Crucible of a Generation
Page 14
a miscellany of watches, ax handles, twist tobacco, and ancient bicycles.
From time to time, one of the traders would stand on the high bank over-
looking the wagon yard and yell: “I’ll give boot or take boot or swap even.” The
reporter did not say that the people would slowly approach the seller. Instead it
was “the folks” who would “mosey over” to see what he had to trade.
It was noisy there in the wagon yard. Hound dogs were howling mournfully.
Someone picked out chords to test a guitar. A whip was cracked as an owner
tried to incent “an old rip mule to trot out and show his paces.” Mules were hee-
hawing, and against all this background noise Carrollton laughed and talked. It
was a sociable event.
Taylor Criswell told the story of the raider of his hen house, when not only his
eggs disappeared but also a painted wooden egg. The way he told it, six months
later he killed a chicken snake and noted a bulge in the middle which he pro-
claimed with conviction turned out to be the wooden egg. Criswell then turned
to business. He offered for sale six twists of tobacco for a quarter or “what’ll you
trade,” sorghum syrup at fifty cents a gallon and ax handles made of seasoned
hickory at a dime apiece.
Frank Askew was a tall black boy in rubber boots. He came to swap his dog
Cora and a fresh coonskin. A cross-eyed boy came by with a guitar. Askew report-
edly plunked the strings and started to sing:
I say gimme fried chicken when I’m hongry.
Gimme white lightnin’ when I’m dry.
Oh, I say, gimme fried chicken when I’m hongry.
Gimme me white lightnin’ when I’m dry.
Gimme me a good lookin’ brown skin woman
In heaven when I die. 21
Askew extolled Cora’s praises but the guitar owner didn’t need a dog or a
coonskin.
Newton King had a bicycle and a guitar but what he really wanted was a fiddle.
Oscar Bush showed him a fiddle enhanced with fourteen rattlesnake rattles. That
was to sweeten its tone, he said. King offered a dollar; Bush walked away from it,
but when he slowly turned round and came back it was evident a deal was near,
and in the end King got his fiddle and Bush a bicycle.
C. E. Adams came “a tradin’” with a complete outfit consisting of a mule
named Jack, a set of harness tied with string and a decrepit buggy. As traders will,
80 Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941
he extolled his mule: “it’s the perkiest stepping mule you ever saw, frisky as a feist
dog.” His health was declining, said Adams, and he wanted to get rid of mule,
buggy, harness and all, “like she stands.” It was a complicated business, but in the
end, with a watch making part of the bargain, a buyer led off the mule named
Jack still hitched to the buggy. It was trading day in Carrollton. “And how’ll you
swap?” 22
Carrollton was a small town; Houston and Harris County, Texas, formed a
large metropolitan area. But the budget adopted by the Harris County Board of
Public Welfare was, to say the least, modest. With a 1940 population of 384,514,
it planned its 1942 welfare expenditures at $363,000, $25,000 less than the 1941
request, $21,733 less than the 1941 approved budget, and $10,489 less than actual
expenses over the year. Based upon these stringent appropriations, the Houston
Chronicle editorialized, the county was fulfilling its pledge to the community, and would attempt to meet its responsibilities without spending one dollar more than
was absolutely necessary. The poverty of cash contrasted to the wealth of compla-
cency was enshrined in the closing observation that “It has become the solemn
patriotic duty of every possible official and every citizen to restrict all expenditures
to vital and essential items.” 23
*
Depression could not extinguish America’s love for the automobile. But as in
so many aspects of life, people adapted. Conrad Pontiac in Englewood, Colo-
rado, offered a ’31 Hudson sedan at $65, a ’31 Studebaker coupe at $75 and a ’32
Buick coupe at $95. They might not, the dealer said, show low mileage on their
speedometers but he emphasized they were “GOOD TRANSPORTATION.” At
the upper end of the market Mountain Motors offered a late-model ’40 Packard
four-door trunk sedan equipped with radio, heater, and overdrive at $895. Its
maker urged prospective buyers to “Ask the Man Who Owns One.” Radios and
heaters were not likely to be original equipment, and cars equipped with them
commanded higher prices. When radios were first offered to car buyers there
was concern about distractions that would cause accidents. But the market and
the driving public had by 1941 taken this in stride.
The ’31 models selling at less than $100 in their time would have been classed
as “jalopies.” But there were available many later-model cars at extremely low
prices: at Denver Buick, Inc., a ’36 Plymouth Deluxe Coupe at $295, a ’34 Chev-
rolet Coupe for $165, and a ’33 Buick Coupe with “new paint” at $125. The
solid middle class of car buyers was represented by a ’37 Buick Special four-door
trunk sedan with radio and heater for $475, a ’37 Olds Club coupe with radio,
heater, and sport lite at $395 and a ’38 Buick Convertible Coupe with radio,
heater, low miles and “very clean, priced to sell.” 24
*
It was not only in automobiles that the price levels of a def lationary era are still
capable of surprising us today. One of Denver’s leading department stores, May
Company, offered “prep suits,” fingertips, and overcoats at two for $19. In men’s
Wednesday, December 3, 1941 81
FIGURE 7.2 Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler (see color plate section).
Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, 2591244.
sizes, the careful buyer could find suits in tweed, cheviot, and cashmere hand-
finished fabrics, single or double breasted, or the new drape models, at two for
$33. The same price applied to overcoats in heavy winter-weight fabrics. In an
age when adolescent boys made the transition from knickers to long trousers,
“longies” sold for $2.00. Women could buy rayon, crepe or satin slips, tai-
lored, embroidered or lace trimmed, at three for $2.00. A household essential,
wool blankets were reduced from $2.59 to $2.00 a pair. Christmas was on the
way, and Santa could have filled his capacious bag with a wide array of toys:
an easel-type blackboard, dolls with moving eyes, a heavy steel wagon, a dial
typewriter, adjustable roller skates or a rotary type printing press, all of them
two for $2.00. 25
82 Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941
Human Interest: All-American Girl
The scope of the defense program may have been expressed in billions of dollars
but it would take the work of multitudes of modest workers in modest positions
to move the program toward its goals. One of these, reported in The Washing-
ton Post , was Margelee Hollingsworth of Acadia, Florida, population 4,055. Not
without trepidation, Margy emerged from Washington’s Union Station, twenty-
two years and ninety-eight pounds of hope and ambition. 26 It had been a difficult decision, leaving home for the firs
t time. But there were exciting possibilities:
larger opportunities than Acadia could offer, an increase in salary, new people.
In the manner of young women of the era, Margy powdered her nose and
straightened the seams of her stockings in the cab that took her to the Navy per-
sonnel office. Standing in a long line, she was amazed at how quickly things went;
and she emerged a clerk-typist in the Navy’s Torpedo Section at an annual salary
of $1,440.
She found the tempo of life fast by the standards of Acadia. Everyone walked
fast and no one on the street said “Good morning” or “Howdy” to Margy. She
soon realized why. In Acadia, everyone was acquainted; in Washington, nobody
knew her.
She found a home at the Belmont Gardens where 160 “government boys and
girls” also lived. A week later she wrote home in wide-eyed wonder: “This is a
wonderful town. There are so many things to see here.” After a month, dipping
her pen in the ink bottle (the ballpoint pen was in the future) she wrote home
that she was enjoying herself very much and that Washington was right in the
middle of things. But taking up her pen again, not to her parents but to her diary,
she confessed: “I’m terribly homesick.” She worried, too, about how Dad’s citrus
was coming along.
Things were brighter by the fourth month. She went out dancing at a night-
club. She faithfully recorded the event. The boy was nice, the club was nice, too. It
was, she reflected, like going juking, “only you didn’t have to put in any nickels.”
At the Belmont Gardens, Margy’s prim, plump roommate played the piano
while others of her fellow residents gathered ’round in song. Returning to her
room, Margy looked for a small cardboard box in her bureau drawer. It contained
her collection of demitasse spoons. It was certainly growing. One wonders about
Margy’s further career in the nation’s capital. One wonders, too, if she ever went
back to Acadia.
*
Human interest stories like Margy’s could also be presented in photographs. A
photo spread in The Oregonian featured landing-craft practice at McNeil Island in Puget Sound. Fifteen men were needed to carry the coffin of 815-pound Ruth
Pontico. Primary schoolers were a perennially popular topic, and this edition
showed students creating posters for the annual Ainsworth Grade School Carni-
val. Youth and age were combined in the picture showing one-time presidential
candidate Al Smith “tripping the light fantastic” with a chorine from Olson and
Johnson’s Sons o’ Fun.
Wednesday, December 3, 1941 83
Human Interest: A Fatal Shooting
Stories of crime were and are a journalistic staple. The most celebrated are capi-
tal crimes and among these, surpassing crimes rooted in money or revenge,
are crimes of passion, especially when a beautiful and sympathetic woman kills
her lover. The trial of Lucyle Richards in Houston for the fatal shooting of her
employer, Frank Dew, a wealthy Houston cattleman, had all the elements guar-
anteed to command a fascinated public.
She was clad all in black—dress, shoes, hose, coat, and a dramatically flared off-
the-face black hat. The defendant’s face was fixed in a solemn mask that never
varied throughout the proceedings. Sitting with her during the trial were her
sister, Mrs. Shirley Fitzgerald of Alvin, Texas, and “Sis” Martin, the cowgirl singer.
