by Ann Tatlock
In all my life up to that point, I don't think I was ever so happy as when Mother handed me that blanket. Her coveted permission was granted, her own donation given, and I was in business.
I dug out my old red wagon from the garage, washed it, oiled its squeaking wheels, and generally readied it to make the rounds. I wanted Charlotte to go door to door with me, but she was still sick in bed. (Mrs. Besac had come around to the office looking for a cure, and Dr. Hal had sent her to the drugstore to get some expectorant and Vicks vapor rub.) But then I realized that Claudia and Molly would actually be better for tugging at the heartstrings of our neighbors. Those two little girls dressed up in lace and ribbons were irresistible. They happily agreed to go with me--to them it seemed a great adventure--and even Mother said it might be a good experience for them. "At least," Mother added, "it'll get them out of the house for a while, give them something to do." We all three put on our best Sunday dresses, buckled on our black patent leather shoes over white ankle socks, and tied ribbons in our hair. When Simon said we looked like a bunch of sissies, I knew the adults would love us.
Papa certainly did. We called to him for his approval just as we were ready to leave, the three of us lined up on the front porch with our wagon. Mother's blanket was in the wagon to act as a sort of incentive to our prospective contributors: "If someone else can give, then so can I." Papa said we made him proud, then gave us each a kiss and sent us on our way.
Our first visit was to our long-time next-door neighbors, Ed and Clara Mobley. They were an elderly couple but still spry. Every evening we saw them out for what they called their "daily constitutional"--a walk that took them past our house in one direction at seven o'clock and past our house in the other direction at seven-thirty. They spent a good portion of every day working in their garden--Clara Mobley's homemade pickles had taken first place at the county fair three years in a row--and they volunteered a great deal of their time to church functions and numerous civic activities. I had them figured as exactly the type of people who would want to donate a blanket to the poor.
Molly and Claudia stood on either side of me while I rang the doorbell. The wagon was left in full view at the foot of the porch steps. Because their front door was open to catch the breeze, we could see Mrs. Mobley coming down the front hall from the back of the house.
"Land's sake!" she cried. "If it's not the little Eide girls!"
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Mobley," I said politely as she opened the screen door.
"My, but don't you look fine, all dressed up in those pretty dresses. Come in, come in! What's the occasion, girls? Today's not some sort of holiday, is it?"
Before I could say anything, a voice reached us from somewhere inside. "Who is it, Clara?"
"It's the little Eide girls, Ed," Mrs. Mobley called over her shoulder. "All dressed up and looking pretty as a picture."
Mr. Mobley appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Come on in, girls," he invited cheerfully. "We've just squeezed some fresh lemonade. Come on in and join us."
Claudia and Molly eagerly accepted the invitation. I was eager only to get down to business. But I, too, sat down to a glass of lemonade and a plate of oatmeal cookies, afraid to offend our neighbors by declining.
When we were all seated around their large kitchen table, Mr. Mobley asked, "Now, to what do we owe the honor of your company?"
"Well, Mr. Mobley," I explained, "my sisters and I are on a mission."
"A mission, is it?" The corners of the man's mouth turned back in one of those grown-up "I'll-play-along-with-it" smiles. "And what kind of mission might that be?"
"We're collecting blankets for the poor," I said with great seriousness. I even thrust my chin out a little as though daring him to smile again.
"Blankets!" Mrs. Mobley dabbed at her moist upper lip with a linen napkin. "My goodness, child. How can you possibly think of blankets when the mercury's just about to burst right out the end of the thermometer?"
I cleared my throat. "It's always prudent to plan ahead, Mrs. Mobley," I said, parroting Mother. "It may be hot now, but winter's going to come before we know it. And there are people out there who are going to be plenty cold unless someone's willing to give them a blanket."
Both sets of Mobley eyebrows went up at the same time. I had their attention. While my sisters gobbled down cookies and guzzled lemonade, I tried to appear sophisticated as I told our neighbors about the residents of Soo City. Mr. Mobley nodded while I spoke as though he already knew all about it, but Mrs. Mobley punctuated my speech by occasionally crying out, "Oh my!" and "Oh, dear me!"
