There is no responsible alternative; they really don’t know better.
I believed, as a callow U.S. airman in 1967, that haggling was de rigueur in Asian cultures. To get the best price was the name of the game, and no holds were barred. It was normal and expected.
So when a soft little man stepped out on the sidewalk in Taipei and asked what I thought of the monochrome painting I was gazing at, I replied with sappy disdain. “I suppose it’s all right, if you like that sort of thing.”
It was a moody waterscape with a Chinese boatman sculling his craft between a larger boat and some timbers jutting from the river. A gray hill or mountain hovers vaguely in the background. One can feel a wisp of fog and hear the slip of water streaming along the strakes.
This painting stood among flat Taiwan street scenes bristling with shop signs and telephone wires.
“Is the boat picture by the same artist who did these others?” I asked.
The little man hooked a thumb toward his puffy chest. “Me. I did them all.”
“Really? Because this one looks nothing like those.”
His eyes gleamed, black agates behind their epicanthic folds. “I paint many different styles. Peco Yeh.” He shook my hand and gave me a card.
We haggled a bit, and I walked away with the painting, framed, for about three American dollars—equivalent to maybe forty bucks today. The work was worth far more, by any rational scale.
I gave the painting to my parents. It hung in their living room for decades. Later, it came back to me and now graces my wall.
Peco Yeh, it turns out, was a painter of some note. An apocryphal biography from an unknown source on the Web puts an exotic gloss on his life:
“Peco Yeh is/was a Chinese man living in Taipei Taiwan during the 1970s. He came from Chengdu, China with the nationalists in 1947 with his mother. His mother was the mistress of the last court artist of the Qing Dynasty. When Empress Dowager Cixi was poisoned, the court artist went to Chengdu and took the mistress.”
Whether any of that is true, who can say?
I do know that for three dollars more than half a century ago I acquired a painting by a true artist. My only excuse is that I was young. I didn’t know the difference between a hodgepodge of paint on canvas and a work of art.
The boatman painting has grown on me over the years. My own taste has developed, of course, but more to the point: Peco Yeh’s work stands the test of time.
There are others of his paintings out there in the world. You can find a few for sale on the Web at prices in the four-hundred-dollar range. If you look at them, you can see for yourself that what the artist told me is true: He did paint in different styles.
A few weeks ago came an email from a woman named Earline Dirks who buys and sells old paintings. She is in possession of a Peco Yeh canvas, much different from mine. She wrote me because she happened across my blog post of 28 May 2019, which mentions the boatman painting.
The work Earline acquired shows two people, a young boy and an older person—perhaps a mother, grandmother, or servant—holding a Chinese lantern. The older person is kneeling, her face somewhat obscured. The boy’s face is clear, gazing intently into the lantern’s light.
Are we seeing a young Peco? Is this a memory of his own childhood?
Earline was kind enough to share the image with me, so I share it with you.
#
Recently I mentioned my correspondence with Mac McMorrow about Pan Am’s Anzac Clipper, which my Uncle Ed flew into Hilo harbor on December 7, 1941—where they encountered, in an official capacity, Mac’s father, the chief public health officer on the Big Island in those days.
First Mac, now Earline.
Isn’t it wonderful the acquaintances one can make by blogging?
We owe immense debts to the past; remembrance is a token of our respect.
You may consider me your ambassador from the past.
For more than four years I’ve posted the blog Reflections, seeking fresh meaning in our common past, on WordPress.
Now, I’m adding Substack to the mix.
This might be a good time to share my concerns. These are my assumptions:
The past has fresh messages for the present. It takes retrospection to understand our present time. Unless we continually water the plant of remembrance, our roots will wither and we will die.
Where we are now is not an immutable grant. The past is a separate kingdom, and those who venture there may be rewarded by self-knowledge.
We get wiser as we get older, but only if we are paying attention.
The American-English poet T.S. Eliot wrote
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
I write about historical events—what they meant at the time and what they mean now.
I write about personal memories—how they have influenced my life.
I write about what it is like to write about past and present and their close relationship.
I write about how life differs today from the way it was in days gone by.
I write about all the ways in which the past informs the present.
If you have not read my blog before, you may wish to sample a few earlier entries:
So this is what I do. Why am I suddenly doing it on Substack?
First and foremost, to expose my work to a wider spectrum of readers.
Secondly, to offer readers the opportunity to support my work with cash. You are not required to do this. You can read everything I post for free. But if you want to support and encourage my work, Substack offers a convenient way to do it.
Why do I mention this second point? The writing life is not remunerative. There are conferences to attend, websites to maintain, software to update, books to buy, manuscripts to print. Most book fairs and festivals charge a fee for a booth or table—a fee which may or may not be recouped by sales. My subscription to Publishers’ Marketplace, an essential tool for writers, costs $25 every month.
In the seven and a half years since becoming a full-time writer, I have spent $9,000 more on the project than I have earned in book sales and other income. I persist despite the dollar cost, because I have something to say, and I will not live forever.
For every James Patterson or Stephen King there are thousands of us who never receive enough for their writings to break even, let alone make money. Substack is offering a different paradigm, in which readers can support writers by paying them.
From my point of view, it’s worth a shot.
Whether you pay or not, I hope you’ll enjoy reading my posts. And if you do, tell others.
Here’s a small story of the publishing world. It includes hope and anguish, heroism and tragedy. If you read to the end you may be touched, as I have been, by the goodness that surfaces from time to time in human affairs.
In December 2020, mystery writer G.P. Gottlieb sent word to book coach Christine DeSmet that Dan Willis of DX Varos Publishing, Inc., would be open to new submissions in January. Noting that historicals were among the genres Dan published, Christine passed the information on to me.
I sent a query, and Dan asked to read my shiny new manuscript, Freedom’s Purchase. Trembling with hope, I sent him the file. After only a few weeks, he replied:
Dan Willis
Hi Larry, Thank you for the opportunity to consider to consider your manuscript for Freedom’s Purchase.
I’m afraid I’m going to take a pass on this one. The plot as described in the query had not begun to develop in the first 50 pages, and I frankly lost interest in the story at that point. You might want to consider rearranging some of your chapters, assumed the escaped slave story did eventually materialize, and have it interspersed with the character/scene development that was all at the beginning.
Best luck to you!
Daniel Willis, Publisher D. X. Varos, Ltd.
Sigh. Another rejection, par for the course.
But this was the best kind of rejection—a personal note telling me what was wrong. Combining it with one received from another publishing house and triangulating: BAM! I achieved a sudden blinding insight.
I spent a year rebuilding my book from the ground up, gave it a new title—The Maelstrom—and asked Dan to read the new version. He agreed to read it and then agreed to publish it.
