🎧 264: Said May Castle . . .

     Said May Castle of Herb’s affection for tinkering:

     Herb loved to make things and fix things — oh, he’d make a stab at fixing anything that was broken, well just anything! He was not always successful, mind you, but he’d give a try all the same. Garth couldn’t fix a thing and didn’t care to try — he could fix martinis, but that was about it. Garth would always manage to get Herb to try to fix something whenever he and Lorna came to visit. Well, this wasn’t difficult to do. I mean, all Garth had to do was say, “Herb, what do you think is the matter with the doohickey that makes this mixer go?” And right away Herb would have the mixer apart and spread out all over the kitchen table. And then he always wanted to make some new gadget or improvement. It wasn’t enough for him to try to fix something; he always had an idea for something new. He concocted some twisted-wire thingamabob so that Garth could use the mixer to mix paint, I think. Well, that’s about the last thing Garth had any use for, something to mix paint. Now something that would shake up a cocktail, well, maybe, but paint!

     The selling went much as Ben had predicted. The system of selling a large set of items one item at a time was a stroke of genius. The customer found it easy to agree to purchase the first book or shirt stud; not much money was involved, after all. However, in agreeing to purchase the first, the customer had struck a bargain — not only with Herb, but with himself — to continue, to fill out the five-foot shelf, to complete the set of links and studs. Most customers did. Some of the customers for Professor Clapp’s Five-Foot Shelf of books continued to buy beyond five feet, and a few became serious bibliophiles. Some of Herb’s link-and-stud customers went on to buy fobs, stickpins, and belt buckles, and a few became serious collectors of erotica.
     Herb was soon successful enough to be able to tell his mother to stop working, and he even managed to move the family to a new and larger apartment, on the ground floor, with a large, sunny, pleasant front room where his father, who slumped lower in his cork chair with each of Herb’s successes, sat in the only dark corner. Despite Herb’s losses on the expandable shelves and the jewelry caches, the Lester Pipers ate well, were well supplied with books, and were able to afford a few luxuries: a meal in a restaurant now and then, excursions to seaside amusement parks, evenings at a moving-picture house, and even an automobile.
     Among the books that Herb sold was The Automobile: Its Selection, Care, and Use. Herb read and reread this guide, and he cast a critical eye about for a car that would suit the needs of his expanding business, since it was now necessary for him to call on a lengthening list of established customers and to continue to find new ones. He also wanted a car that he could use for pleasure, one that he could use to take the family on outings, with his parents seated in the back, his mother savoring the sun and fresh air, his father slumped morosely by her side. He also wanted a car that he would look good in, something with a little dash, something that suited a young man who already enjoyed a modest success and had every hope of enjoying more in the future. He couldn’t afford a car that would do all of that, so he settled for a used Studebaker four-cylinder Model SA Touring Car.

In Topical Guide 264, Mark Dorset considers Real Reality: Books Therein and Studebakers: Model SA Touring Car from this episode.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

• You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

• You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

• You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

• At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

• You’ll find overviews of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.