When I finished, Mrs. Mobley rose from the table and said, "I'll check the linen closet right now. I'm sure we must have something...." Her voice trailed off as she disappeared down the hall. Mr. Mobley poured Claudia and Molly more lemonade while we waited. He said we were doing a fine thing and promised to make an announcement about it at the Odd Fellows meeting that evening. I told him there was a box in Papa's waiting room where anyone who wanted could drop off donations.
In a moment Mrs. Mobley returned with not one but two blankets. "I'm afraid they're a bit moth-eaten," she apologized, "but they're still warm."
I thanked the Mobleys for the blankets and for the lemonade and cookies and told Mrs. Mobley I was looking forward to seeing her pickles win another blue ribbon at the county fair in the fall.
Our experience was just about the same at every house we visited that afternoon--which wasn't very many because everywhere we went we were invited in for something to eat. At the Hansens' it was butterscotch cookies. At the Watsons', pistachio cake. At the home of Widow Wilma we were actually served little finger sandwiches and chocolate truffles. And at almost every house, there was lemonade. Tall glasses of pulpy lemonade with plenty of sugar and ice. As with the Mobleys, I didn't want to refuse for fear of offending, but our neighbors' hospitality, however well intended, did take up a great deal of time.
Our only bad experience was when we rang the doorbell at the Oberlyns' house. I didn't know Mr. Oberlyn other than by sight, but he had a reputation for being a grouch. It was kind of an initiation into manhood for the neighborhood boys to break his living room window by throwing a baseball through it and running away before getting caught. They chose Mr. Oberlyn's house because he was the one sure to yell the loudest and swear the bluest streak. His wife, though, was known for being a sweet-tempered soul, so when my sisters and I stopped there on our rounds, I was hoping it would be Mrs. Oberlyn who answered the door.
Unfortunately, she must not have been home that afternoon. We were met at the door by the grouch himself, a slovenly bear of a man who hadn't bothered to put on a shirt but wore only a T-shirt over his hairy chest and large protruding belly. The T-shirt wasn't even tucked into his pants but hung out over the belt like the drooping lower lip of an old hound dog. He looked like we had just awakened him from a nap, but the newspaper he carried in one hand suggested he might have been reading. A day's growth of whiskers darkened his face, and a toothpick poked out from one corner of his down-turned mouth. All in all, not exactly the portrait of friendliness.
We weren't invited in for lemonade and cookies. I had to talk through the screen door to explain why we were there. All the while I was speaking, Mr. Oberlyn gnawed on the toothpick, his thick lips and flabby jowls working lazily to torture that little stick of wood. When I finished my speech, he hitched up his pants, rolled the toothpick with his tongue to the other side of his mouth, and slowly announced, "Little lady, the only blanket I'd give those lazy good-for-nothings would be a Hoover blanket." With that, he opened the screen door and tossed out the folded newspaper. It landed with a slap on the porch not far from Molly's feet. When the door slammed shut again, he said, "If you want it, you're welcome to it."
Molly's lower lip began to quiver, but I checked the tears by making a funny face as we walked away from the house--minus the newspaper. Claudia and Molly both laughed at my contortions, and the man's rudeness was quickly forgotten. At least by the
m. I didn't let on how much it bothered me to hear someone call the Soo City residents a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings now that I was acquainted with some of them.
But we kept going and, as I said, everyone else was gracious and neighborly and willing to help if they could. Not every household had a blanket to spare, but by the end of the afternoon we headed home pulling a wagon with eight blankets in it, and we were rather proud of our accomplishment.
Our satisfaction, though, was somewhat deflated by the effects of too much lemonade. Molly, who was too shy to ask for a bathroom, had an accident on the way home that left her socks wet and her shoes making squishing sounds as she walked. Mother was none too happy about that, but she was further annoyed by the fact that neither my sisters nor I could eat our supper. We were too full and too nauseous. Papa gave us bicarbonate of soda to help settle our stomachs, but we still felt a little green around the gills when we slipped into bed that night. I told myself I was suffering for a good cause, but as I lay there listening to the occasional moan that escaped one or the other of us, I vowed never to drink another glass of lemonade for as long as I lived.
