Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/96

 away about hard times, when I cut him off sharp and made him listen to me for half a hour. That New York paper I seen in Kale Yackley's cigar store gives me the scheme and I passed it along to Ajariah. I told him to have a radio-receiving set, with one of them big horns on it, hooked up in his store. Then every afternoon between, say, three and five, he could give free radio concerts to his customers from the broadcasting stations in Newark. It would be the first and only one in Drew City, and, of course, everybody's read about radio and they'd be crazy to hear it. Anything new will draw a crowd—look at New York, for instance. After he gets his customers inside it's up to Ajariah to make 'em buy, I tell him. For that purpose he wants to hire a first-class, big-town soda jerk, which composes a mean sirup and will mix a cruel drink. A ad in the Newark papers will do the trick. I even wrote on a piece of wrapping paper for Ajariah a couple of signs to have his soda man put up on the mirror back of the fountain: "Try a Radio Sundae!" and "Wireless Phosphate—Something New!"

Well, Ajariah had his radio in four days later and the results made him think I got one ounce more brains than Edison. The Drew City "Sentinel" give the stunt a big write-up and curiosity done the rest. Pretty soon the natives start looking for places in the drug store as early as two o'clock in the afternoon, and—then buy! Besides the soda jerk he got from Newark, Ajariah had to hire Vince Neil to help him out. So that was that!

Not long after this I find out just why Rags Demp-