Tipsy and the Board of health

by Lilian Jackson Braun

(The following interview with Mr. C.W. was taped at the Old Sailors' Home in November 1985, for the Oral History Project of Gattville Community College.)

Sure, I'm old enough to remember the Depression. Herbert Hoover, Prohibition, bread lines, soup kitchens, Repeal. I remember all that. If you wanna know, things was tough then, boy. I washed dishes, did street sweepin'—whatever I could get. That was before they tore down the waterfront and built them fancy skyscrapers with fountains and trees and stuff like that.

What was the waterfront like in the thirties?

On Front Street it was all docks and warehouses. Behind that was tenements, meat markets, candy stores, a coupla beaneries, two churches, a school. It was a nice neighborhood. Everybody knowed everybody. That's all gone now.

Fella come to see me last week. Used to be a butcher at Nick's Market on the waterfront. " Porky" is what we called him. He's still fat as a pig and smokin' them stinko cigars. We talked about the old days. Hamburger, thirteen cents a pound. Porky says to me: " Betcha you don't remember Tipsy and the Board of Health."

I says: " Betcha two bits I do. I told my grandkids about Tipsy. They'll be talkin' about her long after you and me cash in our chips."

What did you tell your grandchildren?

Tell 'em? How Tipsy made us laugh when there wasn't much to laugh about. No jobs. No unemployment insurance. Couldn't pay the rent. Some folks would starve before they'd go on welfare in them days. That was what the Depression was like, boy. But Tipsy made us laugh.

Who was Tipsy?

Funniest cat you ever laid eyes on! She hung around Nick's Market, huntin' for mice. They didn't have fancy pet foods then, I don't think. Folks had a hard time feedin' themselves. Cats and dogs, they had to rustle up their own grub.

How was Tipsy involved with the Board of Health?

Well, now, that's a tale! I was there when the inspector first seen Tipsy. I went over to Nick's Market to get a chaw on credit and shoot the breeze with Porky. Mrs. Nick was behind the cash register, scowlin' like a bulldog. Nick, he was still in the hoosegow doin' time for bootleggin'. And Tipsy, she was in the front window, smack between the carrots and cabbages, givin' herself a bath. Cleanest thing in the whole store, if you wanna know.

So, in walked this fella in a brown suit and white shirt and tie, lookin' like City Hall. Carried a big thick book with black covers. He stuck his nose in the meat cooler, sniffed in the backroom, and wrote somethin' in his book. He gave Tipsy a sour look, but she gave him no mind — just scratched her ear.

Then the man says to Mrs. Nick: " Two weeks to clean up the store and dispose of the animal."

Mrs. Nick give him a fierce look. " Animal? You tell me what about animal? " Her English wasn't so good.

" Get rid of the cat! " the inspector says loud and clear. " The cat! The cat in the window! "

Mrs. Nick stands there with her arms folded, like a reg'lar battle-ax. " I not get rid of no cat."

The man says: " City ordinance, ma'am. No cats allowed in food stores."

Mrs. Nick says: " Hah! The city, it like mice better in food store? "

" Set traps! Set traps! " he says. " If the animal is still here in two weeks, you can expect a ten-dollar fine."

She bangs on the cash register and waves a ten-spot. " I pay now. I keep the cat."

" I don't want your money, " he says. " I just told you what the law requires. Get — rid — of — the — cat! "

" I make it twenty, " and she waves a tenner in each hand.

So then Porky comes out from behind the meat counter, jabbin' his cigar at Mrs. Nick. She was his mother-in-law. He says to her: " See? What'd I tell you? You gotta dump that smelly cat."

" She smell better than you, " she says.

Porky tries to explain to the inspector. " She's from the Old Country. I keep tellin' her you can't have no cat sittin' on the vegetables. It ain't sanitary."

" Hah! " Mrs. Nick says to Porky. " You go make some sanitary hamburger, and this time no cigar butt in it."

Why was she so stubborn?

If you wanna know, Tipsy was good for business. She sat in the window and made passes at flies, but it looked like she was wavin' to people on the sidewalk. The kids, they was tickled pink, and they come in the store to spend their penny. Grown-ups got a laugh out of it, too. It was good to see someone smilin' in the Depression.

Where did Tipsy get her name?

That's the funny part. She was white all over, with a black patch over one ear. Looked like a black hat slippin' down over one eye. Gave her a boozy look. To make it even better, she staggered, sort of, when she walked. Musta been somethin' wrong with her toes.

Was she still there when the inspector returned in two weeks?

Tell you what happened. Porky was always feudin' with his mother-in-law, and he was bound and determined to get rid of the cat. So one night after Mrs. Nick went upstairs to bed, he puts Tipsy in a soup carton and lugs it to a drugstore six blocks away. I was there to get an ice cream cone when Porky walked in.

