Document text
Yankee Folk
YANTCF_E BUSINESSMAN
_ _
"But it's a hard world and a man's got to be hard to get along."
I'm seventy, and I ain't so awful bad off. I don't do nothing much by
way of real work now. Just help the boys around the mill. I got three boys
grown up, pretty good boys they are too. But I still help them out and take
care of them. Why, by God! I made more money in one year than all of themill
make in a lifetime. Kind of funny when you stop to think of it. But it's true.
I can still work when I want to. But I get up when I please now. No more
early rising for me unless I feel like it. If tin tired and want to stay
in bed I stay. I leave orders at home that I won't accept Ii phone calla be-
fore eight o'clock anyway. When I get up I get up and eat a good breakfast
if I feel hungry. Then I go over to the mill and build a good fire in the
office stove. And I sit around there and smoke and read and think, handle the
orders that come in for lumber, write letters, answer the phone, things like
that. Sometimes the boys come to get some advice and I go along into the mill
them
and held out. I don't do much no more, but I guess I do enough. I got a com-
fortable chair in the office. It's warm and comfortable with the fire going.
I set right back and enjoy life. I figger I done enough in my time so I de-
serve a little bit of rest now. Yes, by God, that's how I figger it.
The boys are good boys but they'll never do what I done or make the money
I did. Maybe I spoiled 'em, make it too easy for 'em, I don't know. Ralph's
the best one. He's a worker, that boy. Never leaves that mill. Right by
that old saw all the time. He's a great worker but he ain't got much of a
head for business. The other boys are all right too. One of tem runs a store;
the other one's on a farm. I gave them both their start, set 'em both up.
Yankee Folk 2
They're doing all right too. Why hadn't they ought to be doing all right?
I give 'em a hand whenever I can. Glad to do it. Glad to be able to do it,
you know. Nobody ever helped me much, but that's all right too. I didn't need
nobody.
I made six hundred dollars yesterday. Yessir, I sold that house I got
last week and cleared six Inindred on it. The bank was going to auction it off
and they asked me to bid on it. I allowed I had enough property on my hands
alre,dy. Well, I finally put in my bid and went home. Guess it kind of soured
on their minds after I bid. Come to find out mine was the only damn bid made
at all! Nobody bid against Hank Davis. I had a house I didn't even want
and I had it cheap. Now a house you buy to live in ain't making you no money,
is it? No moreln a suit of clothes you buy to wear makes you money. Just kind
of necessary, that's all, necessary to have but no money-maker. Now a house
you buy and sell at a profit or rent it out that's where you're making
money. The man that buys or pays you ront is the man spending the money.
Couise I didn't make a whole lot on this deal. Sold out too cheap; might's well
given the place away. But I wanted to get rid of it. I got enough to tend to
without no more.
I was always buying and selling and trading. I been stuck and I've stuck
others. Guess the balance is on my side, if any. Why, I made a trade with Sam
Ellington the other day. Sam said he'd quit drinking if I quit smoking. Well
4
sir, I put my pipes right in the stove. And I quip drinking too --to kind of
keep Sam company. When I heard Sam had broke over I started smoking cigars.
And I take a drink now when I feel like it. But I ain't smoked a pipe since.
would've kept the bargain fair and above -board if Sam had done his part. Sam's
a good feller,qdamn good worker, but he likes his drinking liquor awful well,
Sam does. It134 take a first-class undertaker to stop Sam from drinking!
Yankee Folk 3
Years back I used to loan out money to people, folks as had to have it,
you know, and maybe couldn't raise it from the banks. Lots of 'em used to
curse me for a crook and a skinflint and a bloodsucker, but I don't know....
I figger, by God, I was doing 'em a favor. They needed the money bad. I
had it. They had debts I had cash. I let 'em use it and they paid me for
it. Ain't that a solid business proposition? Maybe I did charge 'em more
than the banks. Why not? If a feller wanted a hundred dollars I took his note
for a hundred and twenty-five, you see? Then by God I charged him six percent
on the kindred -and -a -quarter! You got to pay to get credit in this world. I
always had to. If a man's got money he's a fool not to eppitalize on it. I
been accused of a lot of things in my time. But it's a hard world and a man's
got to be hard to get along.
