But I was in the lumber camp, cooking for the "boys."...
"Hank," Spalton's youngest son (there was a second son, whose name I forget ... lived with his mother, Spalton's divorced wife, in Syracuse, and was the conventional, well-brought-up, correct youth)—Hank worked in the camp, along with the other lumber-jacks.
The boy was barely sixteen, yet he was six feet two in his stocking feet ... huge-shouldered, stupendous-muscled, a vegetarian, his picture had appeared in the magazines as the prodigy who had grown strong on "Best o' Wheat," a prepared breakfast food then popular.
I asked him if the story that he had built his growth and strength on it was a fake.
"Yes. I never ate 'Best o' Wheat' in my life, except once or twice," he answered, "I like only natural food ... vegetables ... and lots of milk ... but I draw the line at prepared, pre-digested stuff and baled breakfast foods."
"Then why did you lend them the use of your name?"
"Oh, everybody that has any prominence does that ... for a price ... but I really didn't want to do it. 'John' made me ... or I wouldn't have."
"And now you have your hair cropped close, why is that?"
"I suppose it's all right to wear your hair long ... but, last summer, it got so damned hot with the huge mop I had, that I always had a headache ... so one day I went down town to the barber and slipped into his chair. 'Hello, Hank,' says he, 'what do you want, a shave?' (joking you know—I didn't have but one or two cat-hairs on my face)....