P.S. Guess what? There is something I didn’t know about — O’Groton. It’s not spelled that way. It’s spelled au gratin, which means “with cheese” in French. It doesn’t make it taste any better. We had cauliflower au gratin tonight and it was still vomitous. A good eight on the vomitron. Ozzie and I have invented the vomitometric scale, or for short the vomitron and it goes from zero to ten.
December 1, 1932
When we came back from school today we smelled all sorts of good things. Mama and Jackie were baking cookies for Mama’s literary club. Mama belongs to two ladies’ clubs, the Indianapolis Woman’s Club and the Fortnightly Club — one eats and the other doesn’t. As far as I can see that is the main difference. It’s just about all the same ladies in both clubs, but in one they talk about books and in the other they write papers about boring things. In the Woman’s Club all they serve is ice water! I would never belong to such a club. Ice water and highfalutin intellectual ideas. Enough to make you throw up even without any food.
Jackie makes little dough folk for me and Willie Faye and Ozzie. Ozzie drips green food coloring on his so it will look like a Martian. Then Jackie says, “How you know a Martian’s green, Oz?”
This begins one of Ozzie and Jackie’s long arguments.
Ozzie says something about how in space there is no atmosphere and no oxygen. “But he ain’t in space, he’s on Mars,” Jackie argues.
“That’s just the point,” says Ozzie. He believes that on Mars there are chlorophyll beings and that they are kind of like plants — they breathe carbon dioxide. And then Jackie says, “Well, maybe there be colored beings up there. Not green but black and brown and cinnamon color like me.” Jackie is kind of the color of cinnamon. So on and on they go, round and round in circles. One thing is for sure: Ozzie is absolutely certain that there is life out there in space on some planet. He calls them extraterrestrial life forms. Ozzie’s biggest ambition in life is to build a kind of immense ear that can listen for signals from space. But in the meantime he’s working on a homemade telephone, which I guess is a kind of ear as well as a mouth.
Mama gave us fifty cents to go to Nick Kerz to buy a birthday present for Bernadette. Nick Kerz is the limit as far as toy stores go, although on the first floor they have what they call notions and things that aren’t toys at all, like thread and thimbles and yardsticks. Very boring stuff. We walked there. Willie Faye couldn’t believe her eyes. Floor to ceiling toys — dolls, dollhouse stuff, board games, puppets, whirligigs, toy cars, trucks. All that was too expensive. We bought Bernadette a set of jacks and a ball and then down in the notions department we got her a Christmas hair bow.
This weekend Santa Claus comes to Nick Kerz. It’s really Mr. Jones, a relative of the owner, who dresses up. The little kids sit on his lap and then they look around and point to the things they want for Christmas.
Later
We took the long way home. Here’s something else Willie Faye didn’t know about. Booth Tarkington. He’s only the most famous author in America, maybe the world, for all I know, and he lives on our street — yes, just four blocks down from us at 4270 North Meridian and our house is at 4605. Mama and Mrs. Tarkington both belong to the Fortnightly Club. They call each other by their first names. She calls Mama Belle and Mama calls her Susanah.
Willie Faye has heard of Al Capone. Ozzie is almost as fascinated with Al Capone as he is with Martians. He was very disappointed that the law finally caught up with the famous gangster just for cheating on his taxes and not for murder. Papa says as long as the fiend is behind bars it’s okay with him and he doesn’t care if he’s jailed for cheating at tiddlywinks. We need a new tiddlywinks set, by the way. We’ve lost all of our pieces. But it was too expensive at Nick Kerz — seventy-five cents!
After supper
Thank heavens Jackie is back from her funeral trip. Now we can eat decent. Supper was really good tonight. If I had had to have turkey marrow soup or turkey anything one more time I would have up and died. Not only that but Gwen likes to try to cook these recipes that she had to type out for the cookbook Bobbs-Merrill published called Joy of Cooking. Lady and I call it the Sadness of Aspic. Aspics are about the sorriest food a person can encounter, in my opinion. They aren’t exactly Jell-O and they aren’t exactly pudding. But they are made into fancy molds and shake like a fat lady’s behind. They are considered quite elegant. We have had tomato aspic, tongue aspic (cow tongue, as if one could make that meat any more disgusting than it already is), we have had vegetable juice aspic and a cucumber salad one. Mama says they are elegant and thrifty. I think they are vomitous. Aspic is a solid ten on the vomitron.
