Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  In another day Bob Hooker’s office had been as full of photographs and souvenirs as the Mayor’s office in City Hall. Not so in 1945. On his return a few years earlier from a trip to Daytona Beach he found that in his absence his wife had done over the sanctum sanctorum, laying down wall-to-wall carpet, installing bookshelves, and furnishing the room with a massive desk and leather club chairs. His old Remington Number 10 looked strangely out of place in the new elegance, but his wife was wise enough to know that the typewriter belonged in the room in the same way that a scale model of a Model T belonged in the office of Henry Ford, a tiny locomotive in the office of Samuel Vauclain, a speedboat in the headquarters of Gar Wood, a chest of machinist’s tools in the office of Walter P. Chrysler. A couple of million of Bob Hooker’s own words had been tapped out on the Number 10, the second typewriter he had ever owned and successor to his Smith Premier Invisible. It was one of the few objects retained from the old office. Signed photographs of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Mellon and Mike Slattery, Joseph B. Chapin and George Horace Lorimer, E. T. Stotesbury and Gene Tunney and Mrs. Robert Hooker (Kitty) were framed in blue pin seal and placed at strategic points in the office, where they would catch the eye of the visitor. The other photographs of political and sporting figures, of Bob Hooker’s high school class and National Guard company, of coal breakers and high-tension towers and the starting of the Standard’s R. Hoe press, as well as caricatures and cartoons and letters from important people—they were all removed from the office and stored in the Hookers’ town cellar for future hanging in his little den in the farmhouse down country. The knotty-pine paneling had been built into the den, but the framed souvenirs rested in the cellar.

  Bob Hooker, as literary man, permitted himself a few mild eccentricities. He was a pipe collector, for one. He shaved himself with a straight razor, for another. He wore high-laced shoes. He carried a hunting-case watch that wound with a key “for show,” and wore a time-piece on his wrist. There was nothing dangerously queer about him, but as a man of letters he knew he was not expected to be like everybody else. Another of his gentle aberrations was his insistence on an old-style desk instrument for telephoning. It was distinctive, and it cost him nothing. At its ring he picked up the receiver. (At this hour of the day only important calls were put through to him.)

  “It’s the Mayor,” said the switchboard girl.

  “Okay,” said Bob Hooker. “Hello, Mayor.”

  “Hello, Bob,” said Conrad Yates. “Bob, I been sitting here in my office thinking about Joe Chapin.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Hooker. “His memory will live with us a long, long time, Mayor.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to speak to you. Exactly.”

  “How’s that, Mayor?”

  “His memory. Joe’s memory. Did you ever know Joe Chapin kept me in Gibbsville?”

  “Why, uh, didn’t you tell me something to that effect, I believe so.”

  “Some thirty-five years ago I was thinking of moving to the city and Joe talked me out of it.”

  “Talked you out of it. Well, that was a good thing for you and Gibbsville, Mayor.”

  “Thanks, Bob. I appreciate what you say.”

  “It’s the truth. You’ve been good for the town, and I guess the town’s been pretty good to you.”

  “And if Joe Chapin didn’t talk me out of it when I was a kid I would have been just a dumb hick from the country down in Philly.”

  “I see. And what did you have in mind? I know you’re leading up to something.”

  “That I am, Bob. Bob, I want to organize a few fellows together and propose some kind of a memorial to Joe. You and Henry Laubach and Mike Slattery. Arthur McHenry. I don’t want Jenkins or the new school fellow that was there today. But some of us old-timers that was acquainted with Joe as a friend.”

  “Mm-hmm. Just town fellows. No out-of-town men?”

  “Town would be better.”

  “Not Paul Donaldson from Scranton, fellows like that?”

  “Well, we can ask them for a contribution later on, but the committee ought to be us, from town.”

  “What did you have in mind for a memorial?”

  “Well, I didn’t decide yet.”

  “Talked to the other fellows?”

  “No, you’re the only one so far,” said Conrad Yates.

  “Well, I’m in favor of it, provided it’s the right kind of a memorial. I’ll speak to Edith about it when I see her. Let me think about it and I’ll call you in a day or two. I’ll be talking to Edith and I can sound her out, although it may be a little soon. But how’d it be if I just kind of sound her out a little first? Then I could call a kind of an informal meeting here in my office, you and the rest of the fellows, and we could discuss the broad outlines. How would that be?”

  “Well—you want to have the meeting in your office?”

  “Or your office. But in your office it kind of gets into politics more or less.”

  “Well, if you want to keep politics out maybe we better forget about Mike Slattery.”

  “He’s a state senator, don’t forget that.”

  Conrad laughed. “I do forget it, most of the time. I’m so used to him being a politician I forget he’s a senator too.”

