A Mid-Winter Sport Carnival

Guest Blogger Dept.: Looking for ways to combat the winter blahs? Robert Benchley offers an inspiring portrait of what the more adventurous folk among us are getting up to.

                                                                                                  

LONG ABOUT THIS TIME OF YEAR, we sportsmen find ourselves rather up against it for something to do to keep the circulation pounding even sluggishly along. Golf, tennis, and paddling about on water-wings are out of season, and somehow bear-hunting has lost its flavor. Bear-hunting has never been the same since the supply of bears ran out. There really is nothing much to do except sit behind the stove in the club-house and whittle. And even then you are likely to cut your thumb.

Drawing by Gluyas Williams

In an attempt to solve this mid-winter problem for red-blooded men, a postal ballot has been taken to see what others of our sort are doing during the long evenings to keep themselves fit for the coming open season. Some of the replies are strictly confidential and cannot be reprinted here. You would certainly be surprised if you knew. Send a dollar and a plain, self-addressed envelope and maybe we can make an exception in your case. The address is Box 25, Bostwick, Kansas.

Following, however, are some excerpts from letters concerning which the writers have no pride:

“I keep in training during the winter months,” writes one man, “by playing parchesi with my little boy. The procedure of this only fairly interesting game is as follows:

“I am reading my paper after dinner. My son says: ‘Dad, play parchesi with me?’ And I say: ‘No.’ Then my wife says: ‘I don’t think it would hurt you to pay a little attention to your children now and then.’ ‘Oh, is that so?’ I reply.

“The parchesi board is then brought out and I am given my choice of colors. It is a good rule to pick a bright-colored set of buttons (the technical name for parchesi men escapes me at the moment) because as the game progresses and you get sleepier and sleepier, a good bright color, like red, will help you focus on the board.

“As you probably know, the way in which parchesi is played is a combination of that man’s game —‘crap,’ and the first six pages of Wentworth’s Elementary Arithmetic. Unless you had played it, you wouldn’t believe that rolling the bones could be transformed into anything so tepid. One evening when my wife was out getting a drink of water I gave the boy a few pointers on what could really be done with the dice by going about it in the right spirit, and before she came back I had got the fifteen cents he had been saving up to buy a pair of shoes with. I had to give it back to him, however, as he cried so hard she asked him what was the matter.

“As the evening wears on, I get so that I can roll and make my move without being more than one-third conscious. The only danger is that I will lean too heavily on the board in the middle and close it up, throwing the men in all directions. This, of course, has the advantage of stopping the game, but you can’t work it very often.”

“You ask what I do for exercise during the winter,” writes another. “Well, I am quite a carver. During the summer and spring (and autumn, too, if you like) when there are other things to do, we have chops and meat-balls and fish for dinner, things which do not have to be carved. But as soon as the weather gets bad, I just shut the doors and light a good fire, and give up my time to hacking roasts to pieces for a family of five.

“In this I am aided immeasurably by my wife. Let us say that we have for dinner a leg of lamb. My first move is to prop it up on its side against a potato and drive the fork deep into the ridge. I may take three shots for this, owing to the tendency of the potato to slip, letting the roast turn heavily over into the dish-gravy. A little time is necessary also to cover up the spots on the table-cloth before the Little Woman notices, of doing which there is a fat chance.

“Then it begins.

“‘Why don’t you carve it down the other way?’

“‘What other way?’

“‘Why straight across, of course. You’ll never get anywhere hacking at it that way.’

“‘Where did you ever see anyone carve meat straight across?’

“‘Everyone carves it that way. You’re the only man I ever saw who tried to gouge it out like that.’

“‘Gouge it out? Who’s gouging it out? What’s the matter with that slice?’ (Holding up a slab on the fork and dropping it into the cauliflower.)

“‘What’s the matter with it? It’s in the cauliflower!’ (Shrill, irritating laughter.)

“I then turn the roast over and slice along the side as requested, doing it badly on purpose to show that that is not the way to carve meat. In messing it up, I overdo the thing and slip with the knife, cutting my wrist.

“‘Now you see? God never meant Man to cut that way. I’ve hurt myself.’

“‘I never said that God did mean Man to cut that way, the way you were cutting. All God meant Man to do was to use his brain—if any. Here, give me that knife, and you go and dish out the beans.’

“And so it goes, every time we have a roast, and double the strength when we have chicken. It keeps the winter months from becoming dull and works up quite a good forearm development.”

An advocate of outdoor sports is the writer of the following:

“As for me, give me the invigorating fun of snow-shoeing when Mother Nature has thrown her mantle over golf-course and tennis-court. Just as soon as the first snow comes, I get out all the picture books in the house, showing people plunging around in the drifts, cheeks aglow and ears a-tingle. Then to the sporting-goods store, where I buy a pair of snow-shoes.

“Trying on snow-shoes in a store is not so easy as trying on a pair of regular shoes. The clerk straps them on your feet and says: ‘Now just walk up and down a bit to see how they feel. There’s a mirror over there.’

“Just try walking up and down a bit on a board floor with snow-shoes on, and you will see why so few people bother to get the right size when buying them. Owing to this carelessness, however, arises much of the flat feet among snow-shoers. Their snow-shoes don’t fit them.

“Then one has to have a stocking-cap, preferably red, and a good stout stick. The stick is for clouting people who make fun of you. In case there is too much ridicule, you can pull the stocking-cap down over your face and then they won’t know who it is. They won’t dare kid anyone whose face is hidden in a stocking cap for fear it might turn out to be Nicholas Murray Butler or someone like that.

“Then, when I have made all my purchases, I take them home with me and order a fire lighted in the fireplace. Next some nails and good strong cord. Standing on a step-ladder (just an ordinary step-ladder will do) I take the snow-shoes, cross them, and hang them up over the fireplace, with the stick as a cross-bar. By this time a merry fire is crackling, and by standing across the room you will get as pretty a picture as you could wish to see, with the crossed snow-shoes fairly dancing in the glimmer of the fire-light. A Scotch and soda helps make this sport one of the most stimulating in the world.”

Write in and tell us what you do in the winter months to keep fit.

– Robert Benchley, Detroit Athletic Club News, Feb. 1923, pp. 24-25. Collected in Pluck and Luck, Henry Holt and Company, NY, 1925