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 all her friends tells her it would be criminal to spoil that head of hair. And when she talks to her husband, she always talks baby talk, maybe because somebody has told her that she’d be single if he wasn’t childish.

And then Ada has got still another pal, a dame named Peggy Flood who is hospital mad and ain’t happy unless she is just goin’ under the knife or just been there. She’s had everything removed that the doctors knew the name of and now they’re probin’ her for new giblets.

Well, I wouldn’t mind if they cut her up into alphabet soup if they’d only do such a good job of it that they couldn’t put her together again, but she always comes through OK and she spends the intermissions at our place, describin’ what all they done or what they’re plannin’ to do next.

But the cat’s nightgown is Tom Stevens and his wife. There’s the team that wins the Olympics! And they’re Ada’s team, not mine.

Ada met Belle Stevens on the elevated. Ada was invited to a party out on the North Side and didn’t know exactly where to get off and Mrs. Stevens seen her talkin’ to the guard and horned in and asked her what was it she wanted to know and Ada told her, and Mrs. Stevens said she was goin’ to get off the same station Ada wanted to get off, so they got off together.

Mrs. Stevens insisted on goin’ right along to the address where Ada was goin’ because she said Ada was bound to get lost if she wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood.

Well, Ada thought it was mighty nice of her to do so much for a stranger. Mrs. Stevens said she was glad to because she didn’t know what would of happened to her lots of times if strangers hadn’t been nice and helped her out.

She asked Ada where she lived and Ada told her on the South Side and Mrs. Stevens said she was sure we’d like it better on the North Side if we’d leave her pick out a place for us, so Ada told her we had a year’s lease that we had just signed and couldn’t break it, so then Mrs. Stevens said her husband had studied law and he claimed they wasn’t no lease that you couldn’t break and some evening she would bring him out to call on us and he’d tell us how to break our lease.

Well, Ada had to say sure, come on out, though we was perfectly satisfied with our apartment and didn’t no more want to break the lease than each other’s jaw. Maybe not as much. Anyway, the very next night, they showed up, Belle and Tom, and when they’d gone, I give ’em the nickname⁠—Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It.

After the introductions, Stevens made some remark about what a cozy little place we had and then he asked if I would mind tellin’ what rent we paid. So I told him a hundred and a quarter a month. So he said, of course, that was too much and no wonder we wanted to break the lease. Then I said we was satisfied and didn’t want to break it and he said I must be kiddin’ and if I would show him the lease he would see what loopholes they was in it.

Well, the lease was right there in a drawer in the table, but I told him it was in my safety deposit box at the bank. I ain’t got no safety deposit box and no more use for one than Judge Landis has for the deef and dumb alphabet.

Stevens said the lease was probably just a regular lease and if it was, they wouldn’t be no trouble gettin’ out of it, and meanw’ile him and his wife would see if they couldn’t find us a place in the same buildin’ with them.

And he was pretty sure they could even if the owner had to give some other tenant the air, because he, the owner, would do anything in the world for Stevens.

So I said yes, but suppose we want to stay where we are. So he said I looked like a man with better judgment than that and if I would just leave everything to him he would fix it so’s we could move within a month. I kind of laughed and thought that would be the end of it.

He wanted to see the whole apartment so I showed him around and when we come to the bathroom he noticed my safety razor on the shelf. He said, “So you use one of them things,” and I said, “Yes,” and he asked me how I liked it, and I said I liked it fine and he said that must be because I hadn’t never used a regular razor.

He said a regular razor was the only thing to use if a man wanted to look good. So I asked him if he used a regular razor and he said he did, so I said, “Well, if you look good, I don’t want to.”

But that didn’t stop him and he said if I would meet him downtown the next day he would take me to the place where he bought all his razors and help me pick some out for myself. I told him I was goin’ to be tied up, so just to give me the name and address of the place and I would drop in there when I had time.

But, no, that wouldn’t do; he’d have to go along with me and introduce me to the proprietor because the proprietor was a great pal of his and would do anything in the world for him, and if the proprietor vouched for the razors, I could be sure I was gettin’ the best razors money could buy. I told him again that I was goin’ to be tied up and I managed to get him on some other subject.

Meanw’ile, Mrs. Stevens wanted to know where Ada had bought the dress she was wearin’ and how much had it cost and Ada told her and Mrs. Stevens said it was a crime. She would meet Ada downtown tomorrow morning and take her to the shop where she bought her clothes and help her choose some dresses that really was dresses.

So Ada told her she didn’t have no money to spend on dresses right then, and besides, the shop Mrs. Stevens mentioned was too high priced. But it seems the dame that run the shop was just like a sister to Mrs. Stevens and give her and her friends a big reduction and not only that, but they wasn’t no hurry about payin’.

Well, Ada thanked her just the same, but didn’t need nothin’ new just at present; maybe later on she would take advantage of Mrs. Stevens’s kind offer. Yes, but right now they was some models in stock that would be just beautiful on Ada and they might be gone later on. They was nothin’ for it but Ada had to make a date with her; she wasn’t obliged to buy nothin’, but it would be silly not to go and look at the stuff that was in the joint and get acquainted with the dame that run it.