I made my money from lumber and real estate mostly. I got started young
and I worked hard. First I used my hands and muscle; then I started using my
brain and letting other men work with their hands. A lot more strong backs in
this country than there are sharp minds. Didn't take me long to figger it out
neither. I was a young feller, in my twenties, and doing pretty well. I own-
ed a sawmill and a store and a lot of land. I had some good timberlands, some
of the best around. I always knew my lumber. I took to lumber like a red-
headed woodpecker.
This bid New York company wanted to buy some of my timberland. They sent
here
men up/to look it all over, and they liked the looks of it first-rate. I made
sure they saw the best stuff standing. Well, after fussing and fooling around
they went back to New York to report. Had some correspondence with the company.
I was supposed to go to New York to close the deal. I knew them fellers thought
I was pretty green, so I thought I'd* have some fun with 'em.
I bought a whole new outfit for the trip dorn to New York. I bought some
Yankee Folk 4
ovoralls a jumper, boots, sheepskin, leggings, and I dressed up in 'em and
wore tem down. Them city fellers liked to die when they see me come in the
office!
I says to 'em: "Had a tarnation of a time finding this place. So many
big high buildings and so many people. You're way up in the air here, ain't
you? How fur you s/post it is down to the ground? I ain't used to all this
commotion. Almost wish I had stayed to home!"
I says to 'em: "This is my best outfit I got on here. Only wear it to
dress up for something special. Couple of years I'll buy me a new one, and
I'll put this right on for everyday. Up home we have to. be sparing of our
clothes.°
I says: Mat be them cars that run up on top of them tall poles and make
such an awful racket. I wouldn't dare to walk under 'em let along ride in tem.
I never see such contraptions as you got here in the city.'
Well, by God, them city fellers was having more fun with me, you know
but not half so much fun as I was having with them. Finally we got 'round to
talking business. They wanted to give me three thousand dollars, down paymenia
held out for five thousand. They begin to sweat and squirm a little then.
After quite a spell they got ready to write me off a check for five thousand.
I stalled 'em off some more, said I'd promised my wife not to close the deal
till I talked with her. They wanted me to use the office phone but I said I
had to have a private telephone booth when I talked to my wife on account she
had such a loud voice it might rupture folks' eardrums that wa'n't used to
listening to it. So they let me go out. I stopped in a place I knew before
and got a couple of drinks. I gave the bartender some more of that farmer
lingo, and the fellers in there liked to died laughing at me. What I really
went out for was to go to a bank and see if their check was any good. I found
out it was and I went back to the office and picked it up. Them fellers didn't
Yankee Folk
5
appear none too happy!:
Then I asks 'ern how I'm going to get back to the depot. I told 'em I was
pretty apt to get lost in all the crowds and traffic and noise. r said I could-
n't keep from looking up at the high buildings and it made me dizzy and I was
apt to fall down and get run over. Well, by God, you know what they did? They
sent a man right along with me clear up as far as White River Junction! Alit
Well, in the spring them city fellers camp up to take over, you know, and
I collected the rest on the land. After they talked to some of the local lum,.
may be
bermen they begun to thinkitney hadn't made such a good deal as they thought.
They found out they hadn't stung Hank Davis a whole hell of a lot. And here's
the best part of it all now. That company went bankrupt trying to get the
lumber out of there!
Oh, I've pulled some pretty good ones, I have. And Itwouldn't surprise
me none if I pull a few more before I'm done. Naturally I got caught up with
ones in a while, and I've spent a good deal of time in the courtroom. But I
never minded that none. Matter of fact I used to get a big kick out of fight-
ing them trials. 'Specially when old lawyerlunkirk the old judge, you
know was in on fem.,
The old judge and I was great friends. Used to take our dinners together
down at the old hotel. That's When I kept an office here in town. We had
dinner together about every noon. He was a great character, the judge, al-
mightly Charp and smart, he was. I was getting sued once and Dunkirk was de-
fending me. We beat 'em too. Xfter thiltrial he says to me: 4Hank, you come
near telling the truth there once, lend by God, I was afraid. If you had of,
we'd lost the case sure!"