So on August 23, 2022, I became the author of a published novel, now titled Price of Passage. This is the proudest accomplishment of my life, after my daughter and grandchildren.
Think of my world as a great room in which nervous writers shuffle about, bumping into one another, smoking endless cigarettes (real or metaphorical), while riffling the smudged and bruised pages of manuscripts that are getting old. The vast floor of that room, Dear Reader, is knee-deep in jagged shards, the remains of shattered dreams.
My book, Price of Passage, would be among those dead fragments of once-bright literature, had not Galit Gottlieb shared key information; had not Christine DeSmet passed that information along; and, especially, had not Dan Willis agreed to read my manuscript—twice!—finding, on the second read, some of the value I had struggled so long and hard to put there.
That’s exactly how gritty and how personal the book publishing business is.
Nearly a year has elapsed since my book was launched. Dan Willis has been my partner in the tough job of selling books. Neither of us is flush with money for advertising. Both of us have struggled, persistently. Dan has been in this struggle not only with me but with about thirty other authors DX Varos publishes.
Dan Willis died July 9.
R*I*P
Dano died of natural causes. He was a comparatively young man, I don’t know how old exactly, but he had not been healthy for some time.
His demise has thrown the future of DX Varos Publishing, Inc., and the future prospects of more than fifty books, by about thirty authors, into uncertainty. That’s because DX Varos has been virtually a one-man operation.
Dan’s friend Karen Morrisey, secretary and co-owner of the publishing house, is trying to sort things out. It will be a while before we know what the future holds.
What we all do know—we authors have been commiserating via Facebook and Zoom—what we all know is that we have lost a great friend and champion.
Dano was a man of many parts. He was an accomplished genealogist with a deep and abiding interest in the royal families of Europe. He was an author, who published several works of fantasy or speculative fiction plus authoritative nonfiction works on the Romanovs, the Hapsburgs, the Windsors, and other royal lineages.
And, oh yes, he was a publisher for aspiring authors like me. In the halls of Random Penguin Publications, he would pass unnoticed. Hidden behind a water cooler. Swamped under piles of digital press releases. Perhaps relegated to the AI department. Who knows?
But at little DX Varos, in Denver, Colorado, Dano was a giant.
Dan didn’t make money as a publisher. He always had to supplement his income with a day job. But he discovered authors, gave them a chance to shine, and brought out a lot of worthwhile books that otherwise would have been just the fragments of shattered dreams.
Dano hawking his wares at a book fair.
His contract was simple, clean, and unambiguous. He responded promptly to emails and was, according to all his authors, a delight to work with. Amid financial and business pressures that must have been gigantic, Dano always found time to pay attention to our questions and concerns. And he was an important part of the volunteer machinery of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association.
We are finding out that Dan, fearing his life might be cut short, had taken special care to set up his files and busines operations in an orderly way so that Karen, his executor and successor at the helm of the publishing company, will have a fighting chance to keep it going, sell it advantageously, or wind up its affairs in a sound way.
We mourn the loss of a wise and patient man who helped us all navigate the problematic world of book publishing.
The Big Five publishers—the ones we all wish would look at our books—have their own way of doing things. A profit-oriented way.
I often feel I’m standing at the edge of the Universe, yelling into a tiny megaphone. My words fly out . . . no echo answers back, and it makes me wonder.
But sometimes, there is a response.
In January 2020 I posted a piece under the heading “A Most Unusual Day.”
On December 7, 1941, Uncle Ed was enroute to Honolulu from San Francisco, flying as first officer on Pan Am’s Anzac Clipper. That Sunday morning, radio signals made it clear Pearl Harbor was under attack. Captain Harry Lanier Turner changed course and landed at Hilo, two hundred miles away.
My rambling January 2020 post told about Uncle Ed’s experience that day and in the days following. I also mentioned the near-simultaneous attacks on several Pan Am stations in the western Pacific.
The post drew several Facebook comments and one on-page comment at the time of its posting. Then three and a half years passed.
Mac’s Comment
Suddenly, three weeks ago, a long comment was posted on the page by Mac McMorrow, a lifelong resident of Hawaii’s Big Island. In the late 1930s, dengue fever and bubonic plague were common in the Hawaiian islands. As a result, McMorrow’s father, the first graduate of MIT’s public health engineer program, was hired to suppress the disease-prone rat population near Hilo.
Though Mac McMorrow was a two-year-old toddler in 1941, Honoluolu Star-Advertiser columnist Bob Sigall reached out to him recently to comment on a note from one Alvin Yee. Yee had written:
The young Shah of Iran and his first wife, Queen Fawzieh, sometime between 1939 and 1945. Photo by Cecil Beaton. Public Domain.
“On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 an unscheduled Pan Am Clipper flying boat [the Anzac Clipper my Uncle Ed copiloted] landed in Hilo Bay after eluding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and [Mac McMorrow’s] father tried to go on board and inspect everyone for disease but some haughty State Department official wouldn’t allow it saying the passengers were VIPs.
“I happen to know the passengers included the young Shah of Iran and the Premier of Burma and their travelling parties on their way back to Asia. . . . Check with Mac to see if I got this story straight.”
McMorrow, in his reply to Sigall, stated: “I can’t confirm very much of his story based on what was passed down to me by my father. I doubt it was my father who was confronted by the State Department official. I think my father would have mentioned that kind of incident to me. My father was the senior Territorial Health Officer on Hawaii Island and he would have had the plane quarantined if the regulations were not followed.”
[W]hat I remember my father telling me was that a passenger on the plane was a US diplomat. He had to return to the mainland on the Clipper. However, accompanying him was an attractive Asian/Eurasian woman who was not an American citizen. She was not allowed to return on the flight. She was left in Hilo when the Clipper took off the next day. One of our handsome family friends quickly took her under his “protection”. He escorted her around Hilo for several days until she could get to Honolulu. You can imagine the gossip little Hilo would have enjoyed, even under martial law.
Gracious Reader, this is the first whisper of this attractive Asian/Eurasian woman to reach Your New Favorite Writer’s ears. Or eyes, actually. It’s downright titillating.
Idle Speculations
One can easily imagine a diplomat traveling sub rosa with an attractive woman to whom he was not officially attached—even in the innocent 1940s. In fact, if we were enjoying a novel or a screenplay, you could count on it. A living informant telling us he heard it as fact from his father certainly adds credibility.
