Mama looked at Mr. Hansen, who acted as if he suspected a fish dinner he had just swallowed… “Olga…” he said. “Not Olga! This ain't fair!”
“Mrs. Hansen told me she will bring you to the meeting.”
“Look… this ain't fair… I gotta… gotta lotta things to do.”
Mama looked at him and wondered how this clot on the skirts of American liberty could love anything, even a woman… but she knew he did, and she had been happy to let Mrs. Hansen be chairman.
“You will be there?”
Mr. Hansen looked up at his char- women in tights over his desk. He said slowly, “Will you have one on the house, Mrs. Longstreet?”
“Why not,” said Mama, in the tones no lady used. “Set up two lemonades… and get Stevie another pretzel.”
So reform came to town…
The lodge hall was packed that night. Every husband who could be blasted away from the fireplace was there, and not liking it. Mrs. Hansen in red silk and a great blue ribbon with gold letters reading CHAIRMAN was on the platform. while behind her sat Mama and ten ladies, and Mr. Hansen, and the postmaster and a red-nosed little man who was new from Ireland and who paved the streets with a gang as green as himself. He had removed all his own teeth and replaced them with gold ones, and he was adding diamonds to his watch chain. Mama hoped to use him for funds.
Mrs. Hansen threw back the bangs of false hair that covered her eyes, puffed out her breath, and beat on the table before her with a fist John L. would have been proud of.
“People,” began Mrs. Hansen, “I open this meeting. I say we ladies… we gotta have votes… I say you men get them for us… I say votes for ladies means votes for America. I now ask the next speaker to tell you more. Mrs. Longstreet!”
Papa and I clapped our hands, and Mama stood up and leaned over and turned up the little gold watch hanging on her bosom and looked at the time, and then Mama opened her pretty eyes and put her hands on her hips, and she said, “I do not intend to make a speech… we are honored by having Silver Dollar Hansen here tonight. Mr. Hansen, out of the goodness of his heart, and his love for our form of democracy, has devoted himself to a study of politics, and is here tonight to tell us how women can get the vote… Silver Dollar Hansen!”
Silver Dollar got up, and Mrs. Hansen kicked him politely with her toe just below the knee, and he smiled at her a fish-belly-white smile.
“Folks…” he said… “women are people, too.”
It was a deep, profound thought. He went on to say that people voted… that votes made a country where people lived, and if women were people, why it proved like he said… women should get the vote. He said he would see what could be done about it, and then he sat down and wiped a pint of warm water off his red face and great bull's neck, and bit off the neck of a fat cigar and ate it sadly, as if the world were ending in ten minutes and he had just foolishly spent his fortune on life insurance…
The next day Mama and Silver Dollar announced a reform group that would put honest Congressmen in power and a new mayor… one whose brother-in-law didn't control the gas and water works… and banners appeared all over town: LIBERTY AND THE VOTE MEANS THE VOTE FOR ALL… VOTE FOR THE CERTIFIED NAMES ONLY.
Mama had been reading about certified milk or something… very new at the time… and she got up a list, and it was the official certified list. Papa asked Mama if she was running for office, too.
“No,” said Mama. “I'm sort of the power behind the machine.”
“Now, Sara, politics is a dirty business for a woman.”
“Not with women in it. You can't corrupt us…”
“How sure are you of Mrs. Hansen, Sara?” asked Papa.
Mama said she was very sure, and didn't he need a fresh collar? Papa wore high linen collars that cut into his chin, and they were laundry products, not the cheap, shiny stuff that could be washed with a sponge or rubbed with a rubber. Papa said no, the collar was good for another day yet… and he hoped Mrs. Hansen would stay in line…
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