“Toot! Toot!” says I, pretending that I was an elevator. “Anybody going up to the president’s office?” Then I took a lath that lay on the floor and smacked old doo-funny a sharp crack on the seat of the pants. “Look out!” I staggered, pretending this time that my arms were loaded full. “I just dropped a jar of pickled carpet tacks.”
Poppy and I fool around that way a lot. It’s kid stuff, I know. And kind of silly. But in a way it bears out that old saying of Dad’s: Every day a little fun and a little business.
Having completed the entertainment, so to speak, I got down to business, making the suggestion that we paint the outside of our store yellow with green trimmings. The “yellow” would be the cucumber blossoms, I brilliantly explained, and the “green” would be the pickles. The inside was to be painted, too, but, of course, we couldn’t do that until the shelves and counter had been made. Spick and span and nothing else but—that was our idea of what a store should be. And it was the right idea, too.
“How about a sign?” says I, as the self-appointed decorator. “Do you want me to paint that, too?”
“What are we going to put on it?” says Poppy.
“‘Poppy’s Pickle Parlor,’ of course,” says I, looking at him in surprise. “I thought that was all settled.”
“But it’s your Pickle Parlor,” says he, “just as much as it’s mine.”
“Of course,” says I, getting the point of his unselfishness. “But ‘Poppy’s Pickle Parlor’ is a better name than ‘Jerry’s Pickle Parlor.’ For the ‘P’ in Poppy sort of rhymes with the ‘P’ in pickles.”
“Alliteration,” old brain-bag swung in.
“What do you mean by that?” I cheerfully showed my ignorance.