Chapter 5

While Mr Holtzman spoke, I absently caressed Corinne's hair and continued working on the ideas that had to be covered in the patent. I must have been at this for ten minutes before I heard my host.

"Jeff, will you come here? Mr Sackman is on the phone."

"Sure." I put the clipboard aside then tried to slip from under Corinne without waking her. I put her head down and she just went back to sleep.

"Hello Mr Sackman. How are you doing?"

"Hello to you too Mr Congdon, and I'm feeling just great."

"Please call me, Jeff. I try to act grown up but I prefer my first name."

"Ok Jeff. What did you think of the terms of the contract?"

"I found them fair even though I'm an unknown. My name is linked to the song and doesn't assist it any. The contract has been signed with no revisions. At the moment it's in the mail."

"That's good to hear. We may have a deal for more of your songs."

"That is good to hear too. Which ones are they?"

"Crying In The Chapel' didn't fit our needs but I sent it out. Apparently one recording studio thinks it would work well with Elvis Presley. 'Help me, Rhonda' looked like a good fit for Frankie Avalon so Chancellor Records wants to buy it."

"That is just great. Have you or the studio made a commission?"

"I have taken it upon myself to initiate the sale of the songs as that is what Mr Holtzman asked me to do. The two companies offer in excess of four thousand each. I usually take ten percent so the transaction will net you with some eight thousand and ten dollars."

"I'm happy with that. Again the contract will have to be sent by post but if you take my word then it'll not be revoked."

"Mr Holtzman said you are very trustworthy and I'll proceed as if I have the signed contract in front of me."

"Please do so. I guess that means that I have to send you a few more songs."

"By all means. How many do you have?"

"Thirty six or seven I think. Does your studio have any specific needs in a song at present?"

"Thirty six or seven! My god how do you do it? You must be writing all the time and I hear you are still in high school."

"High school is more for fun and to be with people my age. You may have heard that I cleaned up on most of the material I already know and now concentrate on fun subjects too."

"Yes I did hear. You are a very impressive young man in doing just what you have done in school."

"Thank you Sir. You seem to have run into one of my cheerleaders."

"Mr Holtzman asked me to specifically put in some stipulations about rights to your songs. What did he mean by 'electronic means'? It's new to me."

"Computers are going to advance in leaps and bounds. All of them will be transistorised. Established companies will change or die. Today's computers are too costly and tubes break down more often. Eventually the individual machines will be hooked up together and the easiest means are telephone lines or the satellites that will have to get launched.

"This linkage means that it will be another type of media, just like print, television and radio. It is better to capture this probability now though it may be many years until it becomes possible then years later when it is a problem. I'm just planning ahead for that eventuality."

Mr Sackman said, "That's very interesting. There are some movies that show that computers can one day be very intelligent. Communications between them seems inevitable then. I know music can go over the phone so I guess computing devices could do the same thing.

"Oh, excuse me. You asked if the studio needs a particular song. As a matter of fact we do. The story line deals with the death of a young wife and what the grieving husband feels."

I worked through my memory and came to 'Honey' by Bobby Goldsboro. It was a very sad song but I wasn't sure if I could remember it. I always loved the tremolo in the singer's voice.

"Excuse me, I may have a possibility. I need a guitar to work it out."

Mr Holtzman said, "We have a piano if it is of any use. He pointed in the direction.

"Please give me a moment. I was working on a song and need some final touches to clean it up."

The piano was easy to find and it happened to be a Steinway Grand and not a baby grand either. I thought of the words:

See the tree, how big it's grown

But friend it hasn't been too long

It wasn't big

I laughed at her and she got mad

The first day that she planted it

Was just a twig

My fingers seemed to work as they should for the most part and when the first ten or so measures had been repeated five times the rest of the song came out. I played it all once then again out loud.

Mr Holtzman was behind me with another phone receiver aimed in my direction. I turned and said loudly, "Is it worth your time to hear it one more time or is it of no use?"

Mr Holtzman held out the receiver and said, "Play it again Jeff."

I started to play 'Honey' one more time and saw a sleepy girl coming to me. I looked at her as I sang the song and I think it helped as I tried to feel her loss of two parents. This made my own voice more expressive and the tremolo came out.

When I ended the song Corinne clapped her hands and smiled. "That was good. Play it again."

"Ok, but in a few minutes." I don't think she understood that the song talked about the death of the young wife.

I got the receiver and Mr Sackman said, "That has to be another hit. I'm even more impressed with your song writing ability. Is this one of your songs you are sending?"

"It will be Sir. Do the lyrics fit with the intent of the story?"

"Not quite but the story can be changed just a bit. It takes place in an apartment and thus no yard to plant a tree. The neighbours can now live in houses instead of apartments. I don't want to rush you needlessly but will you send the song as soon as possible? I have a recording now but it is not good enough to sell to the director and the producers."