As to Alvin Yee’s assertion that “the young Shah of Iran [Mohammed Reza Pahlavi] and the Premier of Burma” were passengers on the plane: That’s not far-fetched, since the Boeing 314 Clippers were the ultimate form of transportation at the time, a natural choice for the rich, famous, and powerful. But the only other place I have seen this specific claim was in a 2016 article by Korea Times writer Nam Sang-so. I have emailed Mr. Nam a couple of times to find out where he got his assertion, but thus far have received no response.
This leaves me wondering whether Alvin Yee’s information came from Nam Sang-so’s article or from some other source.
Uncle Ed’s daughter Elaine greets him with a kiss on his return. Clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle of December 10, 1941, and scanned.
Robert Daley, in An American Saga: Juan Trippe and his Pan Am Empire, says, “The Clipper [was to] be refueled here at Hilo and flown back to San Francisco as soon as possible. Passengers were welcome to ride back [or else] they could stay here and make their own way to Honolulu or Mauir or wherever they were going.” He says all the passengers opted to stay in Hawaii but makes no claim that any of them were VIPs. He mentions no Iranian royalty, Burmese politicians, or mystery women. But a lack of evidence that they existed is not necessarily evidence they did not exist, if you see what I mean.
So for now these things must remain intriguing mysteries.
Thanks, Mac
But I do thank Mac McMorrow, now evidently a very active 84-year-old, for adding to the mystery.
Even more, I thank him for honoring one of my posts by responding. You, too, Fair Reader, are welcome to add your comments to this or any other post on my “Reflections” blog. Or you may email me with comments. My address is larryfsommers@gmail.com.
Safe and happy travels to you all—whether by flying boat, magic carpet, or pickup truck.
I wrote a story called “Encounters With Monsters.” It was about interactions with human beings, from the viewpoint of a migratory Canada goose. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that a goose on a golf course could see people as monsters.
The literary magazines have not yet beaten down my door for the opportunity to print this story. Since many people will never see a story told by an animal as adult fare, I think I’ll change my pitch and sell it as the text of a picture book for young readers.
Meanwhile, I’ve started thinking I should write another one—definitely for adults—called “Encounters With Entities.”
Here is one such encounter:
Interpol on Speed Dial
A few years ago we went to Italy with our friends Bill and Marsha. We rented a car in Florence. My name was on the contract, but Bill did most of the driving, because—well, Bill likes to drive . . . even in Italy!
After a splendid week driving around Tuscany, we needed to return the car to the downtown agency where we had rented it. Florence, like many medieval towns in Italy, is old and confusing. It is a Rubik’s cube of one-way streets. If you rent a car in the center of town and manage to escape to the countryside, that does not guarantee you will ever solve the puzzle of getting back to the same place. The streets are all different, like the staircases at Hogwarts.
Bill turned into a street by a large hotel. It seemed to lead the right way but turned out to be a dead end. Bystanders waved at us sternly to turn around, which we did. As we exited that cul-de-sac, I spotted a sign in English: “PRIVATE ENTRANCE. HOTEL WATSAMATTAYOU GUESTS ONLY.”
Somehow, we reached the darkest heart of Florence, returned the car, and went on our way.
FIVE MONTHS LATER comes a letter from the European Union. Inside the officious-looking envelope there’s a traffic ticket in the amount of €93.50, for “driving in unauthorised zone.” Ransacking my brain, I remembered the dead-end street beside the hotel. We had committed not just a faux pas but an actual Eurocrime.
They must have had a camera snapping the plate of every car in that street. They must have had a computer programmed to match each plate with those of legitimate hotel guests. Their program must have had a subroutine that traced the plate to the rental agency and found my name and home address in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
And here’s the kicker: When the jury of computers had weighed the evidence and found me guilty, my punishment was too important to come from Florence city hall or the local polizi or even carabinieri headquarters.
No. The computer forwarded our case to Geneva so some obscure office of the European Union, in all its majesty, could issue my ticket.
In those days the euro was worth a third more than the dollar. In the five months (did I mention FIVE MONTHS??) since we did the crime, the exchange rate had tanked further. So that €93.50 came to well over a hundred clams.
We shared the joy with Bill and Marsha, our unindicted co-conspirators. We were all tempted to shred the ticket and forget it. After all, the long arms of Jean-Claude von Shakedown couldn’t reach us on U.S. territory.
BUT . . . we might want to visit Europe in the future. Imagine being turned back at Amsterdam passport control because the One Great Eurocomputer choked on an unpaid trafic violation.
As William Shakespeare said, though in a slightly different context, “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
Bill and Marsha chipped in their half, we sent the required Euros to Geneva, and as a result we are still welcome in Europe.
Valued customers, no doubt.
Dear and Gracious Reader, if it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Maybe it already has.
Alternative History
Now picture, if you will, the same incident happening twenty years earlier—before Italy joined Europe and before computers gobbled up all continents.
Italian cop in Florence. Photo by Xeph, licensed under CC-BY-3.0.
Way back then, that same street might have already been blocked off to “unauthorised” traffic— for big hotels have ways to make their voices heard in heavily-touristed cities. But in those halcyon days, enforcement might have been on the honor system; or, more likely, it might have been entrusted to a red-faced little man in a comic opera uniform. He would have lunged into our misguided path, waving a white-gloved hand and blowing his whistle.
He would have approached the driver’s side and addressed us in rapid Florentine. Bill and I would have shrugged, held up our hands, and chanted “No parlo italiano!” The little man in cape and shako would have then repeated the same phrases at twice the volume. We would have shrugged, gestured, and chanted operatically. He would have made obscene hand signs, which we would not have understood because they were in Italian.
We would have ended the episode by driving away unscotched.
Case closed.
Just possibly, we might have been roused in our hotel at two a.m. by a carabinieri rifle squad. But even then (here comes my point, Reader, in case you have lost track) even then, there would have been a person—a brigadiere perhaps, or a maresciallo—whom we could have addressed. One might have pleaded or even begged. Maybe one could have paid a sort of fine on the spot—perhaps a thousand lire for each member of the squad. But there’s no way a few thousand lire would have added up to more than a sawbuck.
The expense incurred twenty years later, doing things à la européenne, came from the cost of all those computers and all that bureaucracy. If you think Italian bureaucrats are bad, multiply them by every signatory to the Schengen accords. Translations alone must cost a fortune.
But when a total robot citation arrives from a major world government, five months after the foul deed, without the shred of a claim that any human ever witnessed the crime, or cared—what are you gonna do?
You can’t fight city hall if there’s no city hall to fight.
And that’s only one example.
It’s Everywhere! It’s Everywhere!
Thesis: Life is now more a matter of interfacing with entities, and less a matter of dealing with people.