Chapter Thirteen
We wouldn't have thought it possible, but the summer only grew increasingly hotter, and sweat-soaked clothes and handheld fans simply became a way of life. People were often dropping off into a dead faint from heat exhaustion. It happened everywhere--in the breadlines, on the street corners where people waited for trolleys, during services in stifling church sanctuaries. In our own church, more than one red-robed choir member tumbled over in the middle of an anthem and had to be revived with water from the baptismal fount.
At home our best defense was simply to open the windows against the heat and draw the shades against the sun so that the hotter it grew outside, the more our living was done within the shadows of indoors. We had numerous small oscillating fans around the house--one in the kitchen, another in the parlor, and one in each bedroom--though any relief they gave us was more illusion than fact. Sometimes when Mother got desperate, she bought a block of ice from the iceman when he made his rounds in the neighborhood. We weren't one of his regular customers because we had bought a refrigerator (which we continued to refer to as an icebox) right before the stock market crashed. But when the iceman came down our street, Mother had Simon or me run out and hail him down to see if he could spare a block. Usually he could. He'd haul the block into the house on his back, gripped in a huge pair of tongs slung over his shoulder, and at Mother's instruction drop it into a metal tub in front of the fan in the kitchen. The air blowing over the ice did help keep the temperature down in that busiest and hottest of rooms. Uncle Jim chipped little chunks of ice off the block so we could have slivers to suck on.
When there was enough wind to make the effort worthwhile, Mother hung up damp sheets in the front and back doorways to create a crosscurrent of cool air through the house. It was a popular idea in our neighborhood, and sometimes on windy days you could walk down our street and see white sheets flapping in every open doorway like so many flags of surrender. Another trick of Mother's was to put our pillowcases in the icebox in the morning and leave them there all day to chill. Resting our cheeks against the cool linen at night made it easier to fall asleep. We only hoped we would successfully reach our dreams before all the coolness wore off.
Mother frequently asked me to watch Claudia and Molly for a half hour or so while they played in a tub of cool water. I didn't mind. I'd sit beside that huge bear-claw basin and dip my wrists in the water and lift the refreshing coolness to my face and neck. The girls and I sang and played games, and sometimes when they got carried away with the splashing, I'd come away soaked through to the skin. But the damp material felt so refreshing I wouldn't bother to change into a dry dress.
Rufus, Luke, and Simon often sneaked down to the river without permission to spend a few hours cooling off, but I never went with them. Only after they all began to suffer from ear infections brought on by the river water did they turn instead to the streets downtown where some of the older kids had learned how to open the fire hydrants with a pilfered wrench.
A few times Uncle Jim drove us kids out to a lake about five miles north of the city. When Charlotte finally got over being sick, I was able to invite her along. (She claimed to have had a combination of pneumonia, bronchitis, rheumatic fever, and maybe even a touch of the gout all in one, but Papa himself had gone to see her and said it was nothing more than a bad case of the common cold.) The grown-ups would have come along to the lake if we'd had another car. Papa's Buick was a spacious vehicle but not nearly large enough for everyone. With my cousins, my siblings, Charlotte and me, and of course Uncle Jim, the car was already crowded enough. Simon and Luke begged Uncle Jim to let them make the journey standing on the running boards, but Uncle Jim said that if they fell off and broke their necks he'd have to answer to Papa, Mother, Aunt Sally, and Dr. Hal, and that was far too many people to reckon with. The two boys grumbled but finally sat inside the car with the rest of us. We all just about died of heat stroke on the way to the lake, but the cool water revived us when we got there. Sadly, though, we got so hot and sweaty again on the long drive home that we were really no better off for having made the trip.
Papa ordered us every day to drink, drink, drink. I quickly got back my taste for lemonade, and I must have consumed it by the gallon. All day long, everyone in the house sipped at glasses of water, lemonade, iced tea, soda pop, or milk, sometimes until our stomachs were bloated and we were arguing over the use of the facilities. Papa also instructed us to eat salty foods. As I recall, every dish Mother and Aunt Sally prepared that summer was on the salty side, which made us all the more thirsty.
