Dusty Books, Frontier Librarian

Chapter 7

Alvin's twin brother Albert... Peas in a pod, but individual personalities... Long or Short Shoremen?... A practical joke... Navigational concerns... A shared cargo space... Molly the Dog... Buying Albert a cask... more commodity news... Ready for the river raft adventure.

After this brief interlude in the near future we are now returning to the time line of our story none the worse for wear, I trust.

I awoke in the morning to find a much larger raft tied up next to us on the pier. This was about as river worthy a craft as I had ever seen, long and flat with a stout sail and good new looking rigging. Not to embellish too much, but this was a hyperion of rafts, not a mere raft by any account. Since you only have my word, believe it, dear reader.

My first thought without thinking really was that Alvin had woken early and was the individual standing on the dock supervising the unloading of several crates off the deck. I knew that something was different about this individual but didn't spot it at first. Our stevedores looked a bit bedraggled and moped about half heartedly, but were helping enough to get the job done. Found out later that our longshoremen were actually of the short variety, pardon the play on words, signing on in Sacramento to work their passage away from the gold fields to get back to San Francisco. They had each 'seen the elephant'. Such a charming phrase, the only sense I can make out of it was that the analogy was that the whole matter was a lot like a circus, and they missed going with it, and had only seen an elephant for their trouble. Might also translate into a 'white elephant', which is a castoff item. They did look that to be sure.

Their 'supervisor' came up and introduced himself, starting to say he was Albert (No French pronunciation) and had I seen...? He trailed off noticing his brother asleep on the deck of the little raft. He made an elaborate shushing gesture. Then, filling his cloth cap with bay water, he approached the sleeping figure and dumped the contents of his cap on Alvin's head.

Alvin awoke sputtering and with a laugh shook it off yelling, 'You got me! You got me!' To hear them laugh together was like hearing the same sound and an echo with no delay from either side of me. Seeing them together I now realized Albert sported a goatee, and Alvin's hair was at least a shade or two lighter. They were definitely twins to not put too fine a point on it. Both proved to have slightly different natures and temperment (sic) on certain issues; not simply copies of one another.

When they worked as a team their effort seemed much more than multiplied by a factor of two. I would see this effort produce favorable result in a very real way soon enough. Albert was a practical joker and Alvin the ideal victim by nature. Albert even played a few on myself, which I would rather not immortalize lest my writing lose all of its questionable luster, since whatever shred of dignity I do possess would fade in short order.

Oh well, I'll tell you one as an example, but please note that you are twisting my arm rather severely! Well it seems that I; no I cannot discuss it, just too embarrassing. I ended up laughing, sitting in a mud puddle, with an idiot's grin on my face, loving every minute of it. I did decide I felt most pleasantly disposed about both men, and passed a good and pleasant time in their company.

They were professionals in their trade and I felt confident when with them. I am going to tell you a story that illustrates why I feel the way I do about these two, but that is going to be told in sequence, so it will make some sense. I have much to tell you first, gentle comrade on paper.

Alvin predicted a morning tide the next day would make our sailing smooth up the bay to the mouth of the Sacramento. When I asked how he could prognosticate such an event, expecting some sort of highfalutin' process, he showed me his tide tables from the Harbor Master's office! This included his usual laugh and wry expression of fun. Albert had a better business head, and a correspondingly less colloquial way of speaking, unless he was very tired. He was always honest with me, but I felt that if he wished to be, he could drive the hardest of bargains if he disliked a body.

Alvin's and my deal for the hauling was never questioned since the rate was by the pound, and I thought eminently fair since he did not charge for MY weight. My 8 barrels of books was to be but a part of the cargo, the rest nails in kegs from around the horn, various other boxes full of tools and equipment bound for an honest merchant in Sacramento of whom both men had expressed great respect. He ran a large mercantile store in the business section of Sacramento right next to the river.

According to my two advisors what separated him from other merchants was simple. He would not sell junk. Prices were high by definition, but his goods were quality and he would brook no nonsense about selling anything less than that. My two friends marveled at this revolutionary way of doing business. I would later hear about this fellow again in regards to another little development called the transcontinental railway. His name was Stanford. Didn't meet him at the time, but I did business in his store. Alvin and Albert's endorsement carried a great bit of weight with me.

I was to be the only passenger, apart from Albert's dog, a German Short Hair bitch hunting dog named Molly who was his constant companion and helper, as well as smarter than all three of us put together. She was a great dog who provided me with a personal service later that I will always remember. Part of her expertise was under the very capable gun of Albert who provided us with quite a bit of game, fetched with Molly's assistance. The delta country had a plethora of grouse, hen, pheasant, ducks, geese, and a few species I didn't know. Alvin's comment was true in this case that it all tasted like chicken, when cooked like chicken. Along with Alvin's angling they provided well for us.

They both took only what we needed to eat and no more. This is a philosophy that I picked up then and have maintained for the remainder of my 62 years so far.

It was a clear bracing morning, the fog clearing with good timing just after the remainder of the cargo was loaded and lashed securely to the deck. It was explained that this often saved losing it all over the side. My short delay in leaving had worked out well. I had gone back to my grog merchant and purchased another cask of the same brand of rum for Albert, the price down another $3.00.

I chatted with the merchant who seemed delighted to talk, and not at all trying to run any sales pitch. We talked about these fluctuating prices. He indicated that just two days previously the casks were up $10.00 each, but another one of those barks had arrived just in time to make the price go way down again.

He did mention that he had a glut of rice at the moment and offered it to me at less than a cent a pound. I remember that Alvin had observed something about the price of rice going down. The most up to date gossip according to this most informative fellow was that two traders paid dearly in regards to the price of rice. They had attempted to corner the market on the commodity and had done so successfully for 2 weeks, bringing the price up to 62 cents a pound. The arrival of the ship I had observed arrived and the two partners, Norton and Thorne had barely covered it. The tragedy for them was that in the next hour another ship loaded with rice arrived and they were bankrupt. The price of the rice had dropped to 3 cents a pound by the end of the day and was down to about a cent now, their burlap sacks almost costing more than what filled them.

My merchant was not dismayed, since he was more diversified in his approach: when one commodity went down another always seemed to go up. He called it the 'Great Pythagorean Law of Averages', and it always favored the merchant. I thought I'd spent enough time on this philosophical discussion. I was ready for a river raft adventure to start.

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