On Growing Up Tough: An Irreverent Memoir

by Taylor Caldwell

  I confess that I have interpreted that particular commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself as meaning that you should have respect for your neighbor’s rights, and should show him kindness and sympathy or at least tolerance, if he is half-way decent. But if he is an unregenerate s.o.b. and a fool or a criminal or a mendicant, or is triumphantly proud of his stupidity and will not learn from experience or from the wisdom of the ages, then as the Koran advises, avoid him always. Love is a two-way street, and the unlovable should curb his disgusting traits and pull up his socks and be a man if he wants the respect of his fellows.

  In these perilous days, alas, the Liberals are talking incessantly of “luv.” You must “luv” and you must be “warm” even if your neighbor turns your stomach and you know that he ought to be in jail, or his personal habits revolt you. This, of course, is pure sanity. For myself, I am usually in control of my less lovable traits, for I know public, or even private mayhem is frowned upon in civilized society. Then, too, the other guy may be able to hit harder.

  There was a time even in my remembrance when American men were manly, heads of their houses, and respected by their wives and children. They were rugged and hard-nosed and not swamped in a soft pink jello. A thief was a thief to them, and not a “disadvantaged, underprivileged, culturally deprived” weakling. I’ve seen men beat up other men who attempted to snatch a woman’s purse on the public streets, or who kicked a dog or punched a child. To be sure, American men demanded to be respected, and not “loved” in those nostalgically remembered days. They’d have laughed in your face if you had asked: “But don’t you Love?” They’d have said, “Yes, I love my God and my country, and my family. I respect my neighbor’s humanity and won’t infringe on his rights—so long as he doesn’t infringe on mine. But ‘love’ him? Are you crazy?”

  Americans in those days were adult, and men were masculine, women were feminine, and there was no blurring of the sexes. A man’s word was law in his home, no matter how shrewish his wife, and God help the kid who questioned the father’s edict. Of course, in those benighted eras of American masculinity, kids didn’t become “juvenile delinquents,” nor did they smoke marijuana or imbibe L.S.D., nor were their pockets stuffed with money, nor did they ride around in cars. The car was Papa’s property, used by Mama only on sufferance. And Papa held the purse strings, so there was no extravagance, no wild buying of worthless tinsel and gadgets and widgets. Best of all, there were no pants, figuratively or literally, on ladies’ legs.

  In short, women were happier then, and so were the kids. Papa wasn’t expected to change Baby’s diapers nor get his bottle in the middle of the night, nor did he wipe the dishes, or run a vacuum cleaner, or “be a pal to the children.” Papa had nights out with the Boys, and if he came home a little beery, and late, Mama knew enough to keep her mouth shut. If a man in those days had said, “I am taking a poorer job with shorter hours so I can spend more time with The Children,” his peers would have thought he was out of his mind.

  A popular woman’s magazine lately held a poll among its readers, asking how they designated their husbands in their minds and in their “projects.” Not one single lady replied that her husband was authority, friend, companion. Indeed not. All of them designated their husbands as “homeowner,” “children’s friend,” “father” or—God help us—“helper.” In brief, Papa was a sort of surrogate Mama, existing solely to feed Mama’s offspring and provide shelter for them. I detected an unconscious contempt in their replies.

  Now, what has caused American men to abdicate their position as men, as citizens, as protectors of the weak, as watchers of Washington, as strong-armed and masculine creatures who were a delight to the eyes, the hearts and the arms of their women-folk? And a pride to their children? Is it, as some claim, because women teachers are permitted to teach boys, and that women have entirely too much influence in this country? I don’t know. But a man isn’t deprived of his manhood, as in some Oriental countries, except by his consent.

  In some fashion, men in America have been deprived of their manhood; and whether they permitted their women to do that is a moot question. If they did, why did they permit it? Why have they left the larger business of watching Washington and studing the national budget, and taking a passionate interest in politics and the state of the beer in their saloon, and making a good living, for the womanish business of cosseting kids and being a good, loving dad and a sort of housemaid?

  Again, who unmanned our men? Who has made so many millions of them sickly homosexuals and weaklings dependent on government hand-outs, and shameless mendicants at the public troughs? Who has encouraged them to cry for more Welfare schemes and more schools and more recreation for the children? Who has turned them from manly lovers of their wives to unmanly lovers of their fellow men? Who has taken the pants off our men and put skirts and aprons on them? And who has made of our women imitation men with coarse husky voices, wide strides, arrogance, and muscles?

  Look at your TV some night, at “family situation comedies” for verification of the frightful state of men and their unfortunate women. The husband is usually depicted as a stupid halfwit, a buffoon, an ignoramus needing the guidance of wise, witty and waspish Mama; a fool to his own children, and a clown falling over his own feet. His children are depicted as clever, indulgent towards Daddy’s stupidity, aides to Mama, and family counselors. Are American men really like this? Or is there a nefarious scheme afoot to make them so?