"It might help that the singer modulate his voice so it could be thought of as crying. I'll write the song out now and send it out as soon as I can. The mails here don't have pickup, only sorting on Sundays."

John brought paper and I made out some score sheets by hand. It would not look professional but it had all the information a musician, or in this case, musicians would need to perform the song.

I had to go back to the piano three times to get some notes corrected but in less than an hour the song was done. Now if I had a fax machine things would be great.

When we were done, it went into a large envelope and John said, "Let's go out for supper and mail the song."

When we got dressed, John asked, "Any particular restaurant, Jeff?"

"How about Japanese tonight. One where the chef works in front of you."

"Hmmm, I think I know one." He looked in the phone book the dialled. In a moment I heard him make reservations.

When he came back, John asked, "Do you like sushi?"

Rather than telling the truth I said, "I'd like to give it a try. I heard about wasabi sauce too but I think it will be too strong. I'm doing this for extra credits for Home Ec." There were no Japanese restaurants in North Bay and no way for me to have tasted the food.

At the restaurant, I expended my entire vocabulary of Japanese words to the chef. He knew some English though.

I said, "I'm taking a cooking class in school. My teacher has not had a chance to see a chef perform as I had heard you could. If it does not offend you, will you show me some of the ways you do your more difficult movements? North Bay has no restaurants as you have here."

He nodded his head and said yes in Japanese and I replied with thank you that would come from a person my age.

We had one other Japanese couple with us and the chef did many things to please Corinne. During the meal he would toss the knives into the air and catch them before doing one job or another. The knives were all very sharp because I knew how easily they cut the food.

The small amount of wasabi sauce brought tears to my eyes. I loved it before but my mouth had not been acclimatised yet. The sushi was good though, and the chef made sure I got to try other varieties with different ingredients. The chopsticks were easy to handle but I had to appear awkward because I should not have known how to handle them competently. Corinne would eat better if I used the chopsticks to feed her. She liked plants from the ocean better than seaweed too.

Corinne got me to give her a bath and I climbed in too. If Mr Holtzman was going to trust me, he may as well start now. We played in the suds and made water shoot up like a clam does before doing the actual cleaning. After I washed her she did my hair. The door had been open and Mr Holtzman came in with a big towel. He just sat on the toilet and watched Corinne work.

I stood and used the shower to rinse her off and handed her to her grandfather. "There you go. Squeaky clean too." While she was being dried I rinsed myself and got out of the tub for my own towel.

Mr Holtzman said, "You don't seem to have a problem being naked."

"It's not rational to be body shy. In some periods of ancient Greek and Minoan cultures the women went topless. This may have lead to a population increase immediately but when it was accepted the birth rate went back to normal. Serfs in feudal England usually wore no clothes and this may have turned a noble's eye but not always. It wasn't too long ago that seeing a woman's ankle was scandalous. Today most of the children in tropical countries run around naked, especially in the villages."

Mr Holtzman thought then said, "It may be cultural because it's not common here."

I asked, "Were you in the military Sir?"

"Yes I was."

"Individual showers and change rooms?"

"Well, no but that was preparing for war."

"I have ten dollars in my pocket. Do you want to bet it is done now without an imminent war over our heads?"

"You are probably right Jeff — "

"What about a rural family with a lot of young children? A washtub goes on the kitchen floor and the kids go into it in rotation. They may even get to go into a real bathtub."

"I give up. It is just the way I was brought up, it may well vary with affluence and the number of children."

"Well you saved yourself ten bucks too."

Corinne went to bed after two sets of kisses and I went back to the front room for a change of clothes. I didn't have a robe and one offered me was many times too big.

John and I discussed a wide range of topics. Music was the main subject but we did get into history before turning in. I now had a lot of money from music but all of it had to stay in an American Corporation that was not set up yet. I got some good advice on what to do when showed the list that James Mason and I had worked on.

Mr Holtzman jotted down the points and said, "I'll get our own corporate attorneys to see what they can come up with, especially when you will be dealing in smoke alarms and automatically tinted glass."

I woke up the next morning to the smell of fresh coffee. Mr Holtzman and I finished our second cup long before Corinne got up. She sleepily climbed into my lap as her grandfather put her food close by. She wanted me to feed her.

"Does your Grampy feed you this way too?"

She looked at her grandfather then said, "Sometimes."

"Ok this time. If you don't use your own arms they will get so weak that you can't scratch your nose."

When we sat in the other room Mr Holtzman said, "Any new inventions today? It must be twenty four hours since your last one so and there should be at least six or seven."

"Only old ones that I haven't mentioned but they are not ripe enough to pick yet. I could use some help with my portable tape recorder."

"What would you like?"

"I need some old or broken units that I can use for parts. This makes them many times cheaper. I don't run into many tape recorders in North Bay and I have to just fix the ones I do find."

"I think I can find a few by calling repair shops here in Toronto. I may be able to get some from pawnshops. They can be shipped to your home. Anything else you need?"

