Poppy Ott's pedigreed 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.

“I was in the bank when you were there and overheard you inquiring about Pennykorn’s empty building. Humph! If you would accept my advice don’t rent from that man if you can possibly help it. Too grasping; too grasping,” and the shaggy gray head waggled sharply in conclusion.

“I guess,” laughed Poppy, “there’s no danger of us renting any building for one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.” Liking cats he got down on his knees. “Hello, Peter,” he held out his hand. “Remember me, old boy?”

As though it did remember him, the cat came over and rubbed against him.

“Up, Peter,” commanded the old man, pleased at the interest shown in his pet. “Show the boys what you can do. Up, I say,” and the cat sat up as pretty as you please.

“You old tyke,” says Poppy, affectionately petting the yellow head.

“He hasn’t forgotten,” says Mr. Weckler, “how you fished him out of that dry cistern and bandaged his foot.”

“I see it’s all well again.”

“A trifle stiff in the joint, but otherwise as good as ever.... How big a place do you figure you need for this Pickle Parlor of yours?”

“I imagine we ought to start up in a small way,” says Poppy thoughtfully. “For the chances are we won’t have much of a stock at first. In fact,” came the laughing admission, “after supplying you people we have only seven pickles left. Nor do we know yet where more of the same kind are coming from.”

Mrs. Clayton laughed when she heard about the unknown pickle genius. Then, at the old man’s invitation, we followed him into the back yard, where, almost hidden in a thicket of neglected apple trees, we were shown a small house on the order of a child’s playhouse, but made full height, which we were told we could use for a store if it were big enough for us.

“Originally a summerhouse, I built it over to please my daughter,” the old man told us quietly. And there was something in the tone of his voice that made us think that the memory of his daughter wasn’t a happy one. “It’s of no use to me now. As a matter of fact, this is the first time that I have been inside of it for years. For your purpose, of course, it would be better to move it to my vacant lot across the street from the canning factory.”

Poppy fairly danced with joy.

“Why, there couldn’t anything be better, Mr. Weckler. It fits our scheme to a ‘T.’ For like the scheme, itself, it’s different. Everybody will notice it. And it’s plenty big enough, too. We can build our shelves on the sides,” he began to plan, “and put the counter back here. Of course,” he ran off into a merry laugh, “it won’t be a very big counter.” Then he stopped. “But maybe,” he looked up at the old man with his big solemn eyes, “we can’t afford to pay you what it’s worth.”

“You paid for it,” came shortly, “when you went down into the cistern to rescue my cat.”

“But that wasn’t anything. I’d do that for any cat.”

I could see that the old man liked Poppy. For his eyes showed it.

“I dare say you would,” he nodded. “Which is all the more reason why you’re deserving of any help that I can give you. No, you needn’t say any more about it. The playhouse is yours to take or leave, as you see fit. As for moving it onto my lot, if you decide to do that you can pay me five dollars a month.”

“Only five dollars a month for the whole business?” cried Poppy. “That isn’t enough. We expect to make a lot of money when we get organized. And I don’t think it’s right for us to fill our own pockets and not pay you what we should.”

“Possibly,” came the dry suggestion, “you would like to take me into partnership with you.”

“Hot dog!” cried Poppy.

“Very well,” the old man gravely accepted the honor. “You may call me your ‘silent’ partner, if you wish. Which means that you’re to run the business as you see fit and I’m to look on. As for sharing in the profits, I’ll take my pay in pickles.”

“So many pickles as that?” Poppy looked his surprise.

“Oh,” came dryly, “it may not be so terribly many. Probably not more than two or three quarts a month at the most.”