Poppy Ott's pedigreed pickles — Context and Discussion

“Too much; too much,” came in a sort of petulant, disapproving voice.

“But the farmers won’t sell for any less.”

“Um.... What’s the Ashton Canning Company paying?”

“Fools! They could buy for less.”

“The farmers aren’t dumb. They know our price is too low. And as a result a lot of them, I’ve been told, are planning to haul their corn over to Ashton. It’s only ten miles. And a difference of one-fifty a ton is a big item to them.”

A chair creaked; after which we heard footsteps going back and forth.

“I told you, Norman, when that Ashton plant was built that we’d suffer from it. If we don’t watch our steps they are going to seriously cut into our business.”

“Well,” came the grunt, “you won’t help matters any by cutting the price on the farmers. For they’re sore at us already.”

“Um ...” studied the crafty banker. “It might be wise for us to buy up this Ashton plant. That would give us control of the local bottom-land acreage. The farmers then would have to sell to us at our price. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to sell at all unless they shipped. And the most of them are too dumb to attempt a thing like that.”

“But our canned-corn outlet doesn’t justify operating another plant. We’d lose money.”

“I’ve been thinking, Norman, that we ought to materially increase our pickle output. Our Dandy Dills went across fine. Very fine, indeed. The wholesale houses expressed disappointment at the early depletion of our stock. Considering the matter, I’ve come to the conclusion that the somewhat extraordinary acceptance of our Dandy Dills is due, not so much to the manufacturing processes, but to the cucumbers, themselves. Our bottom land has produced exceptional sweet corn. And I’m wondering if it can’t be made to further produce exceptional cucumbers in large quantities. That is, cucumbers of improved texture and flavor. You probably grasp my point. If we can greatly multiply our pickle business, which seems entirely feasible to me, we would be justified in taking over the Ashton plant.”

“Exactly. It is something for us to think about.”

“After our marked success last summer with the new pickle line, I encouraged Mrs. O’Mally to increase her acreage this year. And the other day I talked with another farmer from down the river who has a big patch. He’s feeling around for a market. So the prospects are that we’ll quadruple our dill output this summer.”

“Fine. Very fine. But don’t pay too much, Norman. Have an eye to profits. The less we pay out the more satisfactory our profits will be. As a whole, this promises to be a very good year for us. And if we can clean up fifty thousand dollars we’ll be in excellent shape to absorb the Ashton concern.”

“And you really think we should cut the price on sweet corn?”

“It galls me, Norman, to have to pay nine dollars a ton. But, to take a broader view, it would be awkward for us, I imagine, to--ah--antagonize the farmers at this stage in our contemplated development. So we probably had better let the nine-dollar price stand. Or, if necessary, with the future in mind, I even would consent to raising the price to nine-fifty or nine-seventy-five. That will win the farmers’ confidence. And at every opportunity you should talk with them guardedly about cucumbers. You might even contract for a limited acreage. By explaining that it is experimental cannage you can keep them from expecting too much.... By the way, what is the boy doing this summer?”

“Forrest? Oh, burning up gasoline mostly.”

“You should put him to work in the factory. He should be learning the business. Idleness and extravagance are twin evils, Norman. And I cannot countenance either, much less in the habits of my only grandchild.”

Not particularly interested at first in this long-winded business conversation, we had pricked up our ears at the mention of pickles. For that was stuff in our line! It was a sort of coincidence, I told myself, that we should overhear their pickle plans so soon after our decision to start up a Pickle Parlor. But I never dreamed that soon the two businesses, so to speak, would be kicking each other in the seat of the pants.

A sporty-looking roadster having pulled up in front of the bank, its owner, a boy of our age, now sauntered lordly-like into the lobby. Forrest Pennykorn is what I call a first-class snob. I never did get along with him at school, and probably never will, for the only way to keep peace with him is to toady to him, and that is something I won’t do with any kid, rich or poor.

Getting his eyes on us the snappily-dressed young millionaire brought out a scowl. For he has about as much love for us as we have for him.

