Read Ebook: Homeburg Memories by Fitch George

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I'll never forget the day when Banks came back to Homeburg. He hadn't been back for thirty years and hadn't the slightest intention of coming either, as he admitted afterward. But he was going through on his special car, and old Number Eleven, which was hauling him, performed the most intelligent act of its career. The engine broke down right at the depot, and when Banks found he was in for an hour or two, he got out and strolled down Main Street to see the town in which he had begun his life.

It was a most depressing occasion. No one who had ever come back had changed as much as Banks. If he had worn a pigtail and talked Choctaw, he couldn't have grown farther away. It wasn't his fault. He tried his best. But he hadn't talked our language for years. He couldn't get down near enough to converse. He passed most of his playmates without remembering them, but when he saw Pash Wade's sign, he went in and shook hands with him. About forty of us came in to trade and watched him do it. It was pathetic. They stood there like strangers from different lands, Banks trying to unbutton his huge, thick ulster of dignity, and not succeeding, and Pash trying to say something that would interest Banks--along the line of high finance of course--state of the country, etc. They gave it up in a minute, and Banks went out. He found Pelty Amthorne and shook hands with him. Pelty is pretty loquacious as a rule, but he couldn't talk to Banks--not that Banks, anyway. He'd never seen him before. He said "How-dy-do," and, "It's a long time since you were here," and Banks said, "It is indeed. I hope you and your family are well." And then Pelty oozed hastily back into the crowd with a relieved air as if he had done his duty, and Banks looked bored and took out his watch. But just then Sim Askinson came up all out of breath and burst through the crowd.

Sim is little and meek and has a hard time holding his own, even in our peaceful world. But when he saw Banks, he snorted like a war horse and grew up three inches.

"Hello, Pudge, you old son-of-a-gun!" he said, with both hands in his pockets.

"Hello, Sim!" said Banks, sort of startled.

"Where'd you come from?" demanded Sim, "and why ain't you come before? You're a nice friendly cuss, you are. Sucked any turkey eggs lately?"

"No, you knock-kneed dishwasher," said Banks as a grin began to edge its way across his face. "Have you tried to sell any more toads for bullfrogs?"

"No, nor I ain't fought out any bumble-bees' nest since the time you got one up your pant leg and pretty near pounded yourself to death with a ball bat," said Sim. "Can you still run as fast as the time Wert Payley and I dared you to ride Malstead's bull?"

"Where's Wert?" demanded Banks. They were shaking hands now, using all four of them. "Say, I've got to see him and Wim. Horn. I've got to leave in a few minutes."

"Like fun you have," growled Sim, linking arms with Banks. "You seem to think some one's chasing you. You're going to stay all night, that's what you're going to do."

"I am not," said Banks; "and I wouldn't stay with you, anyway. You had a garter snake in the bed last time I slept with you. I've got to see some more of the boys, though."

"He thinks he's going away in a few minutes," said Sim to Wert Payley, who had heard his name and was now shaking hands with Banks. "Why, the old fat snide, nobody wants to see him outside of Homeburg. He's going to get a free supper to-night. Remember Sadie Warren?"

"Remember!" shouted Banks. "What do you think I am?--Methuselah? I remember more things than you ever heard of. Why, Sadie and I went skating the night you couldn't find your fat horse and sleigh."

"Ya-a-a--" yelled Payley, with a sudden shriek of laughter. "Never knew who took your rig, did you, Sim?"

"You--you--" said Sim, glaring at Banks. "You confounded horse thief, I believe you took Sadie in my own sleigh."

"Ain't he bright, Pudge," gasped Payley, "only took him thirty years to catch on."

"Well, Banksie," said Sim, "Sadie's been more particular about her young men since that night. We've been married twenty-five years, and I guess I'll let you come up and eat this evening, anyway. She lets me bring most any old pelter home."

"Gosh, boys, I can't."

"Say, what are you? the porter on that varnished car down there?" demanded Sim. "Won't they let you off a minute?"

"Tell you what we'll do," said Pelty Amthorne. "We'll take you to band practice to-night. Sim still runs it, but he won't let me play any more."

