me the two-spot.
It took them two more apiece to get over the Airline and into the marsh on the other side. They laid ten feet apart, with Mr. Perkins away. His ball was in a bad spot. There was weeds, a bunch of them, right behind it, and you were lucky to hit it at all. If you did hit it you wouldn’t have any force after cutting through the weeds.
“You got a rotten lie,” said Jake, so’s we could all hear him. “I should think you could kick it away from those weeds to where you could get a crack at it.”
“Kick it away!” said Mr. Perkins. “That’s against the rules.”
So Jake said:
“Why, don’t you remember when you laid next to the woods—”
Mr. Conklin wasn’t the only one with a bad cold.
“You’re even worse off now,” said Jake, “than when you were laying against those trees on the eighth. And then—”
Mr. Perkins had heard aplenty. He went up to Jake, pretending to look in the bag for another club or something. And when he moved back to his ball again to shoot, Jake was putting the day’s receipts in his pocket.
Whether Mr. Perkins was mad or not I don’t know; but he cut through those weeds with that mashie as though he’d been saving up for this shot all afternoon. And, believe me, he got a whale of a shot, the ball carrying pretty near to the green and rolling onto it!
I thought to myself “It’s good night to my man!”
But maybe he was sore too. Or maybe he’d just come to realize how bad he needed a new ball. Anyway, he pulled one pretty near as good as Mr. Perkins’, stopping just off of the green.
“What’s come over them?” I whispered to Jake.
“They ain’t muscle-bound no more,” he said. “They’ve both loosened up.”
Mr. Conklin approached and went six or seven feet past the cup. Mr. Perkins was quavering again, and he stopped about the same distance short. He was away. He already had his putter in his hands, but he was too scared to know if it was a golf club or a monkey wrench. What did he do but stick it into the bag and haul out his spoon, the first time he’d touched it all day!
“What are you going to do with that?” Jake ast him.
And then the poor goop came to and looked at it.
“I’ve played too hard,” he said, kind of half smiling. “Conklin, what do you say if we call it square?”
“I’m willing,” said Mr. Conklin; and you bet he was!
Neither one of them could have hit their ball in three putts.
“We’ll call this hole halved in fives,” said Mr. Perkins. “And-let’s see: As near as I can figure, that gives us both a medal score of fifty-four apiece.”
“He means,” said Jake to me, “that their score’s fifty-four apiece after they’ve meddled with it.”
We took their bags and started for the shop.
“How much did you get?” I ast Jake.
He told me a dollar and a half.
“But I guess we earned it,” he said. “We’ve been out three hours.”
So I said:
“Davy can have them after this.” And then I happened to think of the bet we’d made him. “Say, Jake,” I said, “he’s just a kid and don’t know how to handle these fellas. He’ll learn when he’s older. It don’t seem right for us to take advantage of him and collect that dough.”
“No,” said Jake. “Let’s show him the proceeds and tell him the bet’s off.” And then he said: “Say, my old man told me if I saved up twenty-five dollars between now and Christmas he’d give me ten to put with it. What do you think about us both taking these geezers’ money and putting it in some bank?”
“I’m with you,” I said—“only the bank won’t be one of Mr. Conklin’s.”
Gas, Oil and Air
In pretty near every magazine these days, they’s advertisers that tells you you’re a sucker to keep on workin’ for what your employers pays you, and why don’t you buy our correspondence course in somethin’ or other and soon you’ll be makin’ from $5,000 to $5,000,000 a year, and so forth. And they print a picture of Adolph Klauss, from Ligonier, Indiana, that slaved for years keepin’ books for the Elite Grocery and finally got hep to himself and took our course, and now look at him! General manager o’ the Peekskill Prune Company at an annual pittance o’ fifty thousand per year, not includin’ tips.
I’m not knockin’ these birds. They’s no question but that a man that’s goin’ along in a rut should ought to get out of it and get into another one, and he can learn how to do it by subscribin’ to one o’ these courses. They’re pretty reasonable, too, I guess. But still, they do cost some money, and the average man in a rut ain’t got it to spare.
Well, I’ve found a lucrative profession that you can go into without payin’ for lessons or wastin’ time on ’em. Anybody in the world can be a mechanic in a garage. You don’t have to know nothin’.
All you got to do is give your conscience a sleepin’ potion and borrow a pair of overalls.
The reason I got a car lives out in Hyde Park, but she’s thinkin’ about leavin’ there. Her name’s Alice. I ain’t alone in considerin’ her the greatest girl that ever lived; at least, they’s been others.
One o’ them was George Boles. His old man’s a plumber, so George never had to worry. His father even give him a chummy roadster last Christmas.
I and Alice was brought up in the same neighborhood. I’ve knew her ever since she was a foot high, and always liked her. After my people moved out on the West Side, and I wasn’t able to see her more’n once a week, I begun to realize that she was somethin’ more to me than just a lifelong friend; in fact, that she