Big Joe Williams sings the blues, 1971. Photo by Patrick Denoréaz, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Sometimes I wish I were a musician. If I were a musician, I could write and perform something like this:
Mmm . . . I got those old Interacting-with-Entities Blues,
Oh, yeah, I just got to tell you this news—
There’s no reason not to tell you,
I got those Interacting-with-Entities Blues, oh, yeah . . .
You’ll have to imagine the tune on your own, Fair Reader. I can’t be expected to do everything.
Wisconsin, where I live, is known for inclement weather. Winter seems to last about six months here in Madison.
Then there is a brief spring, followed by three months of warm, GLORIOUS SUMMER, which tapers off in a wine-and-gold two-month autumn until snowflakes fly around November 1.
Since summer does not last forever, I spend as much time as possible in my backyard. When not mowing or weeding, I sit in a chair, reading a book and sipping something. I glance up now and then to appreciate how lovely it all is.
One view of my backyard.
A black locust towers over our house. The tree is in the front yard, but I can see its top, over the roof, from the backyard. It’s thing of beauty and a joy forever, especially with its green leaves yellowed by the afternoon sun.
Another view of my backyard.
There is a sound track, too. My favorite part is the catbird’s call.
This small gray bird, Dumetella carolinensis, flits about the backyard, perching in one of our tall spruces, or sometimes briefly in our forsythia, a red cedar, or my wife’s special Montmorency cherry tree.
“But tell me, O New Favorite Writer, how do you know your catbird’s a he? Couldn’t it be a she?”
No, Dear Reader. He could not. Which is something I did not know until I did a bit of research. It’s surprising what you can learn by writing a blog. More on catbird vocal dimorphism below.
For now, suffice it to say that Mister Catbird is a phenomenal singer and mimic, much like his Southern cousin Br’er Mockingbird.
And he does all his vocalizing from a kind of throne. Though our common robins, sparrows, and cardinals use the same trees and bushes, when Mister Catbird perches there, it becomes a special thing.
The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms says, “To be in the catbird seat means ‘to be sitting pretty, to be in a favorable position.’” The book, like other sources, calls it a 19th-century Southern Americanism but admits in a roundabout way that nobody ever heard of it until 1942, when James Thurber publicized Red Barber’s use of it.
James Thurber in 1960. Photo by Ed Ford, World Telegram staff photographer. Public Domain.
James Thurber (1894-1961) was a cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright—a literary icon whose work appeared often in the New Yorker. Today he is mostly remembered for his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” but during his lifetime he published many stories, as well as humorous essays, memoirs, and cartoons. One of his stories is called “The Catbird Seat.”
I won’t give you any spoilers, in case you’d like to read this now somewhat dated, but still entertaining, story. What concerns us here is how it got its title. Its main character, a file clerk named Mr. Martin, is disturbed by a co-worker, Mrs. Bellows, who sprinkles her office repartee with a variety of odd expressions.
It was Joey Hart, one of Mr. Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. “She must be a Dodger fan,” he had said. “Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he uses those expressions–picked ’em up down South.” Joey had gone on to explain one or two. “Tearing up the pea patch” meant going on a rampage; “sitting in the catbird seat” means sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.
Red Barber in 1955. Photo by Al Ravenna, World-Telegram staff photographer. Public Domain.
Red Barber (1908-1992), “the Old Redhead,” was a sports announcer who over a long career called major league baseball games for the Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the New York Yankees. A native of Columbus, Mississippi, he spoke slowly, with a soothing southern drawl, countrified and unflappable even when describing the hottest action.
Did Barber ever use the phrase “in the catbird seat” before reading Thurber’s 1942 story attributing it to him? That must remain one of those enigmas lost in the mists of time.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the catbird seat as “a superior or advantageous position.” I guess that’s about right. “He’s sitting in the catbird seat” means he’s got no worries—however things turn out, he’s covered.
If you’re in the catbird seat you can sit aloof and entertain yourself with pretty songs while you wait for others to find out the bad news.
Our friend Mister Catbird perches, sometimes hidden by dense foliage, but always in a place where he can supervise the whole world. And he comments.
The Catbird’s Song
He sings one of the most complex songs of any bird. It’s a long, polysyllabic thing, a startling series of whistles, squeaks, squawks, and burbles. It lasts several seconds and is then repeated, only with its elements re-arranged.
That’s how I know it’s a he, Dear Reader. Because the catbird I’m hearing is not singing a normal “catbird” song, which is relatively brief and simple. Nor is he chirping the single meow-like syllable that gives him his name.
The complexity of Mister Catbird’s call comes from the fact that he’s imitating a series of other birds’ calls. Ornithologists think this is simply a way for a male catbird to show off, attracting the female of the species to his rich repertory of bird sounds. It’s like a guy who gets up at a party and rattles off a series of impressions—John Wayne, Dean Martin, Jimmy Cagney (“You dirty rat!”), Cary Grant (“Judy Judy! Judy!”) and on and on.
Only Dumetella carolinensis is actually a talented mimic, unlike our friend at the party.
Do yourself a favor, Dear Reader, and take five minutes to watch and listen to this YouTube video sponsored by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in which Greg Budney, former audio curator of the Macauley Library, shows examples of catbirdmimicry.
After hearing all the calls the catbird masters in Budney’s video, you may imagine what it sounds like when they’re all run together by Mister Catbird in my backyard.
It makes me think of a general issuing detailed orders to the troops.
It sounds like an NFL quarterback barking a complex cadence before the ball is snapped—half of the syllables to inform his teammates about the play, the other half only to fool the opponents.
It’s the auditory equivalent of the gestures a third-base coach uncorks between pitches. You’ve seen it if you’ve ever been to a ballgame. He pats his left shoulder, rubs his elbow, taps his foot, shakes his head, doffs his cap, etc.—so his teammates will know what to do but the other guys won’t figure it out.
Even though I know Mister Catbird’s song is just an act to impress Miz Catbird, I still can’t shake the feeling that his baffling cascade of sounds must mean something.
Dear Readers—The following, though almost comic in its brevity, is a concise snapshot of the thrills, glamour, and enjoyment that are part of an up-and-coming author’s daily life.
Sunday, June 4
Church as usual in the morning, and daughter Katie expected for dinner in the evening. That should leave me four or five after-lunch hours for literary work and my Mandatory Nap.
I spend two hours revising the blog post for Tuesday, June 6. It’s about Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans, and how that nasty fight of yesteryear echoes down to our day. What if this post draws fire from Hamilton’s or Jefferson’s 21st-century followers? I must get this right, as near bullet-proof as I can make it. Don’t want to get drawn into politics.
Fooboo. Photo by author.
