Some Came Running
Page 131
Dawnie and Shotridge lived on campus where a Quonset hut village had been set up for married students. In the summer of 1949 when they had first moved to the campus, Dawnie and Shotridge had decided immediately that they would rather live there than to take an apartment. They could easily have afforded an apartment in town, because both Harry Shotridge and Frank would gladly have financed them in it. But Dawnie and Shotridge had chosen the Quonset village anyway. Because, with all the beautiful wedding gifts they had, they could decorate their little three-room Quonset apartment as beautifully as an apartment in town; and here, they were able to be amongst their own set: the young married students. And it was a wonderful way of life: They entertained for each other, and helped each other out with their babysitting, and lived a quiet simple life different from the rather frantic kiddishness of the unmarrieds. And, in fact, this very thing was the subject of the Weight magazine series of articles.
They, Dawnie and Shotridge, had come up to school for the summer course of 1949 more or less out of necessity: When she had been going to Western Reserve, Shotridge had spent so much time over there that he’d flunked out three subjects and had to make them up. But then they both liked it so well they had decided to go right on this summer, too. Because after all, she was in her second-semester junior year now; this fall, she would be a senior and graduate next spring. Without those two summer terms, she would only be a first-semester junior this fall. As for Shotridge, after he had made up those three dropped subjects, he had risen steadily up in his class, and he would graduate at mid-term this coming year. He intended to stay and pick up some extra credits the next semester until Dawnie graduated. Then, as he was Air Force Administrative ROTC, and high up in his class, they would probably have to do their stint in service. They hoped to be able to spend their two years in Paris. Or at least in France. All this information they imparted to the Weight Inc. man, as the photographer moved around clicking his two Leicas.
Weight: The Magazine of Opinion was the biggest as well as the first of all the big picture-story magazines. And now Weight had decided to do a big series of picture stories on this peculiar new phenomenon: the young married students, and their young families. And Dawnie and Shotridge and their Quonset village at the University of Illinois had been selected as one of their examples.
Sitting in her expensively decorated living room while the Weight interviewer fired his questions at them and the photographer continued to go around snapping his two Leicas, Dawnie could not help but feel that they—she and Shotridge and little Diana Sue—were a pretty excellent example for their story. Most of the kids didn’t have quite as much money as they did. However, no one would have known it to look at them. They very carefully kept it in the background—in everything except the decoration of the little apartment, and the parties they threw for their friends who didn’t have as much—but other than that, it was unnoticeable and they preferred it that way, not only because they liked living in the Quonset village, but also because they did not want to embarrass their friends. But beyond that extra money, Dawnie felt Weight Inc. could not have picked a better example of college marriage. And as the Weight man questioned Shotridge, and Shotridge amiably expounded his views of what their life was like, Dawnie looked contentedly at her husband and then over at her daughter, playing in her playpen. Little Diana Sue looked back at her with her wide blue eyes and then gurgled happily, and everything in Dawnie—her happiness, her contentment, her pleasure—swelled up powerfully.
“Hold it!” the photographer said. “I missed that. Here: Look back at the baby and think just exactly what you were thinking before.”
So Dawnie looked back at Diana Sue, and thought about her baby and everything that it entailed. And Dawnie could not help feeling sorry for all the poor women who had never had the delicious experience of motherhood. Looking at Baby Diana Sue, Dawnie already knew what her baby was going to be, when she grew up. Diana Sue was going to be a prima ballerina: She already had, at six months, the potential beauty, the coordination, the intelligence, and not only all of that the little imp was a natural-born actress. And Diana Sue knew her picture was being taken—don’t think she didn’t—she posed and primped herself with all the aplomb of a successful prima ballerina already! Yes, she knew what her baby was going to be. And she was deliciously proud and pleased.
“Fine!” the photographer said. “That’s exactly what I wanted! Now, if you’ll just pick the baby up. Maybe we could get a shot of you changing it.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be—sort of . . .” Dawn said hesitantly.
“Oh no. We’d shoot it right, you know. And it’d make a good picture.”
“All right,” Dawnie smiled. She picked her up out of the playpen, while Diana Sue chortled happily, and carried her in on the bed where she always changed her.
“Fine!” the photographer said. “Fine! We won’t use all of these pictures, you see. May not use any of you folks, actually, even. But we have to have a lot of variety to choose from.”
“We don’t care if we’re not pictured in your magazine, Mr Beckett,” Dawnie smiled, and went to changing her little baby, her beloved own little baby. “We’re just about as happy as we could be,” she smiled; “and I don’t think anything could add or detract from it.”
“Yeah, sure,” the photographer said, and smiled encouragingly. “Fine!” He began clicking his Leica vigorously. “Maybe later on, we can get a shot of you all in your car out front. Is that your new red Dodge out there?”
“Yes,” Dawnie smiled. “It was a wedding present from my father.”
“Your father’s Frank Hirsh, isn’t he?” the photographer said, still clicking. “From down in Parkman?”
“Why, yes! Do you know Daddy?”
“I met ’im once, in Springfield,” the photographer said. “When I was shooting a big important businessman’s meeting there.” And he mentioned the names of the Greek and Clark Hibbard’s father-in-law. “Your father’s got influential friends.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dawnie smiled, “but he’s very nice to us.
