Sometimes at night when I cannot sleep, I hear again the long, grinding whine of Mama's first Model T… a car that is history and tarnished brass now, but a car that was part of my puppy-hood… and I remember every bolt and rattle, every grimace that Mama made when it did not act the way the auto agent said it would.
I forget about this part of my life, and then suddenly one sleepless night something brings it back… some incident of the day, like this…
It is almost thirty years later on a California beach… I had an Indian with me named James Peachpit—although later he admitted the name was his own idea; it was really Floundering Cow. Jimmie was a good Indian and a fine cook, and one morning when I was sitting on the sands, he came up with a basket of mussels and asked in his best grammar school voice if I liked soup.
“Yes… but not from seaweeds.”
“Mussel… very fine mussel, I catch them.”
“You don't catch mussels… they can't run.”
“I pick them then… gimme cigarette.”
I gave him cigarette, and he explained that his family (better-class Americans who looked down on Mayflower folk) had always made a good mussel soup.
I gave in and said we would have it for dinner. There was a singer coming down from Hollywood who sang Cole Porter off key, and she had a friend… a man who backed Russian actors in cheesecloth and called them danseurs in a Bronx accent. I didn't care if the mussel broth was a little deadly. I told Jimmie Peachpit to do his best, and I explained in pure Indian talk c'est une affaire extremement grave… if they were pleased with the meal I would have to design the stage sets for them.
I regret to say that Mussel Soup Early American was a delight. It was so good, and the guests got so excited over it, that they forgot to ask for the stage sets.
Here is how James Peachpit, Indian, makes his soup. He picks his mussels at low tide. If you haven't got a California beach near at hand, get a quart of freshly shelle mussels. Clean them. Pour into a clay pot a pint of white wine… we had a California Riesling… a very goo white native wine… dry and very palatable. Steam the mussels and the wine together until the meats are tender. Then strain everything, and add to the stock a fistful of sweet butter rubbed well with chopped parsley, two ounces of red and green peppers, a dash of chili powder, and a pint of cream. Just as the soup stock begins to boil, add the mussels you have left in the strainer, and serve.
With this, Jimmie served Indian tamales, made of sweet green corn grated from the cob and rubbed with red an green peppers, diced onions, salt and brown sugar, with the whole thing shaped with the hands to fit the green corn leaves, and then buried in the embers of a wood fire in the back yard.
The next day, of course, James Peachpit asked for more money. After all, he said, I had hired him to drive a car. I drove after that. He cooked native dishes… like giant crawfish steaks in butter…
Anyway, that night I dreamed… I dreamed of Mama's Model T. It kept parking itself in my dream with those wide, fender-crushing charges that Mama was a master of, the steam coming as usual from the brass front that Mama had forgotten to fill with water. I remember how it all began. Mama came down to breakfast one day and stabbed Papa with a look.
“Mr. L, I want to buy a car… a Model T.”
“Why?” Papa had courage… of a kind”.
“Fran is with us, and I want her to meet young men… sporting young men.”
“Sara, I must remind you that sporting young men are not what you think. In the slang of our period, a sporting young man is not a sportsman.”
“He's an elbow bender,” I said.
“Go out and bite a dog, Stevie,” said Mama… “Fran needs to meet young men.”
Papa said, “It's no use. She's your sister, and if you want to kill her in a Model T… very well.”
Fran was as beautiful as Mama, who was the peach of the town, to hear Mr. Floy tell it. Mr. Floy was Mama's idea of what was good enough for Fran… Mr. Floy kept two hunting dogs, and spit into the sawdust of the best bars, and had yellow gloves and a lumber yard. An now that Aunt Fran was staying with us Mama had made up her mind that Mr. Floy was going to marry her. That was why she wanted a Model T.
She took me with her to Mr. Floy's lumber yard, and Mr. Floy was standing at his desk dropping cards into a blue hat. He was very skillful, because he had to stay in the office two hours a day… it was in his father's will…
“Hello, John,” said Mama. “I'm such a ninny. Mr. L. wants a car and I don't know how to begin…”
Mr. Floy clicked his tongue. “You just take off the brake and push… haha… eh, Stevie?”
I agreed, and sat down to read a book of lumber prices…
Mr. Floy and Mama talked gayly (for what passed for Noel Coward talk in those days), and we trooped down to Bennie Godoff's garage.
Bennie was polishing a high, dark car with a seat so high you could see Sandy Hook lighthouse from it on any clear day.
Mama looked at it and said, “It's big.”
Bennie admitted it, and punched a rubber ball that moaned like a cow. “And listen to this, Mrs. Longstreet… ain't that a pip? Scare the bacon out of any road pig you meet. Now the enjine…”
“What color is the leather?”
“Subdued Chinese red. Now this steering wheel…”
“I love those coach lamps.”
“Yep, real erl burners. Here is the motor!”
“Close that hood. I feel like a dentist looking into a mouth. What do you think, Stevie…?”
“Does it make smoke when it goes?”
Bennie closed his eyes. “Stinks like a Stanley Steamer, gives off a fog like a Stutz Bearcat… But about the gears…”
Mr. Floy yawned. “Mrs. Longstreet will take this one, Bennie.”
