OF MRS. JARLEY, THE ORIGINAL TIN-CANNER—OF THE TWO SCHOOLS OF TIN-CAN THOUGHT—OF THE HARD-BOILED BACHELOR WITH THE CONDENSED OUTFIT—AND OF FOLK WHO RIDE ON THE BACKS OF THEIR NECKS
MR. CHARLES DICKENS, in The Old Curiosity Shop, described the original luxurious tin-canning vehicle; but Dickens knew the contraption as a caravan. And instead of being motor-driven, it was, of course, horse-drawn. The original tin-can tourist appears to have been Mrs. Jarley, proprietress of Jarley’s Waxwork, who “rode in a smart little house upon wheels, with white dimity curtains festooning the windows, and window shutters of green picked out with panels of a staring red, in which happily contrasted colors the whole concern shone brilliant.... One-half of it ... was carpeted, and so partitioned off at the further end as to accommodate a sleeping-place, constructed after the fashion of a berth on board ship, which was shaded, like the little windows, with fair white curtains, and looked comfortable enough, though by what kind of gymnastic exercise the lady of the caravan ever contrived to get into it, was an unfathomable mystery. The other half served for a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed through the room. It held also a closet or larder, several chests, a great pitcher of water, and a few cooking utensils and articles of crockery.”
Heated discussions arise among the tin-canners as to the proper size of a camping outfit. The man with a portable bungalow scorns the man who jams all his belongings into a small space as being an old woman and a tight-wad; while the man who packs his camping outfit into the small machine views the portable bungalow owner with the utmost contempt as being inefficient, spoiled by luxury, a road hog and a slave to his belongings.
In Lemon City, a suburb of Miami, I found a tin-canner whose tin-canning outfit was probably the extreme opposite of the portable bungalow outfit. His home was Chicago, and since early autumn he had jounced from Chicago down to Texas, around the eastern side of the Gulf of Mexico, down the west coast of Florida and up the east coast.
He was a hard-boiled bachelor of the sort who announces loudly that he doesn’t propose to bother anybody and that he doesn’t want anybody to bother him. His means of locomotion was a small Ford runabout with a box-like contraption behind the seat similar to that used by salesmen who carry their samples around with them. Nothing was strapped to the sides or the running boards of the machine; it was an ordinary runabout with the top up and with an inconspicuous box attached behind. Into this box, which a carpenter had built for him for a matter of seven dollars, the tin-canner had packed everything that he needed for a five months’ camping trip. He had lain awake at night for years doping out exactly where he was going to carry the butter and how he could fry the eggs with the least commotion; and the final result was a masterpiece of compactness—or such compactness that if any one but the inventor had tried to repack the camping outfit, he might have sweated over the problem for two hours and still had enough left over to fill a freight car.
The front of the box came off and proved to be shelves packed with tin cans and other matters pertaining to the kitchen. A khaki top and sides pulled out of the top of the box, extending straight backward from the machine top, and were held in place by collapsible uprights. The seat of the machine, laid along the top of his kitchen shelves, formed his bed; and on this was placed what he called a shoulder-and-hip mattress. All a person needed, he explained, was a mattress that made a comfortable resting-place for his hips and shoulders: it made no difference what became of his legs. His cooking utensils, including a collapsible stove no bigger than a fair-sized inkwell, came out of a small tin suit-case. He had every move planned out in detail.
“In the morning,” he explained, fondling his outfit with the proud and gentle hands of a parent, “I get up and eat one of these individual packages of breakfast food. While I’m doing that the water is boiling for my coffee, and as soon as the coffee is done, I put on my frying pan with bacon and eggs in it. I use two paper napkins for my tablecloth. When I have finished breakfast, I put the eggshells in the breakfast-food box, wipe out the frying-pan with the napkins, put them into the box on top of the eggshells, and touch a match to the box. That cleans everything up.” He knew exactly how, when and where he was going to do everything, and he was delighted to knock off a couple of days to explain any or all of his well-ordered regimen to any one who wanted to know about it. He would even deign to explain it as fully as possible to some who didn’t want to know about it. One of his greatest pleasures was to unpack and pack the tin suit-case that contained his kitchen utensils. It seemed impossible that any human agency could get all of them into the space at his disposal, but he could do it almost every time. Occasionally he would find himself with a frying-pan left over when the packing was finished; but instead of getting excited he would unpack calmly and coolly and fit the things together with a practised hand until there was nothing left over. He had a collapsible chair that dropped into the side pocket of his coat and took up less space than a note-book. He had a diminutive double-ended ice-cream freezer. This was his ice-chest. Butter went in one end and milk or cream in the other. The biggest day in the life of this genius will, I believe, be when he discovers a collapsible frying pan that will fold into a one-pound bacon box.
The ordinary tin-canner, unlike these two extreme examples, is content with an ordinary, small touring car, which, when in motion, has a part of his camping outfit attached to every exposed part of his machine. The tent and a couple of suit-cases are attached to one running board; mattresses and blankets are attached to the other; cases of canned goods, kitchen utensils and other odds and ends are fixed to the rear or concealed beneath a false floor in the tonneau. The false floor is frequently carried to such an extreme that the occupants of the automobile convey the impression of riding around the world on the backs of their necks. When the ordinary tin-canners break out their camping outfit, the tent extends out at right angles from the side door of the car, so that the occupants of the tent can use the car as a combination lavatory, sitting-room, chiffonier, clothes closet, pantry and safe-deposit vault.