Ozzie and I almost threw up after the tongue aspic. We kind of wish we had. At least that would have proved our point. Ozzie said it would have been the cat’s whiskers if we could have had a puke-athon. Nobody would have ever served aspic in this house again, that’s for sure.
There’s going to be one of those dance marathons starting on New Year’s Eve. The idea is that couples dance all day and all night long with only a few minutes’ break every hour to eat or go to the bathroom. The couple that dances the longest wins a pot of money. Some couples have danced as long as a month. Mama forbids us to go see them. She says that it’s immoral and that people should not be forced to abuse their bodies in this kind of entertainment. Mama says the only person who should attend such a sorry spectacle is That Fool Hoover — he’s the cause of it.
Tonight for supper we had turnip greens, cornbread, and hash with Jackie’s homemade catsup. The only good thing was dessert: chocolate pudding. Mama added that to make up for the rest of the dinner.
Mama says that Willie Faye and I should go over our spelling words one more time since the test is tomorrow. Clem has to have Ozzie help her with her physics homework. Willie Faye at first didn’t understand how a nine-year-old in the fifth grade could help a seventeen-year-old in the twelfth grade. But I think she is beginning to. We went into Ozzie’s lab. He showed her his crystal radio and let her use the headphones. She got a funny look on her face.
“What’s on?” Ozzie asked and he took the earphones for a second. “Ooh!” Ozzie made a face. “Rudy Vallee.” Ozzie and I purely hate Rudy Vallee. He’s this stupid singer. He was singing “Love Letters in the Sand.” A nine on the vomitron — just behind aspic.
Ozzie explains to Willie Faye all about crystal radios and how he builds them. He shows her a crystal — a galena crystal. They’re the best, Ozzie says. They cost about four or five cents. He explains how these crystals are able to detect radio signals, for some strange reason, because of the minerals in them. The detection happens at a point between one of the crystals and the tip of a piece of wire. They call these wires cat’s whiskers. That’s why Ozzie is always saying “That’s the cat’s.” Most people say, That’s the cat’s whiskers, or That’s the cat’s pajama’s, meaning something is really good. Ozzie means it, too, when he says it but he is also thinking about crystal radios. His workbench is covered with wire and these things he calls capacitors and little coils.
December 2, 1932
I’m so mad. I can’t believe it. I missed two words on the spelling test. And Willie Faye got 100 on hers! I missed the word “nativity.” That was just a silly mistake. I left out one i. But the other word was the surprise word “chrysanthemum.” I mean, why would Miss Cuddy choose a big old fat springtime flower word from the surprise list on the second day in December, just going into the Christmas season?
I feel positively rotten. And to make matters worse Papa came in the door on our heels and said that the Hoosier Bank and Trust just closed. “Oh, Sam!” That’s all Mama can ever say these days. He went straight up to his room. I think I’ll go straight up to mine. I’m so tired I could drop. Willie Faye and I stayed up really late. More about that later. Willie Faye wants to go with Jackie to the garage and help her catch a chicken to kill. At least that’s good: chicken for dinner. Oh, yes, and at least it’s Friday. Only two more weeks of school before
we get out for Christmas vacation.
After nap
I feel better. I don’t ever want to hear or see the word “chrysanthemum” again, though. And I’ll never grow those flowers. When I opened my eyes Willie Faye was sitting cross-legged on her bed and poking a wire through a feather. “What in creation are you doing?” I asked. Turns out she is making a Christmas present for Lady out of chicken feathers and some of Ozzie’s copper wire that she begged off him. They are going to be earrings. And guess what: They will go perfectly with Lady’s feather boa, the one she wore to the prom with the dress that has now been turned into a kidney-shaped curtain. I shall say it again: Willie Faye may not have known about toilets and bathtubs and adjectives, but by gum, I think she could be an inventor. I wonder if she’ll make something for me for Christmas. I hope so. I was kind of cranky coming home from school about the spelling test and all. I think I’ll try to make up to her now. I think she needs to know about the burden of my name — Minnie, short for Minerva. Yes indeed. My true name is Minerva Swift. Just think of that — Minerva, named for the goddess of wisdom. There’s always this pressure, you see, to be smart. Not simply act smart, be smart. It is too much of a name for any mortal.