At three o’clock, I took the dog, Fooboo, for a walk. It’s a beautiful day, but quite hazy, due to wildfires in Canada.
Then back to work. I read and digest a new chapter written by a colleague in Tuesdays With Story, one of two writers’ critique groups I belong to. This chapter is a vivid excursion into a dystopian society of the near future. I mark a few passages of tangled syntax or confusing concepts, but it’s a great read. This kind of work is time-consuming, but you’ve got to give feedback so you can get feedback. Otherwise you’re just shouting into a vacuum.
Katie arrives at five, bringing her dog Lucy to dinner with her. Time to put off the literary lion and put on the dad.
Never got my nap. Hmpf.
Monday, June 5
Ian Fleming. Fair use.
A late breakfast, accompanied by all we could stand to watch of a disappointing 2014 biopic on the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Then it’s time to get to work.
This is one of two or three mornings a week I manage to carve out a few hours for writing new material. I bang away at the first draft of my new World War II novel, tentatively titled Brother’s Blood. This seems to me the most brutal and exciting part of writing. A story does not exist yet, except some fuzzy notion in your head. You make it come to life by writing words, sentences, and paragraphs. How does one do that? I don’t know, but one must do it. Two and a half hours later, out of breath, I emerge with another chapter and a half snug in my laptop.
Time to wash breakfast dishes and clean up the kitchen. Over lunch I read the penultimate chapter of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, the book that prompted my upcoming blog post.
Almost forgot to record that somewhere in the middle of the morning’s writing, I took a few minutes to email my fellow writers in Tuesdays With Story, to make sure everybody understands which chapters we’rre reviewing tomorrow night. I’m the group’s gatekeeper for stories to be critiqued, and I host the Tuesday night meetings, which are a hybrid of in-person and Zoom encounters.
After lunch Fooboo takes me for another walk. His real, official name is Midnight, so I’m walking Midnight at noon. Midnight at Noon. Great title for a book! What would it be about? Alaskans and Norwegians, especially Spitzbergers, are proud of their midnight sun, but this is Midnight at Noon. Arthur Koestler wrote Darkness at Noon, a political thriller about the Bolshevik experience in Russia. But no. This would be Midnight at Noon. I ought to keep it under wraps lest someone steal my title and write the book before I even know what it’s about.
After walking Fooboo I take my nap. Now it’s three p.m. I’d better look at the blog post again, and then read another story for tomorrow night’s meeting. But revising the blog post takes the whole time. I call it quits for now—can’t miss Jeopardy!
After supper and our nightly Scrabble game, I’m back at the laptop, seeking out royalty-free images to decorate the Hamilton blog post. Then I spend an hour entering the text and images in WordPress, adjusting their positions, highlighting and coloring text, etc. I finish around 9:30.
Tuesday, June 6
I’m behind on my reading for tonight’s Tuesdays with Story meeting, so most of today will be consumed with reading the work of my fellow writers and registering comments on same. I enjoy this process, even though some of my colleagues write in genres or subject matter I have no interest in. The fact that I am not the author’s intended audience has notthing to do with my responsibility to read the piece and give intelligent feedback. Sometimes it’s a kind of drudgery, but it’s drudgery that might prove useful to a friend who hopes to break into publication. By suppertime, I’ve finished all six items and have printed out my comments so they’ll be close at hand when we begin our discussion.
So the nightly ritual of Jeopardy!, supper, and Scrabble occurs just as scheduled.
At seven, Mike and Jack show up at the door. Ensconced with wine in the sunroom, we three are joined via Zoom by Amber, Amit, Judy, Suzanne, Bob, Kashmira, and Jaime. Two hours fly by as we comment on one another’s work with comments that swing frequently between praising and challenging. Critiquing is an art. To receive critique with an open and discerning mind is a discipline.
Wednesday, June 7
The morning’s first business: follow up on last night’s meeting. There is a Tuesdays With Story newsletter, with rotating editorship, that summarizes the feedback each author received. After first updating my own list of future dates and presenters, I send reminders to all who presented material last night to send their concise summary of feedback received to this month’s editor. And I send the editor list of who presented last night and who is on the docket next time.
This week’s Blood Pressure Challenge is a letter from the Kia car company advising me that I’d better apply for a free steering wheel lock to protect my apparently all-too-stealable 2016 Kia Soul. I navigate their website and fill out their form. The software does not accept it and advises me to call their 800 number instead.
While waiting for Kia to answer the phone, I peruse other websites in my self-assigned quest to determine whether I am a fool for not switching my weekly blog from WordPress to Substack. I learn that there are different forms of WordPress, and I’ve chosen the wrong one. It appears, by the way, that I should also be considering Medium and Ghost. In addition, I learn that actual reasons to choose any one of these platforms over the others exist only in web marketing techspeak—no matter which forum one reads. None of these programs would stay in business if they had to explain themselves in English. We would all figure out that we don’t need any of the things they claim to do. But as it is, we will never know that, because we’ll never find out what it is they claim to do.
After two hours down this rabbit hole, I hang up on Kia and make myself a sandwich. After lunch, I nap and walk the dog.
Then it’s free reading time. I’ve got a tall stack of books. I order them from the public library and then try to cram them into my head before they’re overdue. Right now I’m on Spencer’s Mountain, by Earl Hamner, Jr. It’s the coming-of-age novel that gave birth to the Waltons TV series. It’s what we now call a young adult novel, a quick read but well worth reading for its distinctive voice, its narrative flow, and the skilful plot management. Even though I’ve seen it all on TV, it still draws tears at all the right places.
Kristin Oakley
After Jeopardy! and a quick dinner of microwaved yakisoba, I’m off to Mystery to Me Bookstore, that magical Madison venue where my friend Kristin Oakley is unveiling her new novel The Devil Particle. It’s the first of a four-book series—a different genre, story line, and approach from her previous novels. But if you liked Carpe Diem, Illinois and God on Mayhem Street, you might like this one, too. Kristin’s launch party brings out lots of good friends—writing guru Christine DeSmet, author Peggy Williams (whose new book will be published next spring!), internet marketing maven Celeste Anton, and Milwaukee publisher Kira Henschel. It’s nice to be together in one room, all unmasked. And I get my copy of The Devil Particle SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR!
Thursday, June 8
The long weekend is already beginning. After two sets of geriatric doubles tennis in the morning, I make my usual Thursday rounds: I pick up the church’s mail at the Struck Street post office, drop it off at the church, and stop at the fish store to pick up half a pound of salmon for tonight’s dinner and a pint of seafood gumbo for lunch.