" Hey, Sam, " Porky says to the druggist. " You still got trouble with mice? I found you a good mouser."

" I don't want no cat, " Sam says. But Porky dumped Tipsy out of the box anyway, and she staggered around like she was four sheets in the wind. You should hear the customers whoopin' and hollerin'. They said: " You gotta keep her, Sam."

So Tipsy moved in. Made herself right at home. She caught a coupla mice and then bedded down on some clean towels behind the soda fountain.

Sam always played cards with us in the back room at Gus's Bar, and he told us what happened the next day. Tipsy was entertainin' the customers when in walked the man from the Board of Health. He gave Tipsy a long hard look. Seems like he recognized her but wasn't sure.

" Have a root beer, " Sam says to him. " Is everything okay? "

" Everything except the cat, " says the inspector. " The law prohibits animals in establishments vending food and/or beverages."

Well, Sam wasn't one to fool around with City Hall, so he pitched Tipsy out in the alley.

How did the customers feel about that?

They was disappointed, but — you know what? The little devil staggered right back to Nick's Market — six blocks. When Porky got to work the next day, there was a crowd around the front window — people laughin' — kids jumpin' up and down. Tipsy was on the string beans, wavin' at them.

Next night, Porky put her in an evaporated-milk carton and took her to Gus's place. He had it fixed up like a log cabin.

I was helpin' out behind the bar when Porky walked in with the milk carton.

Gus give him a wallop on the back and says to me: " Pour the ol' galoot a shot o' red tea to warm his pipes." He liked to talk logger-talk sometimes.

Gus was a nice old fella, but he looked half-crazy. Gray hair stickin' out every-which-way, nose crooked, no color in his eyes. When I got to know Gus he was pretty old, but he could still jump over the bar and bounce a foundry worker or dockhand if they was makin' trouble.

I remember the bar—all made of logs, with a pine slab three inches thick. A beaut! There was a potbellied stove with about fifty feet of stovepipe. And all over the wall there was animal heads — deer, elk, moose. A stuffed raccoon, stuffed weasel — all like that. Gus said he bagged 'em all himself, but nobody believed it. He was soft on animals. We guessed he'd shoot a man before he'd shoot a squirrel.

What did Gus think about Tipsy?

He thumped the milk carton and says to Porky: " Whatcha got in the kennebecker? "

" New invention for killin' rats, " Porky says.

Gus peeked in the box, and Tipsy sneezed right in his face. The old fella howled like a bridegroom. " She's a dinger, ain't she? " he says.

He put her on the bar, and Tipsy staggered down the pine slab — the whole length. Weavin' between the shot glasses and beer mugs, with that boozy black patch tippin' over one eye, she sure was a funny sight!

I says to Gus: " Want me to cut off her drinks, Boss? "

Well, boy, Tipsy got to be the hit of the whole blame waterfront. She put on a reg'lar comic act in the bar. Give her a cigarette butt and she'd stalk it, grab it, throw it in the air, bat it a coupla times, and then sit on it and play dumb, like she didn't know where it was. I poured a lotta shots and pulled a lotta beer when Tipsy was around.

Gus lived upstairs, and he let her sleep on his pillow nights. " The li'l dinger curls round my head like a coonskin cap, " he says in a boastin' way, " and if she wants to go out, she bites my nose."

Tipsy went out, all right. She started gettin' fat and lazy, and we all knowed it was kittens. Ding-swizzled if Gus didn't start buyin' her hamburger and providin' a sandbox so she wouldn't have to go out in the dirty alley.

Did business fall off when Tipsy stopped putting on her act?

Not on your life! Everybody was bettin' how many kittens she'd have and what color. She got big as a barrel, and when she tried to walk you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Gus was gettin' nervous. He had a box ready for the kittens to be born in, and he wouldn't allow no jokes about how Tipsy looked.

Then one day who should walk into the bar but the health inspector. He sees Tipsy and does a double take. Then he makes his speech about the ten-dollar fine.

After he left I says to Gus: " What'll you do? "

" Hell, I'll just pay the fine, " he says. " The li'l dinger is worth it."

Ten smackers! That was more'n a week's wages if you was lucky enough to land a job.

Next night, a rowdy bunch of sailors come into the bar from a cement carrier docked on Front Street. They was makin' dirty remarks about Tipsy, and Gus was gettin' mad. Finally one of them idiots tried to give her a snort of whiskey in an ashtray.

Gus jumped over the bar like a wild man and grabbed the sailor. " You hell-pup! " he yells. " Get outa here before I knock you galley-west! "

The other sailors started swingin' and the reg'lar customers piled in. It was some shindy! Fists flyin', heads crackin', tables knocked over!

