HELLING and pearling are linked close together in the lives of a lot of us shanty-boaters. Up-the-bankers sort of give us the once-over and then the go-by. Naturally, people generally don't know any more about us than they do about any one else that isn't joined to them by being married, or related, or in business, church, or society together. Yet somehow, the way things break, we trippers on the rivers never quite manage to untangle ourselves from back yonder in the proud and considerable communities of industry.
I graduated from the Chippewa County high school, the same as quite a class of us youngsters. My average was neither the highest nor the lowest in the list of thirty-six, which included two dozen girls and one dozen boys. I was second among the boys, and Reck Tabore was first.
The sixth among the girls, and the one that I was most interested in, was Cora Doraine. She was the daughter of John C. Doraine, who owned three of the best farms along Shellback Creek. He was also a director of the Cornfield Bank, of which Reck Tabore's father was president; so Reck stepped from high school into the cage as one of the clerks.
My father, Lester Carline, owned the combination shoe-store and jewelry-store down the street, just opposite the park. He was probably the best watch-repairer in all that region, if I do say it. I went to work for him; so sometimes I spelled him repairing jewelry, or selling it, and sometimes I was on the other side of the store, handling shoes or rubbers. Old Tom Glauber, father's assistant, was good-natured, and he taught me a good bit about leathers, kids, and plain repairing.
That was the way things stood at the start; but five years later my father and Reek's father were dead. Reck was president of the bank, and Cora Doraine was teaching, being assistant superintendent in the big district school over at Calbray. She had spent her summers in Indian Hill, our home town, and from the way she developed Reck, who had been a little too proud for what he called "country girls," began to see that he had made a mistake.
Cora was a year younger than I, and she sure was a fine-looking girl. It wasn't so much her good looks, though they counted a lot. Her eyes had sort of a lake blue in them, but it wasn't the color, either, that one noticed most. She danced with the best of them, and she picked up quite a few new dances which she took off the stage in the opera-house and then practised up by herself.
Reck and I were good friends. We rode around in his automobile, first along, and sometimes we had to hire a farmer to haul us back home, for that was in the early days of the machines. Cora used to go with me, and Reck would have one or other of several nice girls around town.
It was in the bad days of 1914 that my eyes were opened, and it was pretty late, then. When the smash came, and I needed money, I went to Reck, the same as always, and explained the situation exactly the way it was. He looked at my note, shook his head, and shoved it across the desk to me.
"Sorry, Jim," he said. "Can't let you have a dollar."
That was the only bank in town. We had never done business with any other.
I went over to neighboring towns, told my predicament, and showed my papers. They called up the Cornfield Bank, of course. I can see it was just as natural as could be. Reck spoke for the Cornfield Bank, and he simply said that he didn't think it was advisable to let Jim Carline have any money, speaking for the Cornfield institution, and no more. Always he said that he spoke only for his bank.
I took a wagon, filled it with shoes, and went off across country. I sold them. I sold out my whole stock. I brought in shoes and harnesses for Tom Glauber to repair, and he repaired them. We fought it out together. Then, when we were clear and on our feet, I turned the shoe-store over to old Tom. He has it yet, and he's a director in the new bank board, too.
But while I was plugging night and day, selling shoes on the road out of a wagon, and while I didn't think I could win through, there was a break with Cora Doraine. It was a mean break. It didn't have anything to do with Reek's refusal to let me have money, or with his putting me in wrong with the other banks around Indian Hill, speaking particularly. Generally, though, I was so worried, so desperate, so nervous, that I couldn't talk to her the way a lover should. She gave me back her ring, and three weeks later I sold my jewelry business for fourteen hundred dollars, packed up, and left town.