“Yeah, sure,” the photographer said, and took his camera down and smiled. “Well, I guess that’ll do for that one. Well now, let’s see, what else do I need? You do the cooking yourself, don’t you?”
Dawn could not help but smile at that. “Yes,” she said simply.
In the living room, the Weight writer was just finishing up talking to Shotridge. He came over to them, as they came back through the door and Dawnie put little Diana Sue back in the playpen. “You take him for a while,” he said, “and let me talk to her. Then we’ll get some shots of them together.”
“Okay,” the photographer said, and Dawnie sat down with the writer.
It was a very interesting interview she had with him. He was obviously an extremely intelligent man. He sat beside her on the divan—asking question after question, encouraging her to talk about her life. And as a result, Dawnie was able to air a lot of her own ideas about college marriages and marriage in general. All of her own theories that she had gradually worked out for herself in the past year. Yes, she thought marriage helped college students; helped to stabilize them and to give them a sense of mature responsibility, she smiled, looking over at Diana Sue. No, she didn’t think a college marriage had a bad effect upon students’ grades; in fact, they had found it helped to raise the grades: by giving the students a maturity that young, and unmarried, people often did not have. She wouldn’t have traded her marriage for any other situation on the face of the globe. As a matter of fact, the being married—even with the little baby—was even easier than living singly. She and her husband staggered their courses pretty well, so that whenever one was in class the other could be home with Diana Sue; and on those few occasions when they both couldn’t be there, one of their friends in the Quonset village would babysit for them—a favor which, of course, they themselves reciprocated. And she and her husband shared the household chores, and had lots of study time, since th
ey preferred staying at home. On the whole, she was all for college marriages.
Dating? Oh, of course, there was lots of dating—before you were married. Everyone did. Petting? Oh, of course there were a few kisses. No, she didn’t honestly feel that the unmarried dating ever went much further than that. In spite of Doctor Kinsey, she smiled, she felt that there was really very little premarital sexuality in American colleges. Everybody was always getting alarmed about American youth and its morals, she smiled; but after all this wasn’t the Flaming Twenties: This was—well—the fifties already, wasn’t it? The “Level-Headed Fifties” they might be called, someday, Dawnie thought.
The Weight man scribbled notes in his notebook, and fired more questions at her and scribbled down her answers, and smiled at her encouragingly. And under his sympathetic impetus, Dawnie found herself expanding, and going more and more into what her ideas of marriage and motherhood really were. Women matured more quickly nowadays, she thought, and so there was a sooner need in them today for the fulfillment that only marriage and motherhood can bring. Then, too, with the world in the state it was in today, sitting on the edge of an atomic bomb, young people were maturing more quickly, and seeing the place that they as citizens and family-upbringers must fill.
Finally, the Weight man closed his notebook and said that they were done. After that, they took the other pictures, and then they left.
Dawnie and Shotridge both—once the Weight man and his photographer were gone—discovered that they were limp as dishrags. They sat, while Baby Diana Sue played in her playpen, and smiled at each other happily.
“Dawnie, you were wonderful,” Shotridge said finally, and came over to her and put his arms around her. “Especially when you were talking about marriage and maturity and all. I was awful proud of you, Dawnie.”
“You were pretty good yourself, Shotridge,” she said. “I was proud of you, too.”
“Yes, but not like you I wasn’t,” Shotridge protested. “When you were talking about motherhood, and how the college students were so much more level-headed—well, I thought I was just going to have to come over to you and put my arms around you right in front of them.”
“Well, I only told them the truth to the best of my ability,” Dawnie said. “I think as long as you tell people the truth, you’ll always be safe.”
“That’s true,” Shotridge said. “That’s very true. But nobody but you would ever think of it, Dawnie.”
After they had rested a little while, they talked about the trip to Parkman as soon as classes were over. It would be early September and they would be arriving just in time for the Parkman Centennial Week: the big celebration of the hundredth birthday of the founding of the city of Parkman. And, since neither of their folks had been able to see Baby Diana Sue more than a couple of times, it would be doubly nice to take her home with them and let her get to know her grandparents.
“Can’t you just see our lives stretching away ahead of us, Shotridge?” Dawnie said happily. “Always just like this: so happy, and so wonderful. People have to earn that kind of happiness, Shotridge, like we’ve earned it.”
“They sure do,” Shotridge said, and put his arms around her again.
They decided not to say anything about the Weight magazine article just yet, at home. Not until they found out whether or not any of their pictures would be in it. Because after all, there was no use in building the folks’ hopes up and then having them fall flat. But wouldn’t it be nice to be home for the big hundredth year Centennial Festival? They could spend part of the time with Frank and Agnes and part with Harry and Eleanor.
Chapter 74
THE PARKMAN CENTENNIAL FESTIVAL was indeed a big thing in Parkman. It had been planned ahead for the second week of September for over a year. All the businessmen’s organizations and the college had worked on it together as co-sponsors; and Frank Hirsh, as one of the officers of the Chamber of Commerce—as well as being the newly respected manager of the bypass shopping center and the new motel-restaurant—was right in the thick of it from the very start.
