The Moffat Museum (19 page)

"Well," said Spec Cullom, "what in the name of Sam Hill
is
the matter?"

Rufus looked up. He had gotten hold of himself. He said, "For years me and Joey have looked at a little trolley car in the back of the carbarn. We always wanted to own it. This morning two guys there said me and Uncle Bennie could buy it for one dollar. Joey gave us the dollar he got for helping Mrs. Crowley. Uncle Bennie and me went back to the carbarn with the dollar to buy the little trolley and to get it put in writing. But the guys said they was just jokin'!"

"Just jokin', eh?" said Spec Cullom. "Huh! Some joke! Get up in my seat. You hold the reins, Rufus. You know how to make her 'gee!' I've finished my rounds. So we'll go down there and take a look around a place where they say, 'Just jokin'."

So, cloppity, cloppity, they trotted to the carbarn.

Outside the carbarn there was a hitching post. Spec Cullom hitched Nelly to this, though she whinnied in dismay at such an unusual change in her daily life. Spec went inside by himself. He told Rufus to stroke Nelly on the nose. He'd be out right away.

"Got to see what's going on in here," he said.

Spec stayed in there quite a while. The boys listened. There was no sound of argument, no loud voices, just some low-voiced conversation going on in the little office where Captain Moody kept track of things.

Then Spec Cullom came out with his brother, Jim, and Bill, who had made the sale. Bill asked Rufus and Bennie to come into the carbarn, and the entire group walked to the back where the little trolley was.

They were joined right away by Captain Moody, who left a spare workman in his office to keep track of things for a few minutes, and all stood beside the little trolley car.

Captain Moody spoke. "We can't sell this little trolley car. It's an antique. But it can still run. There's going to be a trolley car museum opening up soon down near Lighthouse Point. We promised the people working on this museum that we would donate this trolley to them as a gift from the town of Cranbury. You know all about museums, Rufus. Even
I've
been to The Moffat Museum. And what we have decided to do is to name this trolley car the
Rufus M.
"

Rufus looked up at the man. Maybe he was "just jokin'," too. So he didn't say anything.

The man went on. "At this museum there's going to be a little roundabout trolley track. In the summertime, when the crowds come, sometimes, along with other famous trolleys, your little trolley will make a few rounds on a schedule the museum people will work out. Since it doesn't hold many people, only little children will ride in this little trolley. And I'll put it in my arrangement with those fellows across the harbor that at least once on a Sunday afternoon you and Joey and Uncle Bennie can take it around!"

A slow smile spread over Rufus's face. The man could not be jokin' because it was such a long speech!

"Well," said Captain Moody. "What do you think of all this? In a way, it will be
your
trolley. But that is where it will stay, over there in the Trolley Museum."

"Oh-h!" gasped Rufus. "That's great. Gee! But I don't want it to be named the
Rufus M.
It should be named the
Joey M.
That is my big brother, and he discovered the little trolley. He showed it to me. Together, we wanted to own it."

"We can name it the
J and R...
and what about this fellow?" he asked, pointing to Bennie.

"He was with me when we almost bought it," said Rufus. Bill hung his head and so did Jim Cullom. "His name is Uncle Bennie Pye."

"How about this for the name of the trolley then, the
J. and R. and U.B. Trolley
? Keep people guessing what the dickens that means," said Captain Moody, and everybody laughed.

"On opening day," Captain Moody went on, "the museum people might let you two and Joey run the first trolley around the circle with some museum man along with you. Don't mind him. Might just happen to be an old friend of yours, someone from right here in our carbarn. The first trolley, leading the way, sort of, could be this little Cranbury trolley."

Rufus looked at Jim Cullom. Rufus smiled, and Jim Cullom smiled.
Just might be somebody I know,
thought Rufus.
And no one's jokin' now.

"We have a fellow here in Cranbury who paints signs," said Captain Moody. "We'll have him paint a sign for this little trolley. Have it say, "
THE J. & R. & U.B. EXPRESS
. They'll list it,
Donated by the town of Cranbury, built
..." He paused.

"
Circa
..." said Rufus.

"Yes,
circa 1892,
" decided Captain Moody.

"Besides," said the captain of the carbarn, "when the day comes that this little trolley leaves its old track here and heads out for the Trolley Museum, you kids and Joey can go with him. Jim Cullom will go with you and maybe the First Selectman, Mr. John Jones of Cranbury."

"Everybody will laugh and clap their hands to see such a tiny trolley!" said Rufus.

Now everybody was laughing. Just then Joey rode up on his bike. He was stunned when he heard the news. Then he had to laugh, too. He murmured, "
The J. & R. & U.B. Express.
"

The man named Bill, who had said, "Just jokin'," came up to Rufus. "I'm sorry about that dollar business. I didn't think you'd believe me."

"It's okay," said Rufus. "Bye!"

As the boys were leaving, Captain Moody came out of his office with two rusty old bent trolley car signs. One said SAVIN ROCK and the other said LIGHTHOUSE POINT. "Choose!" he said.

"You choose," said Rufus to Bennie.

"Lighthouse Point, because I can see it across the harbor from my house," Bennie said.

That made Rufus happy because he and Joey really wanted the SAVIN ROCK sign. The Savin Rock trolleys went past their corner all the time.

"You'd think it was Christmas!" said Rufus. He got on the handlebars of Joey's bike, and Bennie got on the crossbar, and Joey pedaled home to the Pyes' house first, because the clock on the Green was beginning now to solemnly ring out twelve o'clock.

