A Room of My Own

by Ann Tatlock

  Uncle Jim's response to the ranting of his ex-employer: "That yellow-bellied snake knows full well it's not the Reds behind the strike. He's just using that as an excuse not to recognize the union and to turn everybody else in this city against us."

  Thiel might not have convinced everyone that our city was in danger of a Communist revolution, but one person he did persuade was the mayor. Mayor Dowling, a weak-chinned, spineless little fellow (it was later uncovered that he gained his office through bribery), sided with the employers announcing, "We won't have our city be known as the birthplace of the American Soviet Republic." Whether he really believed the strike was a Communist-led plot was anybody's guess, but wanting to remain in favor with a wealthy and influential man like Emerson Thiel, he called on the governor to implement martial law.

  Fortunately, Governor Borgmann, who had been voted into office on the Farmer-Labor ticket (amazingly, a radical party with identifiable ties to socialism), was reluctant to step in on the side of the employers. Recognizing that the mill workers had some legitimate grievances, he hesitated to implement martial law, asking instead for the mayor to set up a board of mediation. And wanting to remain on good terms with the governor, the mayor set up the board. It was comprised of three supposedly disinterested citizens who would act as a go-between for the employers and employees as they worked out their differences.

  The board of mediation seemed a good idea at first, but no matter what compromises the board came up with, they were rejected out of hand by both sides.

  And so the workers went on picketing while scabs--many of whom were recruited from out of state, some scarcely old enough to have graduated from high school--continued to be escorted though the picket line. Because of the ensuing riots, only a small percentage of the scabs actually got beyond the front gate. But about three weeks into the strike, the newspapers reported that the mill was running at nearly half capacity.

  "How many scabs you think they've got in there?" Dr. Hal asked Uncle Jim one morning at breakfast.

  Uncle Jim shrugged as he replied, "Can't be more than a hundred, maybe less. They only try bringing them across the line a couple times a week. So say they've crossed a half-dozen times, and each time a dozen scabs got in--that'd be what, about sixty, seventy men?"

  Dr. Hal tapped a cold piece of toast against his plate while he thought. "How could the mill be running at half capacity with fewer than a hundred men?" he asked. "Is Thiel bringing men in at night?"

  Uncle Jim shook his head. "Nights are quiet," he said. "We've got men outside the gate around the clock just to make sure the scabs aren't brought in under cover of dark. So far, nothing at all has happened at night."

  "Then either Thiel's got more men in there than we think or the mill's not running at half capacity."

  "It might be he wants us to think he's doing better than he is. Thiel's got the newspaper on his side. They'll print whatever he asks them to."

  "Maybe. But my guess is he's bringing in men we don't know about."

  Uncle Jim shrugged again and finished his coffee. "Don't know how he could," he replied as he settled the cup in the saucer. "No, Thiel's just trying to pull one over on us. He may be able to throw a lot of power around, but I'm still of the opinion we've got the upper hand. That man can't turn his grain into money without us, and right now he hasn't got us. He'll be willing to see reason sooner or later."

  Down on the picket line, men continued to fight and to be wounded, but after they were pieced back together, they returned to the line. More men were arrested, but when the union's lawyer got them out on bail, they went back to the line. Reinforcements were added to both sides. Businessmen, lawyers, store owners, clerks--all felt the patriotism surging through their blood and stepped forward to allow Sheriff Dysinger to deputize them into the fight against the Commies. While the ranks of the deputies grew, those of the picketers were increased somewhat by a handful of unemployed volunteers--some from Soo City--who joined the picket line. They joined not only because they had nothing else to do, but because they believed in what the mill workers were fighting for. Longjohn was one who joined the line, skivvies and all. Ross the Hoss was another. Judson Breemer, whose hand Papa had tended to, and his friend Scott Larson also marched. Sherman Browne, I heard, took up a sign once or twice. Some of the other men from the camp whom I didn't know also put in hours on the picket line. Though they were in the midst of a battle that probably would have no payoff for them personally, I think marching on the line gave them a sense of purpose.

