Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It
They’re certainly a live bunch in this town. We ain’t only been here three days and had calls already from people representin’ four different organizations—the Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis, and I forget who else. They wanted to know if we was comfortable and did we like the town and is they anything they can do for us and what to be sure and see.
And they all asked how we happened to come here instead of goin’ somewheres else. I guess they keep a record of everybody’s reasons for comin’ so as they can get a line on what features tourists is most attracted by. Then they play up them features in next year’s booster advertisin’.
Well, I told them we was perfectly comfortable and we like the town fine and they’s nothin’ nobody can do for us right now and we’ll be sure and see all the things we ought to see. But when they asked me how did we happen to come here, I said it was just a kind of a accident, because the real reason makes too long a story.
My wife has been kiddin’ me about my friends ever since we was married. She says that judgin’ by the ones I’ve introduced her to, they ain’t nobody in the world got a rummier bunch of friends than me. I’ll admit that the most of them ain’t, well, what you might call hot; they’re different somehow than when I first hung around with them. They seem to be lost without a brass rail to rest their dogs on. But of course they’re old friends and I can’t give ’em the air.
We have ’em to the house for dinner every little w’ile, they and their wives, and what my missus objects to is because they don’t none of them play bridge or mah jong or do crossword puzzles or sing or dance or even talk, but just set there and wait for somebody to pour ’em a fresh drink.
As I say, my wife kids me about ’em and they ain’t really nothin’ I can offer in their defense. That don’t mean, though, that the shoe is all on one foot. Because w’ile the majority of her friends may not be quite as dumb as mine, just the same they’s a few she’s picked out who I’d of had to be under the ether to allow anybody to introduce ’em to me in the first place.
Like the Crandalls, for instance. Mrs. Crandall come from my wife’s hometown and they didn’t hardly know each other there, but they met again in a store in Chi and it went from bad to worse till finally Ada asked the dame and her husband to the house.
Well, the husband turns out to be the fella that win the war, w’ile it seems that Mrs. Crandall was in Atlantic City once and some movin’ picture company was makin’ a picture there and they took a scene of what was supposed to be society people walkin’ up and down the Boardwalk and Mrs. Crandall was in the picture and people that seen it when it come out, they all said that from the way she screened, why if she wanted to go into the business, she could make Gloria Swanson look like Mrs. Gump.
Now it ain’t only took me a few words to tell you these things, but when the Crandalls tells their story themselves, they don’t hardly get started by midnight and no chance of them goin’ home till they’re through even when you drop ’em a hint that they’re springin’ it on you for the hundred and twelfth time.
That’s the Crandalls, and another of the wife’s friends is the Thayers. Thayer is what you might call a all-around handy man. He can mimic pretty near all the birds and beasts and fishes, he can yodel, he can play a ocarena, or he can recite Kipling or Robert H. Service, or he can do card tricks, and strike a light without no matches, and tie all the different knots.
And besides that, he can make a complete radio outfit and set it up, and take pictures as good as the best professional photographers and a whole lot better. He collects autographs. And he never had a sick day in his life.
Mrs. Thayer gets a headache playin’ bridge, so it’s mah jong or rhum when she’s around. She used to be a teacher of elocution and she still gives readin’s if you coax her, or if you don’t, and her hair is such a awful nuisance that she would get it cut in a minute only