After the gumbo (After the Gumbo—another great book title!), I’m off to Winnequah school in my Literary Lion persona. Attentive Readers may recall that I read my middle-grade manuscript, Izzy Strikes Gold!, aloud to grandson Tristan’s fifth-grade class last winter. Today they get their yearbooks—yes, fifth-graders get yearbooks now—and spend time milling around in the corridor signing one other’s yearbooks. The teacher, Matt Fielder, has invited me back to see the kids and sign their yearbooks. More than fifty years have passed since I last signed a yearbook. It’s very nice to be asked.
Arriving at home, I face an infrequent chore. We take Fooboo out, drench him with water from the hose, soap him up, rinse him down, towel him off, and turn him loose. He does not like it one bit, except for running around the backyard shaking off water and rolling in the grass. Since he’s still too wet to be re-admitted to the house, I spend quality time with him in the yard, so he won’t be lonesome.
I lounge in my zero-gravity chair and start on my next library book. (I finished Spencer’s Mountain.) The new book is Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons. I saw the movie with Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw when it came out in the Sixties. I caught the last scenes of it recently on TV and was struck by the dialog between Sir Thomas More and his accusers. So I got the book to read it and perhaps get a few clues how a great playwright does it.
After an hour, the dog’s ready to go in, and Jeopardy! is coming up.
Friday, June 9
The day begins on the East Side of Madison. I join a couple of friends, Norm and Karl, for breakfast at a local cholesterol shop. Our geezers’ triumvirate meets three or four times a year to grouse about how life is getting to be strange.
I rush from breakfast to Winnequah school, where Tristan graduates from fifth grade at 9:30—yes, fifth-graders have graduations now. A good time is had by all.
By the time I get home, it’s noon. Besides lunch, I have an email saying that the June issue of Well Read magazine has dropped, featuring my short story, “Beast of the Moment.” I take a few minutes to announce it on social media, complete with a link so people can read it. I’m proud of this, the first short story I’ve published in a long time. Short stories are about as hard to write as novels. Just shorter.
I accomplish a bit of yard work and house cleanup Then Katie, Elsie, and Tristan descend on us, along with my sister, Cynda, and her husband, Steve. We spend the afternoon and early evening celebrating the kids’ graduations from their respective school grades—fifth and eighth—and my approaching 78th birthday. We can’t celebrate together on my birthday, because Joelle and I will be in Budapest, ready to start our adventure cruising down the Danube.
Alexander Hamilton. Portrait by John Trumbull, 1804. Public Domain.
Alexander Hamilton has got me thinking about Republicans.
Hamilton may have been a republican, but he was not a Republican.
Hamilton was the disease Republicans vowed to cure.
I’ve been reading Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow’s scholarly biography. It’s the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the musical show Hamilton.
Out of respect for your time, Fair Reader—and to put my own subsequent remarks in context—I shall boil down Chernow’s quarter of a million words to a few paragraphs, immediately below.
Summary of Chernow’s Book
Hamilton was a meteor that flashed across American skies in the late 1700s and very early 1800s. The glare of his arc obscured a lot of other guys desperately trying to get noticed.
President George Washington in 1795. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Public Domain.
A poor immigrant from the West Indies, Hamilton became George Washington’s right-hand man during the Revolutionary War, and the postwar confusion, and the early Constitutional period. When Washington was elected president, he chose Hamilton as secretary of the treasury. Besides consolidating and funding the existing Revolutionary War debts, starting a national bank, and putting America’s currency and credit on a sound basis, Hamilton organized nearly everything else about the infant government. He pushed all his many projects, from the Coast Guard to the Whiskey Tax, on to ultimate success.
In his pushiness, he made an enemy of Thomas Jefferson, Washington’s Secretary of State. Besides the fact that Hamilton leaned toward the British, from whom we had just separated, while Jefferson favored revolutionary France, the two men held opposing images of the future United States.
Hamilton advocated a strong central government to protect U.S. commercial interests, foster trade, and preside over an expanding industrial economy. He also abhorred slavery and wished to see it abolished. Jefferson idealized the independent farmer spread across the landscape—including those independent farmeers of the South who owned battalions of slaves to help with their independent farming. He distrusted cities, financiers, and a centralized government.
The Founding Fathers abhorred political parties; but factions immediately arose in the new American republic, based on contrasting worldviews and economic interests—and you had to call them something. Hamilton and his teammates were called Federalists. The name came from the Federalist Papers, a series of essays Hamilton had written, or caused to be written, promoting adoption of the U. S. Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson as president, 1801. Portrait by Rembrandt Peale. Public Domain.
Jefferson and his friends, including fellow Virginians James Madison and James Monroe, accused Hamilton of trying to sell America back to the British. They suggested that Federalists wanted to replace our elected president with a monarchy—despite the fact that Federalist-in-chief George Washington would never condone such a thing. The Jefferson crowd were called anti-Federalists, or more lastingly, Republicans—simply meaning they favored a republic, not the monarchy they feared the Federalists would impose.
Federalists vs. Republicans: It was the birth of the American two-party system. Things went downhill from there.
Chernow of course adds numerous details, which I have spared you. But that is the gist of it.
The Upshot
Hamilton came to a tragic end, which need not detain us here.
But what of that two-party system? What happened to it? Why is it that, 225 years later, we do not still have Federalists and Republicans?
Hold on a moment, Gracious Reader: Are you sure we don’t?
Around 1800, when France’s woes were an American spectator sport, U.S. fans of the French Revolution organized themselves as “Democratic Clubs.” These clubs aligned with Jefferson’s Republicans, at least on foreign policy. So the Republicans started calling themselves Democratic Republicans and, later on, just Democrats.
Meanwhile the Federalist party shot itself in the political foot too many times and went out of business, to be replaced by a party called the Whigs. Named after a similar party in the United Kingdom, the Whigs were not quite Federalists, but they had a lot in common with them. They wanted a strong central government that would foster infrastructure—roads, canals, railroads—to grow the domestic economy. They also favored a national bank and protective tariffs.
Sound a lot like Hamilton, don’t they, these Whigs?
The Democrats—and remember, Democrats were Republicans—espoused Jeffersonian ideals. They aimed to protect farmers, including the slaveholding farmers of the South. They rejected urbanism, industry, and finance. They opposed a strong central government.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Original photo by Julian Vannerson, with Photoshop work by Kosobay. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, for example, wanted each state to make its own choice on slavery. This idea, which he called Popular Sovereignty, would have allowed Northern states to salve their consciences by prohibiting the immoral institution while simultaneously the Southern states could go on exploiting African American slaves. Douglas thought it was the ideal solution.
