town and all afternoon getting the mule to haul it back. He has had three machines since then, and the one he owns now is only third-hand.
For years Mrs. Strawn washed clothes for the town from morning till night, two washings a day and all garments returned intact. Her boys used to call at our house for the wash with a wheelbarrow. They come in an automobile now. She bought it. It was a hopeless invalid at the time, but they nursed it back to health, and I hear that next spring they are going to trade it in for a new machine.... Why do I say machine? Because that's what an automobile is out our way. It's a machine, and we treat it as such. Most of our people couldn't take a lobster to pieces to save their lives, but you ought to see them go through the shell of an auto. Too many Americans buy portable parlors with sixty-seven coats of varnish, and are then shocked and grieved to discover when too late that said parlors have gizzards just like any other automobile and that they should have been looked after.
I said there were one hundred automobiles in Homeburg. I was mistaken. There are ninety-nine automobiles and one car. The Payleys own the car. They bought it in New York, paid six thousand dollars for it, with a chauffeur thrown in to drive them home, and they have been under his thumb ever since. He was the only chauffeur who had ever been brought alive in captivity to Homeburg, and the whole town inspected him with the utmost care. He was the best stationary chauffeur I ever saw. He seemed to regard that car as a monument and was shocked at the idea of moving it around from place to place.
It was too high-priced a car to be touched by Sam Gayley, our local auto doc., and somehow the chauffeur never seemed to be able to keep it in running order long enough to get up to the Payley residence and take the family out. He ran around the country a good deal, however, tuning it up and trying it out, and as he was a sociable cuss, some of us always went with him. In fact, about every one rode in the Payley car that summer except the Payleys. Wert Payley used to stop me and ask if I could fix it up to take him along sometime when I went riding with his chauffeur, but I never would risk it. Besides, it would be imposing on the boy's generosity to lug a friend along when you went riding.
The most of our machines vary from the one thousand, five hundred dollar touring car to the five hundred dollar little fellows; and since they have come, life in Homeburg is twice as interesting. They are our dissipation, our excitement, our amusement, and the focus of our town pride. The Checker Club disbanded last winter because the members got to quarreling over self-starters, and I understand that in the Women's Missionary Societies and the afternoon clubs the comparative riding qualities of the various tonneaus about the city have about driven out teething and styles as a subject of debate. For a while during the Wilson campaign, it looked as if politics was going to get a foothold in the town, but some enthusiast organized a flying squadron of automobiles to propagate Democratic gospel, and then it was all off. Everybody rushed into the squadron, and the trips around the district became reliability runs, with a lone orator addressing the freeborn citizens upon the tariff at each stop, and said freeborn citizens discussing magnetos, springs, and tires with great earnestness and vehemence during the speech.
Business always suspends for half a day whenever a new automobile comes to town. There may be a dozen of the same make already, but that doesn't make any difference. We are experts, trained to notice the finer shades of perfection, and until we have seen each new machine put up the clay hill four miles south of town and have ridden in it over the Q. B. & C. crossing and the other places which show up bad springs, we can't fix our minds on our work. Time was when a new baby could come into Homeburg and hold the attention of the town for a week. Now a baby is lucky if its birth notice isn't crowded out of the _Democrat_ to make room for the list of new machines.
As for those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its compression--half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove that it will pull better uphill with the spark retarded. At night, during the summer, we hurry through supper and then go out on the front porch to wait for a chance to act as ballast.
No automobile owner in the dirt roads belt will go out without a full tonneau if he can help it--makes riding easier--and this means permanent employment during the evenings for about three hundred friends all summer long. In fact the demand for ballast is often greater than the supply. As a result, we have become hideously spoiled. I have passed up as many as six automobiles in an evening on various captious pretexts, waiting all the time for Sim Bone's car, whose tonneau is long and exactly fits my legs. Once or twice Sim has failed to come around after I have waved the rest of the procession by, and we have had to stay at home. I have spoken to him severely about this, and he is more careful now.
Because of our great interest in automobiles, vicarious or otherwise, there is no class-hatred in Homeburg. If a man were to stop by the roadside and begin to denounce the automobile as an oppressor of the pedestrian, he would in all probability be kidnaped by some acquaintance before he was half through and carried forty miles away for company's sake. About the only Homeburg resident who doesn't ride is old Auntie Morley, who broke her leg in a bobsled sixty years ago and has had a holy horror of speed ever since.