There was really a tremendous lot to be done by everybody. There were the rides and games concessions to be handled—although this was actually more easily done than the rest: Because an apparently entirely new profession had grown up in Southern Illinois in the last couple of years: that of “festival impresario.” Almost every town and city in Southern Illinois had had some kind of a festival or other in the past three years. And, for every festival, there must be a festival impresario. Mostly these were ex-carnival managers, who simply switched over because there was more money to be made in festivals than there was in old-fashioned carnivals.
Parkman, however, was an exception. They had had no festivals—in the three years the businessmen of Parkman had wisely decided to wait—despite a number of dissenting votes—before their bona fide Centennial Festival. There was something satisfying at looking at those round zeros after that one, and knowing that your city had actually existed for a full hundred years. So they were all glad they had waited, and now that it was here, they were going to let the sky be the limit.
The entire square and courthouse was to be fully lighted up with strings of blazing lights, at city expense. And three whole sides of the square were to be blocked off to traffic for the entire week. That in itself lent an excitement and holiday air to the whole thing.
The rides and games concessions wisely had been farmed out to the “festival impresario” the business organizations had finally chosen, who, of course, would receive his flat-price profit. That in turn saved the Parkman businessmen untold work, because the three blocked-off sides of the square would be lined with booths and concessions and games of all kinds, just about every variation of all the carny games booths. And, in fact, that was what it really resembled more than anything else: a mammoth carnival. The rides themselves were being set up on the courthouse lawn—a Ferris wheel, a bullet, an octopus, a bump-car ride, and, of course, a merry-go-round. In addition, every businessman’s organization—the Kiwanis, the Lions, the Rotary, the Elks, the Moose, the Eagles—were all setting up their own particular cider booth or lemonade booth or hot dog stand, to be run by the businessmen members themselves. Also, the college was sponsoring a large historical display of artifacts from a hundred years ago, to be run by the students and professors. In fact, there was almost nothing that wasn’t thought of and attempted.
The joint festival committee, composed of small committees from all the various organizations, had decided to elect a festival queen. There would also be a parade of floats across the still-open fourth side of the square, sponsored by the various businesses and whose motif would be “Pioneer Days,” and a prize would be given for the best one. Also, the joint committee decided, “Pioneer Days” ought to apply to everybody—to the citizens, as well. Consequently, proclamations were prominently displayed in town to the effect that beginning the Monday of Festival Week until the following Sunday, any male or female found on the square in unsuitable attire would be arrested and jailed on the old-fashioned pole stockade which would be set up on the northeast corner of the square, for a period of two hours. Also, any male found without a beard or mustachios or some suitable hirsute adornment would be locked up in the stocks set up alongside the stockade for a period of one hour. Consequently, as far back as eight weeks before official Festival Week, men began starting their beards. The joint committee issued a further proclamation that a prize would also be given for the best or most unusual beard or combination of hirsute adornments. As a result, there were Mormon-type beards, Quaker-type beards, Amish beards, Wyatt Earp (an ex-Illinois boy, himself) mustachios, all kinds of chin beards and goatees and bulging sideburns. And as Festival Week approached, the laughing feverish excitement grew apace with it: For one week, everybody was going to be able to forget themselves, and the world they hadn’t made but had to live in—forget it all, and be happy, for just one week.
A large platform was to be erected in the southwest corner of the squ
are for round dancing. All the stores around the square planned to stay open during Festival Week, and Frank Hirsh decided that the Parkman Village Shopping Center would also stay open, if any of the individual store proprietors wished to. Naturally, they all did: Frank Hirsh’s new restaurant adjoining the motel, as soon as it opened in late August, became the most popular dinner place in town—people were even forsaking the Country Club to have dinner there—so naturally there would be a string of people out there during Festival Week.
The setting up was, of course, the hardest job. Saturday night at midnight, trucks began to move in the equipment: the rides, and the concession booths and their contents. All night and all the next day, countless hordes of tough leathery carnies labored to get everything set up for the official opening Sunday evening, while the citizenry stood around and watched excitedly. The Chamber of Commerce had already appointed their private police force for the inspection of beards and costumes, and while their authority did not go into force until midnight Sunday they were able, amid much laughing, to go about warning offenders of what they would do to them after midnight. The warm crazy laughing near-hysteria spread all over town. It was going to be a gala week. Just about everybody in the county was expected to turn out, and spend money, and be happy.
There was, however, at least one man who had no intention of turning out. Dave Hirsh was still working ten to fourteen hours a day at the shell plant; and he was still trying to work at night on his goddamned novel—which, by now, he had come to hate more than he had ever hated anything in his whole life. It wasn’t right, and he knew it. The trouble still lay with the damned love affair. It just didn’t play right. If he cut it out entirely, it would leave a book of only some five hundred manuscript pages—not a very big book at all. And anyway, he still felt it could be an integral part of the whole novel. But he could not write it right. And he had no intention of going out nights to some damn carnival—he had lived as a carny too damned much in his life, to be able to be excited by a carnival—and trying to be happy.