"You're on time," said Rufus.

"Oh, wait till they hear this! This trolley-car story, almost as exciting as the day we bought Ginger," said Bennie.

At the Moffats' house Jane was in the kitchen helping Mama make some sandwiches. When she and Mama heard the tale of the
J. &R. & U.B. Express
landing in a museum, they couldn't go on with their fixing. Everybody had to make his or her own sandwich.

"Jane, we'll get you in on the first ride," Rufus promised. "Mama, too, maybe?" Mama smiled. "See this?" he said. "SAVIN ROCK! A real trolley-car sign! I'm going to tack it on the wall of the museum, Jane, near your handcar man's red calico handkerchief." This he did. So there was now a new section in The Moffat Museum. They named it ADVENTURE.

Joey and Rufus and Jane sat on the back step and studied the museum. "You know, Joey," said Rufus. "We saved Bikey from the junkman to be in our museum. Now maybe because we always went down to the carbarn and admired the little trolley, we saved it from just rusting away in the far corner of the carbarn."

"Right," said Joey. "Right! Instead of that, it will be an 'artifact' in a museum, the Trolley Museum!"

"Right," said Jane. "An artifact in that museum like Bikey in ours!"

Joey and Jane and Rufus were racing as fast as they could to Savin Rock because today was Straw Hat Day. In Cranbury this great event always took place on Labor Day. On this day the men of the town threw the straw hats that they had been wearing all summer into the sea. It was a day of great celebration.

The Moffats loved Straw Hat Day and always tried to be the first ones to get to the end of Wilcox's Pier in Savin Rock, the best place to view the casting away of the hats.

"Next year you will have a hat to cast away," said Jane to Joey as they raced along.

Joey smiled.

Most straw hats were flat. These were the Panamas. They had wide bands of grosgrain ribbon around the brim, and the bands were of different colors. But most men preferred black or dark blue. Practically all the men of Cranbury put on their straw hats on Memorial Day, May 30, and wore them until Labor Day, the day to cast them into Long Island Sound.

After today you'd see very few men with a straw hat on. Tomorrow, out would come the derbies, the homburgs, or the caps with earflaps tucked inside, ready for the cold and blizzardy weather that was bound to come. Tomorrow it might still be as hot as blue blazes, but it didn't matter. Straw hats had been thrown into the sea. That was the custom.

Mama said she had once talked to a lady from Hungary, who said they had the same custom in that country. There the men cast their hats into the Danube River. So this casting away of straw hats on Labor Day was not just a Cranbury custom. "It is the custom everywhere, perhaps," said Jane, awestricken.

"Would you be put in jail if you wore your straw hat
after
Labor Day?" demanded Rufus. "Is there a law against it?"

"No," said Joey. He laughed. "Just a custom, a Straw Hat Day custom ... almost as much fun as the Fourth of July."

"No fireworks, though, just straw hats shooting into the air instead of Roman candles," said Rufus. "But fun."

The straw hats, which had been bright and shiny on the Fourth of July, had become sunburned. Some had nicks at the edges as though a bird had pecked at them. At the end of this day, men would have to walk home hatless, even those men who were growing bald and might become sunburned or get freckles on the top of their heads. And of course there were always some men who didn't wear the flat straw hats anyway. They wore larger hats, straw, but shaped like their winter homburgs, which were too expensive to just fling into the air. Judge Bell was such a man. But he was always there anyway to watch the more wasteful segment of the population throw away their flat hats.

It was a lovely sunny day. No wonder Jane and Joey and Rufus wanted to be the first ones on the scene and shout, "Hurrah!" when the first hat went sailing and spinning around and around and then wafted down on the water to float and bob up one wave, disappear from sight, and come up on another.

"Who will be the first man to throw in his hat?" Rufus wondered.

Joey just smiled. All along Joey had been holding a flat brown paper bag tightly in his hands. "You must have gotten up at the crack of dawn, even before me and Rufus, and made sandwiches," Jane said admiringly.

Joey just smiled, and they hurried. The nearer they got to the pier, the faster they walked, and they
were
the first to reach the weather-beaten silvery wooden pier, the longest of all the piers. To the right of it was a large rock, shaped like a whale. Weeds and spindly grass grew between the crevasses. This was Savin Rock, and the entire amusement park was named for it. Many families headed for it with their picnics. The fathers of these families would cast their straw hats in from there; others from beaches all up and down the shore.

Even though they were the first to arrive, the way Joey and Jane and Rufus tore to the end of the pier, you would have thought the entire population was in pursuit, racing for the same spot, the end of the pier. Not so. Looking back, though, they could see people beginning to meander this way and that to their own favorite spots.

The tide was low. Between cracks in the wide flat boards, they could see the mud of low tide and clumps of seaweed. Now and then a clam spurted a stream of water straight up from under.

"There's one!" exclaimed Rufus, flat on his belly, eyes glued to the crack in the boards. You'd think a clam spurting a fine stream of water up from way down under was as exciting as spotting a shooting star.

They sat down on the end of the pier and dangled their bare, tanned legs over the edge. They watched what was going on below them and above them ... the gulls, the clouds. It was such a clear day, they could see all the way across Long Island Sound. A perfect day for the casting away of straw hats. Only a slight and whimsical breeze was blowing, just enough to make the hats go this way and that when the time came.