Before supper
I explained to Willie Faye about the name and all. She seemed to understand. One of the reasons I was so tired is that Willie Faye and I stayed up really late last night. First we got up after we should have been in bed and crept into Ozzie’s lab. He has another set of earphones and the three of us traded them around and we listened to the Texaco Star Theater with Ed Wynn. It was easy to do with no one finding out. Everyone was downstairs listening to the same program on the Spartan, but it’s on after our bedtime. And this is the funniest show ever. Here was one funny thing Ed Wynn said. He was talking about the opera Carmen and he said the lady who played the role was skinny. “Skinny as a bone,” he said. “In fact she is so thin her own dog buried her three times in one week!” We had to laugh with our hands pressed over our mouths, but we heard them roaring downstairs — except for Papa. He was up in his room and we could hear the adding machine tonight — k-chung!
After supper
When Willie Faye and I went downstairs to set the table and help Jackie in the kitchen, guess who came knocking at the door? Onesy. Onesy is short for One and he is the only hobo that we allow in the kitchen. We call him Onesy because he has just one eye and one tooth, and he’s missing a finger. So it kind of fits. He’s nice, but he did smell a bit rank. So Jackie gave him a dishpan of hot water and another kettle full and told him to wash up before he sat down at her kitchen table. The chicken was just coming out of the oven and she gave him some grits left over from breakfast, and some pickled watermelon she had put up last summer, and tapioca. Tumbleweed seemed to like Onesy a lot. We’re going to try the baby powder–baking soda mix on Tumbleweed this weekend.
Onesy told us he wants to marry Kate Smith. She’s a lovely lady singer on the radio but I don’t know how she would take to Onesy. I want Mama to get her hair fixed like Kate Smith’s, but Lady says Mama’s face is too narrow. She’d look like a pinhead with it all flat on the sides and then those little ridges waving back from her forehead. They call them finger waves. Lady says they’ll be out of fashion by next year anyway. Lady really does know a lot about fashion.
Lady, Gwen, and Clem are all going out tonight with their gangs. Well, Gwen will go out with The Frink, as Lady and I call him. Lady is going out with a mystery man. She says she’s going down to the Lyric Theater to meet the girls. But there are usually some boys and there has been one boy calling up here a lot lately. Clem is going out with Homer Peet, which is okay except I think he is totally in love with Clementine and when he is around her he is nearly speechless and drooling like a puppy. I really don’t think Clem gives a hoo-ha about him. She just likes to go to the picture shows. Mama says she’ll take Ozzie and me and Willie Faye to the picture shows tomorrow night after Bernadette’s party if Ozzie and I won’t argue about which picture show.
You see, we haven’t been driving the Packard much lately to save on gas. Gas is ten cents a gallon and that is the same price as a picture show. So we have our picture show jelly jar and it really is filling with dimes saved from not driving the Packard.
In the meantime before Buck Rogers comes on the radio we go up and watch Lady put on her makeup. She’s finally got her eyebrows plucked right so she doesn’t have to use so much eyebrow pencil. She was practically bald up there this summer. She sits in front of the vanity in our bedroom and scootches up her lips and then draws first with red pencil around them. She directs most of her comments to Willie Faye because she knows I’ve heard it all. Willie Faye’s eyes are glued to Lady. She has never even seen mascara, and she watches as Lady wets the little brush and brushes the black on her eyelashes. It really does transform her eyes. Ozzie comes in and makes a rude noise. He loves to annoy the girls when they are getting dressed up.
The doorbell rings. “The Frink,” Lady and I say at once. Delbert always comes early.
