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I

The Hustlers

I Met Chuck Rhine in the Spring of 1952. Having recently graduated from college, I was grappling with that age-old problem - best known to Liberal Arts graduates - of finding a job. Any job. I was broke and not having a lot of success. My veteran's benefits were exhausted.

    To make ends meet, I had reverted to pre-college habits and taken to hanging out around boatyards where I picked up day work as a helper. My sole possession was a leaky old rowboat which I kept fast to a piling on Ole Amundson's dock. On days when the tide tables showed an early a.m. flood tide, I was up with the chickens and out on the marshes by daybreak. My mission was to retrieve useful flotsam lodged overnight in the tall Spartina and eel grass along the shores of Long Island Sound. This flotsam consisted of chocks, blocks, wooden wedges, loose planks and in fact, just about everything that might float away from the boatyards and marinas...

    I would scrounge these items up and make them fast with a line and then row this raft of goods back to shore. It was tiresome and unrewarding work, indeed! Once ashore, I would try to sell this booty back to the boatyard owners - who more often than not - recognized certain items as "theirs" (and which, in truth, I might have recovered and "sold" back to them many times before, the result - you must believe - of the vagaries of God's tides and the careless habits of dockside workers..).

    I was soon aware this activity held little promise as a permanent career.

    One fine morning, out upon the Sound, I made a chance find: a big balsa log bobbing up and down in the light chop. I got a line around it and towed it back. "Where", I wondered, "had a balsa log come from in these waters?" I never knew. Perhaps it had slipped over side from the deck load of some South American freighter bound down the Sound for New York Harbor. Or...? I never figured it out. But on that balsa log, believe it or not, I was at last to float to economic security - sort of.

    And it was a prime log for all that. Maybe eight or nine feet long, and ten or more inches through. And light as a feather, of course. Ashore, I wiped it off and then sat down upon it and wondered how I could turn this find to my advantage... It was a rare find, true - but not something Ole Amundson would want to buy from me - of that I was sure.

    Then I had an inspiration! I was an active ship model maker at the time, and though I didn't use balsa in my ship models, I knew it was much desired by model plane makers. Maybe, just maybe, my pal, Jack, who owned a model shop up in Stamford, would buy this treasure from me for resale to customers in his shop! I was sure of it! After all, wasn't I in the marine salvage business, and didn't I know an opportunity when I saw one? Fortune beckoned! One doesn't find a prime, honest-to-God South American balsa log floating in his front yard every day, now. Of all people, I should know!

    That afternoon a lone figure trudged the back road from Old Greenwich to Stamford, an immense log balanced upon his shoulder. Outwardly, the log appeared a northern hardwood, with scaly bark patches and numerous scars and cuts. In fact, from its looks, it might have been a native White Oak trunk or similar species - and if so, it must have weighed at least 800 pounds...! Cars honked, children waved, women threw admiring glances, and truckers gave me the brotherhood's "thumbs up" as, ponderous log upon my back, I strode purposefully along. Little did they know my main problem was to keep this exceedingly light log from being blown off my shoulders with their every passing breeze ...

    Soon, I reached Jack's Model Shop. I entered and stood my giant log upright against the counter. Jack appeared from in back.

    "Bernie! What in hell is that?", said he. The only other person in the shop was a guy looking at model kits down at one end of the counter.

    "What's that?", I mimicked.

    "Why, Jack - what kind of model shop operator are you anyhow? That there is a genuine South American balsa log - prime stock for airplane model makers - as you know. And I'm here to make you the best deal you've had all day: I'm going to sell you this log - and you are going to have the balsa wood market cornered, so to speak, and balsa galore for all your customers....".

    Jack wasn't slow: he got the drift.

    For a bit he was silent, then he said,

    "Bernie -you're right! That is really one hell of a log. And we of course sell balsa wood stock to our customers here. But there's one problem with your log, you see. Model makers are fussy dudes and all, and they mostly want their balsa all slivered up you might say - like into paper thin sheets, and strips, and little, bitty, trimmed down sticks and such like - you know. You're a model maker yourself. So, tell you what I'll do: I'll buy your balsa log off you if you will take a razor blade - say - and go at that tree trunk hot and heavy and get it all trimmed up into tiny, useable, salable pieces...".

    Now here was a setback to my beckoning fortune. I hadn't considered the "processing" my log needed to ready it for the trade. I thought on it and the prospect of tackling that log with a razor blade ... well, this seemed more like a backward step in my career plans than a bold moving forward. So, I made a lame counter-offer. Jack replied in kind. And so we dickered - fruitlessly - for some time. Jack himself, was a graduate of my alma mater some years preceding and had always been interested in my comings and goings. I guess in the course of our exchange I mentioned I was driven to such measures because I still hadn't found a job - in publishing - as I had hoped to do by now.

    At this point, the other fellow in the shop, a short, wiry little guy (we were later to be called Mutt and Jeff) who had been quietly standing by to one side at the counter, turned to me and said,

"Pop'll give you a job."

    I looked at him. "Who are you?", I said.

    "Chuck," was the reply.

    "Chuck? Chuck what?", I said.

    "Chuck Rhine".

    "Like the River Rhine?", I asked.

    "Yep".

    "Why would your Pop give me a job, Chuck Rhine?"

    "Well, I know my Pop," said my new friend. "And anyone that tries that hard to sell something like that log there - why, he'll give 'em a job if they want it. And in publishing, too," he added - as sort of an afterthought.

    "Where do I find your Pop?" I said. He blurted out a street address on Putnam Avenue down in Greenwich. Then without another word he turned on his heel, and was gone.

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