"I haven't touched a horn since I left Homeburg," laughed Banks. "But I'd give ten dollars to see you and Wimble Horn blat away on those altos again, with your eyes bulging out of your cheeks."

"We'll get Wimble and we'll break up band practice if you'll stay over."

"I--"

"No, you don't," said Sim. "I won't have riff-raff loafing around my band."

"You won't, eh?" said Banks. "We'll show you. Come down to the car while I send about forty telegrams, and then we'll fix you, Mister Askinson."

Which they did that night, while most of the town looked on. The next fall Banks came back and stayed three days, and his conduct and that of his old companions in crime set an example to our younger generation which didn't wear off for years. They went out orchard robbing in an automobile, and Banks said he never realized before the wonder of modern conveniences.

THE HOMEBURG WEEKLY DEMOCRAT

No, Jim, as I have already said about thirty-four times this week, I don't care for a paper. Don't buy one for me. I could read your New York papers for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and at the end of the time I would have to stop some good-natured looking chap and ask what the news was. It's all there, I know, but I don't seem able to find it. Even the Chicago baseball scores are hidden in the blamed things. Instead of putting them first, the way they ought to, they stick them down at the end of the page. As for the editorial pages, I might as well go to Labrador and hunt for personal friends as to read them. If there's anything that makes a stranger feel about ten thousand miles from home, with the cars not running, it is to get into the editorial page of an unknown newspaper and try to sit in with the family discussions. It makes me feel like a man who has gotten into a reunion of the Old Settlers' Association of Zanzibar by mistake.

It's not much of a trick to go into a strange town and learn to navigate from hotel to hotel, but it's a hopeless task to try to find your way around a strange newspaper. Takes about two years to learn to read a strange newspaper skilfully, anyway, and find your way through it without banging into the want ads when you want to find the editorials, and tripping over the poets' column when you are hunting for the crop reports. You've been buying a paper every time you turned a corner for the last week, Jim--you New Yorkers seem to have to have a paper about as often as a whale needs a new lungful of air--and I've taken a hasty look at all of them, but when I get home I am going to ask my wife what has happened in the U. S. while I've been away from Homeburg. Outside of the eternal Mexican case, I don't seem to have discovered a thing.

Mind you, I don't blame your papers for bearing down hard on the local news. I suppose it's mighty interesting to you New Yorkers to learn every morning just how much more money you owe on your new subway, and whether or not the temperature of Mrs. Van Damexpense's second-best Siberian wolf-hound is still rising. That's what newspapers are for--to save you the trouble of stepping around and collecting the events of the day from the back fence. But your papers don't bear down hard enough on the Homeburg happenings, and that's why they don't suit me.

"For goodness' sakes, Ayers, let that item go and get to press," he says. "Give it to me and I'll read it aloud down-stairs, your whole subscription list's down there waiting."

Pretty soon we hear the rattle-te-bang-te-clank-te-clicketty-clang of the old press, and in five minutes more Editor Ayers comes out with an armful of folded papers all fragrant with fresh black ink.

He's right, too. Outside of the fact that it has another week of old man Ayers's laborious and worried life in it, it is mighty bare. There isn't enough news in it to cause a thrill in a sewing circle. But after supper at home, when we look it over more carefully and the first hot flush of anticipation has worn off, we do find a lot of information. We find that Miss Ollie Mingle has gone to Paynesville for a two days' visit , and that Mrs. Ackley is visiting her daughter in Ogallala, Neb. Wimble Horn is erecting a new porch and painting his house. We also find that Jedson Bane's peaches are ripe and of the best quality, which fact he has just proven to the editor's entire satisfaction. And that old Mrs. Gastit is feeling very poorly, and Pete Parson, while working on his automobile the other night, contributed a forefinger to the cause of gasoline by poking around in the cogs while the engine was running.

Your big papers pride themselves on their brevity, except in murder cases, and I understand that almost every New York editor thinks he could boil the story of the Creation down into less than the six hundred words which the Bible wasted on it. But Editor Ayers could give all your editors instructions in this kind of economy. If the Creation had happened around Homeburg while he was on the job, he would have called attention to it the next week about as follows:

"We understand there was a creation in these parts during the last week. We did not learn the particulars but those who were on the ground at the time say that it was a successful affair, and that the new world is doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances."