Well, Ada kept the date and bought three dresses she didn’t want and they’s only one of them she’s had the nerve to wear. They cost her a hundred dollars a smash and I’d hate to think what the price would of been if Mrs. Stevens and the owner of the shop wasn’t so much like sisters.

I was sure I hadn’t made no date with Stevens, but just the same he called me up the next night to ask why I hadn’t met him. And a couple of days later I got three new razors in the mail along with a bill and a note from the store sayin’ that these was three specially fine razors that had been picked out for me by Thomas J. Stevens.

I don’t know yet why I paid for the razors and kept ’em. I ain’t used ’em and never intended to. Though I’ve been tempted a few times to test their edge on Stevens’s neck.

That same week, Mrs. Stevens called up and asked us to spend Sunday with them and when we got out there, the owner of the buildin’ is there, too. And Stevens has told him that I was goin’ to give up my apartment on the South Side and wanted him to show me what he had.

I thought this was a little too strong and I said Stevens must of misunderstood me, that I hadn’t no fault to find with the place I was in and wasn’t plannin’ to move, not for a year anyway. You can bet this didn’t make no hit with the guy, who was just there on Stevens’s say-so that I was a prospective tenant.

Well, it was only about two months ago that this cute little couple come into our life, but I’ll bet we seen ’em twenty times at least. They was always invitin’ us to their place or invitin’ themselves to our place and Ada is one of these here kind of people that just can’t say no. Which may be why I and her is married.

Anyway, it begin to seem like us and the Stevenses was livin’ together and all one family, with them at the head of it. I never in my life seen anybody as crazy to run other people’s business. Honest to heavens, it’s a wonder they let us brush our own teeth!

Ada made the remark one night that she wished the ski jumper who was doin’ our cookin’ would get married and quit so’s she wouldn’t have to can her. Mrs. Stevens was there and asked Ada if she should try and get her a new cook, but Ada says no, the poor gal might have trouble findin’ another job and she felt sorry for her.

Just the same, the next afternoon a Jap come to the apartment and said he was ready to go to work and Mrs. Stevens had sent him. Ada had to tell him the place was already filled.

Another night, Ada complained that her feet was tired. Belle said her feet used to get tired, too, till a friend of hers recommended a chiropodist and she went to him and he done her so much good that she made a regular appointment with him for once every month and paid him a flat sum and no matter how much runnin’ around she done, her dogs hadn’t fretted her once since this corn-husker started tendin’ to ’em.

She wanted to call up the guy at his home right then and there and make a date for Ada and the only way Ada could stop her was by promisin’ to go and see him the next time her feet hurt. After that, whenever the two gals met, Belle’s first question was “How is your feet?” and the answer was always “Fine, thanks.”

Well, I’m quite a football fan and Ada likes to go, too, when it’s a big game and lots of excitement. So we decided we’d see the Illinois-Chicago game and have a look at this “Red” Grange. I warned Ada to not say nothin’ about it to Tom and Belle as I felt like we was entitled to a day off.

But it happened that they was goin’ to be a game up at Evanston that day and the Stevenses invited us to see that one with them. So we used the other game as a alibi. And when Tom asked me later on if I’d boughten my tickets yet, instead of sayin’ yes, I told him the truth and said no.

So then he said:

“I’m glad you ain’t, because I and Belle has made up our mind that the Chicago game is the one we ought to see. And we’ll all go together. And don’t you bother about tickets because I can get better ones than you can as Stagg and I is just like that.”

So I left it to him to get the tickets and we might as well of set on the Adams Street bridge. I said to Stevens, I said:

“If these is the seats Mr. Stagg digs up for his old pals, I suppose he leads strangers twenty or thirty miles out in the country and blindfolds ’em and ties ’em to a tree.”

Now of course it was the bunk about he and Stagg bein’ so close. He may of been introduced to him once, but he ain’t the kind of a guy that Stagg would go around holdin’ hands with. Just the same, most of the people he bragged about knowin’, why it turned out that he really did know ’em; yes, and stood ace high with ’em, too.

Like, for instance, I got pinched for speedin’ one night and they give me a ticket to show up in the Speeders’ court and I told Stevens about it and he says, “Just forget it! I’ll call up the judge and have it wiped off the book. He’s a mighty good fella and a personal friend of mine.”

Well, I didn’t want to take no chances so I phoned Stevens the day before I was supposed to appear in court, and I asked him if he’d talked to the judge. He said he had and I asked him if he was sure. So he said, “If you don’t believe me, call up the judge yourself.” And he give me the judge’s number. Sure enough, Stevens had fixed it and when I thanked the judge for his trouble, he said it was a pleasure to do somethin’ for a friend of Tom Stevens’s.

Now, I know it’s silly to not appreciate favors like that and not warm up to people that’s always tryin’ to help you along, but still a person don’t relish bein’ treated like they was half-witted and couldn’t button their shirt alone. Tom and Belle meant all right, but I and Ada got kind of tired of havin’ fault found with everything that belonged to us and everything we done or tried to do.