“Some one must have left the back door open,” was his clever little slap at us, as he disappeared into his grandfather’s office. “Hi, Grandpop. Hi, Pop. Why don’t you turn on the electric fan? It’s hotter than an oven in here.”

“Not infrequently,” was the banker’s dry reply, “it is advisable to endure slight bodily discomforts in order to economize.”

“That’s all Greek to me. Say, Pop, can I have a ten-spot? I want to take a spin over to Ashton this afternoon.”

“Forrest, your grandfather and I have just been talking about you. And we both feel that you’re old enough to be of some help to me at the factory.”

“The business will be yours some day. And you ought to begin now to--”

A gust of wind having blown the door wide open, it was now closed with a bang, staying latched this time. And not knowing how much longer we might be kept waiting, Poppy got up, sort of impatient-like, and went over to the cashier’s window.

“We’re interested in Mr. Pennykorn’s empty store building near the Lattimer meat market. Can you tell us what it rents for?”

“One hundred and twenty-five a month,” snapped the cashier, a bit peeved, I guess, that we hadn’t taken up the business with him in the first place.

“One hundred and twenty-five _dollars_?” says Poppy, drawing a deep breath.

The man nodded curtly, after which the president and general manager of Tutter’s leading Pickle Parlor gave a sort of wilted laugh.

“I guess, Mr. Blynn, that’s too steep for us.”

A stoop-shouldered old man had come into the bank. And I noticed now that he was standing where he could listen. His face looked peculiarly familiar to me. But for the life of me I couldn’t place him at the moment.

“Are you planning on starting up a store?” the cashier thawed out under the warmth of his own curiosity.

“A Pickle Parlor,” says Poppy, who felt, I guess, that the sooner he started advertising the new business the better.

“A _what_?” the bank clerk stared.

“What in the name of common sense is a Pickle Parlor?”

“What is an ice-cream parlor?” countered Poppy.

“A place where you buy ice cream.”

“Naturally. So a Pickle Parlor is a place where you buy pickles.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“I rather imagine,” came modestly from the genius of Tutter’s new enterprise, “that our Pickle Parlor will be the first of its kind in the United States. When completely organized it is our plan to sell all kinds of quality pickles--apple pickles, beet pickles and various mixtures. But at the start we will specialize in cucumber pickles. I hope you will give us a trial, Mr. Blynn. Pickles is pickles for the most part, but you’ll always get preferred pickles when you deal with us. Even your wife, excellent cook as she no doubt is, will be unable to make better pickles than ours. And to serve with those tasty party sandwiches, which mean so much to an experienced hostess, who would want to use any pickle except the perfect pickles that are the fame of Poppy’s Pickle Parlor? As a matter of fact, we expect to get a corner on the whole pickle business of the town. And later on we may branch out and sprinkle a chain of Pickle Parlors all over the state.”

“I swan!” the cashier stared. “I swan!”

A jeering laugh followed us out of the bank, for young Pennykorn had come out of his grandfather’s office in time to overhear Poppy’s pickle oration.

“Well,” I grinned at my chum, when we were in the street, “we’re getting a lot of that ‘laughed-at’ recognition that you talked about. So you ought to be happy.”

“A Pickle Parlor!” smarty hooted after us from the door of his grandfather’s bank. “A Pickle Parlor! Haw! haw! haw!”

“Jerry,” came solemnly, “do you know what I wish?”

“That you could coax him into an alley and punch his face?”

“Oh, no! I wish I could make him come into our store and beg us to sell him some of our pickles.”

“Which reminds me,” says I, “that you haven’t told me yet where you’re going to get these wonderful pickles.”

“That,” says he, with a thoughtful look, “is still a puzzle to me.”

“_Good_ night!” I squeaked, with much the same feeling as though, having skidded off the moon, I had landed kerflop! on the hard earth. “It’s a good thing, I guess, that they didn’t make us a special offer on that store. For we’d look cute trying to run a Pickle Parlor without any pickles.”