Where was Tipsy during the fight?

That's what I'm gettin' to. The bar cleared out in a hurry, and Gus and me stayed up all night, moppin' up. When we finished, it was daylight, and Tipsy was gone!

Gus was fit to be tied. We hunted in the cellar, the iceboxes, the garbage cans, most every place. I tramped around to all the stores, and Gus prowled around the waterfront. Couldn't find hide or hair.

" She's gone, " Gus says, and he blows his nose hard. " The cement boat sailed last night. Them sailors musta stole her. Maybe drowned her." You never seen a man so broke up.

Things was pretty gloomy in the bar that night. The bets, they was all called off, and the place emptied out by ten o'clock. Next night, same thing. Customers bought one beer, maybe, and then vamoosed. Gus had no heart for anythin'.

We was there alone in the bar, just him and me, not even talkin', when we heard a little noise. Golly if it wasn't a meow. Gus jumps up and yells: " It's Tipsy! Where is she? She's trapped someplace! "

We listened hard. Yep, another meow. It come from the black hole in the wall where the stove pipe used to go, and you could see a kind of shadow movin' in the hole. Then a black cat come out with a mouthful of somethin' black, size of a mouse.

" That ain't Tipsy, " I says, but when she jumped down and staggered across the floor, it was Tipsy, all right.

How did Gus react?

He went crazy, boy. Yellin' and jiggin' and carryin' on! Word got round the waterfront, and that night the cash register was ringin' like nobody's business.

Tipsy got the kittens all cleaned up — two tigers and four black-and-white—and the whole family was squirmin' around in a box on the bar when... guess who walks in!

The health inspector.

Nobody but! Gus took the violation ticket and grinned, sort of. He says: " What'll this cost me, Inspector? Ten plunks? "

" Seventy dollars, " the man says. " Ten for each animal on the premises. Payable at City Hall. You can expect a follow-up inspection within a few weeks."

" Seventy holy smackers! " I says to Gus, after. " Y'better drown 'em."

" Nothin' doin', " says Gus. " We'll raffle 'em off and pick up enough plunks to pay the fine."

Well, the raffle tickets sold like hotcakes, but Gus wouldn't let the kittens leave their mother yet. Too young. So the whole caboodle was crawlin' in and out of spittoons when that doggone inspector showed up again.

He counted tails and wrote up another seventy-dollar ticket.

" Whaddaya drink, Inspector? " Gus says, with a wink at me. " I'll buy one."

" Sorry. Regulations, " the inspector says. He kept shakin' his foot. One of the tigers was tryin' to crawl up his leg.

Well, the little ones got to be seven weeks old — time to pull the winners out of a hat. It was Saturday night, and the place was crowded. Gus was kinda quiet. Looked like he was sorry to see Tipsy lose her brood.

After the raffle he drops a bombshell. He says: " Drinks on the house, folks, till the booze runs out. The city's gonna padlock the joint at midnight."

The customers, they raised a holy row. Nobody believed it.

Gus says: " Funny thing, folks. Durin' Prohibition I ran a speakeasy, and once up north I came close to killin' a fella with a peavey, and nobody give a hoot-n-holler. Now I get me a little cat, and they're liftin' my license."

Porky was there, and he says: " Don't be a dumfool, Gus. It ain't worth it. Get rid of the cat."

" Nope, " Gus says. " Tipsy and me'll get a shack up in the north woods, and we'll get along jim-dandy. She'll have a reg'lar hoodang in North Kennebeck. No alleys. No garbage cans. No scummy rats."

And that's the last we ever seen of Gus and Tipsy.

Did you ever hear about them after that?

Can't say we did. But a few years back, me and some buddies went fishin' up north. Drove up in a big RV. Stopped in North Kennebeck to get grub for our camp. No shacks there anymore. No dirt roads. All condominiums and curbstones. Musta been a lotta cats in town because the store had about fifty kinds of catfood in them little cans. I asked around, if anybody every heard of an old fella called Gus. Nobody remembered him. Course, that was maybe forty years before. Time flies, don't it?

We ate some five-dollar sandwiches in a restaurant in North Kennebeck. Made me think back to the Depression — sandwiches for ten cents — big bowl o' soup for a nickel. It was a nice restaurant, though — sort of a log cabin. Folks said it was there a long time. Changed hands once in a while but always kept the same name. It was called Tipsy's Tavern.

ENRICH YOUR VOCABULARY

1. Learn the meaning of the following words and reproduce the situations in which they are used:

to starve to vend to trap

welfare violation mouthful

to dispose raffle premises

ordinance bet brood

to stagger to vamoose