  Bob Hooker did not laugh. “And a mighty influential man, Conrad. I don’t have to tell you that. You got to look at it from all angles. I understand you don’t want to run again, so we better take into consideration you may not be Mayor when the campaign gets under way, the campaign for Joe’s memorial, that is. The next mayor may want to stay out of something that was started when you were Mayor. That’s the only thing I was thinking. And these things take time, you know. We don’t want to get started too soon.”

  “No, and we don’t want to get started too late.”

  “I understand that, Conrad.”

  “I’m ready to start with a thousand dollars right now.”

  “Mm-hmm. Naturally I’ll get behind it as soon as we have a few meetings and arrive at some decision.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I still think we ought to have the meeting here, or anyway, some place preferable to City Hall. You see what I mean, Conrad?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ve got a nice office, and we won’t be interrupted.”

  “All right,” said Conrad Yates.

  “You’ll be hearing from me,” said Bob Hooker.

  “Or you’ll be hearing from me, either one,” said Conrad Yates, hanging up.

  Conrad Yates kept his hand on his telephone while he thought out his next move. His next move was to flip the intercom. “Is Joe Raskin in the building?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” said his secretary.

  “I want to see him.”

  In less than a minute his intercom flashed. “I got Joe Raskin. He’s on his way up.”

  Raskin entered the office. “Hyuh, Mayor,” he said. “What’s cookin’?”

  “I got a little story for you,” said Conrad Yates.

  “I can use one,” said Joe Raskin, who covered Morning Sun.

  “I want it to get in tomorrow morning’s paper.”

  “That’ll be easy,” said Raskin. “You decided to run again?”

  “Nothing like that, Joe. But maybe if I like the way you handle this, maybe when I make the other announcement I’ll let you have it first.”

  “Mayor, everybody knows you aren’t running again, but what’s the story?”

  “For tomorrow’s paper,” said Conrad Yates.

  “You sound as if you weren’t going to give it to the Standard.”

  “I ain’t going to give it to the Standard. They can copy it from you, if they want to.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “Well, Mayor Conrad L. Yates, Mayor of Gibbsville, announces that he
is going to donate a thousand dollars, one thousand dollars, to start a memorial in honor of the late Joseph B. Chapin, the distinguished lawyer and citizen of Gibbsville because I always admired Joe Chapin for being a great citizen and true friend.”

  “A thousand bucks, eh?” said Raskin, taking notes. “What kind of a memorial? A statue, or something of that kind?”

  “Haven’t decided. In a few days the Mayor will gather together a group of representative citizens to form a committee to decide about the memorial. Maybe one of them things, a plaque? Anyway, something nice, and I’ll start the ball rolling with a thousand dollars.”

  Raskin smiled. “What are you sore at Bob Hooker for?”

  “Sore at Bob Hooker?”

  “He’s going to be sore at you if this is in the Sun before he can print it.”

  “No, I just want to make the announcement as soon as possible,” said Conrad Yates. “Get things started.”

  “Okay by me,” said Raskin. “Any more?”

  “That’s all, Joe. Thanks.”

  “Thank you, Mayor,” said Raskin.

  Joseph B. Chapin was finally dead. They had started fighting over him.

  In 1909 there were so many old, quite old houses on Lantenengo Street that Gibbsville did not need to have the still older residences of North Frederick Street and South Main. Lantenengo Street had houses that were old enough for all sociological purposes, and in fact the more antiquated places of Frederick and South Main were not much older than the landmarks of Lantenengo. Five or six houses on Lantenengo antedated some of the South Main and Frederick houses. But even in 1909 there was already one marked difference between the people who remained on Frederick and South Main, and the people who lived on Lantenengo: it was the difference that no one coming up in the town’s business and social life was moving to Frederick or South Main, while slowly (and even in 1909) the old Frederick and South Main houses were being given up by the families that owned them. A Christiana Street man began to amount to something in Gibbsville, and he moved to Lantenengo Street, to live with the other people who amounted to something. A move to Frederick Street or South Main would have been a move downward. In 1909 to build a house beyond 19th Street was considered foolish because it was too far out, and a house on Lantenengo beyond 19th Street was not considered an important symbol. “Anything to live on Lantenengo,” people would say of their Christiana Street neighbors who built in the 1900-block or past it. A 1900 or 2000 Lantenengo Street address carried no more social prestige locally than a 1900 Park Avenue address in New York. Still it was Lantenengo Street and things were happening in Lantenengo Street; things that had to do with progress. In 1890 the social outpost had been 16th Street; in 1909 it was 19th. But in the Twentieth Century nobody wanted to move to North Frederick Street or South Main, and the people who did live in the two oldest residential parts of town were fond of two statements: “I was born here, and I’m going to die here,” and “When I get my price, that’s when I’ll sell.”

