Hippomobile! (4 page)

“Gold?” we shouted.

“That's right,” said Grandpa Homer. “The shiny yellow stuff womenfolk hang off their ears. Whole lotta fellows back then was goin' out Alaska way lookin' for it. Wasn't they, Virgil?”

“They was, Homer. Heck, cousin of mine tried it, but the only thing he came back with was a runny nose.”

Grandpa Homer said, “A place called Dawson City is where they hoped to make their good fortunes. And this Gottfried Schuh was one of 'em. On account of that he was known to be able to fix anything, right on down to a rainy day. And he was as strong as an ox, which you needed to be to carry your supplies up the snowy trails that led to the gold fields. Once you got there, you lived in a tent and ate fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And that's if you were lucky. And you also froze your behind off, grew a long, dirty beard, and drank something called ice-worm cocktails.”

Ice worms? We figured he was trying to put one over on us, and our faces turned suspicious.

“Now, that's as true as the day is long, I tell ya. Them ice worms is little fellers, about as small as a snap of thread. Drop a few of 'em in your glass of whiskey, and they'll keep you good and warm.”

We gulped.

“No, kids, it warn't no bed of roses.”

“You can sure as heck say that again, Homer,” Grandpa Virgil said again. But as far as we remember, Grandpa Homer didn't.

“So did they struck gold?” we asked.

“Reports are fuzzy, ain't they, Virgil?” Grandpa Homer asked.

“Fuzzier than a bunny, Homer.”

“But it does seem that the Wymore party eventually struck a nugget or two,” Grandpa Homer went on. “It also seems that this Gottfried Schuh was made to do more and more of the work while everyone else sat in the saloons talking to the pretty dance-hall ladies. And so at some point, he must have told 'em to skin their own skunks,
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and he stuck a few of them yellow rocks in his pocket and left those fellas up there and made his way back to Wymore.”

“What happened to them?” we wanted to know.

Grandpa Homer looked at Grandpa Virgil. “Virgil, you got the dibs on that one?”

“Well, now, Homer. Lemme think . . . If I ain't mistaken, they went and became Eskimos, got into the igloo-making business, and turned a modest fortune.”

“That sounds about right, Virgil,” said Grandpa Homer. “But getting back to Gottfried Schuh now. He arrived back here in town a fairly wealthy individual and paid two barbers to shave off his beard. They had to use garden shears on it on account of his beard was so thick and wiry and full of stuff that normally don't belong in any man's beard.”

“Were you the ones who cut it?” we asked.

That got a good laugh out of them both.

“No, it warn't us. And not our pas, neither. But it was our grandpas, and that's a fact, ain't it, Virgil?”

And Grandpa Virgil said, “Ain't no fact facter.”

That was how we learned that Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil were third-generation barbers, which explains how come they were so good at barbering. They always had just the right bowl to fit over our heads, and never once did they snip our earlobes.

“Now, where was we, Virgil?”

“Homer, you just brought Gottfried back to town.”

“I did, indeed,” said Grandpa Homer. “So now, Gottfried first got hisself some new clothes, since his was all full of seam squirrels.
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Then he built a house of his very own and became a much-regarded fellow in town with bushy sideburns.”

“How I do remember them sideburns, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil. “All us kids had a good time laughing at 'em.”

“So you can remember him?” we asked.

“Just them sideburns,” said Grandpa Virgil. “What about you, Homer?”

“Course I do. But let me finish my story now. You see, kids, in spite of his nice house and them nice whiskers, Gottfried still had one problem. And you know what that problem was?”

We didn't.

“His problem was his feet.”

“His feet?” we asked.

And Grandpa Virgil asked, “His feet?”

Grandpa Homer gave him a look and said, “That's right, Virgil, his feet.”

And then Grandpa Virgil said, “Of course! How could I go and forget his feet like that?”

“I don't know,” said Grandpa Homer. “Because, kids, when Gottfried was out in the Alaska winter diggin' for gold, his toes turned all black and just about nearly froze clean off.”

“Froze
off?
” The story was really starting to get good!

“Well, they didn't froze off, but they did stay black as coal, and ever after that Gottfried had a problem finding shoes that didn't pinch his toes none. So you know what he done?”

We didn't, but we sure wanted to.

“Well, what he did was he used some of that gold he had left and built hisself a brick building and started manufacturing his own shoes.”

“Manu-whatering?” we asked. Back then that was a long and complicated word for us.

“Shoe factory,” Grandpa Homer explained. “Gottfried Schuh's Shoe Shop it was called. His business took off like a bottle rocket, and his piggies couldn't have been happier.

“Gottfried Schuh loved to tinker around in his shop. He came up with the darnedest things, and there warn't never a contraption he didn't like. And one day he caught wind of something called a McKay machine that made shoes all by its own. And he decided he just had to have hisself one of 'em, and four months later it arrived by train right at our very own train station.

“Well, he tested it out, and that thing spit out shoes for him left and right, but Gottfried didn't feel it lived up to his high standards of perfection. And so what he done is he improved upon it. And in time Gottfried got it so improved upon that he created the perfect shoe that never wore out. He called them Gottfried Schuh's Everlasting Shoes. If you've ever taken a good look at them black things Grandpa Milton
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wears on his feet, then you'll know what Gottfried Schuh's Everlasting Shoes is. Them shoes Grandpa Milton wears is one hundred years old or more and got wore by Grandpa Milton's grandpa and Grandpa Milton's pa and now by Grandpa Milton hisself, and not even the shoelaces ain't never needed replacin'.”

