An American Idyll | Page 6

I'd been saving for it all day, with just ten
cents in my pocket." I met a pal of those days who used to save Carl

considerable of his nine dollars by "smooching" his wash into his own
home laundry.
About then Carl's older brother, Boyd, who was somewhat fastidious,
ran into him in Spokane. He tells how Carl insisted he should spend the
night at his room instead of going to a hotel.
"Is it far from here?"
"Oh, no!"
So they started out with Boyd's suitcase, and walked and walked
through the "darndest part of town you ever saw." Finally, after
crossing untold railroad tracks and ducking around sheds and through
alleys, they came to a rooming-house that was "a holy fright." "It's all
right inside," Carl explained.
When they reached his room, there was one not over-broad bed in the
corner, and a red head showing, snoring contentedly.
"Who's that?" the brother asked.
"Oh, a fellow I picked up somewhere."
"Where am I to sleep?"
"Right in here--the bed's plenty big enough for three!"
And Boyd says, though it was 2 A.M. and miles from anywhere, he lit
out of there as fast as he could move; and he adds, "I don't believe he
even knew that red-headed boy's name!"
The reporting went rather lamely it seemed, however. The editor said
that it read amateurish, and he felt he would have to make a change.
Carl made for some files where all the daily papers were kept, and read
and re-read the yellowest of the yellow. As luck would have it, that
very night a big fire broke out in a crowded apartment house. It was not
in Carl's "beat," but he decided to cover it anyhow. Along with the
firemen, he managed to get upon the roof; he jumped here, he flew

there, demolishing the only suit of clothes he owned. But what an
account he handed in! The editor discarded entirely the story of the
reporter sent to cover the fire, ran in Carl's, word for word, and raised
him to twelve dollars a week.
But just as the crown of reportorial success was lighting on his brow,
his mother made it plain to him that she preferred to have him return to
college. He bought a ticket to Vacaville,--it was just about Christmas
time,--purchased a loaf of bread and a can of sardines, and with thirty
cents in his pocket, the extent of his worldly wealth, he left for
California, traveling in a day coach all the way. I remember his story of
how, about the end of the second day of bread and sardines, he
cold-bloodedly and with aforethought cultivated a man opposite him,
who looked as if he could afford to eat; and how the man "came
through" and asked Carl if he would have dinner with him in the diner.
To hear him tell what and how much he ordered, and of the expression
and depression of the paying host! It tided him over until he reached
home, anyhow--never mind the host.
All his mining experience, plus the dark side of life, as contrasted with
society as he saw them both in Spokane, turned his interest to the field
of economics. And when he entered college the next spring, it was to
"major" in that subject.
May and June, 1903, he worked underground in the coal-mines of
Nanaimo. In July he met Nay Moran in Idaho for his second Idaho
camping-trip; and it was on his return from this outing that I met him,
and ate his jerked meat and loved him, and never stopped doing that for
one second.
CHAPTER III
There were three boys in the Parker family, and one girl. Each of the
other brothers had been encouraged to see the world, and in his turn
Carl planned fourteen months in Europe, his serious objective being, on
his return, to act as Extension Secretary to Professor Stephens of the
University of California, who was preparing to organize Extension

work for the first time in California. Carl was to study the English
Extension system and also prepare for some Extension lecturing.
By that time, we had come a bit to our senses, and I had realized that
since there was no money anyhow to marry on, and since I was so
young, I had better stay on and graduate from college. Carl could have
his trip to Europe and get an option, perhaps, on a tent in Persia. A
friend was telling me recently of running into Carl on the street just
before he left for Europe and asking him what he was planning to do
for the future. Carl answered with a twinkle, "I don't know but what
there's room for an energetic up-and-coming young man in Asia
Minor."
I stopped