As the slavery question came to dominate politics, the Whig party—which was not all of one mind on slavery—withered away. A new party was born to take its place. Founding delegates meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin, thought “Republican” would be a good name. The Democrats having discarded the label long before, it was up for grabs. So old Whigs like Willam H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln became Republicans.
By 1860, the two-party system comprised Republicans, who now occupied the niche the Federalists had carved in the 1790s; and Democrats, who formerly had called themselves Republicans, back when they stood against the Federalists.
All clear so far?
Maybe not? Perhaps a review is in order.
Hamilton led the Federalists, who wanted a strong government fostering industry, trade, and commerce. Jefferson led the Republicans, who wanted a weak central government, states’ rights, and a system tilted in favor of dispersed farmers.
Through a process of evolution, the party that carried on Hamilton’s outlook called itself “Republican” in the mid-nineteenth century, as the Jeffersonian Republicans decades earlier had changed their label to “Democrats.”
Switch-a-Roonie
When the Civil War came along, it was a war between the Republicans and the Democrats. That’s an oversimplification, but conceptually it is true.
The Republicans won the Civil War and the Democrats lost the Civil War.
Then the Republicans, assuming the slavery question had been settled, went on to other preoccupations: high finance and large-scale industry—typical Hamiltonian concerns.
The Democrats, after losing the Civil War, hoped to restore their party’s good name in the North while restoring society to its antebellum status in the South.
Now, Kind Reader, it is beyond Your New Favorite Writer’s competence to sketch how the two-party system evolved from a quasi-Hamiltonian versus a quasi-Jeffersonian party a century ago to a Big Government party and a Small Government Party today.
I am only here to suggest that today’s Democrats seem to espouse postures of which Hamilton, the Federalist, might approve. And today’s Republicans seem to espouse postures that Jefferson, the Republican, might endorse.
Would it be folly to suggest that today’s Democrats are a continuation of Hamilton’s Federalists, and that today’s Republicans now carry on the tradition of Jefferson’s Republicans?
Perhaps it is folly. Yet there is something in it.
So What?
Reading Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, I especially enjoyed one statement by the author: “If Washington was the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.”
Hamilton set the pattern of the federal government as an active partner in setting the United States up to be a great nation—commercially, politically, and on the world stage. Because of Hamilton we have a federal government that is not afraid to step into the lives of its citizens and assume a directive role.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others were wary of such confident assertiveness by the Executive Branch. They strove to establish primacy of the Congress over the Executive. With almost 250 years of perspective, we can say they largely failed in that mission. Congress today is more an appendage of the presidency than the other way around.
Largely for this reason, today’s Republicans wage a twilight struggle against federal overreach, highlighting many cases where people’s lives have suffered unreasonable intrusion by the federal government. They are opposing a well-entrenched foe—the Democrats, moved by a vision of the good things government has accomplished, and all the good things it might yet accomplish, if only the Republicans would let it.
The chief lesson of our common past is that the passions of today did not spring full-blown from our own brilliant imaginations. They are the echoes of similar passions begun centuries ago and modulated along the rocky pathways of the intervening years.
Lord help us all if we fail to grasp the implications of this fact.
Memory is a funny thing. It is not, strictly, accountable.
Memory is evocative. It calls up emotions. When gripped by clear and distinct memories, we may easily grasp the emotions they inspire. We may re-live the feelings we felt at the time.
But when we revisit early childhood—fragmentary scenes, half remembered and half dreamed—we may feel vague longings which have no substance but a mysterious and compelling flavor.
Reeling In the Years
Last week, on May 20, my mother would have been 101 years old. She only made it to 74, so she’s lived only inside me these past 27 years. My memories of Mom are mostly concrete and specific. Thinking of her, I re-live my feelings from the midst of life with her.
Some other Woodrow Wilson. Photo by Harris and Ewing. Public Domain.
But now I’m thinking of Georgia McCune, Mom’s best friend from high school. Georgia married a man named Woody Wilson, a few years older. His parents, the Wilsons, had chosen to name him Woodrow. So that gives you an idea when he was born.
Mom lived in Knoxville, a village of two thousand souls in West-central Illinois. Georgia was from East Galesburg. East Galesburg is more like a suburb of Knoxville than of Galesburg—except that East Galesburg couldn’t possibly be a suburb or any kind of “urb.” Even now, it barely forms a hamlet. In those days it was but a few houses along a gravel road.
I do remember the house Georgia McCune’s parents lived in—because we visited there often. But the memory is blurry. I must have been three or four years old.
Theirs was the last or nearly the last house. The road sloped down to a cattail-fringed lake. The lake is no longer there; I checked on Google Earth. But it was an ill-omened lake anyhow, Georgia’s older brother having died there. He dived in headfirst, struck a submerged rock or a shallow bottom, broke his neck, and drowned. This was told to me as an object lesson.
To this day, in all things, I look before I leap.
I do recall walking down to the lake once with Mr. McCune, Georgia’s father. He took out his pocket knife and carved me a whistle from a willow branch. He cut a notch and slid the bark off the willow. I have forgotten exactly how it was done, but it turns out you can find anything on YouTube.
Magical Nights
I must have been five or six when Mr. McCune made me that whistle, else I would not remember it so clearly.
But I remember more vaguely once, or perhaps more than once, when I was younger, attending a picnic at the McCunes’. They had a large patio, probably paved with brick or stone, beside their house. There were wood tables and a large brick barbecue. The whole side yard was canopied o’er with two or three giant weeping willows, their branches trimmed just enough to cast a splendid aura over the whole scene.
A weepy willow. Photo by Larry F. Sommers.
It turned dark as we ate. But the darkness and the end of supper did not extinguish the evening. Somebody—one of the picnickers, or perhaps a neighbor—had a small pack of hounds. They treed a coon down near the lake. I recall watching and hearing the hounds baying at the treed coon. I do not recall any guns, shooting, or a dead raccoon. Maybe it was not a real hunt, just an exhibition of the dogs.
Later that night, or maybe on another, similar night, Mister McCune took a few of us—men and boys—down the railroad line to see something or other on the tracks. He may have been a Santa Fe Railroad employee—a switchman or yard hand. I recall he lit a red signal lantern and escorted us from the gravel road to the tracks, where we looked at some train cars. Why we did so remains a mystery.
The cars may have been parked on a siding for the brickyard. East Galesburg’s only industry was Purington Bricks. Purington Pavers were famous throughout the Midwest and beyond for their deep purple color and their adamant composition. Some streets in small towns are paved with Purington bricks to this day, long after the brickyard has fallen silent.
Purington Bricks 1895. Galesburg Republican Register. Public Domain.
