“I have a hunch,” says I, “that it’s going to be a whole lot worse than that. A Pickle Parlor! We’ll be the laugh of the town.”
“The Wright brothers were laughed at when they tried to fly. And Edison was laughed at when he started working on his talking machine. The easiest thing some people can do is to ridicule any new idea that comes up. But we should worry how much the Tutter people laugh at us. To that point, I’d rather have them laugh at us than ignore us. For to be ridiculed is recognition of a sort.”
“Help!” I cried, holding my head. “Get the dictionary.”
That set Poppy to laughing. And if you could have seen him then as I saw him you would better understand why I like him so well. With all of his wise talk there isn’t a boy in Tutter, where we live, who has more real he-kid fun in him than this long-legged, long-headed chum of mine. And that he has big ideas is, of course, the more credit to him. As he says, half of the fun of being a boy is getting ready early in the game to be a man. Take the stilt factory that I told about in the book, POPPY OTT’S SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS. That was a big idea, let me tell you. Imagine two boys starting a real, honest-to-goodness factory! With a smokestack on the roof, and everything. When the brain storm first struck my ambitious chum I declared flat-footed that we couldn’t do it. But old long-head said we had to do it, for already he had two big stilt orders in his pocket. On the strength of these orders we borrowed money from the bank to get started. It was pretty tough sledding for us at first, and once we got a wallop that almost floored us. But Poppy is like a rubber ball: the harder he gets bowled over the higher he bounds on the come-back. Good old Poppy!
To-day the stilt factory that we started is a growing business. Mr. Ott runs it. And so spruce and businesslike is he that at sight of him it’s hard to believe that only a short time ago he was a shiftless, no-account tramp. In the book, POPPY OTT AND THE STUTTERING PARROT, I told in detail how Poppy made his father settle down and get a job. So you see my chum deserves credit for that good piece of work, too. Oh, you’ve got to hand it to Poppy, all right. He knows his cauliflower, as the saying is. From which, no doubt, you’ll gather that I wasn’t half as reluctant to become his Pickle Parlor partner as I had let on. I just talked against him for fun. All the time that I was running his scheme down I was thinking of the fun we were going to have and the money we were going to earn. Money! What boy doesn’t like to have money? And how much more it means to a fellow when he earns the money himself. Yes, sir, if old long-head wanted to start a Pickle Parlor or any other kind of a parlor I was with him till the cows came home. Of course, I had everything to learn. But I could watch him. And at the very least I could dust off the pickles while he cleverly punched the cash register. Deep down in my heart I even confessed to myself that I was pretty lucky to have this chance of being his business partner, which shows how much I appreciate him. And it makes me happy to know that he feels the same way toward me. Two peas in a pod! That’s what Dad calls us. But maybe, to better fit this particular case, I should make it two cucumbers on a cucumber vine! Huh?
Now that it was all settled in the leader’s active mind that we were going to be the prosperous proprietors of Tutter’s first and foremost Pickle Parlor, we did the squinting act up and down Main Street to find a suitable location for our young gold mine, thus getting track of an empty store building. It looked awfully big and roomy to me. I tried to picture in my mind what it would look like when we got it filled up with pickles. And my uneasy conclusion was that if we did succeed in filling it up with pickles we’d have enough pickles to feed the whole United States for the next sixty-seven years. Finding out who owned the empty building we trotted down the street to the Canners Exchange Bank, where we asked to see Mr. Foreman Pennykorn, the president.
Of the three Tutter banks Mr. Pennykorn’s bank is the smallest and shabbiest. It gets its name from the canning factory that he owns. And if it wasn’t for this factory I dare say the bank wouldn’t have any business at all. For people as a rule don’t like to do business with that kind of a bank any more than they like to trade in a dingy, sleepy-looking store. I’ve heard it said that the Pennykorn family is one of the richest in the county. But old Mr. Pennykorn is too tight fisted to spend any of his money for adding machines and other up-to-date bank stuff.
Waiting outside of the president’s office, at the orders of the grumpy, suspicious-eyed cashier, we heard voices through the unlatched door. Nor did we feel that it was our duty to stuff up our ears.
“And what price have you posted for early sweet corn?” we heard Mr. Pennykorn inquire, from which we gathered that he was talking with his son, Mr. Norman Pennykorn, who runs the canning factory.
“Nine dollars a ton.”