  Uncle Jim returned to the picket line in spite of his injury and in spite of the danger. The attitude of Thiel and his men only fueled Uncle Jim's anger and made him all the more determined to see the union recognized by the mill. Aunt Sally continued going down to the commissary to serve breakfast and lunch, and every afternoon she came home and turned on the radio and took up her vigil in the rocking chair to listen for news bulletins. And the bulletins invariably came, interrupting the music shows and the daytime serials, commanding more attention in our house than the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a man called Hitler in Germany, and Hoover's inevitable admission that Prohibition wasn't working.

  Every morning I wondered whether Uncle Jim would come home again, and every night Aunt Sally cried with relief when he did. We'd all go to bed thankful that he'd made it through another day. And then the whole anxious and agonizing cycle began over again the next morning when my aunt and uncle left the house together to catch the early trolley down to strike headquarters.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Charlotte called one afternoon and asked me to come over right away, I couldn't get out of the house fast enough. She said she had something important to discuss with me, and even if that something was how to win over the affections of my cousin Rufus, it had to be better than sitting by the radio waiting for news about the strike. August was winding down to the homestretch, and the whole of it--the last month of my summer vacation--had been mired in the anxiety of what was happening at the grain mill. Because it was a citywide issue, I couldn't get away from it anywhere. At church, talk of the strike replaced the usual pleasantries that floated about the fellowship hall during coffee hour, and Rev. Winchell preached on the blessedness of peacemakers and the evils of greed for three weeks running. At the market, women huddled amid the rutabagas and brussels sprouts to rue the day their husbands had voted to walk out of the mill, and Mr. Thiel himself was properly censured for having created the conditions that started the strike in the first place. At the butcher shop that Mother frequented, Mr. Ramsey was quick to swing his cleaver viciously into the cutting board at the mention of Mr. Thiel's name. Our butcher was sympathetic to the mill workers and made generous donations of meat to the strike commissary. At the bakery, Mr. Bixby, who donated day-old bread to the commissary every morning, repeatedly cursed Mr. Thiel, saying, "If anyone's a Red devil around here, it's Thiel himself! He's the one who wants to keep all the mill workers in chains." Even at the movie theater waiting for the show to start, kids were placing bogus bets on whether or not the governor would call in the National Guard. It was a far cry from the usual talk of who was sweet on whom and how many frogs and snakes had been caught down by the river the previous afternoon.

  Our Philco radio ran nonstop from the moment Aunt Sally got home in the midafternoon until Uncle Jim returned late at night. There was a time I would have loved nothing better than to lounge around the parlor floor listening to that marvel of modern communication, but during the summer of 1932 I learned to detest the click of the dial that brought that monster to life, the buzzing static that bristled the hair on my neck as the beast warmed up, the tinny music that always seemed so at odds with what we were waiting to hear, and most of all, the deep and disturbing voice of the newscaster who brought the events of the strike all the way across town and into our otherwise quiet home. Whenever a fight broke out on the line, he couldn't simply lay out the facts in a voice of monotonous serenity. He had to embellish his announcements with
numerous inflections and exclamation points, as though his dramatic flair were necessary to drive home to our hearts the horror of the situation: "At two-twenty-five on this hot afternoon, tempers flared and fists flew as yet another bloody conflict broke out on the picket line outside the Thiel Grain Mill! The clash between police and strikers ignited as lawmen attempted to escort truckloads of workers across the picket line. The ensuing battle led to countless injuries and one unconfirmed death. We'll have those exact numbers for you as soon as they're available. In the meantime, don't touch that dial...."

  The only good news I heard out of that torturous machine all month was that on the sixteenth a second son was born to Charles and Anne Lindbergh. It didn't make up for the kidnapping and murder of the first one, but I was grateful to think that the new baby must surely be a source of joy in the lately troubled home of my hero.

