A Fistful of Fig Newtons

by Jean Shepherd

  The leader, lost in thought, muttered, “Meow. Does anyone here know the meaning of that? Mee-yow.”

  There was no reply.

  “Hmmm. We may have to rethink some of our theories on their language. There’s a lot we don’t know. It’s obvious.”

  The technician called out from the rear, “I have another one threaded on this thing, sir. Should I run it?”

  The leader grunted in affirmation. He leaned to his left and whispered to his trusted lieutenant. “You realize that this could mean my directorship, at last. I can tell you now that I was worried toward the end of the dig that it was just another dry hole, but I always knew that there just had to be something of importance in the Madison Ah-vay Littoral. I just knew it. It had to be.”

  He glanced to the rear, where the operator was struggling with the machine. His lieutenant politely asked, “Why do they call that area Madison Ah-vay?”

  The leader, always delighted to show his superior erudition, went on expansively. “Canmut Nine’s first dig years ago came across a plaque or shield of some sort bearing that name in the area, and you know how he was. He immediately gave the dig that name, whether it was significant or not.”

  The assistant leaned forward thoughtfully. “Does Madison Ah-vay mean anything?”

  “Yes, I suppose it does. Canmut at least thought so. Madison was the name of one of their early patriots or generals, and Ah-vay is a Latin word meaning prayer or sacred song. If Canmut was right, the area might well have been a sacred place of leaders. Or perhaps of high priests.”

  His lieutenant, now thoroughly interested, asked, “You mean it’s possible that these ‘commercials,’ as we call them, could be some sort of Scripture, or—”

  “Shhhh.” The leader motioned for silence. “Never give away your theories for free, especially in this crowd.”

  3-2-1-BEEP. A magnificent pastoral scene burst upon them: green trees, grass, but above all another wildly enthusiastic group of celebrants, young and old. At the center a rapidly revolving device bearing mysterious wooden animals, upon which many of the young were seated. Pennants and banners flew. This curious scene was accompanied by loud pagan music. There was revealed, high over them all, another revolving device gleaming in the sunshine. It resembled a vast spinning container bearing the likeness of a benevolent white-bearded ancient. The voice boomed:

  “When Mother needs a rest, give her a day off. Go to the Colonel’s!”

  A group appeared bearing containers exactly like the one in the sky, but miniature. They began devouring the contents, while looking upward in rapt adoration at the bearded ancient’s image.

  “The Colonel’s eleven secret ingredients make it finger-lickin’ good …”

  A chorus, accompanied by native drums, screamed:

  “FINGER-LICKIN’, FINGER-LICKIN’, FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD!”

  The scene disappeared.

  “Wonderful!”

  “Incredible!”

  “What style they had!”

  Various disjointed phrases echoed around the room. The leader’s lieutenant hissed into his ear, “You could be right. That revolving icon must have been one of their major priests!”

  The leader, impassive, his face stony, nodded imperceptibly. “Shhh. Don’t tip your hand.”

  The technician, who seemed to have gotten the hang of the primitive machine, almost immediately announced that he had another spool ready for action.

  5-4-3-2-1-BEEP. An interior of a colorful repository of some sort appeared, row upon row of shelves adorned with gaudy cubes. Three females in bizarre costumes moved into the foreground. They were pushing spidery, wire-like contrivances filled with more cubes.

  The three of them stopped and reverently picked up some mysterious white circular rolls. Their eyes glazed in ecstasy. They fondled the rolls. A stern male arrived, clad in a white uniform. He resembled a guard, or perhaps an officer of some kind–definitely a figure invested with authority.

  “Ladies, please don’t squeeze the Charmin!”

  The three females continued to fondle the rolls, with even more intensity. The guard, overcome by emotion, himself began to squeeze a pair. One female piped: “I just can’t help it, Mr. Whipple.”

  Nervously the guard squeezed even harder.

  “See, Mr. Whipple, Charmin’s so squeezably soft!”

  The scene concluded with all four of them fondling the rolls in high excitement.

  As the lights came back on, there was a barely suppressed roar of conversation in the room. The leader stood and cut through the hubbub with his voice of command.

