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.
To this Papa would add salt, saffron, and pepper to taste, a clove of garlic, half a cup of olive oil, and two-thirds of a pint of Gramp's dry white Sherry (if we still had any left). Papa and I would brood over this cooking pot for fifteen minutes more, and then prepare the toast to serve it on.
If we had company, as we usually did… mostly Mama's sister Fran… Mama would always say she didn't see how she could tend to her public work and cook at the same time, and so would they forgive her if the food wasn't very good. Which was untrue…
After lunch Mama went back to attacking Mr. Hansen.
“We shall see how women change the political picture.”
“You will see,” said Papa.
Mama smiled and stood up in her button shoes. “I am no fool, Mr. L. I know how you men play politics as well as Mark Hanna. I shall offer Hansen a chance to support us… I am calling on Mr. Hansen at the Silver Dollar…”
Papa seemed to have choked on something, and we heard him gasp as Hatty came running with a glass of water.
Hansen's Silver Dollar was a low, wide saloon built of heavy pine, varnished, and gay with likker signs. In one window stood three tired palms peppered with fly love… and a huge painting of Custer's Last Stand, detailed down to the last scalp and bullet. It was the pride of the Silver Dollar, that painting… one of the prides… for inside over the bar was Reba, the breathing nude.
Mama went up the steps of the Silver Dollar, and I followed. She swung past the swinging doors like an old elbow-bender, and we went across to the bar. Mama sniffed her small nose sideways, and looked up at Reba.
In those days Reba was called a nude. She wore silks and pillows and drapes, and actually had as much on as a high school co-ed of today… but her stomach was bare, and behind the painting was a clockwork pusher, which, when set off, made Reba breathe… the regular falling and rising of the chest was amazing.
Mr. Hansen himself stood behind the bar, and he nodded to Mama. “Good morning, Mrs. Longstreet… what can I do for you? Some Oporto Sherry?”
“I do not drink, or chew tobacco,” said Mama.
Mr. Hansen was impressed, Mr. Hansen was a dirty crook and a very smart politico. He was the town boss, and, of course, he had a heart of gold and the paving contracts, because the town, like all America, was just then coming out of its Mud Age and paving itself clean.
“Mr. Hansen,” said Mama, hunting the brass rail with one small, dainty foot, “I have come to you to offer you five thousand votes…”
Mr. Hansen fingered his tiger pin, and then handed me the biggest pretzel in town. “Shall we go to my office?”
Mama nodded and took my hand, and the barflies bowed out of our way, and watched Mama walk across the saloon. Mama was a daring dresser for those days… big plaids and very puffy sleeves. Some low-life started to whistle Oh You Kid… but the barkeep pointed a battered, beer-soaked thumb at him, and the hoodlum shut up.
Mr. Hansen's office was tastefully decorated in old musical comedy posters and pictures of washerwomen in tights and high bosoms. There was a long-dead stand of flowers with a faded ribbon reading: SO WE WON AGAIN.
Mr. Hansen put aside an unlit, but well-eaten cigar, brushed the Brewers' Bimonthly off a chair, and asked Mama to sit down.
Mama did, and I began to make away with my pretzel. Mama said, “I have organized the women of this town. I am holding a great meeting tonight. We want the vote and mean to have it. We want a bill asking for women's rights introduced in Congress.”
“You got rights, now… all ladies got rights.”
“Not to vote. Now you listen to me, Hansen. I control five thousand women… they control twenty thousand husbands, brothers, fathers and sons… They control this town with real votes.”
Mr. Hansen laughed the way the wolf must have laughed at Red Riding Hood. “Nobody votes the way a da… the way a lady asks her family. Now I'm a family man… and I vote free like any American.”
Mama stood up. “Mrs. Hansen is our chairman tonight.”
Mr. Hansen turned as green as his good cigars. Mama was no fool. She always went armed and ready to let anyone have it. Mrs. Hansen weighed 200 pounds and was very red and loud (but she had discovered culture and discarded all the rubber plants in brass pots from her house on Mama's advice).
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…
Election day dawned like a battle, with far-off fireworks.
On election day Papa always made a boeuf bouquet garni. It was his way of getting people to vote, after putting his hoped-for voters in a good mood. When Mama was political… which didn't last as long as it seemed… he was always ready with his iron casserole.
He would have four ounces of butter boiling in it, browning two pounds of lean beef. Papa and I had been to Cold Storage Sam's for the beef. Cold Storage was a happy man with a red nose, a red cat, and a lot of red steer cadavers hanging from his ceiling… and only he in the whole town knew how to age beef, how to get game hung, and what to do with bear, deer, or rattlesnake cutlets…
Papa and Cold Storage would talk beef, and I and the red cat would look up at the hanging steers and wait for the bargaining to end. Cold Storage would always moan, “Damn it, Mr. L., for two pounds beef I hate to cut into half a ton of prime A… but for you, all right.”
