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1/15 – Adam R.

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Tenth Post

To continue on my train of thought... When the Great Brain leaves, his younger brother, J.D., decides to model himself after the Great Brain. His logic behind this decision is that his brother swindled almost everybody in town, most of all his younger sibling. Therefore, with the Great Brain gone, J.D. has the most experience in swindling people. When Tom leaves, he offers to let J.D. Use his bike for a nickel a week. JD decides to take his brother on his proposition. He figures that he can rent the bike out to kids around town and pay his brother and still have time to ride it. Wow! Does this backfire on him! So he ends up renting it out every weekend to a kid who uses it to get a job. Then that kid gets a bike and rents it for less. On top of it all, that kid wears down the tires, so J.D. has to pay 3 bucks for new tires! He ends up loosing a lot of money. There are moral lessons in this event. Such as, don't rent someone else's property. Also, don't rent something out unless you know that the rent will cover all the costs.

Ninth Post

In my last post, I told the story of J.D.’s first swindle: under-paying two kids to do all his chores. His parents had told him to just be himself and not to try and swindle people. So then John reforms after his brief career as a con-artist. Later, his father invites a guest, as usual for Sunday dinner. He rarely remembers to tell his wife who he is inviting, but it is so regular that she always sets an extra place at the table. This time he invites a drifter, who is an old friend, but they haven’t seen each other in ten years. This friend is also a sort of con-artist himself, though it isn’t what you would expect. When she learns this person is coming, she is irritated with her husband, but holds her tongue for the rest of the night. When John and his father go into the study, where Thomas’s friend has a handful of cigars in his breast pocket as well as one in his mouth. When they are catching up and talking about the guest’s business, J.D. discovers that the man is a trader. Let’s say he has a mule, he would trade it to someone in need of a mule for something of more value, and then he would repeat this process until he was satisfied with his profit. J.D. tries it out and with a list of all the toys his friends want, emulates his father’s friend. He begins with an old Indian costume of his brother’s, and after a few days work gets to the last person on the list, but that person doesn’t have anything he wants. So J.D. ends up with a pig, and when his mother wont let him keep it, he is forced to pay the previous owner to take care of it. The moral in this story is to never get in over your head, and to not trade for something unless you really want it and are allowed to have it.

Eight Post

In my last post, we left of with J.D. conniving his way into his new role of town swindler. He deceives the town poor kids into thinking that he is giving them just compensation for doing all his chores, while he is really only giving them half of what they earned. When his parents notice the other kids doing their son’s chores, they immediately are on to him. At dinner, they confront him about his plot, asking why Frank and Allan Jensen are doing all his chores. Thinking on his feet, he says that he figured that 20¢ was too much for one boy to have every week, and that he thought that he’d pay the Jensen boys, who don’t have enough money to get allowances, 5¢ each to do Tom’s part of the chores. He is shocked when his parents praise him for his generosity and thoughtfulness. This continues until the week after when his mother notices his sitting on the fence watching the Jensens doing all the chores again. She goes back inside to have a word with her husband Thomas. At dinner that evening, they have a word again with J.D. They say that it is unfair and immoral to make the two boys do the same work he had to do the first to weeks and only pay them half the money. That is were I will stop for this post, and you can clearly see the moral issue. It is similar to hiring two people to answer phones and when they do the same work, paying one $10 an hour and the other only $5 per hour.

Seventh Post

I know I have probably tortured my diligent readers by not posting for the last few weeks, but I was on vacation and enjoying every minute of it. Obviously during our two week vacation I have had plenty of time to read, so I am full of information and observations, so get ready cause I'm about to spew. I will begin where I left off, the Great Brain Series. At this point, the Great Brain has just left for Salt Lake City, where he will be attending a catholic secondary school with his older brother Swen. After many tears and a long goodbye, the eldest Fitzgerald boys board the train and head off for Salt Lake City. A few days later, the youngest Fitzgerald son, the narrator, realizes that with his older brother and his great brain gone, this is his opportunity! Though he has only a little brain,” he figures he is still smart enough and has learned enough from Tom that he can rule the town. this is when the trouble starts. His parents have determined that since he is going to be doing all his and his brothers chores, they will change his allowance from 10¢ to 20¢. And while that doesn’t seem like much today, at the period, it was the equivalent of raising his allowance from $2.50 to $5.00, and mind you it’s an eight year old boy. Then John’s “little brain” has a big idea, he decides to hire the poor boys in town to do all the chores for 10¢. He deceives the boys and his parents into believing that he’s doing them all a favor.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Sixth Post

I have started the nest book in the installment (yes I know I am really lame), and so far it’s even more eventful than the first. At the beginning of the novel, the author’s oldest brother comes home from Catholic Private School in Salt Lake City. When he hears about “The Great Brain’s Reformation,” he laughs and tells J.D. (the author), that Tom is just fooling their parents in order to get a bike for Christmas. Then times passes quickly until summer vacation, when Swen comes back from Salt Lake City Again, and boy is everybody in for a surprise. He begins to talk with odd expressions that according to him are “popular with us city folk.” When Tom gets sick of being called old man by his brother, he begins to call him grandpa, which everybody gets a kick out of. In response, S.D. begins to call him little school boy kid, which irritates Tom. He asks his father if he can start to work at his newspaper company as a printer, but his father claims he’s too young. Tom then asks for his father’s old, unused printing press, and begins his own paper. This paper, The Adenville Post, is based almost solely on gossip (which he thinks is good news). Though he and his teem of reporters manage to uncover the bank robbers who had recently stolen one-hundred-thousand dollars from the bank, his father is disgusted with the gossip portion of The Adenville Post, and punishes T.D. severely, as well as tells him: “it [the newspaper] showed mw that you are too young to do anything at the Advocate other than deliver papers.” This book also contains moral issues, like publishing private affairs, such as arguments that spouses are having with each other.

More Adventures of The Great Brain by John Dennis Fitzgerald

Fifth Post

I know this is another late post, but late slip to the rescue Mrs. B so if your not here today, then you know. Once again, I finished my book, and with lack of a better option, I chose to read the Great Brain series over again (I know it’s kind of ridiculous, but they’re nice to read late when I can’t concentrate). This series is sort of a biography of the author’s brother as a kid then a teenager. It takes place in Adenville, Washington, a few hours train ride from Salt Lake City. The author, John, is about 8 at the time of the first book and his brother, Tom, is 10. Tom is known in town for his “great brain” which he uses for varied purposes. For example many times he used it to swindle people out of money, but there are a few times when he “saves the day” by finding lost kids or something to that effect. This book was once again, riddled with moral and ethical issues. Pretty much every time that Tom or T.D. (Tom Dennis) swindles somebody, he gets caught by his mom, and is forced to return all of his money. However, there was a time when a kid in town who had recently had his leg amputated was feeling useless and suicidal. Tom helped him learn how to play games, fight and do all his chores again. In return the boy, Andy, was going to give him his brand new erector set (the Andy’s parents were okay with this because Tom had essentially saved their sons life). Then, Tom declines the set and gives back his brother, J.D. his Indian Belt that he swindled out of him earlier.

The Great Brain by John Dennis Fitzgerald