“Time for Buck Rogers!” Ozzie screams. Then I hear him going up to the third floor where Papa is. I hear him say, “Please, Papa, please come down. You never miss Buck Rogers.”
This is sad. But Papa doesn’t come.
We go on down and start listening. Buck Rogers always begins the same way. There is a thundering, rumbling sound. That is supposed to be the time machine that takes us into the future and forward in time to go with Buck. And if The Frink is here, as he usually is waiting for Gwen, he always says, “You know how they really make those sound effects? They bang on a piece of sheet metal and then they . . .” And every week we tell him to shut up, or, if Mama’s around, to be quiet. It just ruins it. It is supposed to be the time machine, not sheet metal getting banged on. Then after the roar the announcer says, “Buck Rogers . . . in the . . . twenty-fifth cen-tu-reeee.” And then there is the commercial for Cocomalt that you stir in your milk — we hate it. Number six on the vomitron. Then the show really begins. Here’s how it began tonight:
“Wilma.” (That’s his assistant. She’s gorgeous. We just know that even though we can’t see her.) “Wilma, does all your equipment check out?” Buck asks.
“Yes, Buck, I have my thermic radiation Projector, the electro-cosmic spectrometer and the super-radiating protonoformer all set to go.”
Ozzie just loves it when they have the super-radiating protonoformer. But it probably won’t seem the same tonight without Papa being here. I really do feel sorry for Ozzie.
Just before bed
Guess what? Papa came down in the middle of the program. Now the frost on the window was about to melt from Ozzie beaming, although Mama was about as happy. Then after the show Papa dug into his pocket and came up with some bits of copper wiring and a couple of capacitors that Luther, the foreman at Greenhandle’s, said he didn’t need. It probably amounted to all of three cents but it really takes very little to make Ozzie happy. Just Papa to listen to Buck Rogers with him and a few metal bits.
Toward the end of the show, Buck always says something kind of philosophical and really nice to Wilma like, “And don’t forget, Wilma, you are an important part of this mission for the peace and security of the planets.” I kept thinking about that when we got into bed. It was snowing out but kind of slow snow, if you know what I mean. The flakes just sort of drifted down and we could see the moon. Twenty-three more days until Christmas and I don’t have to worry about the peace and security of the planet, but I do worry about Papa. I wonder if this stupid Depression will be over by the twenty-fifth century, certainly not the twenty-fifth of December. Everyone is really counting on Franklin Roosevelt. I hope he doesn’t let us down. He’s not exactly Buck Rogers, and Mrs. Roosevelt is no Wilma Deering, but the Roosevelts are real and Buck and Wilma aren’t.
P.S. I’m a little bit hungry tonight. We had cabbage au gratin and a casserole of Spanish rice with a little bit of pork. Lady called this dish rumor of pork. But the au grati
n didn’t seem to stretch as far as it usually does. And you practically need a microscope to see the pork in the Spanish rice. I didn’t realize I was hungry until Buck Rogers stopped. Nothing like a good story to take your mind off your stomach. I don’t think you feel quite as empty when you’re listening to a good radio show or reading a good book.
December 3, 1932
The worst thing has happened. I can’t really even write about it. We are all just shocked. Mr. Otis, Bernadette’s father, killed himself! Yes, it really happened and just as we were arriving for the birthday party. We hadn’t even taken off our coats. We heard this awful sharp crack. Nothing like the sound effects on the radio. Then a scream and then Bernadette’s grandmother came rushing down the stairs and hustled us all out the door and told us to go home. So we did. Now we just found out. I can’t write another word.
5 P.M.
Willie Faye is a mess. She kind of froze up after we found out and she won’t speak. Mama’s real worried. She made her Ovaltine and ran a hot bath for her, but Willie Faye just sits on the bed holding Tumbleweed. I don’t know what to do.
6 P.M.
Willie Faye won’t eat supper.
7 P.M.
Mama’s a mess. She was sitting in the dark in the sunroom, of all places, the coldest part of the house in the evening. She was all bundled up and crying. I know what she’s crying about. She’s worried about Papa. He hardly ate any dinner, then went up to his room — k-chirp.
7:15 P.M.
Christmas After All Page 3
