The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis Read online

  Pearl, the self-appointed chairwoman, stepped to the lectern. At a table on the side of the room sat a dozen reporters, about whom Professor Pomfritt, with new leather patches on his elbows, hovered like a genial bee. The students were in a festive mood. Pearl rapped for silence.

  “Nominations,” she said, “are now in order.”

  I stood and was recognized. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said I, loud and clear, “I want to tell you about a fellow Minnesotan named Emmett McBride. Emmett McBride is in the construction business. In the last few years Emmett McBride has constructed the following edifices at the following profits: the First National Bank of Minneapolis—$1,583,087; the St. Cloud-Chaska highway—$987,590; the Rochester reservoir—$798,679; the Sauk Center viaduct—$807,234; the Bemidji causeway—$694,589.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “I mention these figures,” I said, “to prove two things. First, that Emmett McBride is a construction man, Second, that Emmett McBride is a businessman.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “In these parlous days of reconstruction and retrenchment,” I went on, “do we want a politician in the governor’s mansion?”

  “No!” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “Do we want a theorist in the governor’s mansion?”

  “No!” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “Do we want a visionary in the governor’s mansion?”

  “No!” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “What do we want in the governor’s mansion?” I asked.

  “A construction man and a businessman,” shouted Pearl from the chair.

  “Exactly,” I said. “And since we can’t have two governors, we must find a man who is both a construction man and a businessman. Emmett McBride is both. In these parlous days of reconstruction and retrenchment, we want Emmett McBride in the governor’s mansion, that’s who we want.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Pearl from the chair, and from the students the cry came back, “Hooray!”

  “Few of you,” I said, “have ever heard of Emmett McBride. He has never been a candidate for office. It is fitting that the discovery of Emmett McBride should be made at this university which has been the scene of so many other great discoveries. Here is the source of progress in this state. The people look to us for leadership. Let us supply that leadership. Let us elect Emmett McBride!”

  Before the mounting cheers could get out of control, Pearl shouted, “I move that McBride be elected by acclamation.”

  “You can’t make a motion from the chair,” cried some finicky parliamentarian, but his voice was lost as the entire assemblage in full-throated uproar acclaimed Emmett McBride the victor.

  Then I was hoisted on several shoulders and carried around the room. “Uncle Emmett will love you,” yelled Pearl as I was carried past her.

  “How about his niece?” I asked as I circled her the second time and she nodded energetically and blew kisses.

  “I’ll be over tomorrow morning—after he’s had a chance to read the papers,” I said the third time around.

  It was all on the front pages the next morning, and I drove to Pearl’s house whistling all the way. I walked boldly up the path, threw open the door without knocking, and called cheerily, “Where is lovable old Uncle Emmett?”

  Pearl, lying prone on the living-room sofa, lifted a tear-stained face. She looked at me for an instant, then scrambled to her feet. “Run for your life,” she cried. “Leave the city. Leave the state. Leave the country if possible.”

  “What’s the gag?” I asked, mystified.

  “Hurry! Uncle Emmett will be home any minute. He’s already raised his bail.”

  “Bail?”

  “You read the papers, Dobie—all those figures you gave about Uncle Emmett’s profits.”

  “So?”

  “So they arrested him this morning for income tax evasion.”

  Boy Bites Man

  I am the type citizen who counts his blessings and lets sleeping dogs lie and doesn’t look gift horses in the mouth.

  Far was it from me to complain because my girl Lola Pfefferkorn had one teensy-weensy shortcoming: she was as dumb as a post. This I could overlook when I considered her obvious advantages. She had hair like spun gold and lips like the red, red rose, and eyes where dwelt enchantment, and a figure that brought forth frequent cries of admiration from my slightly foam-flecked lips. She was rich too; she had inherited real estate all over Minneapolis.

  So I would say to myself as Lola and I walked arm in arm across the campus, the object of envious glances, I would say to myself, I’d say, “Brains aren’t everything. In Lola’s case, hardly anything.”