“Our business career was kind of short and snappy,” I told Poppy, when we had turned a corner out of sight of the Canners Exchange Bank where our enemy, Forrest Pennykorn, had just given us the horselaugh.

“How do you get that ‘was’ stuff?” says he. “We really haven’t got started yet.”

I had known, of course, that he would say something like that. For when he starts out to do a thing he usually sticks to it until he finishes it. That’s the kind of a kid _he_ is. But I pretended that I was surprised.

“What?” I squeaked, as we ran into a jam of people in front of the Parker grocery where a sale was going on. “Haven’t you given up that scheme?”

There was a crash of glass on the concrete sidewalk.

“My pickles!” cried one of the shoppers, glaring at poor Poppy as though she was mad enough to snatch him bald-headed. “Stupid! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

The offender, of course, had an apology a mile long. Then, in his quick-minded way, he got down on his knees and began fingering the pickled cucumbers as they lay in a puddle of juice on the sidewalk, acting for all the world as though he were conducting a pickle post-mortem, or whatever you call it.

“Mrs. Clayton,” he finally looked up with a long face, “you may not realize it, but this accident is nothing short of an act of Providence. And while it may seem to you that you have suffered a loss, you really are going to be benefited. The very fact that you made this purchase proves that you are a lover of good pickles. I say _good_ pickles, for, as a pickle specialist, I can see that you bought the best pickles that the store had. Probably they are fairly good pickles, as pickles go. Because I am in the pickle business myself is no reason why I should run down anybody else’s pickles. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that I have a right to uphold the superior quality of my own pickles. And it is of such pickles that I am going to make good your loss. Not _store_ pickles, Mrs. Clayton, as we usually accept the term, but _home-made_ pickles, of which the more you eat the more you want; pickles that you never tire of; pickles with the lasting, lingering taste; pickles with a skin you love to touch; pickles,” the orator soared, like a rooster flopping over a fence, “that please but never pucker. A wonderful treat is in store for you. And once you have been initiated into the dinner-time joys of perfect pickles, I hope you’ll remember me, not as a blundering boy who bumped into you by accident, to the loss of your bottle of store pickles, but as the hand of Providence that led you into the light. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Easy to remember, isn’t it? If you’ll say it over two or three times you’ll never forget it. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Which is all to the point, Mrs. Clayton, that whenever you are in need of pickles, the place to buy them, if you want the best, is at Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, the home of perfect pickles.”

Well, say! I never felt so foolish in all my life. Poppy is all right. He is a smart kid, in fact. And no doubt this new scheme of his was water tight. But it struck me that he was spreading the gab too promiscuously. Enough people would laugh at us, I figured, without him making a monkey of himself (and me, too!) in public.

“The first thing you know,” I hinted, when we had escaped from the laughing crowd that had gathered around us as a result of the free show, “they’ll be locking you up in a padded cell.”

“What’s the matter, Jerry?” he grinned, in perfect contentment with himself. “Don’t you like my lingo?”

“You can’t keep it up,” I told him, “and get away with it.”

“It’s good advertising,” he modestly bragged on himself.

“But what’s the use,” says I, “of letting on that we have a Pickle Parlor when we haven’t?”

“A business is a business,” says he, “from the time it’s organized. And we’ve been organized for more than an hour.”

“But we haven’t any store. And you say yourself that you don’t know where we’re going to get our pickles.”

“I know where we’re going to get the first quart,” he grinned.

I saw then that he was holding something back. Which was like him, of course! And so I was prepared for something of a surprise as I followed him down the street to his home, where he reappeared from the cellar with a jar of cucumber pickles, which, on sampling, I had to acknowledge were the swellest home-made cucumber pickles that I ever had set my teeth into.

“Who made ’em?” I smacked.

“That,” says he, “is something I have yet to find out.”

“Don’t you know?” I stared.

He slowly shook his head.