People pity the poor ministers' families who have to live on the scrambled proceeds of donation parties, but an editor's family in our parts has even harder luck. I have seen Ayers order two suits of clothes from a clothier who owed him a big bill and was getting wabbly, and then pass by the meat market empty-handed, because his advertising account there was traded out. He told me once that he has taken disk-plows, flaxseed, magazines, encyclopedias and a new back porch in trade for advertising and subscriptions, but that he has been wearing an obsolete pair of spectacles, to his great discomfort, for ten years, because our local jeweler will not advertise. The doctors in town carry cards in the paper and owe him large amounts because his family is too healthy to catch up with them; but it will be two years before either of our local dentists accumulates a big enough bill to allow Mrs. Ayers to have some very necessary construction and betterment work, as the railroad folks say, done to her teeth.

Of course the two papers are always on opposite political sides--no matter whether it is a school or national election. Makes us scheme a good deal at times to keep one of them quiet on some public project so that the other will not jump on it. We had a big time, when the plan to pave Main Street was going through, to keep Lafe from jumping in and shouting for it. That would have set Ayers off dead against it, and we had to muzzle Lafe until Ayers had committed himself.

Ayers is getting pretty old, and for several years we have been worrying about his future. Since a cruel Government has decided that a newspaper publisher must keep his subscription list paid up or go out of business, times have been pretty hard for Ayers; formerly he could let a subscription account run for ten years and then take a second-hand buggy or a quarter of beef, or a few odd size grindstones on account; but of late he has had to dun us every year, and of course that makes us mad, and we quit his paper with great frequency and vim. I don't know what would have happened to the old man if Wilson hadn't been elected. But that, of course, has settled things for him. He will be our next postmaster. Every one has conceded that except Pash Wade, Emery Billings, Colonel Ackley, and Sim Askinson, who are also candidates. However, old man Ayers's petition is as long as all the rest put together, and when he is appointed and begins to draw down fifteen hundred dollars a year for handing out his own paper to his subscribers, we will sigh with relief, and Simpson's yells will be sweet music in our ears.

If I had my way, I would put a clause in the Constitution giving all third-class postmasterships to third-class editors, anyway. It's the only chance they have of accumulating enough of a surplus to be able to go into a store with their hats on one side and buy things like other people.

THE HOMEBURG MARINE BAND

Where you New Yorkers get farthest ahead of us Homeburgers, Jim, is the fact that you can go out and soak yourself in real, soul-hoisting music whenever you feel like it--provided, of course, that you have the price and that some speculator hasn't cornered the tickets, and that you can get home at night in time to get dressed in time to go back to town, and that you have sufficient nerve and endurance to go four rounds with your celebrated subway in the same twenty-four hours.

You can't realize what having music constantly on tap means to a pilgrim from a town where two concerts in a winter is a gorge, and where about the only regular musical diversion is going to church on Sunday morning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is going to hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me because I can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, and because I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowing worms. But if most of your life had been spent listening to Mrs. Sim Estabrook jumping for middle C about as successfully as a dog jumps for a squirrel in a hickory tree, you'd splash around in melody, too, while you had the chance.

Of course, I don't mean to say that the music canneries don't do as big a business out our way as they do anywhere. I'll bet they ship as much as ten barrels of assorted masterpieces a month into Homeburg for our graphophone cranks; and last winter Wimble Horn broke the piano-player record by tramping out Tannh?user in seven minutes flat. But while these things educate us and enable us to roll our eyes in the right place in a Wagner number, they don't satisfy the soul any more than souvenir cards from Europe take away a thirst for travel. We want the real thing, and year in and out we're music-hungry. We drive our young folks to the piano and listen to them heroically until they get good, and then they go away to the city where the gate receipts are better and leave us at Lutie Briggs's mercy again. Time and time again the only thing that has stood between Homeburg and a ghastly musical silence has been the Homeburg Marine Band.

