In those days everyone knew he could become very rich by being very smart. Mama and Papa had been city folk; but when I was growing into a long puppy, they moved to a small town, and Papa set out to prove how wrong the popular idea was. Papa never was a poor man… because when there wasn't a dollar in the house, at least half of the town property was in his name… and even if it was mortgaged to the hilt, people pointed to Papa and said, “That's Longstreet-biggest real estate holder in town.”
Mama, the most beautiful woman in town, had invented a system that held our heads above water. Papa would buy houses and mortgage them, and with the money so obtained buy more, always one jump ahead of the market. But bankers were very impressed by Mama… who had posed for Mr. Gibson and had been reprinted around the world as one of his girls. Many people who started building America with Papa grew very rich… but Papa never did.
Mama was one of the most remarkable women I ever knew, and she lived in a remarkable period, and we kids enjoyed life because she had a way of making every day an adventure. She was ahead of her time… very advanced… she played Debussy on the piano, and collected Maxfield Parrish paintings, and was after my father to sell Ned, the old horse, and get a Model T.
And Mama wanted to vote.
It had been a good year for us. The houses were all rented, and Papa had not gone under, and was only ＄50,000 in debt to the banks… He bought a new buggy whip, and I had my first shoes with bulldog toes.
Mama came down to breakfast and said she wasn't hungry, and Hatty, the hired girl, sniffed and said it was just as well, as the cow was dry. Mama very carefully pulled on her skin- tight black gloves…
“I'm holding a meeting in the lodge hall tonight, Mr. L.”
Papa looked up from his notebook where he was adding together a million dollars (dream money and fifty acres…) and said, “Now, Sara… women don't want to vote.”
Mama wet her lips with her tongue and rubbed her cheeks to keep her morning color (she used powder, but no other facial make-up), and she smiled. “This town is dirty with graft. The slums are open sores… and Stevie here is playing with children who have n-i-t-s!”
Papa rubbed out a 20 per cent dividend on river lots with the shortest pencil stub in the world. “N-i-t-s?”
“Never mind respelling it. He's getting a little brighter. We women in this town want a good honest election and no graft.”
“Hansen will not stand by and see you upset the town.”
“We shall see,” said Mama. “What is lunch like?”
“I think you will like it,” said Papa.
There is no use hiding the fact. Mama could not cook… and she said so. When she had to cook, the burning of London, the cinders of Rome, the ashes of Frisco were better food than the cinders she placed before us.
I must admit that Papa did the cooking. That is, between hired girls, and as the servant problem is older than sin (and not so amusing), he cooked a great deal.
I had helped prepare that day's dish… I remember it well. It came from Gramp's notebook and has gone down in gourmet society as “bouillabaisse Longstreet.” Papa would take a pound each of sea bass, red snapper, eel, and lake perch that he had caught himself. He would cut the fish up in two-inch squares, season with skill, and drain.
Into a clay pot he would pour two quarts of stewed canned tomatoes… me holding the can opener ready for this red act. In good cooking oil he would brown four small onions, three sweet green peppers… worrying all the time… a habit of Papa's… if he had sliced them thin enough. Then out of the pan into the pot, with the tomatoes, and I had to time him for fifteen minutes while it all cooked together. Then he would add thyme, one bay leaf… after letting me smell it… and half a fist of parsley. I then handed up the fish squares, and he added a half-pound of boiled, cleaned river shrimp, a boiled lobster (not even undressing him from his shell), and if in season, three soft-shelled crabs, and always a dozen and a half of oysters which I had carried home not too unwillingly, in a dripping paper box.
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