  The money was older on South Main and North Frederick. And in some cases, there was more of it. But it was not the amount of money that mattered in the social scheme of things: Family X, living on Lantenengo Street, might be an old Gibbsville family with money, or might be a Gibbsville family with new money; but Family Y, living on North Frederick Street or South Main, belonged to the old and the rich of Gibbsville.

  The abandonment of North Frederick Street and South Main Street in favor of Lantenengo Street and the “Roads” and “Places” and “Drives” that were developed on the West Side of Gibbsville during the Twenties was almost entirely the doing of the young people, the young men and women who were coming to maturity in the second decade of the century. And their abandonment was, by the end of the third decade, so complete that the families that remained in the old houses were either mildly (or not so mildly) eccentric, or so old and conservative that their age and conservatism were themselves a kind of eccentricity. No children were being born in those houses, into those families that remained; the grandchildren were being born, but in the new or remodeled houses on Lantenengo Street and the roads, places and drives. (Or, worse, in one of the Gibbsville hospitals.) The desertion was so nearly total that even before Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideas arrived in Washington, the old homes on South Main Street and North Frederick had become monuments of a passing way of life, reluctantly and fearsomely recognized as such by the sons and daughters who had deserted the monuments, and visited only at Christmas and family holidays.

  The big westward movement paused briefly, but it paused, on October 14, 1909, and the temporary halt was caused by the marriage of two of Gibbsville’s best young people. The marriage of Edith Stokes and Joe Chapin was important enough because of the bride and groom and the family connections involved; but it was in addition a source of satisfaction to those residents of South Main and North Frederick who were disturbed by the westward trend. Edith Stokes was South Main; Joe Chapin was North Frederick, and what was more, he was taking his bride to live at Number 10 North Frederick. It was just short of a rebuke to the other young people, those who had decided to build or buy on Lantenengo. If North Frederick was good enough for Benjamin Chapin’s son Joe, it was good enough for anyone else in Gibbsville—so said the older ones. Joe’s decision earned him their gratitude and their confidence; the gratitude and confidence of people who gave neither freely. It was especially gratifying to learn of Joe’s decision because as a rich, handsome and young man, and the prince of an old Gibbsville family, he could have lived anywhere he chose and no one would have criticized him. He could have built a California bungalow in the 2100-block, and some excuses would have been found for him. Joe Chapin, as Joe Chapin, took on a sort of ready-made popularity among the friends of his parents, but when there were added to that the fact of his money, the fact of his good looks, the fact of his choosing to marry a Gibbsville girl, and the fact of his favoring North Frederick Street over Lantenengo, Joe Chapin established himself as a young man who could be relied upon not to confuse change with progress, and a young man who would not reject the good things of the past merely because they were of the past.

  There were those who believed, without insisting upon it, that Edith Stokes was entitled to some of the credit for Joe Chapin’s good sense. For of the qualities of her elders found in Edith Stokes, none was more frequently cited than her good sense. “Edith is a girl with remarkably good sense,” they would say. Nor was it a remark made exclusively by the men; the women said it too. But among the men and women who were slightly inclined toward Joe as between Joe and Edith (there was, of course, no real controversy), it was always pointed out that Joe had had the good sense to pick a girl who had good sense. “Joe could have had any girl in Gibbsville, not mentioning any names,” they would say. “But he had the good sense to pick Edith.” There was no one in Gibbsville, at least no one who counted, who would have been so discourteous as to suggest that Edith’s enormous good sense might make up for the absence of mere facial beauty. It was still the custom of the North to say of a girl that she looked very pretty today, with no intentional implication that the prettiness was not the case yesterday or likely to be tomorrow. Few girls seriously questioned the compliment, but Edith Stokes was one who never let it pass. “Oh, but I’m not pretty and I know it,” she would say, saying it with such conviction and such complete lack of coquettishness that her honesty contributed to the general regard for her good sense. Just as it was somehow known, somehow common knowledge without its being discussed, that for Edith Stokes there never had been anyone but Joe Chapin. Most other girls would at least have gone through the motions of enjoying the society of young ladies and gentlemen, friends her own age. But Edith stayed away from the picnics and the boating parties at The Run, she found excuses to exclude herself from the sleigh rides and chicken-and-waffle suppers. She rode horseback and played tennis, sometimes with young men friends, but the only young man who had ever taken her to
an Assembly was the young man whose name she would bear throughout her lifetime. It was never a question of breaking a date to be with Joe Chapin; when Joe Chapin was in town she would not make dates, so that when he would write her a note, or encounter her on North Main Street, he could always know that whenever he wanted to see her, she would be ready and free. “I don’t consider it quite fair to pretend that you’re keen on a boy when you’re not, and besides, I wouldn’t know the first thing about flirting,” she would say.