Humor In The Good Old Days

I came across a photograph of my grandfather the other day. It was one of those sepia prints and it shows him sitting in a straight-backed chair, sporting a white moustache and a van Dyke. He doesn’t smile and he looks like a man with whom one wouldn’t want to trifle. I never knew my father’s father. He died at age 72 the year before I was born. He was a forester and game warden like his father before him and he had a reputation as a man who could shoot straight, drink hard and didn’t suffer fools lightly. He managed the forests of the largest landowner in the area for the sum of 100 gold marks a year. According to my father, that was a fabulous salary in the years before World War I. The locals considered him a rich man.

In the photograph he didn’t look like a man with a sense of humor. Nevertheless, my father insisted that he did have one, of sorts. You be the judge. My father told me the story of the hunting guest my grandfather’s employer asked him to guide on a deer hunt. He was a banker from Frankfurt and the baron owed him a favor. Either the patron indicated to my grandfather to get rid of this banker or my grandfather didn’t think much of this city slicker and decided to short-circuit his hunting adventure. Anyway, the reasons for what followed remain unclear. What is clear is that the banker had an unforgettable hunting adventure.

Here’s what happened. Apparently in the years around the turn of the last century French eucalyptus lozenges were a very popular cough medicine. They were sold in small flat tins. These bonbons, as they were called, were oval and about ½ of an inch long, brown-green in color and bore an uncanny resemblance to weathered deer droppings. Unless you looked closely, these cough drops were indistinguishable from the real thing. You pretty much had to touch and handle them to know one from the other.

The evening before he was supposed to take this banker hunting, my grandfather sent his gamekeeper out into the woods on the trail they were to take the next morning. It led through some birch and willow thickets, home to a number of old does, who had frequented this particular grove for years. These are not the deer we see here. These were roebucks, much smaller than North American deer and found throughout central Europe. They topped maybe 60 pounds, if that. They are about the size of key deer found on Pine Key in the Florida Keys. They’d left their droppings along this path in large and small piles, wherever they’d bedded down. The gamekeeper added two each of the French cough drops to the edge of the first two piles about a hundred yards apart and marked their locations with sticks laid out in an X, so that he could find them again the next day.

Early the next morning, my grandfather and his gamekeeper led the banker into the bush to stalk deer. When they got close to the first marked pile of deer scat, the gamekeeper, who was in the lead, faked a coughing fit, uttered a quiet curse, bent down, picked up the first two cough drops and slipped them into his mouth. When he saw this, the banker’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. He turned to my grandfather, who brought up the rear, and burst out excitedly: “Did you see that?”
“What?” my grandfather asked quietly.
“He’s eating deer shit!”
“Yes,” my grandfather answered, “he wants to cure his cough.”
“With deer shit? Good God, man, I never heard of such a thing in all my life. That’s disgusting. I can’t believe what I saw.”
“What,” my grandfather asked surprised, “you don’t know about this remedy, sir? Three or four-day-old deer shit is one of the oldest and best cough remedies in the world. Everyone around here knows that it’s the best tuberculosis-doctor.”
“Ah, you’re pulling my leg! That man’s only pretending,” parried the banker.
“Anton,” called my grandfather in answer, “our guest doesn’t believe that you chew a little deer shit as an antidote for your cough. He knows nothing about the curative qualities of this natural cough medicine!”
The gamekeeper turned around without a word and stuck out his green tongue, complete with two throat lozenges attached. The banker was dumbfounded. He sputtered and muttered under his breath and couldn’t calm himself. He had never seen anything like it. In the meantime, they were approaching the second pile. To reassure the banker, my grandfather bent down right in front of his hunting guest, also picked up what seemed to be two droppings and put them into his mouth as if it was the most commonplace thing to do.

The banker could not contain himself any longer. He spat in all directions and hollered: “I don’t believe what I’m seeing! They are really chewing and sucking on deer shit!”
My grandfather told him to calm himself and to keep quiet or they’d spook the deer. The banker continued to shake his head in disbelief. They had to show him their tongues again before he was finally convinced. No more was said and they continued the hunt.

The next morning, my grandfather went to pick up the banker, who had spent the night at a hunting cabin in the woods, with the gamekeeper in attendance to take care of his needs. When he got to the cabin, the gamekeeper opened the door and said:”Thank God you’re here, boss. Something terrible has happened. Your banker is lying inside and is in the throes of death! He won’t last another ten minutes!”
“Why? What’s his problem?” my grandfather asked in a loud voice.
“His gall bladder must have spilled over! He’s writhing in agony like a worm; he’s groaning and has green foam coming out of his mouth! You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” the gamekeeper unburdened himself.

They entered the cabin. The banker lay squirming and whimpering on his bed. “What’s going on? What is wrong with you?” my grandfather asked, pretending pity, in a quavering tone.
“I’m spilling over! I’m puking my guts out! I can’t hold it front or back! My navel is coming out of my mouth. God damned deer shit! I’ll never suck any again!” moaned the banker in agony.
“You poor man! How many did you take?” inquired my grandfather.
“About six or seven, I think. They must have been a bit too fresh,” he groaned.
“How could you take so many at once and un-aged ones at that? That’s a regular horse cure! No wonder your body protests,” my grandfather reproached. “Here drink some coffee. I’m sure you’ll feel better in a bit. We’ll leave you alone for half an hour.”

They needed the half hour as much as the banker, as they exploded with laughter once they got back outside. An hour later the banker emerged, dim-eyed and bent over, ready to hit the latrine. Without a word he packed his gear and made his way to the railroad station. They were rid of him for good.

They later learned that the banker claimed to his friends that the deer shit had cured his tapeworm. I guess those were the good old days.