“How true, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil. “Not even a single shoelace.”
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Grandpa Homer continued. “And soon word spread about them Everlasting Shoes. Folks took to calling them Gottfrieds, and folks came from all across the county and sometimes from clear out of state just to buy a pair. They'd stay in town right at the Any Hotel, where we all live today. Except for back then it was still called the Stanley.”
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“How I do remember, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil. “I was only about knee-high back then, but I remember my pa sayin' how much hair there was in that hotel on any given day. Must've been good business.”

“Must've been, Virgil,” said Grandpa Homer. “But now listen close, kids, because here's what happened next. Within a month or two, there warn't a man, woman, or child within seventy-five miles of Wymore that ain't bought and wore a pair of Gottfrieds. And so Gottfried Schuh naturally started makin' more and more of his famous shoes. After all, they was sellin' like blowout patches.
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But the problem was his shoes ain't never wore out, and so no one ever needed to buy another pair of his shoes again. They just took to tradin' 'em with their neighbors whenever their feet growed some. And that's how come Gottfried Schuh never sold another pair of his Gottfrieds, and at the end of six months he went clean out of business with a huge pile of Gottfrieds in his factory.”

Not only was that the bad part of the story, but it was also the part where our grandpas decided to spin us around in the chairs to face the big mirror, put a bowl on our heads, and give us a trim.
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We usually felt sorry for ourselves when that happened, but as long as we got to find out what happened to Gottfried Schuh, we said we wouldn't do no complaining. Our grandpas said it was a deal.

“So there he was, kids,” Grandpa Homer began again. “Penniless once more on account of makin' all them eternal shoes. But a man like Gottfried Schuh warn't a man to give up so easy. He might've been outta work and down on his luck and without a penny in his pants, but there was something he had on his hands. And can either of you guess what that was?”

We looked at each other in the mirror, and by the way our tongues were sticking out the sides of our mouths, we could tell each of us was trying to come up with a better guess. But none of us did, and so we just said, “Nope.”

Grandpa Homer turned to Grandpa Virgil. “Virgil, what about you?”

And Grandpa Virgil said, “Why, Homer, I'd say he had his hands on the McKay machine, is what I'd say.”

“Right you are,” said Grandpa Homer. “The McKay machine. But what do you do with a McKay machine when you already got more shoes than you can ever find feet for in the whole state?”

That was another question we didn't know the answer to.

“Well,” Grandpa Homer said, “if your name's Gottfried Schuh, you roll up them sleeves of yours and tinker around with that McKay machine and make it do something else useful. And you probably wanna know just what that was.”

We did.

“Well, then, I'll tell ya,” said Grandpa Homer. “But to tell ya, I'm gonna have to tell ya somethin' else first. You see, Gottfried still kept in contact with a sister he had back in the old country. They'd send letters to each other back and forth, and that was how Gottfried kept up on the gossip in his old village. Things like who had the best apricot preserves that season and whose hen laid the most eggs.”

“Whose?” we asked.

“
Whose?
” said Grandpa Homer.

“Yeah, whose?” asked Grandpa Virgil.

Grandpa Homer just shook his head. “That ain't so important right now. But what is important is that sometimes his sister would write him of other news she heard about. Things going on elsewhere in the country. And one piece of news was about a new kinda machine that you could sit on and make go from point A to point B without you having to do none of the work. Kinda like a horse. Only it was a machine. You get what I'm gettin' at?”

This time we said we did.

“Good. Because when Gottfried read about that idea, he thought it sounded kinda nifty. Because remember, here's a man walked all over Alaska, freezin' his toes black. So if he could contrive up some sorta somethin' that would allow him to sit on his backside while this somethin' did all the work and brought him to where he wanted it to take him, wouldn't that sound good to you, too?”

We told him it would.

“Well, there you go. Gottfried Schuh got to work on his McKay machine, and took out the motor, and added some nuts and bolts, and put on a gear here and a belt there, and plopped that whole new engine on the front of a three-wheeled horse wagon. Then he slapped a horn to the front of it for safety purposes, and you kids ain't never gonna guess what he had hisself.”

We could see in the mirror that both him and Grandpa Virgil were getting pretty excited, and we figured it had to be the big moment of the story. And so we just took a stab at it and said, “You mean a hippomobile?”

Well, our guess surprised them more than a four- cornered egg. In fact, we clean knocked them speechless, something that had probably never happened to those linguisters before.

It took them a minute to get their tongues back. And when they did, Grandpa Virgil said, “Them kids are as smart as new paint, Homer.”

 

 

 

 

SO NOW YOU KNOW
that the word “hippomobile” we saw in the letter ain't got anything to do with the hippo you see in the zoo. It just means an old-fashioned car that looks more like a horse-drawn carriage. But what we still wanted to know was how come Gottfried Schuh gave it a name like “hippomobile.”

“Good question, kids,” said Grandpa Homer.

“Well, what's the answer?” we asked.

“Ain't no one knows,” said Grandpa Homer. “Does they, Virgil?”

“Ain't nobody I knows who knows,” said Grandpa Virgil.

“Theories abound, though,” said Grandpa Homer.

“What are theories?” we asked.

“Theories? Well, them are like guesses. Ain't they, Virgil?”

“I'd call 'em guesses, Homer.”

Then they went on to tell us some of the theories. One theory was that Gottfried called it a hippomobile on account of its gigantic size because the horse carriage he picked out for it was a mighty big one. Another theory was that his English just never got no good and he thought he was calling it something else altogether. The problem with this theory is that it didn't explain what he thought he was really calling it. Then there was the theory put forth by the librarian Grandma Henrietta. She said that in one of her dictionaries hippo means “horse” in a language called Greek. So according to her, Gottfried Schuh called it a hippomobile because it was made out of a horse wagon.