Лилиан Браун - Moose County Legends

Why did these physicians brave the wilderness a hundred years ago? Many were young men with the ink barely dry on their diplomas. They came from medical schools in Detroit, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Louisville, sailing up the lake in a schooner that was destined to pick up a load of lumber. Pioneering was the spirit of the times, and the wilderness was an adventure for young doctors, as well as an opportunity to use their new skills and knowledge. No doubt they were gratified, also, by the instant acclaim and hospitality accorded a new physician in a frontier town. His presence relieved some of the terror of pioneer life.

Not every medical adventurer was willing to tolerate 쑽쑽쑽

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Lilian Jackson Braun the hardships. He left after a year or two, and another fresh graduate took his place, arriving from the metropolis in a frock coat and top hat, befitting the dignity of the profession. He soon exchanged that garb for a rough cloak and frontier hat, with high boots and a stout stick for tramping through woods and bogs.

Some doctors elected to stay in Moose County. The population of the area was increasing, the lumbering towns were thriving, and roads progressed from muddy ruts to decent dirt. The physician now used a cart or a horse and buggy for house calls, and a sleigh in winter. Saddlebags were replaced by the modern badge of the profession: the little black bag, in which babies were said to be delivered.

The general practitioner’s office was in his front parlor.

Counting office hours and house calls, he worked a twelve-hour day—more if there was an emergency in the middle of the night. Yet his patients did not always take his advice—

as in the case of vaccination for the dreaded smallpox. In some towns not a single student answered the school bell on V-Day. Families clung to their old remedies: goose-grease plasters, onion poultices, catnip tea, beefsteak broth, and the trusted bottle of whiskey reserved for medicinal purposes.

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4.

Hilda the Clipper

She Put Fear into the Male

Population of One Small Town

Brrr happens to be the coldest town in Moose County. Is it a coincidence that it also has the largest number of “characters”? Hotelkeeper Gary Pratt tells about Hilda, and I believe every word!

—JMQ

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My grandfather used to tell about this eccentric old woman in Brrr who had everybody terrorized. This was about seventy years ago, you understand. She always walked around town with a pair of hedge clippers, pointing them at people and going click-click with the blades. Behind her back they laughed and called her Hilda the Clipper, but the same people were very nervous when she was around.

The thing of it was, nobody knew if she was just an oddball or was really smart enough to beat the system. In stores she picked up anything she wanted without paying a cent. She broke all the town ordinances and got away with it. Once in a while a cop or the sheriff would question her from a safe distance, and she said she was taking her hedge clippers to be sharpened. She didn’t have a hedge. She lived in a tar-paper shack with a mangy dog. No electricity, no running water. My grandfather had a farmhouse across 쑽쑽쑽

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Lilian Jackson Braun the road, and Hilda’s shack was on his property. She lived there rent-free, brought water in a pail from his hand pump, and helped herself to firewood from his woodpile in winter.

One night, right after Halloween, the Reverend Mr.

Wimsey from the church here was driving home from a prayer meeting at Squunk Corners. It was a cold night, and cars didn’t have heaters then. His Model T didn’t even have side curtains, so he was dressed warm. He was chugging along the country road, at probably twenty miles an hour, when he saw somebody in the darkness ahead, trudging down the middle of the dirt road and wearing a bathrobe and bedroom slippers. She was carrying hedge clippers.

Mr. Wimsey knew her well. She’d been a member of his flock until he suggested she quit bringing the clippers to services. Then she gave up going to church and was kind of hostile. Still, he couldn’t leave her out there to catch her death of cold. Nowadays you’d just call the sheriff, but there were no car radios then, and no cell phones. So he pulled up and asked where she was going.

“To see my friend,” she said in a gravelly voice.

“Would you like a ride, Hilda?”

She gave him a mean look and then said, “Seein’ as how it’s a cold night . . .” She climbed in the car and sat with the clippers on her lap and both hands on the handles.

Mr. Wimsey told Grandpa he gulped a couple of times and asked where her friend lived.

“Over yonder.” She pointed across a cornfield.

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Short & Tall Tales

“It’s late to go visiting,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather I should take you home?”

“I told you where I be wantin’ to go,” she shouted, as if he was deaf, and she gave the clippers a click-click.

“That’s all right, Hilda. Do you know how to get there?”

“It’s over yonder.” She pointed to the left.

At the next road he turned left and drove for about a mile without seeing anything like a house. He asked what the house looked like.

“I’ll know it when we get there!” Click-click.

“What road is it on? Do you know?”

“It don’t have a name.” Click-click.

“What’s the name of your friend?”

“None o’ yer business! Just take me there.”

She was shivering, and he stopped the car and started taking off his coat. “Let me put my coat around you, Hilda.”

“Don’t you get fresh with me!” she shouted, pushing him away and going click-click.

Mr. Wimsey kept on driving and thinking what to do.

He drove past a sheep pasture, a quarry, and dark farmhouses with barking dogs. The lights of Brrr glowed in the distance, but if he steered in that direction, she went into a snit and clicked the clippers angrily.

Finally he had an inspiration. “We’re running out of fuel!” he said in an anxious voice. “We’ll be stranded out here! We’ll freeze to death! I have to go into town to buy some gasoline!”

It was the first time in his life, he told Grandpa, that 쑽쑽쑽

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Lilian Jackson Braun he’d ever told a lie, and he prayed silently for forgiveness.

He also prayed the trick would work. Hilda didn’t object.

Luckily she was getting drowsy, probably in the first stages of hypothermia. Mr. Wimsey found a country store and went in to use their crank telephone.

In two minutes a sheriff deputy drove up on a motorcy-cle. “Mr. Wimsey! You old rascal!” he said to the preacher.

“We’ve been looking all over for the Clipper! Better talk fast, or I’ll have to arrest you for kidnapping!”