In spite of our best efforts to stay cool, the heat made us all sluggish and irritable. Mother snapped at us more often, Molly's lower lip quivered more frequently, and Uncle Jim--when he wasn't at one of his union meetings--walked about the house stripped to the waist and cursing the weather. More than once Uncle Jim entered the kitchen and compared the room to Hades--though his language was a bit more colorful--and he claimed we all were suffering the torments of perdition well before our time. Mother took offense at his theology, declaring, "I for one have no intention of spending any time at all in that big inferno underground." Aunt Sally simply ordered Uncle Jim to get out of the kitchen and "for heaven's sake, put some clothes on!"
All of us, from Papa on down, were enervated daily by the heat, and by the time evening rolled around, we could do little more than gather around the radio in the parlor, sip our iced drinks, and pray for rain. We barely had the energy left to wave our cardboard fans, the ones that advertised Morton's Funeral Home where Grandfather Eide's service had been held some years before. Most people in our neighborhood cooled themselves with fans advertising one funeral parlor or another, and in a macabre sort of way, those funeral parlor fans seemed rather appropriate. More than one person died that summer of heat-related causes, and the rest of us were more or less convinced we'd be the next to go.
The heat of those middle months of 1932 was so memorable that to this day I cannot separate the name of Franklin Roosevelt from those steamy nights around the radio when I first became aware of the man. As governor of New York, he had accepted the Democratic nomination for president on the second of July, and all that summer we listened to his campaign speeches over the radio and wondered whether he would beat Hoover in the November elections. All the grown-ups in our household decided that Roosevelt had their vote. They only hoped he could do what Hoover had not yet done--pull the country up out of the depths of the Depression. We listened to his campaign promises in silence, the only noise in the parlor other than the radio being that of Aunt Sally's chair squeaking as she rocked and the clinking of ice cubes against glass as we sipped at our drinks.
The heat did have one advantage, though: People were no doubt more willing to part with their heavy bed covers in the midst of a sweltering summer than they might otherwise have been in midwinter. Blankets we
re left regularly in the box in the waiting room, and soon the box overflowed.
At the end of the first week, I had twenty-two blankets to take to Soo City. True to his word, Mr. Mobley had made an announcement at the Odd Fellows' meeting, and that resulted in the donation of six or seven of the blankets. The rest were from regular patients of Papa and Dr. Hal. Miss Cole, when I told her what I was doing, returned with a hand-stitched quilt the day after my piano lesson (taken, she hinted, directly from her own hope chest), and old Mrs. Greenaway brought a couple of woolen coverings simply in celebration of the fact that she was still alive. I didn't do any more door-to-door solicitation--Molly had been somewhat traumatized by the loss of her lemonade on a public sidewalk, and I wasn't exactly eager to run the risk of another stomachache myself.
All twenty-two blankets, plus the little red wagon, went with Papa and me the next time we returned together to Soo City. The backseat of the Buick was crammed so full Papa couldn't even see out the rear window. Since it was impossible to drag all the blankets around at once, my plan was to take about a half dozen in the wagon at a time, hand those out, and go back to the car for more.
On the way there Papa said, "You've done a fine thing, Ginny. Some of the people in Soo City are going to appreciate your efforts--even more so later, when winter comes. I say some, because not all will appreciate what you're trying to do for them. I want you to understand that these people are in need, but there's not one among them who cares to admit it, obvious as it is. It's a hard thing for a man to be wanting. It makes him feel like he's failed, like he's not a man at all. And it's very hard for some people to accept what they think of as charity. The funny thing is, if the tables were turned and we were the ones in need, there's no doubt these very same people would do everything they could to help us. They wouldn't think for a minute to just stand by and do nothing while we went without. It's only natural for people to want to help other people, but at the same time it's not equally a part of our human nature to be glad to get help. You know how our Lord said it's more blessed to give than to receive--well, when it comes right down to it, it's a whole lot easier on a man's pride to give than to receive, and that's just a fact."