  My Liberal pals always smile when I pose this question to them and they say, “Do you really believe the Communists are responsible for what you call unmanning of American men?” No, I answer, I believe you are. I tell them, “You are without real heart and spirit, enviers of real men—in spite of your empty pipe and your tweeds. If you had manhood, you wouldn’t be asking for more bounty from the pockets of your neighbors, via taxes, and more benefits and more ‘security.’ In order to make your beggar’s dream come true it is necessary for you to remove the manhood from other men, and it seems you are succeeding.”

  Somehow, when I tell them that, they don’t “love” me any longer; but they never deny the accusation, either. For they know only too well that it is they who have “encouraged”—one of their more loathsome and presently popular words—women to demand dominance in America and men to submit to that dominance. They have “encouraged” young people to despise their fathers and feel superior to the man who feeds their bottomless stomachs and clothes them. They have made fools of our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, our sons. If it is true, as is alleged, that more and more women are becoming alcoholics in their sanitized suburbs, it is because they have lost—in the deeper meaning of the word—their husbands. They have lost their authority, their lovers, their companions, their friends. They have lost what God gave them, and may God help them.

  When men are unmanned, spiritually if not physically, then a country becomes depraved, weak, degenerate, feeble of spirit, dependent, guideless, sick. Such a country can never resist authoritarian despots, tyrannies, the men on horseback, Communism.

  The men who once gloried in their race and their country, now smirk at the sight of their flag, duck their heads in embarrassment when religion is mentioned and run from the sight of the attacked helpless; they are terrified of becoming involved. They leave government in the hands of despicable politicians. What resistance will such wretches put up against internal and external Communism?

  Europeans laugh at this desire of American men “to be loved,” and I am sure all of us have heard that broad and knowing laughter. “Why are Americans such fanatics about needing to be ‘loved’?” they have asked, in articles and before audiences. “Is it a sign of weakness?” Indeed it is.

  I have watched sessions at the UN on television, and it is not very pleasant to see the covert smiles of contempt when some American spokesman meekly expresses his soft opinion. And why should they not smile? The hand in the velvet glove is not iron. The voice is not the voice of a man. The will to s
trike in the name of freedom has been drugged by sentimentality. The desire for justice has been polluted by false compassion. America has become the clown of the world because she has permitted the Liberal to deprive her of her sword, and the will to use it.

  Our Presidents are always talking about our image abroad. I have news for them. Our “image” is a surrogate Mama, in an apron, with a baby’s bottle in his hand. Surrogate Mama to a laughing and contemptuous world! Bottle-feeder to ravenous “infants” to proclaim themselves heads of some obscure state in some backyard continent!

  That is our image abroad. Does it make a nice picture to you? Then do something about it. Start in your own house, and then with your own local government. Unseat your emasculators in Washington. Drive them from your schools and your courts. Proclaim to the world again—and again—that you will stand no more nonsense, and that our flag is to be honored wherever it flies over any embassy; that you have power and are quite willing to use it, in the name of freedom and justice, tempered only slightly by masculine mercy.

  Then, perhaps, America will be honorably feared and respected, and peace might really come to a mad and disordered world. The center that “cannot hold” might tighten and become iron and invincible, and Doomsday thus averted.

  11 Women’s Lib

  The Left, alas, is now running yet another “Liberation Movement,” this one championing females who believe that the male sex has somehow done the ladies wrong. The members of this Front say they want all the spoils the boys appear to be getting out of life. They’re quite mad, of course. What these “girls” are about to do is to ruin the biggest Con Game, and the most ancient, which one section of humanity has ever imposed on another, since Eve invented it.

  I’m just jealous, myself, having been deprived by circumstances from getting into that Big Con Game … alas, alas, alas. But I’ve stood on the sidelines and seethed with envy, and now I hope—I say with a grin over clenched teeth—that the Liberation “girls” will get exactly what they want. It is all they deserve.

  I am convinced that the Liberationist females, judging from their photographs at least, and on some personal observation, are so unattractive mentally, physically, and in personality, that they are envious because they can’t even qualify for the Big Con Game, and so don’t want other women to wallow in it with sweet and secret smiles. As for myself, I am only wistful, and plenty happy that my two beautiful daughters are in on the Game and enjoying every minute of it, and wouldn’t even dream of Female Liberation. I brought them up to appreciate their blessings—and to shut their mouths around their husbands, for fear the boys would catch on and demand liberation for themselves. Which is exactly the calamity these rampant females in the “Liberation Movement” are going to precipitate. God help the contented women who will be their victims!

  The Liberation Ladies would have just loved my Mama, who was very advanced and ultra-modern, even more than most women of today. Mama believed in rearing girls exactly as boys were reared, and no nonsense about the weaker sex and the softer yearnings in a girl’s heart. Mama believed that what a boy could, and should, do a girl could and should do also; and if a girl had softer muscles and more tender feelings, well that was tough.

  So, I was reared just as my brother was reared—except that Little Brother was somewhat smarter than I was and ran his own Con Game against Mama, and succeeded to an enviable extent.

  From early childhood I hauled heavy scuttles of coal in from the coal shed, in England, for my parents’ fires. The housemaid refused to do it. “It’s a man’s job,” she would say, but Papa, having a dominant wife, lay down on the job. Mama, who had a convenient memory, forgot that what a man can do a woman can, too, and did not haul the coals. She remembered that only when it came to me. So I did the hauling, and nearly pulled my arms from the sockets in the rain and the snow and the harsh winds of a British winter.