  “All right, that’s more than enough for our first session. Tomorrow I want to hear some of your theories on what we’ve seen. Remember, no leaks. I repeat, we must not allow any of this to get into the wrong hands. Get some rest. We’ll see you on the morrow.”

  He and his lieutenant moved toward the exit. As they left the chamber, the leader, his voice low and shaking with emotion, said, “We are right. Now it’s clear to me. Those tightly rolled white scrolls … they were worshiping! Are you ready for a cosmic theory?”

  They both glanced around conspiratorially as they moved toward their conveyance.

  “Yes, yes. What is it, sir?”

  The leader muttered almost to himself. “If we can find out what was on those Charmins, or what they were used for, I believe we would know what their civilization was all about, what they believed in. Do you follow?”

  The lieutenant gasped, “By Karnak, you could just be right. Yes, you could just be right!”

  In high triumph they moved off.

  Ah, Mr. Whipple, with that sissy mustache and those funny little glasses, running around squeezing Charmin. I wondered how many shoppers secretly began squeezing toilet paper after that ad campaign, just to stay up with the crowd. Once, there was a commercial for Alka-Seltzer where the bride cooked up a heart-shaped meatloaf. Not long afterward I myself was served a heart-shaped meatloaf by a smiling, toothsome wench. Life imitates art again.

  I chuckled, remembering squirting Heinz catsup on the heart, which gave it a distinct religious overtone. Like the time my grandmother served a cake molded like a lamb, with coconut wool, for Easter. She whacked off the head and served it to me with vanilla ice cream, which caused me to wake up screaming for years afterward and ultimately caused my conversion to zealous atheism in my teens.

  So my fevered thoughts ran, in my endless odyssey through the Lincoln Tunnel, jammed wall-to-wall with Detroit iron of various marques and vintages. Oh, I’ve had my share of tunnel adventures. It isn’t always dull. Like the time late at night, with little traffic, I was racing along free as a breeze when I happened to glance in my rearview mirror. The guy directly behind me at that very instant, just as I was looking at him, had the whole front end of his car collapse, with a giant roar and a blood-curdling scream of metal on metal.

  I had a brief clear view of their astounded faces as the car, a new model, incidentally, slid along on its gut. They had the look of those people you see in old, grainy black-and-white pictures of travelers on the deck of a sinking ocean liner, or that moment in a Laurel and Hardy film when Hardy discovers that the grand piano is rolling down the stairs toward him and somehow a horse had gotten atop it and is going along for the ride. Or maybe that golden moment when you were a kid and you tried out your new shipment of Sneezing Powder from Johnson Smith in Racine, Wisconsin. Along with a new bird-call whistle and a device for throwing your voice into trunks (“Help, help, let me out!”). The look of startled disbelief, like you’ve truly been had.

  The Whole Fun Catalog of 1929

  “TRAGEDIES OF THE WHITE SLAVES–

  TAKEN FROM ACTUAL LIFE!

  FOR GOD SAKE, DO SOMETHING!”

  Countless red-necked, raw-boned farm boys licked their lips in lustful righteousness as they addressed an envelope, using a chewed, stubby, penny pencil, to Johnson Smith & Co., Racine, Wisconsin. They were ordering #1375 from the “Big Book,” or “The Catalog.
” In a few weeks they would have in their horny hands two hundred pages of some of the ripest outhouse reading this side of The Police Gazette.

  Johnson Smith & Co. is and was as totally American as apple pie; far more so in fact, since they do make apple pie most places in the civilized world. Only America could have produced Johnson Smith. There is nothing else in the world like it. Johnson Smith is to Man’s darker side what Sears Roebuck represents to the clean-limbed, soil-tilling righteous side. It is a rich compost heap of exploding cigars, celluloid false teeth, anarchist “stink” bombs (“more fun than a Limburger cheese”). The Johnson Smith catalog is a magnificent, smudgy thumbprint of a totally lusty, vibrant, alive, crude post-frontier society, a society that was, and in some ways still remains, an exotic mixture of moralistic piety and violent, primitive humor. It is impossible to find a single dull page, primarily because life in America in the early days of the twentieth century was not dull; it was hard, a constant struggle, and almost completely lacking in creature comfort. The simplest activity was, to use a popular phrase of the day, “fraught with danger.” For example, the “Young America Safety Hammer Revolver” is described as “very popular with cyclists.” Apparently, to the reader of the day, no explanation was necessary. The mind boggles at the unknown horrors that a “cyclist” daily faced. The same item is also described as “excellent for ladies’ use.” It is just this sort of thing that makes the Johnson Smith catalog zippier reading than any James Bond fiction. It is hard to believe at this date that the writers of the catalog were dealing with real life of the time. I don’t recall ever meeting a “lady” who carried a .32 caliber automatic in her handbag (“for immediate use”).