  Sometimes, I’ll confess, I would become a little irritated at Lola. Like the time she locked her keys inside her car for safekeeping. Or the time she tried to buy a ticket for the football game between Minnesota and Open Date. But my irritation would soon disappear. I would take another look at Lola and I wasn’t mad any more.

  I first met Lola in a freshman journalism class. What she was doing in a journalism class, or in college for that matter, I won’t attempt to answer. My own presence in the journalism class, on the other hand, is easily explained. Ever since I was editor of the yearbook at the Salmon P. Chase high school in Blue Earth, Minnesota, I have known that journalism and I were made for each other. Why, I even look like a reporter. I always wear my hat on the back of my head and chainsmoke cigarettes and carry a big wad of yellow paper in my pocket and shout over the telephone.

  Oh, I was a natural for journalism all right, and the University of Minnesota was the natural place for me to study it. Because at the University of Minnesota journalism was not just a matter of reading textbooks and doing homework. Here you got practical experience in addition to academic theory. For two weeks out of every year, students were required to go to work as cub reporters on the downtown Minneapolis newspapers, where they covered real news stories and helped to put out a real metropolitan daily. This type work, as I had so ably demonstrated at the Salmon P. Chase high school in Blue Earth, Minnesota, was all grist for my mill.

  But I digress. I was telling about Lola. I first saw her in the freshman journalism class. She was sitting across the room. I smiled at her. She smiled back. I wrote her a note:

  “Dear Stacked: Will you have a coke with me after class?”

  She nodded.

  I borrowed a dime from a rich kid sitting next to me.

  We had a coke. We talked. I told her all about myself, my early life, my accomplishments, my ambitions. She asked me whether I had heard Tommy Dorsey’s new record of “Be There, Ingrid, When the Oats Are Green.”

  The next day I borrowed a dollar and we had lunch. We talked. I told her about the state of the nation, intrigues in international politics, the need for a favorable balance of world trade. She asked me whether I could do the Samba.

  Our romance budded. When I started to do her homework, it bloomed. We were seen everywhere together: dances, shows, sleigh rides, hayrides, wiener roasts, night court. Occasionally we would spend an evening at home just sitting before the fire and having a long conversation—I talking, she dozing.

  It was natural that Lola and I should stick together when it came time to go to work for two weeks on a downtown Minneapolis paper. We chose the Minneapolis Sentinel, a fine old newspaper and entirely worthy of my talents.

  We walked into the city room, stated our business and were directed to see Mr. Oliver, the city editor. Hand in hand, we approached his littered desk. “How do you do, sir,” I said. “This is Lola Pfefferkorn and I am Dobie Gillis. We’re from the University of Minnesota and we’re going to work here for two weeks.

  “Perhaps it would help,” I continued, “if I told you a little about us. I am what might be called a natural reporter, a born newsman. I think you will find me well qualified to fill any assignment, particularly the reporting of public affairs. May I suggest that you assign me to cover City Hall?


  “Now, Miss Pfefferkorn’s talents are not so clearly defined. Her abilities, you might say, have not yet crystallized. Perhaps it would be better to just give her a roving assignment. Let her wander about the city and interview people. She is quite familiar with Minneapolis; her father had large real-estate holdings here.”

  “Let go of her hand,” said Mr. Oliver. “Take off your hat. Put out that cigarette. Stop leaning on my desk. Pull up your necktie. Wipe that grin off your face. Stop shuffling your feet. Take your hat off my desk. Close your mouth.”

  “I want to go home,” said Lola.

  “This,” said Mr. Oliver, “is a city room. This is a place of business. Stop sniffling, little girl. Let me tell you two something. I think college students belong in college. Not in my city room. Unfortunately, my employer doesn’t see it my way. He no longer allows me to throw college students out of here bodily. He says it gives the paper a bad name. But”—Mr. Oliver picked up a pair of long shears and waved them ominously—“the very first bit of nonsense out of either of you and out you go. Both of you. Is that clear?”