  On the afternoon that Charlotte called sounding more animated than usual, I had just finished practicing my piano lesson when Aunt Sally returned from the commissary and turned on the radio. I thought I might volunteer to pull weeds in the garden just to get away from it for a time, but mercifully the phone rang before I could mention my plan to Mother. Also mercifully, Mother said I could run on over to Charlotte's until suppertime. The strike had upset even the regimented routine of our household as Mother tried to deal with the increase in the size of our family, the strain on our finances, and the frayed nerves of her sister. Though my absence meant a couple of regular chores would go undone, I think Mother was just glad to have one less person underfoot for a few hours.

  Charlotte met me at the front door of her house, waving the latest issue of Life magazine and chanting, "We're gonna be rich, we're gonna be rich!"

  I thought she had lost her marbles for good and said so.

  Undaunted, she pointed to the open page and demanded that I read it. The figure $25,000 in type nearly an inch high caught my eye, and I grabbed the magazine from her and read the following headline:

  $25,000 in Prizes!

  May the best "Blurbs" win.

  464 cash prizes each month.

  Two first prizes of $500 each ... Just write a "blurb."

  Beneath the headline was a series of pictures of two men in undershirts, one with shaving cream lathered over his face. The soap-free man held a tube of Palmolive shave cream, the lathered man held a tube of Colgate. Their conversation went something like this:

  Palmolive man: "Pardon me for bragging, Bill, but Palmolive's the finest shaving cream a man ever used."

  Colgate man: "You're wrong again, Walt. Colgate's for me first, last, and always. You can have all the rest."

  Palmolive man: "I tell you I've tried them all, and for quick, lasting lather in any kind of water--hot or cold, hard or soft--nothing, absolutely nothing, compares with Palmolive."

  Colgate man: "Don't be so cocksure! My beard's as tough as yours, and I never knew what a close shave was till I used Colgate's."

  Palmolive man: "Yeah? Well, you'll never know what a real shave is till you use an olive oil shaving cream."

  Colgate man: "What do you mean, real shave? I claim it takes a real shaving cream to get these bristles of mine off close to the skin. I'll stick to my Colgate's."

  The ad copy then invited shavers to get in on the argument. "Get into this shaving cream blurb contest, men. Who are you for--Walt or Bill? Palmolive or Colgate's?" Contest rules and the address of where to send the blurb were printed on the opposite page.

  "All we have to do is write a blurb," Charlotte cried, "and we're five hundred dollars richer!"

  "But, Charlotte, this contest is for men," I pointed out.

  "So we send in our blurb under my father's name. So what? The judges will never know."

  "But, Charlotte," I continued, "we have no idea what it's like to shave." We had in fact tried to shave our legs once, an incident that ended with both of us sporting several bandage strips across our shins.

  "Well, silly," Charlotte countered, "all we have to do is do it!"

  "Shave, you mean?"

  "Of course, shave!"

  Before I could protest further, my eager friend grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs to the bathroom. She flung open the mirrored medicine cabinet and proudly produced the lather brush and soap dish that her father used while at home. In the dish was a round, nondescript cake of soap, dry and cracked from days of neglect since her father was, at the moment, on the road.

  "Which kind is that?" I asked, wrinkling my nose at the thing. "Palmolive or Colgate's?"

  My friend looked at the forlorn disk of soap and shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. But she hastened to assure me that it didn't matter. "Shaving cream is shaving cream. It doesn't matter what we use."

  "But I don't think that's shaving cream," I argued. "It's not in a tube like in the ad. This stuff's just plain soap."

  Charlotte sighed heavily and glared at me in disgust. "Look, Virginia, do you want the money or not?"

  I had to admit that I did. Only a few days earlier Mother had told me that rather than getting my usual new pair of shoes for school, I had to make do with the pair from last year. I never knew exactly how we stood financially--that was something Mother and Papa didn't discuss with us children--but I did know that things weren't quite what they used to be if we couldn't afford my annual pair of school shoes. I suspected it was because our budget had had to stretch to include the Dubbins, and when I thought about going back to school and facing Danny Dysinger with the same old footwear he'd seen all the previous year, I was almost tempted to feel angry with Uncle Jim all over again. But suddenly, here was a solution to my problem.