The silent brickyard has been overrun with woods. If you know just where to look, you may see a ruined smokestack poking above the trees. That’s about it.
Meaning
What does this all mean?
That’s just it, Dear Reader. I don’t know.
Perhaps if I did, it would not call me back so. Its meaning would be too plain for further query.
But as things stand, this reverie of summer evenings in East Galesburg is just a near-fantasy—a wisp of truth at its heart, and a swirl of nostalgia surrounding it.
I don’t even know why I thought you might like to hear about it.
Perhaps there is something like this lodged stubbornly in your own memory, Gentle Reader. Some fragment of a long-lost world. Something you don’t understand now because you had not reached an age of understanding then.
Take my advice. Don’t interrogate it too hard. It won’t stand up under questioning.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
What is it that drives me back upon the past, to consider what has gone before and view it in a new light? I feel the need more strongly with each passing year.
When we get old, we want to make young people understand.
Understand what?
The portents of the past, things our children and grandchildren do not know simply because they were not there. The world I grew up in was not only different, it was instructive.
My mind reels back to Streator, Illinois, population 17,500—the town where I lived between the ages of six and twelve. The years were 1951 to 1957. The rhythms and facts of life told us who we were and taught us how to be.
Downtown
People needed things. But shopping malls, strip malls, and convenience stores on the edge of town—these had not yet been invented. So what were we to do? We went downtown, of course.
All the stores were on Main Street, or on half a dozen streets that intersected Main in what was called “the business district.” We had a big, solid bank; two department stores, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward; a couple of dime stores; dry goods stores, men’s and women’s clothing stores; a store that sold sheet music, band instruments, phonograph records and the machines to play them; two movie theaters, a few family-style restaurants, and several taverns.
Stores opened at nine a.m. and closed at five p.m., but on Saturday they stayed open till nine at night. People drove into town from outlying farms. They walked up and down the streets, shopping or window-shopping in the stores.
We town-dwellers did the same thing. Thus the streets were crowded every Saturday night. You were always bumping into people you had just seen at school or at work yesterday. Sometimes you encountered an old friend you hadn’t seen in nearly a week!
It taught us we were members of a community.
Sunday was a day of rest. Nothing was open on Sunday except the churches, a few gas stations, and the little mom-and-pop stores—one in each neighborhood—that sold newspapers, candy, bubble gum, cigarettes, and the occasional quart of milk or box of crackers.
Diversity
For a few weeks in summer, muscular, leathery men in clean blue jeans, western shirts, and cowboy hats joined the promenade on the streets of town. They were Navajos and worked most of the year repairing track and roadbed for the Santa Fe railroad. They worked their way north, arriving in our area in early summer. They lived in dormitory railcars that were parked on a siding near the high school athletic field.
On Saturday nights, these Navajos got cleaned up and went downtown like everybody else, adding an exotic element to our community. When they were in our vicinity, they just came downtown on Saturday night, like everybody else. It was what you did.
Our parents taught us that people who are different from you are still people, and that people who do hard jobs are worthy of respect on that account alone.
Women’s Work
Men went out to work in offices, shops, or factories, or on farms. Women worked at home doing housework, which was more demanding in those days. Clothing was washed in cylindrical tubs, then run between a pair of rollers on top of the tub to wring the water out. Then you hung the clothes on a cotton line in the backyard to dry.
Doing laundry in the 1930s, a decade before I was born. U.S. Government photo. Public Domain.
When the sun had dried the clothes stiff, they were taken down, remoistened with water from a sprinkling bottle, and ironed. Irons were electric, but they were not yet steam irons. Therefore clothes had to be dampened before ironing so the wrinkles would come out. Wrinkled clothes were considered unsightly; permanent press fabrics did not exist. The woman of the household spent at least one full day each week, maybe two, on laundry and ironing.
Every spring Mom had a special job to do, part of spring cleaning. She had to clean soot off the walls. We burned soft coal for heat all through the winter. Tiny specks of soot wafted through heating ducts and clung to walls and other surfaces. Most of our walls were covered with wallpaper, which in those days was literally paper. You couldn’t get it wet.
So mom used a special wallpaper-cleaning compound. You rubbed a lump of it across the wall, picking up soot, then folded the soot inside and used a clean part of the lump on the next stroke; over and over again. When coal furnaces and old-fashioned wallpaper were things of the past, the wallpaper cleaning compound was re-merchandised as Play-Doh.
Not only laundry and housecleaning, but food preparation was more labor-intensive. Housewives took full advantage of canned foods and the new frozen foods—TV dinners—that became available, but most food was not prepackaged. It had to be cooked on a stove, electric or gas-fired. We didn’t have microwave ovens yet.
Women used lard a lot in cooking. Often the lard was actually bacon grease, drained from the skillet and saved in a tub in the refrigerator.
There was no “Take Your Children to Work Day.” Opportunities to shadow Dad at work were rare for most of us. But we got to see Mom hard at work on her many tasks every day. It gave us a respect for our mothers.
Skylarking
For all that, life was not just a daily grind. There was a fair amount of skylarking.
A ride in the country. Public Domain photo.
Gasoline was cheap, traffic was light, and America’s love affair with the private automobile was in full bloom. Often on weekends in the summer Dad loaded us into the car for a drive in the country. We just drove around, looking at farms and forests. We kids rolled the windows down and stuck our faces out into the slipstream like cocker spaniels. We seldom exceeded fifty miles per hour, which was about what the roads would allow. The Interstate system was just starting to be built; none of us had ever experienced driving on a superhighway.
On the way home we would stop at the root beer stand for—what else?—root beer. It was a delightful treat on a Friday or Saturday night. We learned that life had simple pleasures to offer, and they are good.
General Mills and the other cereal companies offered wonderful emoluments for children—secret decoder rings, a square inch of land in the Klondike gold fields, miniature atomic submarines that rose and sank in the bathtub when fueled with baking soda.
You had to send in one or two boxtops from the sponsor’s cereal brand, along with twenty-five cents “in coins or stamps,” to a postal box in Battle Creek, Michigan. It usually took two or three weeks for the small parcel with the prize to arrive in the mail. That taught us the principle of delayed gratification.
Instructional Value
Far be it from me to suggest, Dear Reader, that our daily routines were a preconceived set of lesson plans to educate us in important life skills and attitudes. But that’s what they amounted to. That was the effect.
I lie awake nights wondering if my grandchildren will grow up easy marks for fast-talking salesmen because they were never wooed by the siren song of the Duncan Yo-yo representative in the vacant lot beside Marx’s store on a balmy afternoon in May.
No wonder I’m starting to look haggard. I guess we’ll just have to hope for the best.