That's right! Laugh, darn you! What if Homeburg is twenty miles from the nearest creek? Our band is a lot nearer salt water than your Caf? de Paris is to France. And, besides, there are only three names for a country band, anyway. If it isn't the Marine Band, it has to be the Military Band, or the Silver Cornet Band. Chet Frazier, who is our village cut-up, says that they named ours the Marine Band years ago, after it had waded out to the cemetery on a wet Memorial Day through our celebrated bottomless roads.

You can't realize what a comfort and pride a band is in a Class X town, unless you have grown up in one. They say this isn't a musical country, but its intentions are certainly good as far as brass bands go. Long before an American town is big enough to have a post-office, its citizens have either organized a brass band or are trying to get another man to move in to complete a quorum. Life never gets so complicated out on the grain elevator circuit that the station agent, school principal, and the two rival blacksmiths, and the city marshal can't lug their horns down-town once a week in the evening and soar sweetly off into melody at band practice--that is, if they can get off on the same beat during the evening.

I can hear our home band now--up over McMuggins' Drug Store on a summer evening. It's hot--not hot enough to ignite the woodwork, but plenty warm enough to fry eggs on the sidewalks--and the whole town is out on the porches and lawns chasing a breeze, except the band. It is up in the super-heated lodge room of the Modern Woodmen, huddled around two oil lamps, because the less light it has the less heat will be generated, and it is getting ready to practice the "Washington Post March" for the Fourth of July parade. Our band has practiced the "Washington Post March" for over twenty years, but while the band has altered greatly, the grand old piece shows no sign of wear and is as fresh and unconquerable as ever.

Querulous, complaining sounds come from the lodge room. The tenor horns are crooning, and the bass horn blatting gently, while the clarionet players are chasing each other up and down the scale, like squirrels running round and round in a cage. The warming-up exercises are on. They will continue until Frank Sundell shaves his last customer and gets up to the hall with his trombone. You can tell when he comes. He pulls the slide in and out a couple of times with an unearthly chromatic grunt, and then there is a deep, pregnant silence. They are going to begin.

Usually they begin several times. It is as hard to get a band off together in practice as it is to send a dozen horses from the wire. But finally the bass catches up with the cornets, and the others sprint or put on the brakes, and they land on the fourth or fifth beat together.

For a few minutes it's great. They go over the first four bars in a bunch, and old Dobbs gets the half note and change of key in the bass, which usually floors him, like a professional. It is a proud and happy moment for the leader. But it doesn't last. It's too good to be true. Ad Smith strikes a falsetto with his cornet and stops for wind; this rattles his partner, who can't carry the air alone to save him. Dobbs sits down on the wrong key in the bass. The tenors weaken, discouraged by the cornet, and everybody hesitates. A couple of clarionets lose the place and get to wandering around at random, creating terrible havoc. The altos stop, being in doubt. Ad recovers and launches out with terrific vim half a beat behind. There is a rally, but it is too late. You can hear fragments of five different keys, and presently every one stops except Mahlon Brown, who plays the bass drum and always bangs away through fire or water until some one turns him off.

Then there is silence--a good deal of it. We all know what is happening. Sim Askinson, the leader, is making a few well-chosen remarks, and each player is turning around in his chair and going over the faults of his neighbor in the most kindly and thorough fashion. Ed Smith empties out his baritone horn and takes a little practice run, and then they commence to begin--or begin to start--or start to commence--whatever it is, all over again. But when they stop at ten o'clock, they haven't played the "Washington Post March" clear through in any one heat.

Doesn't sound encouraging for the Fourth, does it? But, pshaw, that's only practice! When the big day comes and the boys put on their caps and coats and such trousers as will come nearest to blending with the said coats and march down the street, do they falter and blow up in the back stretch? Not much. They canter through that air as if they had been born whistling it. There's a wonderful inspiration in marching to a band man--give him a horn, a ragged slip of music, and about four miles of road, and he will prance down the street, climbing over ruts, wading through mud, reading at night by the light of a torch carried by a boy who is twenty feet away fighting with another boy; and he will blow his immortal soul into his horn for hours at a stretch without missing a note.

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