“Just,” said Mama, trying the horn with two small hands, “just send Mr. L. the bill.”
Bennie nodded. “Some day a lady is going to buy a car and let me finish the sales talk… but I doubt it.”
All the way home Mama told Mr. Floy what a wonder he was and would he take us and Fran for a drive around the country. Stevie had a weak chest and the country air would do him good…
Mr. Floy was pleased, and that night when Fran came home from her job Mama told her the news. Fran was the telephone girl at the local exchange… because by then a lady could work and still be a lady. She had red hair an a habit of carrying pencils in it during business hours.
“A car?” she said, removing her business pencils from her hair. “A real car?”
“A new Model T.”
Fran smiled. “You lucky girl,” and kissed Mama in front of Papa to show how lucky he was to have Mama…
“And Mr. Floy will take us driving soon to see the country.”
Next day the car came an Mama learned to drive… in a way.
Only millionaires had self-starters on their cars. Mama had a novel way of starting our Model T. She would pull on her driving gloves and lean out of the window of the house and yell. She yelled for two people.
One was Papa. She would yell, “Henry! Henry!”
She was not very big and had a small voice, although she liked to talk a great deal. Her calls to Papa were often not answered. Papa would be busy someplace else growing richer every day (but at the end of the month we always got a new bank loan to see us through a period of tightness).
Then Mama would lift her driving veil and say, “Professor!”
She would then call again, “Professor…” because Professor Moe never answered the first three times he was called. The Professor lived in our alley. He was a remarkable black man we got from Gramp. He read law and cleaned our woodshed, and when we had a horse called Ned, he curried Ned and polished his harness. Professor Moe spoke better English than anyone on the block.
The Professor would appear, an Mama would say she was ready to go for a drive. Then they put their heads together to get the Model T started.
Mama would switch on the ignition… then turn it off (only fools an children started a Model T with the ignition on). The Professor would pull a wire loop up front called the choke, an turn the crank twice. There would be a stink of old-fashioned gasoline (before it was doctored and colored), and the Professor would nod to Mama.
“Switch.”
Mama would then turn on the ignition, the Professor would spin the crank like mad, and the engine would cough. Again he spun; and if luck was with him, the engine sputtered and snarled into life, and Mama, waiting (like a tiger hunter for the first sign of stripes), would retard the throttle, and the Professor would leave quickly or climb a wall (as Mama had no use for the emergency brake… once the motor turned over the car went).
Most times, however, the motor leered and groaned, but did not turn over. The air would be filled with the aroma of gasoline-flooded metal parts, and the Professor would shuck his coat and keep on grinding. After a half-hour, he would come to Mama and ask questions…
“Gas?”
Mama would get up and take out the front seat, and the Professor would get a yardstick and open the tank under the seat and put the stick in, and he an Mama would read the stick like a fortune-teller read a palm. Mama would say she had a gallon or so, and the Professor would say maybe a cup… but there was gas….
They would talk of points, spark, an other details; then the Professor would jack up the back right wheel and spin her again. That did it sometimes. If not, he look out the point box under the dash and sandpapered the points; or he pulled the spark plugs out like so many cracked yellow teeth and sandpapered them and set the gaps with a thin dime; or he would pour gasoline and a mixture of honey into the holes left by the removed spark plugs. The Professor also used to put moth balls into the gasoline tank. He had a million tricks… the greatest living expert on the Model T.
But even when Mama got the car moving and went to pick up Mr. Floy, and then rushed over to pick up Fran at the Telephone and Freight Office, an brought them home for supper (dinner was a ritual that took place only twice a week), still, for all the money the car cost. Fran and Mr. Floy did not hit it off.
Maybe it was the Mushrooms Longstreet that Papa made. We had been talking of a picnic for a long time. One morning we started. Mama driving, me peeping the horn, Papa and Mr. Floy and Fran in the back.
We found at last a good field and a place where Papa said mushrooms grew. He was going to make a dish for us.
Mama spread the cloths, and Mr. Floy went to admire a view, and Papa and I went out to hunt fungi, and Fran set up Papa's oil-burning camp stove…
We went out with a basket and a bottle of light refresher, and we picked a great many mushrooms, and Papa explained how to avoid picking the deadly Amanita muscaria (which no one really should eat).
Mushrooms Longstreet is a good way to have mushrooms. Mix together a cup of butter and a cup of flour over a flame until the mixture is an umber color. A a pint of chicken broth and fines herbes, and keep stirring this for just eighteen minutes. Lower the flame, and beat in as hard as you can four egg yolks (this dish calls for a strong wrist, as you can see), and season with a red pepper—a very finely ground pepper. Bring up the flame until the mixture dances around the rim of the pot. Lower it again, and add a grated lemon, skin and juice, salt, white pepper, and chopped parsley.
Let a very low flame keep the mixture happy, and turn to the mushrooms. Clean a pound of mushrooms, and if they are very big, slice the stems an caps. Over a new flame sauté them for a few minutes in butter until they are a rich, happy brown. Drain them, and a the sauce, and stand there paddling the mixture like mad. As soon as the boil sets in, scoop out the mixture, and serve in pie crusts shaped in the form of patty shells. Drop a stuffed olive soaked in Sherry on each shell, and begin.