Yankee Folk 6
He was trying a case once, old Kirk was. Seems that this one feller
had a whole corporation buffaloed. They had got hold of him sameehere
ning to use him, you know. Instead of that Billings used them, and he near
used 'em up before he was through. Well sir, Kirk was addressing the jury and
he says: "When I was young, my father told me never to pick up a porcupine.
He told me to let procupines alone, beoause once you got hold of 'em you
couldn't let go no matter how much you wanted to. The more you tried to get
rid of 'em the more quills they threw into you. That is," he says," the same
ii
advice that should've been given this corporation! I won't give it no name
here *They should've let Billings alone in the first place. Now all they
got is a big handful of quills and more stabbing them all the time.11Well sir,
that jury they was all farmers anyway they roared and laughed and
roared same more. That meant more to them than all the fine points of law
there is. Judge Kirk understood human nature and he knew men.
He had a rape case once, the old Judge did. He asked the wman if she
screamed when the man attacked her. She says: PI always do.11 Kirk threw the
case out. The woman was nothing but an old rip anyway. Usually is that kind
that brings up charges of rape, I figger....Kirk and I was good friends always.
I didn't go to his funeral, don't believe in 'em much. Didn't go to see him
when he was sick even. Knew he was dying, and he did too. Knew if I went up
I'd get to bawling and so would Kirk. Felt just as bad about it as any man
alive. I did. Never did have to go to funerals to show my feelings. There's
enough professional funeral -goers amongst the females in this country.
Speaking of funerals it's too bad this bomb didn't get Hitler the other
night. Prob'ly.it's too late to do any good to kill him anyway. He's got
his machine all built up. Yaybe if he had been blowed up they'd really start
fighting over there. All they've done so far is lie about haw many of each
Yankee Polk
7
other's ships and submarines have been sunk, or how many planes they've shot
down on each other. This country could stay out of that mess and get rich, if
they knew enough to.
I remember when the Lusitania was sunk in fourteen or fifteen —nineteen-.
fifteen, I think it was. Them people had been warned not to cross on that boat.
They went ahead just the same. I was arguing with a feller about that. We
said they had a right to go. I Said maybe they did have a right to, but just
the same they'd been given warning, by God, and they should've taken it. I
says; "If a feller was setting off a big blast of dynamite a piece down the
road and. you should come along in your ca:, held warn yga to stop and wait
for the blast. You'd still have a right to go ahead and get blowed to hell if you was damn fool enough. And knowing how bull-headed you are that's
problly :net What you'd of done! But Whose fault would it really be? Yours
or his?
I had another argument with the same feller. He was standing up for
dictatorships. I was standing up for a democracy. Be tells how all the big
improvements in the world have been under dictators. He points out Napoleon,
Trederidk the Great, Caesar, Alexander, all them old-timers. Then he tries
to show how much Mussolini has done for Italy, Hitler for Germany, and all
these modern dictators. I let him rave on for a spell. Then I says to him/
"Look here now. A democracy is a new form of government compared to the
others. It's still in the experimental stage. We're the baby amongst nations;
our government is the baby amongst other forms of government. Look right here,4
I says, show you the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy.
"Your dictniorehip is like a big proud ship," I says. "Steaming away
across the ocean with a great hulk and great powerful engines driving it.
Yankee Yolk
It's going fast and it's going strong and looks like nothing could stop it.
What happens? Your fine ship strikes something under the surface. Maybe
it's a mine or a reef, maybe it's a torpedo or an iceberg. And your wonderful
ship sinks!
"Now you take your democracy," I says to him. "It's like we're riding en
a raft, a rickety raft that was put together in a hurry. We get tossed about
on the waves, it's bad going, and our feet are always wet. But that raft don't
sink 'cause you can't sink it! You can sink your ship, but you can't sink our
poor little raft. It's the raft that will get to shore at last long after
we're dead and buried, long after your big ships, and their captains too, are sunk
and forgotO
That's the way I look at it. Amen, that's just exactly how I see it. You
can do as you like, think as you like. I figger for me I'll stay right on the
raft, tow....Until my wave or my shark comes along, or somebody throws me off.'