  “I want to go home,” said Lola.

  “Hush, dear,” I said. “All city editors have to talk that way. It’s part of their job.”

  Mr. Oliver growled in his throat. He pointed the shears at me. “You, wanted City Hall. All right. Your beat will be the office of the commissioner of public works.”

  “Come now, Mr. Oliver,” I said, chuckling, “nothing ever happens in the office of the commissioner of public works.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Oliver. “And you, little girl, will write obituaries. And if you ever come into this office again wearing knee-length slacks, somebody will be writing your obituary.

  “The deadline for the noon edition is 11 A.M. The deadline for the home edition is 2 P.M. The deadline for the final edition is three-thirty. Now beat it.”

  “I’ll be back and get you for lunch,” I said hurriedly to Lola and fled to the office of the commissioner of public works in City Hall.

  “Come in, come in,” boomed Mr. O’Toole, the commissioner of public works, his big red jowls curved in a smile. “Always happy to receive the press. You’re new on the Sentinel, aren’t you, son? I haven’t seen you before.”

  “Well, sir,” I confessed, “I’m just on the Sentinel temporarily. I’m a journalism student at the university and I’m working on the Sentinel for two weeks to get experience.”

  “Splendid!” said Mr. O’Toole. “That’s just fine. Nothing like an education, I always say. My own boys are students at the Ingelbretsvold Manual Training School. Here’s their picture.”

  I looked at a portrait of two adenoidal hulks. “Fine-looking boys,” I said.

  Mr. O’Toole beamed. “Here’s a picture of their mother,” he said.

  A toothy harridan leered out of the frame. “Damn handsome woman,” I said.

  “Nothing like a family,” declared Mr. O’Toole. “Nothing like coming home after a hard day in the service of the people and finding your wife and children waiting for you, ready to soothe your cares and lift your spirits. Then sitting down to a well-cooked meal of simple food and afterward all playing Twenty Questions or bobbing for apples or maybe reading aloud from a volume of Dickens.”

  Mr. O’Toole pulled out a handkerchief and brushed aside a tear. “Oh, why,” he asked, “must people spend their lives in a frenzied chase after money and power when right in their own homes they can find riches more precious than gold?”

  “Search me,” I said.

  “The homely virtues,” said Mr. O’Toole, “are the best. Nothing like a home and children and friendship and love and mother and honesty and the Constitution.”

  “To be sure,” I agreed. “Now how about some news.”

  “Well,” said Mr. O’Toole, “we just got a new motor for our snow plow.”

  “That’s real nice,” I said, “but don’t you have something a little more sensational?”

  Mr. O’Toole chuckled. “I’m afraid not, son. Nothing much ever happens in this office.”

  “Yes,” I said sadly.

  “I just try to do my job with quiet efficiency and selfless devotion to the needs of the people.”

  We shook hands silently.

  “Aren’t you building any roads?” I asked. “Or perhaps a bridge or a culvert or maybe an airport?”

  Mr. O’Toole looked at me sharply. “What have you heard about an airport?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just wondering.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Yeah?” He looked at me for a long time. Then his eyes narrowed with thought. He rubbed his chin.

  “Son,” he said, “how long have you been working on the Sentinel?”

  “I just started this morning.”

  “I see. Have you had any previous newspaper experience?”

  “Indeed I have. I was editor of the yearbook at the Salmon P. Chase high school in Blue Earth, Minnesota.”

  “Is that so? Tell me, my boy, how much do you know about the organization of a city government? For example, what do you know about the offices in City Hall?”

  “Not much,” I confessed. “But I learn real quick.”

  “Uh huh,” said Mr. O’Toole. He drummed on the desk with his finger tips for a few minutes. Then he looked up at me and smiled. “Son,” he said heartily, “I like to see a young man get ahead. I’m going to do a fine thing for you. I’m going to give you a scoop.”