  I looked at the ad again. There were to be six contests in all, this being the first. Six sets of prizes, each set totaling $4,200, would be awarded. The winners of this first contest would be announced the following month. Two first prizes of $500. Why couldn't Charlotte and I be the recipients of one of those prizes? If we split the money, I'd still have the remarkable sum of $250. I could give $225 to Mother and have enough money left over for myself to buy several pairs of shoes--or anything else I wanted!

  The second prize was $125; the third, $50; and two hundred runners-up would win the paltry sum of five dollars. I ignored those lesser numbers altogether and set my sights on the top prize. Surely if Charlotte and I put our heads together, we could come up with a blurb that would outdo even that of the most experienced male shavers.

  I set the magazine down on the top of the commode and said, "Let's lather up."

  "Now you're talking!" Charlotte giggled.

  She ran the hot-water faucet until the water was steamy, then moistened the brush and ran it in circles over the soap as she no doubt had seen her father do. While she did that, I removed the razor blade from the safety razor that Charlotte had pointed to in the medicine cabinet, saying, "That's Pop's extra razor. He has a better one he takes on trips, for when he has to look really good."

  Once she decided the soap was ready, Charlotte turned her face sideways to the mirror like a man inspecting his whiskers, drew her mouth to one side to pull one cheek taut, and painted her skin with the lather. With one cheek frothy white, she sucked her lips in over her teeth and lathered her chin and upper lip. Then she worked her way over to the other cheek.

  "How's it feel?" I asked.

  "Good," she replied noncommittally. She lifted her chin and lathered her long white neck. When she finished, she gazed at herself in the mirror and smiled. She looked like an adolescent boy with a cotton beard pressed to his face and playing Santa Claus in a Christmas pageant. "Now you go," she instructed.

  I ran the brush in circles over the soap as Charlotte had. Then I used the same circular motion on my right cheek. "Feels nice and soft," I said.

  "Yeah," Charlotte agreed. "Kind of like a massage on your face."

  "I wonder why men complain about shaving."

  "I don't know. Maybe they get tired of it."

  "I kind of like it so far."

  "Me
too."

  "Do you have any ideas yet?"

  "No."

  "Me neither."

  Charlotte picked up the empty razor from the rim of the sink. "Maybe if I go through the motions of shaving, it'll help me think."

  "Okay. Just do one cheek, then let me try."

  Charlotte pulled the safety razor down her cheek and along the line of her jaw, then rinsed off the soap under the running water. She handed me the razor and I did the same.

  "Anything yet?" she asked.

  "Feels kind of tingly and wet. What do you think?"

  "Soothing might be a good word. Yeah, we could work that in somehow. Let me do my chin."

  I passed the razor back to Charlotte. She held it level to the bottom of her lower lip, then drew it down her chin.

  "Think it feels any different when there's a blade in there?" I asked.

  "I don't know, but I don't think I want to find out."

  "Me neither. But maybe it hurts when men nick themselves. Maybe that's why they don't like shaving so much."

  "I always know when my pop nicks himself because he cusses up a blue streak. Mama claims he sets the neighbor's dog to howling, but I don't think that's true, seeing as how none of our neighbors have a dog."

  I tried to picture Papa cussing up a blue streak like Mr. Besac. I generally wasn't awake yet when Papa shaved, but I couldn't imagine that his nicking himself resulted in anything worse than a momentary pause in his morning whistle. There was, though, plenty of evidence that he rarely got through a shave without drawing blood. "Sometimes," I volunteered, "my Pa comes to breakfast with little bits of toilet paper stuck to his face--you know, with one red dot in the middle. Mama has to remind him to take them off before he starts seeing patients."