Besides our apartment bein’ no good and our clothes terrible, we learned that my dentist didn’t know a bridge from a mustache cup, and the cigarettes I smoked didn’t have no taste to them, and the man that bobbed Ada’s hair must of been mad at her, and neither of us would ever know what it was to live till we owned a wire-haired fox terrier.

And we found out that the liquor I’d been drinkin’ and enjoyin’ was a mixture of bath salts and assorted paints, and the car we’d paid seventeen hundred smackers for wasn’t nowheres near as much of a car as one that Tom could of got for us for eight hundred on account of knowin’ a brother-in-law of a fella that used to go to school with the president of the company’s nephew, and that if Ada would take up aesthetic dancin’ under a dame Belle knew about, why she’d never have no more trouble with her tonsils.

Nothin’ we had or nothin’ we talked about gettin’ or doin’ was worth a damn unless it was recommended or suggested by the Stevenses.

Well, I done a pretty good business this fall and I and Ada had always planned to spend a winter in the South, so one night we figured it out that this was the year we could spare the money and the time and if we didn’t go this year we never would. So the next thing was where should we go, and we finally decided on Miami. And we said we wouldn’t mention nothin’ about it to Tom and Belle till the day we was goin’. We’d pretend we was doin’ it out of a clear sky.

But a secret is just as safe with Ada as a police dog tethered with dental floss. It wasn’t more than a day or two after we’d had our talk when Tom and Belle sprang the news that they was leavin’ for California right after New Year’s. And why didn’t we go with them.

Well, I didn’t say nothin’ and Ada said it sounded grand, but it was impossible. Then Stevens said if it was a question of money, to not let that bother us as he would loan it to me and I could pay it back whenever I felt like it. That was more than Ada could stand, so she says we wasn’t as poor as people seemed to think and the reason we couldn’t go to California was because we was goin’ to Miami.

This was such a surprise that it almost struck ’em dumb at first and all Tom could think of to say was that he’d been to Miami himself and it was too crowded and he’d lay off of it if he was us. But the next time we seen ’em they had our trip all arranged.

First, Tom asked me what road we was goin’ on and I told him the Big Four. So he asked if we had our reservations and I told him yes.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll get rid of ’em and I’ll fix you up on the C. & E. I. The general passenger agent is a friend of mine and they ain’t nothin’ he won’t do for my friends. He’ll see that you’re treated right and that you get there in good shape.”

So I said:

“I don’t want to put you to all that trouble, and besides I don’t know nobody connected with the Big Four well enough for them to resent me travelin’ on their lines, and as for gettin’ there in good shape, even if I have a secret enemy or two on the Big Four, I don’t believe they’d endanger the lives of the other passengers just to see that I didn’t get there in good shape.”

But Stevens insisted on takin’ my tickets and sellin’ ’em back to the Big Four and gettin’ me fixed on the C. & E. I. The berths we’d had on the Big Four was Lower 9 and Lower 10. The berths Tom got us on the C. & E. I. was Lower 7 and Lower 8, which he said was better. I suppose he figured that the nearer you are to the middle of the car, the less chance there is of bein’ woke up if your car gets in another train’s way.

He wanted to know, too, if I’d made any reservations at a hotel. I showed him a wire I had from the Royal Palm in reply to a wire I’d sent ’em.

“Yes,” he says, “but you don’t want to stop at the Royal Palm. You wire and tell ’em to cancel that and I’ll make arrangements for you at the Flamingo, over at the Beach. Charley Krom, the manager there, was born and raised in the same town I was. He’ll take great care of you if he knows you’re a friend of mine.”

So I asked him if all the guests at the Flamingo was friends of his, and he said of course not; what did I mean?

“Well,” I said, “I was just thinkin’ that if they ain’t, Mr. Krom probably makes life pretty miserable for ’em. What does he do, have the phone girl ring ’em up at all hours of the night, and hide their mail, and shut off their hot water, and put cracker crumbs in their beds?”

That didn’t mean nothin’ to Stevens and he went right ahead and switched me from one hotel to the other.

While Tom was reorganizin’ my program and tellin’ me what to eat in Florida, and what bait to use for barracuda and carp, and what time to go bathin’ and which foot to stick in the water first, why Belle was makin’ Ada return all the stuff she had boughten to wear down there and buy other stuff that Belle picked out for her at joints where Belle was so well known that they only soaked her twice as much as a stranger. She had Ada almost crazy, but I told her to never mind; in just a few more days we’d be where they couldn’t get at us.

I suppose you’re wonderin’ why didn’t we quarrel with ’em and break loose from ’em and tell ’em to leave us alone. You’d know why if you knew them. Nothin’ we could do would convince ’em that we didn’t want their advice and help. And nothin’ we could say was a insult.

Well, the night before we was due to leave Chi, the phone rung and I answered it. It was Tom.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says. “I and Belle has give up the California idear. We’re goin’ to Miami instead, and on account of me knowin’ the boys down at the C. & E. I., I’ve landed a drawin’ room on the same train you’re takin’. How is that for news?”

“Great!” I said, and I went back and broke it to Ada. For a minute I thought she was goin’ to faint. And all night long she moaned and groaned and had hysterics.

So that’s how we happened to come to Biloxi.