  “Oh, happy day,” I said. “A scoop.”

  “Do you know,” asked Mr. O’Toole, “where Forty Acres is?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “It’s somewhere in north Minneapolis, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Have you ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” said Mr. O’Toole. “As you may have heard, there has been a lot of agitation in Minneapolis for a new airport. The present airport on the south side is too close to the river bluffs. Pilots have been complaining that it’s too hard to land there, especially at night. So people have been talking more and more about building a new airport on the north side. As commissioner of public works, I am in charge of choosing a site. Now I’ll give you your scoop. The new airport is going to be built on Forty Acres. I’m signing a contract for the land the first thing tomorrow morning. I wasn’t going to release the story to the papers until tomorrow, but I’ve decided to give you a break.”

  “What a story!” I cried. “Leave me to a phone!”

  “Wait a minute,” said Mr. O’Toole, rising and taking a firm grip on my lapels. “I’m giving you this story on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You are not to write this story until the deadline for the final edition of the Sentinel. You will not write it for the noon edition and you will not write it for the home edition. You will hold it for the final edition.”

  “But,” I protested, “the final edition doesn’t come out until four-thirty this afternoon.”

  “I know,” said Mr. O’Toole. “I want this story in that edition and I don’t want it in any earlier edition.”

  “But why?”

  Mr. O’Toole gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Now promise me that you won’t write it for any edition before the final. If not, I’ll have to ask you not to use the story.”

  I shook my head helplessly.

  “Promise me,” said Mr. O’Toole.

  “All right,” I said finally. “I promise.”

  I left Mr. O’Toole’s office puzzled. Why does he want to wait for the final edition? I wondered. Why? I sat down on a bench in the corridor of City Hall to ponder the puzzle. I searched my brain for a single good reason.

  Suddenly my reverie was shattered as a man carrying a huge stack of maps tripped and fell over my outstretched legs.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I cried, leaping up.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I was carrying so many maps I couldn’t see where I was going.”r />
  “Let me help you pick them up,” I offered. I bent down and scooped up an armful of maps.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now if you’ll just put them on top of this pile—”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’ll help you carry them. Where do they go?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind. Right down the hall to the county surveyor’s office.”

  I followed him down the hall and into a room that was crowded with maps of all description. Maps were tacked on the walls, piled on tables, and heaped on the floor.

  “Just put them down anywhere,” he said.

  “Say,” I said, “this looks like an interesting place. What are all these maps?”

  “These,” he explained, “are detail maps of every section of Minneapolis. Look around if you want to. Is there any particular section of the city you are interested in?”

  “No,” I said. Then I bethought myself. If I was going to write a story about the new airport, it might be a good idea to look at Forty Acres. “Do you have a map of Forty Acres?”

  “Sure. Right over here in the north Minneapolis section. Here it is right here. See?”

  “Oh yes. Tell me, what does this mark mean?”

  “That? That means a swamp. Forty Acres is all marshland. The whole thing is a bog, and there are patches of quicksand all through it. Horrible place.”

  “Is that so?” I said, bewildered. “It doesn’t sound like a good site for an airport, does it?”

  “Worst possible site,” he answered. “Now, if I wanted to build an airport in north Minneapolis, I’d choose this land right over here next to Forty Acres. It’s called Minnehaha Heights. It’s perfect for an airport. See here. There’s excellent drainage on all sides. It’s on a kind of little plateau. Flat as a table on top and forty feet of solid rock underneath. Long enough for runways and wide enough for taxi strips. Perfect.”

  “Strange,” I murmured.

  “I’d like to spend some more time with you,” he said, “but I go out to lunch now. Would you care to join me? We can come back here afterward.”

  “Lunch!” I exclaimed, remembering my date with Lola. “Thank you very much, but I’ve got to run.”