  Along the same lines, in the description of the “Automatic Break-open Target Revolver” (“it hits the mark!”) is the following come-on: “You never know when War may come, or you may find yourself dependent upon your skill in shooting for a meal of game.” Can you imagine the same in, let us say, an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog?

  The thing that immediately gets you about the Johnson Smith world is its naked, unashamed realism. It reflects a world in which humor involves the “Squirt Ring” (“an attractive-looking diamond that cannot fail to be the center of attraction. The observer experiences a very great surprise”) or the classic “Itching Powder” (“thoroughly enjoyable–the intense discomfiture of your victims is highly amusing”). It was the era of the “Pig Bladder” and W. C. Fields, and subtlety was somehow foreign and feminine.

  As history, the Johnson Smith catalog is far more revealing than many of the voluminous, self-conscious products of historians. For example, the ten-cent “Bootlegger Cigar” says more about the days of Prohibition than anything I’ve ever read on the period: “An exact imitation of a real cigar, which consists of a glass tube with a cork in the end. It is really a well-designed flask that can be used to carry any liquid refreshment.” And they weren’t talking about Orange Crush or Pepsi-Cola. The immediate image, of course, is of a man (how about W.C. himself?) walking around with a glass cigar in his mouth filled with sour mash bourbon.

  Another almost extinct phase of the American scene is fully documented. It is a classic list of emblems of an American phenomenon that flourished in small towns from just after the Civil War through the early thirties: the Lodge, the Brotherhood, the secret society. In a day when men had to band together for one reason or another, mainly social, these institutions were really the focal point of life in many a hamlet. Men wore badges proudly and without self-consciousness.

  For example, the “Panama Canal” medallion stated to the world that the wearer had worked on the famous canal. This item, which today would bring big money from Americana museums, sold for twenty-five cents through Johnson Smith. The plumber, the plasterer, the bricklayer, the blacksmith, and the carpenter all had badges to be hung proudly from watch chains. Where now are the men who wore in honor the Brotherhood of Streetcar Trainmen badge?

  For just a quarter a member could also get a watch that proclaimed to everyone that he was in the Sons of Veterans. Veterans of What? The Civil War? The Spanish-American War? The War of the Roses? They never said. Are there any chapters still flourishing? You can see their proud escutcheon in the catalog and probably nowhere else.

  Johnson Smith was also the Bible of the go-getting entrepreneur, always alert for new opportunities offering “untold riches.” “Make big money stamping key chains,” advised the catalog, or “Raise mushrooms in your own ‘Mystery Mushroom Garden,’ ” an avocation which “has earned several dollars a week for satisfied users.”

  Every live wire, life-of-the-party in those days had a complete repertory of parlor tricks. Totally equipped by Johnson Smith & Co., of Racine, Wisconsin, he was prepared to conquer every social gathering with the sheer audacity of his wit and with the legerdemain he displayed. You needed at least a steamer trunk, apparently, to bring your equipment to a party, because “Diminishing Billiard Ball,” “The Handkerchief Vanisher” (“practically undetectable; never fails”), “The Mesmerized Penny” (“defies the law of gravitation”), and “The Mysterious King Tut Trick” were merely basic equipment. The truly dedicated social climber would need the “Spirit Medium Ring” as well as the expensive but effective “Mysterious Chalice.” This was obviously a time when people provided much of their own entertainment and did not or could not rely on the movies, television, or the canned humor of the stand-up comic. For this reason the joke books which filled several pages of the catalog were popular and highly functional. One Thousand Choice Conundrums and Riddles was one such smash seller. It featured such boffolas as:

  MAN: Why don’t you help me find my collar button?

