The YMCA Convention Soda Fiasco

I have had the hardest work I ever experienced, jerking soda for the Young Men’s Christian Association, said the boy, as he peeled a banana. Don’t cast any reflections on such a noble association. They don’t drink, do they? Drink! Oh, no. They don’t drink anything intoxicating, but when it comes to soda they flood themselves. You know there has been a national convention of delegates from all the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the whole country—about three hundred—here, and our store is right on the street where they walked four times a day. There has been one continual fizz in our store since Wednesday. Of course, if a man winks when I ask him what flavor he wants, and says ‘never mind,’ I know enough to put in brandy. But I wouldn’t smuggle it into a hymn for nothing. This Christian Association convention has caused a coldness between pa and ma, though. The delegates were shuttled out to all the church members to take care of, and they dealt two to ma, and she never told pa anything about it. They came to supper the first night, and pa didn’t get home, so when they went to the convention in the evening ma gave them a night key. Pa came home from the boxing match about eleven o’clock, and ma was asleep. Just as pa got most of his clothes off, he heard somebody fumbling at the front door, and he thought it was burglars. He opened a window and looked out, and saw two suspicious-looking characters trying to pick the lock with a skeleton key, and he picked up a new water-pitcher that ma had bought the last time when we moved, and dropped it down right between the two delegates. Just as they got the door opened and came in the hall, the wind was blowing pretty hard, and they thought a cyclone had taken the cap off the house. They were talking about being miraculously saved, and trying to strike a match on their wet pants, when ma went to the head of the stairs and pushed over a wire stand filled with potted plants, which struck pretty near the delegates. They went down and got behind the furnace. Pa called me up and wanted me to go down in the cellar and tell the burglars we were onto them, but I wasn’t very well, so I locked my door and went to bed. Pa stood on the bottom stair and looked around, and one of the delegates said: ‘Mister, is the storm over, and is your family safe?’ and I recognized the voice, and said: ‘Why, it’s one of the delegates. What you doing down there?’ and then ma explained it, and pa apologized. Pa didn’t retaliate. He is too much of a gentleman to talk back in company. All he said was that a woman who is old enough to have delegates foisted off on her ought to have sense enough to tell her husband.