Well, after Papa had the beef in his casserole, cut into inch cubes and cooked to the right softness, he removed it and added a tablespoon of flour and made a brown sauce. Then he put in salt, pepper, a pint of red wine, three inches of carrot, half a pint of mushrooms, one clove of garlic, and half a dozen shallots, and last, a half pound of browned onions. The meat went back to the casserole with the sliced vegetables and a bouquet garni of parsley, bay leaf, and thyme. On election day, Papa also added half a pint of Madeira and enough water to cover the meat, and simmered the casserole for four hours. Papa served this with rice.
So election day would start with Papa at the stove and the rumble of guns. Fires burned at curbs, and the lame and the halt and the blind were being taken for rides that happened to pass the open polls. The factory workers had already voted, and now the townspeople were strolling to the barber shops, which had draped their chairs and set up booths.
It was a slow day… the jam would start about three o'clock in the afternoon. Mama put on her yellow shoes and her best hat with the longest feathers, and she drew tight a silk ribbon across her little torso: LIBERTY AND THE VOTE… VOTE CERTIFIED, and we went to Buddenheim's barber shop to see how the voting was going.
Papa came out in a fresh high collar, but unshaved… he didn't trust a razor in his own hand, and the chair was not shaving that day… “Sara… there is something afoot. The voting is going to new people… not on your lists.”
“No!”
“Ward heelers, party hacks, and outright grafters… Silver Dollar has double-crossed you.”
“He wouldn't dare,” said Mama…
“He has done it.”
“I am going to see Mrs. Hansen…” Mama took me by the hand, and we rode the trolley car to the Point, where Silver Dollar had built him a huge house out of field stone and stone lions and iron deer and living English bulldogs… Mama and I shooed off the bulldogs, and rang the bell. Mrs. Hansen opened the door and she smiled at Mama…
“Would you mind ringing once more?” Then she shut the door.
Mama looked at me. “Do you think she's mad, Stevie?”
“At who?” I asked, and Mama said I was a jughead and rang the bell again. The door opened slowly, and a tall, thin man wearing a striped vest and black sideburns stood there, his nose almost caught in the ivy over the door.
“Who shall I say is calling, Mum?” said the thing.
“Never mind mumming me,” said Mama… “Olga Hansen saw me…” Mama pushed her way in and I followed, and the thing pivoted around without bending or breaking. Mrs. Hansen stood red with pride. “Isn't he wonderful! He's a butler… his name is Howard and he's English and Mr. Hansen got him for me… Watch.”
We watched. Mrs. Hansen went up to Howard bravely. “Howard, serve tea.”
Mama stood there while Howard marched like a clockwork figure to the back of the house. Then Mama said, “You have sold us out, Olga! Mr. Hansen has given you boodle!”
“Boodle?” asked Mrs. Hansen.
“Howard is boodle! You have delayed the vote twenty-five years. You have sold out your sex! For shame!”
Mrs. Hansen's head dropped. (Mama had been reading Ben Hur, and she knew how to use what she had read.) “Go wallow in butlers… but when they write of those who set women free, your name will not lead all the rest!”
Howard was back with a tray full of tea tools. Mrs. Hansen sniffed. “This is my new tea things.”
Mama seized the opening. “You have sold us out for thirty pieces of tea silver. Come, Stevie.”
“Modom is not staying for tea?” said Howard.
“And don't call me Madame!” said Mama, not knowing she was inventing a famous vaudeville line.
And that was how Mama failed to win votes for women and how reform failed in our town. The ward heelers and loafers and grafters won that election, and Mama retired from politics pure… even if defeated… and Silver Dollar Hansen bought a Stanley Steamer, and Howard the butler (in linen shroud and goggles) used to drive it groaning along the street, and Mrs. Hansen, proud in her betrayal, would sit by Silver Dollar's side ignoring the people ignoring her.
But that night, as I was sitting in the glow of the parlor stove's pink belly reading Treasure Island, Mama said two things that changed our lives. “Henry, I wish you would give up high linen collars… now that the dreadful Hansen butler wears them to do the marketing…”
And Papa did and lost a lot of his starch. People say that was his downfall… that from the day he gave up the high collars he wasn't so impressive while asking for bank loans, and his real estate schemes failed to blow up as big in his hands and as often as usual.
“And Henry,” said Mama, “I think we ought to buy a Model T.” With these words a new era began for us. It had taken us a decade or so to turn with the century… but we were turning. And years later, when Mama cast her first vote… I remember her standing there, the ballot in her small fist… she turned to Papa and said. “To think, Henry, a butler delayed this great event for twenty years.” History books please copy…