  FRIEND: I would, but it always gives me the Creeps!

  This crusher must have panicked them from Kalamazoo to Keokuk, and for only a dime you got 999 more, “enough to last you for years!” And that was the unvarnished truth! Some of those jokes are still kicking around, and writers are earning Big Money selling them to comics who apparently never read the Johnson Smith & Co. catalog. If you have any doubts about this, read a couple of these joke books, and then watch television for a month. Furthermore, the timelessness of the Johnson Smith catalog is not restricted to its gag books. For example, the Ouija board, invented by a Baltimore man as a parlor trick, is selling in greater numbers today than it did when it was introduced and distributed by Johnson Smith.

  The chatty quality of the unknown caption writers is also unique and seems to emanate from a single, crotchety yet ribald human being. On the one hand he cozies up to the reader, nudges him in the ribs, and says: “Here’s your chance, boys. Put on one of these Bunged-up Eye disguises. The effect as you enter the room is most bewildering. Real fun!” On the other hand, he thunders from his soapbox in tones of outraged virtue: “Your heart will burn and you will wonder how such awful things can be, and you will feel like others that you must become a crusader and go out and fight and tell others and warn against the danger.” He is exhorting us to buy From Dance Hall to White Slavery–The World’s Greatest Tragedy (“an absolute steal at 35¢”).

  It is this eerily personal style that sets the tone of this great volume of human desires and vanities. A very necessary and ubiquitous ingredient of the catalog is the consistently provocative illustrations, again the work of anonymous, humble artists who probably never signed a picture in their lives. For example, the grotesque drawing illustrating “Joke Teeth with Tongue” foreshadowed the best of the later surrealists. The man’s startled yet strangely evil expression as he displays his seven-inch rubber tongue and his gleaming celluloid false teeth is enough to make us wonder what it’s all about! On the same page is another fine, unsigned work illustrating “The Enormous Vibrating Eye,” obviously the work of an artist of another school. He, nevertheless, perfectly catches the raffish cloddishness of a man who would wear such a monstrosity. The cap he wears in the drawing betrays a touch of sheer genius. Physical infirmities also abound in the Johnson Smith humor world. “T
he Swollen Thumb” is a good example, incidentally illustrated nicely with a pair of rubes peering dolefully at a giant, bulbous thumb.

  Apparently another sure-fire laugh-getter was the substitution of phony items for commonplace objects. Most of them were made of soap and were “guaranteed to liven up any party.” A real wit could spark up his friendly gatherings with soap cheese (“it might fool even the mice”) and soap biscuits (“a few of these mixed in with a dish of regular crackers will really start the fun”). You bet, especially after a couple of martinis!

  Soap gumdrops, soap cigars, soap pickles, soap chocolates, and even a bar of soap soap that dyed its user an indelible blue made life exciting for the friends of a Johnson Smith addict. There is no record of the number of murders, assault and battery cases, and simple divorces that this single line of Johnson Smith specialties provoked. A man wearing an enormous vibrating eye feeding his wife and kids soap pickles is a commonplace still life in the world of Johnson Smith.

  Everything, or almost everything, came by mail in the early twentieth century. The mailman was often the only link between the great outside world and a largely rural America. Mail order catalogs had an irresistible appeal to simple folk who rarely saw more than a crossroads general store. During the days just before World War I, few homes were without the Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, and Johnson Smith & Co. catalogs, especially if there were boys in the family. The Johnson Smith catalog was predominantly male in its appeal and was not all fun and games. In fact, the catalog had a kind of Horatio Alger upward-and-onward appeal to the young man of the period. He could order correspondence lessons from Johnson Smith in everything from playing the ukulele to New and Simplified Methods of Mimicry, Whistling and Imitation to Polish, Self-Taught. In a day when education beyond the fifth grade was a rarity, these self-help courses represented serious educational opportunity to people who often studied by kerosene lamps.