  I did notice that the young daughters of our neighbors did not stoke the fireplaces and drag scuttles, nor clean out the fireplaces in the cold grey dawns. The fathers and the boys of the family did this, while the Mamas and the daughters stayed snuggled-up in bed. My first resentment began, but being a discreet child and knowing the weight of Mama’s hand I said nothing. Ah, Mama was a real Liberation Movement in herself!

  And when we came to America, guess who did most of the stoking of the huge furnace and the carrying out of ashes. Right. I did. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Mama would say, roughly, when I felt that I would collapse. “What a boy your age can do you can do, too. Girls are just as strong as boys. You’re not going to pamper yourself as long as I am around here!”

  Then, there were the enormous snows, often reaching four feet, almost as high as I was. I had to take the weighty coal shovel and get rid of the snow, all by myself. “No coddling here, just because you are a girl,” said Mama. See how she echoes the Liberation Ladies of today? My ears would ring and my arms scream with exertion, and my heart would pound in my throat. Neighbors would notice, with outrage, but when one of them complained gently to Mama she would say sturdily, “What a boy can do a girl can do! No cosseting in our house!”

  When I was fifteen and an adult, Mama decided that I was quite old enough to go to work—at the first work I could obtain. I was an Adult and should have a job. So, I was pulled out of school and sent job-hunting, and I found heavy laboring work in a factory, six days a week, twelve hours a day. “Why shouldn’t a woman do the same work a man does?” the Liberation Ladies of today ask. Girls, I wish to God you had had a Mama like mine! You’d be silent these days, instead of noisy and stupid. I stood on my feet for those twelve hours a day, at a machine, bending and stooping and hauling, in danger from wheels and lathes and whatever. I worked like a man all right.

  It was around this time that I first noticed that Boys were not all as objectionable as Little Brother, and that some Boys did not resemble Papa in the least. The first feminine instincts began to stir in my fifteen-year-old heart. The Boys were in the factory, and sometimes when they saw me panting too heavily they would force me to sit down for a few minutes and take my place, in mercy, at the monstrous machine. And it was about that time that I began to dream of someday marrying a kind and considerate husband, one who would cherish me and know me for a female and not a Liberated Woman, and take care of me and love and pamper me and hold me precious as a queen, and buy a pleasant house for me where I’d have nothing to do but housework and taking care of children—children quite unlike Little Brother—and shop and cook. I would no longer have to be anxious about carfare and worry if my allowance would cover lunch, and I’d have pretty clothes and be protected all my life—with no effort on my part. (Alas, alas, alas!)

  After work, the snow-shoveling and the carrying of ashes was still my job, and to this had been added outside window-washing, gutter-cleaning, grass-cutting and cultivating, and shingle-repairing. Papa, prodded by Mama, was quite an overseer. He would stand, smoking his pipe, while I teetered on a long ladder and pounded shingles and nails into the roof, and he directed my efforts. Papa, too, would have loved the modern Liberation Movement for Women. Frankly, I think he and Mama invented it.

  When I infrequently complained, pleading exhaustion, Mama would toss her head with a triumphant warning smile, and say, “What a man can do a woman can do! There’s no difference. Sex has nothing to do with it!” Just once, seeing Papa hanging up the laundry, I sarcastically remarked, “And what a woman can do a man can do, too.” This earned me a clout from Mama.

  My Aunt Pollie and my Uncle Willie lived not far from us. Aunt Pollie was not a feminist. She was a lovely gracious lady with long blonde hair and big blue eyes and a dainty charming manner. She had a Mama, too, but fortunately a Victorian Mama who believed that a woman’s place was in her house, and she a queen in her house, and that gentlemen were born for the cherishing, guarding, loving, and pampering of ladies. (Ah, me!)

  To Aunt Pollie, Ladies were Ladies. Gentlemen earned mysterious livings “at business,�
� and it was none of the Ladies’ affair, except when it came to wills. Girl-children were brought up in the graceful womanly arts of cooking, house-managing, children-rearing, sewing, embroidering—and civilized leisure. It was a woman’s place to be an ornament and a comforting presence in her home, adored alike by husband and children, and never was she to be exposed to the harsh elements of competition and outside work, and it was incredible that she should ever be expected to be a “partner” to her husband. She was above such nonsense. She was her husband’s queen, presiding beautifully over the table he provided and over the silver-covered dishes, the contents of which she had toothsomely prepared herself. As for holding a job and “helping out,” Aunt Pollie would have raised a gilt eyebrow in incredulous amusement. Such things were “below” a woman’s existence.

  Aunt Pollie, clothed exquisitely and smelling delightfully of perfume, would go with her redoubtable Mama to twice-weekly matinees, then come home to prepare fragrant tea and bake luscious scones to be eaten with homemade strawberry jam. Though she had no modern washing machine and used flat irons and hung out her laundry and had no vacuum cleaner and other “aids,” she managed to look serene and rested at all times, and had many hours of leisure every day.