“It may seem to you, Jerry, that I just jumped into this Pickle Parlor scheme on a moment’s notice. But it’s a fact I’ve been twisting the scheme around in my head for the past two days. And what put it into my head in the first place was this jar of pickles. Pickles like these, I told myself, would make a storekeeper rich in no time, providing he had enough of them to sell. And what fun it would be, I thought, to run a store of that kind. A Pickle Parlor! The name popped into my head just like that,” and he snapped his fingers in illustration. “But I ran up against a snag when I tried to find out who had made the pickles. I have them here, as you can see. But I don’t know where they came from.”

“But surely,” says I, puzzled over his words, “they didn’t drop out of the sky.”

“Last Saturday,” he explained, “the ladies of the Presbyterian missionary society held a food sale in Drake’s store. And there is where I bought the jar of pickles. I didn’t ask who made them, for I wasn’t interested ... then. And when I tried to find out later on no one seemed to know. First, I was sent to Mrs. Bowman on Elm Street. No, she told me, after tasting the pickles, they weren’t out of her kitchen. Nor could she help me. But she’d like to buy some of the pickles, she said, if it turned out that there were more of the same kind for sale. I went to three women in turn. No success at all. But here’s an important point, Jerry: Every woman who sampled the pickles wanted to buy some. So you can see the big money that’s waiting for us if we can find out who this unknown pickle genius is and win her over to our scheme.”

There’s nothing I like better than mystery stuff.

“What’ll you give me,” I laughed, “if I find out who the pickle maker is?”

“I’ll make you president of the company.”

“No,” I shook my head, “that’s your job. For it’s your idea.”

“Well, vice-president then.”

“All we’ve got to do,” I showed my stuff, “is to get a list of the women who contributed pickles to the church sale and then check off the names until we come to the right one.”

“That would be fine if there was such a list. But there isn’t, for I inquired. As I understand it, the newspaper invited people in general to bring cookies and other stuff to the sale, which explains how the pickles happened to be brought in. Evidently some one just walked in with them, and after setting them down quietly walked out again.”

“Then,” says I, as a second lead, “we’ll advertise in the newspaper. Or if that doesn’t do the trick, we’ll make a house to house canvass.”

It was close to eleven o’clock now. And thinking that maybe Mrs. Clayton would want her pickles for dinner, we filled a bottle of the same size as the one that had been broken and hurried down the street to the factory district, where we saw young Pennykorn’s classy car, together with several others, parked in a vacant lot across the street from the canning company’s office. Just beyond was an old-fashioned house well shut in by untrimmed trees and ragged bushes, a familiar place to Poppy, for he had worked here painting porches when he first came to town. At sight of the sleepy-looking house it suddenly popped into my head who the old man was whom I had noticed in the bank. It was old Mr. Weckler, the widower who had so generously and unexpectedly put up the money for the big assembly cabin in our Boy Scout camp. I had seen him once or twice in camp. So in a way it was strange that I hadn’t recognized him right off. Still, a fellow can’t remember every face that he sees. I’ll never forget the joy of the Scouts when the newspaper announced Mr. Simon Weckler’s donation. And were the Tutter people ever surprised! For it was the general public opinion that on top of being something of a miser the old man hated boys, which goes to show how easily one can be misjudged.

The housekeeper’s face broke into a smile when she saw us at the back door.

“I hardly knew whether to believe your silly talk or not,” she told Poppy, taking the pickles that we had brought her.

“Try one,” beamed the pickle specialist, as he caught her looking curiously into the jar, “and if they aren’t what I represented them to be I’ll run down town and buy you a tubful of the other kind.”

“Oh ...” she cried, biting into one of the pickles. “Aren’t they perfectly delicious! Did your mother make them?”

Poppy shook his head.

“No,” he explained quietly, “my mother is dead.”

Here old Mr. Weckler, himself, pottered into the kitchen, thumping along with his heavy cane, a huge yellow cat tagging at his heels. At sight of us he gave a dry smile, which showed clearly enough that he hadn’t forgotten about the pickle oration that our walking dictionary had so nobly squeezed out of his system in front of the cashier’s window.

“Found a store yet?” the old man inquired.

“No, sir,” was Poppy’s polite reply.