"Someone that can make the dies for a plastic extrusion machine. I can make a cassette from solid stock until I get the right sizes. I have my own ideas on the problems of tape hiss. These will get the major portion of the patents. The rest of it is minor and just engineering. If these ideas prove fruitful I think I will just have to get Phillips to buy it or sell the idea to a Japanese company for a fraction of their common stock. They are bound to grow."

Mr Holtzman said, "Japanese merchandise is usually poor. It is better to go with Phillips."

"You're right, of course, but the Japanese firms are under a major handicap and have nowhere to move but up. Shares in the Japanese companies will grow and grow again and beat most North American forecasts. This won't happen overnight, but it will happen."

"Any particular company you have your eye on?"

"No, I was just looking at trends. My information comes out of the Toronto paper and that's inadequate at best."

"Off the subject, but would you still want to see the library at the university?"

"It is not necessary but I would love to get some documents that a student has that allow me to borrow books."

"That may be arranged I think. I'll just get you registered as a part time student." I saw him start to smile and I could see a plan forming. I had to assume it was sneaky but I didn't see John as mean, at least not to me.

Just after lunch, I made up some additional music paper then wrote out 'Corrina, Corrina' that had been originally done by Ray Peterson. I would have loved to change the name to Corinne but the song didn't lend itself to it.

I handed the sheets to John and said, "It is a silly song. It may not get too high but it was fun to write. Put all proceeds from the song into an account for Corinne. I know she's well taken care of but I like to help too."

John looked at the music and smiled. "I'll be happy to do this." I wasn't sure about the smile and thought it was because the song was repetitious and said very little or for some other reason.

Corinne and her grandfather saw me off on the bus going north. I had a large pile of books and a well-packed box of mirrors. Instead of studying, I just hummed some songs pulled from my memory and I tried to write the lyrics down. When I got to North Bay I had twenty-six sheets of paper with partial or complete songs on them.

I splurged and got a taxi ride home. Jane and the girls were all in her bed and I just slipped in on one side and hugged Maggie to me.

Jane woke me the next morning with a kiss. "How did it go Honey? I didn't even know you were home."

On the bus I had debated how to answer this. To tell of the songs sale then this would put extra pressure on them to tell someone. "I made a simple device that will sense smoke in the air. If the governments will release a special chemical we can get it into production. It'll make a lot of money but it will be quite a few years until I see any of it. Corinne is doing great. I made some special mirrors I need, and she made one with me."

"That's nice Jeff."

She got up and later I heard, "Your breakfast is ready."

I put my arms around Jane. "I'm sorry I didn't let you have your breakfast too."

"That's ok. I may get some tonight."

"I'll make sure of it."

The five of us walked to school. The girls were told what I said to Jane with the addition of the automatically tinted glasses. I carried two of my newly acquired chemistry books to study if the time allowed. I had to study grade ten English Comp and Lit but I had plenty of time.

Woodwork was my new homeroom. Instead of small projects that were mostly toys I got a chance to make some wood frames for my mirrors.

"What are these frames for Mr Congdon?" Mr Sharp asked.

"Just to hold some glass mirrors. I have to reflect some light down a tube. They will have to go into a metal frame to keep them from shaking. A truck on the street can send vibrations through the ground to the floor that will shake them."

"I heard you were an inventor so I guess you know what you want."

"I do in a rough way. There's a lot of tinkering though to get good results."

Mrs Cameron our Home Ec teacher said, "Today we are going to learn how to make a dress." After a slight pause she added, "Or a shirt." She looked pointedly at me to see if I was going to react. I did. I smiled widely at her.

"Who here has made any of those articles before?"

I was one of four that put up their hands.

"You have made a dress or a shirt Mr Congdon?"

"Yes ma'am. Both in fact. The young lady liked the dress and even continues to wear it."

"What things did you learn doing this project?"

"That covers a lot of points. Do you want to hear them all?"

"Go right ahead Mr Congdon."

"Well, if you say so Mrs Cameron. First you have to do the fitting with an onshore wind so the mosquitos get less to eat while the measurements at being taken and the dress made. Second would be to use the proper tools. I used fishing string to transpose the measurements. I had no shears so I used a knife for nearly everything. A large sun dried piece of driftwood was much better than rock when it came to keeping the knife sharp.

"The side of the hide with the hair had to go out which in retrospect sounds clear but I had to turn it inside out. Small pleats were used to hold the hide together and to look nice. The girl in question had a habit of eating quite a lot so I had to make sure the long thongs I cut allowed for a bit of expansion and contraction.

"Layout was difficult because I had to cut shoes similar to what the Romans used. This gave me less waste and more thongs.

"Weeks later I got the chance to use shears on the hem and I embroidered it with the beads I purchased.

"If I had to do it all over again I would just cut up one of the heavy flannel shirts and turn it into britches. I actually had sewing equipment and needn't have used the hide. It would not look as nice but would give better protection from insects and small branches."

Mrs Cameron asked, "How is the young girl doing?"