The defendant was a professional bull rider and an eleven-year rodeo per-
former. She had been employed by Dew to ride bucking broncos in the first
rodeo held in the new Sam Houston Coliseum and thereafter to break wild horses
and train roping horses for him at a salary of $200 a month and board for her
own horse. But Dew had paid only half the salary, a circumstance that must have
aggravated the tension between the two. Emblematic of the defendant’s spirit of
adventure, she was also a licensed aviation pilot, an accomplishment rare at the
time and rarer still for a woman.
Her marital history was as turbulent as her professional career. First married to
Tex Richards, she had subsequently wed both Charley Bright and Donald M. Taft,
Jr. The timing of these marriages and attempted annulments were key factors in
the case. These marital proceedings notwithstanding, the defendant testified that
she had been intimate with Dew and indeed that he had promised to marry her.
In this tangled web of relationships the defendant testified that she had married
Bright and Taft to get away from Dew and because, in testimony bound to appeal
to the jury, she wanted a home, a family, and children. There were strands of con-
flicting passions here. While the defendant testified that she was trying to escape
Dew, she also testified that he had threatened her with death if she did not procure
an annulment of her most recent marriage to Taft and marry him.
Another dark undertone in the case was insurance. It appeared that Dew had
taken out $15,000 of insurance on the life of the defendant and then had the
policy proceeds assigned to himself. In an altercation between the two, Dew had
angrily told the defendant that she was worth more to him dead than alive.
The defendant had spent part of the fatal afternoon waiting for weather to clear
to give some friends an airplane ride. Called by Dew, she proceeded to his fash-
ionable River Oaks apartment where he angrily accused her of failing to procure
an annulment of her marriage to Taft. The defendant testified that Dew slapped
her, knocked her down, picked her up, and violently shook her by the armpits. It
was then that the defendant reached into her purse for her 25-mm handgun. In
the ensuing struggle the defendant testified that she never had her finger on the
trigger, that the gun had “exploded,” with results fatal to Dew.
Why did the defendant carry a handgun? She testified that Dew had insisted
she carry it for her own protection. She further testified that often, on drives in the
country with Dew, they had competed in shooting at road signs and fence posts,
84 Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941
testimony bound to appeal to anyone who has ever driven the rural roads of Texas.
The defendant testified that she had usually been the victor in such contests; this
must have added to the tensions between the two.
The courtroom was crowded for the closing argument by Assistant District
Attorney A. C. Windborn; it was said to be the most brilliant and stirring of his
career. Juries do not bring in a verdict until they have had one or more meals at
the expense of the county, and it was only after dinner that the jury retired for
the evening.
Diversions: Arts and Entertainment
War dominated the new books of the season. Among the most popular was Wil-
liam L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary , his narrative of the swelling power of Nazi Germany as seen by a “neutral” observer. Former communist Jan Valtin had warned of
the threat of Nazi Germany before a recent audience in Houston. The message
was that America must be involved because its vital interests were at stake; and
he expounded this theme at length in his best-seller Out of the Night . With the Soviet Union’s gallant defensive battle much in the headlines,
an audience was
assured for The Soviet Power: Why the Soviet Union Will Help Defeat Hitler by the unshakably contrarian Hewlett Johnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury.
Perhaps it was the quest for certainty in an uncertain world that made the
prognostications of Nostradamus of 400 years ago pertinent. But all reading did
not focus on events on the world stage and popular fiction included The Strange Woman by Ben Ames Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabelle Scott Rorick, Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty and The Hill of Doves by South African novelist Stuart Cloete.
*
The glitter and glamour of Hollywood had provided diversion, entertainment,
and moments of joy during the dark years of the depression. They would per-
form the same function against growing threats of war. Everybody went to the
movies; everyone loved the movies; and the goings-on of the people who made
and performed in the movies were topics of perennial interest. Fans of the Andy
Hardy series depicting the joys and woes of an irrepressible adolescent were glad to learn that Mickey Rooney, Lewis Stone, Cecilia Parker, Ann Rutherford and Fay
Holden would soon be before the cameras filming The Courtship of Andy Hardy.
What made this news even pleasanter was the return to the series of Cecilia Parker
after her absence because of a contractual dispute with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Paramount was on the verge of signing Gary Cooper to play Robert Jordan
in For Whom the Bell Tolls. For the role, Cooper would be on loan from Samuel Goldwyn. Twentieth Century Fox had signed Spring Byington to replace Helen
Broderick in Rings on Her Fingers , and Olivia de Havilland was to be tested for the female lead in Warner’s Saratoga Trunk after Irene Dunne had abandoned the role.
It was a sign of Hollywood times that the Disney Organization had just delivered
“The Thrifty Pig,” the first of four defense cartoons for the Canadian government.
FIGURE 7.3 See color plate section.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Life Begins for Andy Hardy poster from Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.
86 Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941
If America was not yet at war, Disney was. Three of the short subjects concerned
war savings, but the fourth demonstrated the operation of anti-blitzkrieg weapons
to be used for recruit training in the Canadian forces.