We all did very well with the dish, and then we ate some more, and Papa fell asleep in the sun and Mama took me away to hunt wild flowers, while Mr. Floy took Aunt Fran to see if they could find a four-leaf clover…
“Not that way. No clover that way,” I said.
Mama took my hand. “Don't be silly, Stevie… clover all over the place.”
“Not that way.”
But Mama took me away and explained that Mr. Floy and Fran were beginning life and wanted to be alone because, well, they wanted to be with each other. It was the most wonderful thing in the world.
I said, “You mean they're going to act like Gramp did with the actress?”
And Mama looked around as if hunting for soap to wash out my mouth, an said I mustn't listen to gossip… which it wasn't, as Gramp never waste time about beginning life and just wanting to be alone with a lady…
But Mama said never mind the ol goat, and we went back, and Papa was still sleeping and Mr. Floy and Fran were not talking… Fran didn't like Mr. Floy. And on the way home we needed water…
Mama's Model T had a brass radiator which was often in high polish. It leaked like a dike in a story about Dutch heroes, and the Professor brewed dreadful witches' soups to keep it from spitting.
Mama did not believe in oil. She could understand gasoline… after all, the car needed that… but to dump oil into a dirty mouth under the motor hood seemed silly. Mama would skate along and something would smell, an she would stop and the garage man would sniff.
“Smells like the Number One bearing.”
“Nonsense…”
“You need oil.”
“Put it in… but bearings are for roller skates… it's just a way of building up sales.”
Mama never believed in the Number One bearing… even when she burned out three in one summer. There woul start a knocking, a tapping under us,like Poe's Raven. Mama would say, “I don't hear anything.”
“It's the bearing, Sara,” Papa would say. “Number One.”
“Rubbish,” Mama would say, and we would stop to let whatever it was cool off. Of course, there was always a lack of enough water in the radiator to take our minds off the Number One Bearing…
Mama's Model T was a thirsty girl (we always called the car “her”)… I broke my young spine, almost, carrying gallons, floods of water for her cooling system. Yet we could not drive downtown without a boiling sound, like sick bees talking over cures, under the hood. Mama would say, “There she blows…”
And she always did. The radiator cap would dance and shake, great heat waves would dance before our eyes, and then red, rusting water would creep between the cap and the brass front, and a thin spray of red-hot mud would attack the windshield…
I would get down and with tender fingers wrasseled off the cap, and then a small but very strong stream of water, mud, old egg, and iron filings woul go up and up and fall back to stain the polish the Professor had rubbed into the car's finish.
But poor Mama was more worried over Fran and Mr. Floy than over the inner ailments of the Model T. It was no go, and she hated to admit it. Fran was speaking too much of a young freight clerk at the depot who had arms like oak trees and brown, curly hair falling into his eyes… and Mr. Floy was seen one Sunday driving a flashing young dark-haired gal in his buggy, and she was smoking a cigarette.
Mama didn't give up. That summer the telephone girls, known as the Hello Sweethearts of the Bell Company, were meeting in Atlantic City, and Fran was chairlady of northern New Jersey an those sections of Pennsylvania that ha phones… and Mama said why didn't Mr. Floy drive Fran down and we woul meet them by train.
Mr. Floy said well, he didn't want to take any chances getting bogged down. A Simplex two-door job had gone into a bog outside of Tom's River and never been seen again… Mama would have to be sure the car could make the trip. Mama said it would work all right.
Mama loved her car and couldn't understand Mr. Floy's doubts.
The Model T was a good car for Mama because Mama was romantic… She hated hard facts and figures. It was a car Mama, and everyone else, used by guesswork. You put the stained stick down in the gas tank and guessed you had enough to get home (you didn't). You guessed the tires would hold, but they didn't, and you guessed the patch was dry and you pumped air, and you guessed you had enough air in the tire. The way to test that was to kick the tire. If your foot bounced back, you ha enough air… sometimes you kicked and the air bubbled out with a laughing slither.
So Mama filled the tank, kicked the tires, and polished up the horn. At dawn, Mr. Floy, in a racing cap put on backwards, and Aunt Fran, in a linen shroud, were ready…
They left in a belch of smoke. Mama felt sure this time, alone, they would get together. The salt-water taffy would do something to them.
We were to leave by train the next morning. We went to bed to get a goo night's rest, and Papa had just put out the mouse trap (we didn't keep a cat) and come to bed after winding Gramp's best clock… when someone knocked at the door.
Papa went down and then called Mama, and Mama went down and I went down after them. There stood the remains of Aunt Fran… she was covered with car grease, her right eye was closed, and half her clothing was in shreds. She made small, moaning sounds, and a large farmer held her up with a red fist…
“Fran!” said Mama.
“Found her and a dude in my cow pasture about noon…”
“Sara,” said Fran weakly.
“Fran!” said Mama.
“Damndest wreck I ever did see,” sai the farmer. “Ain't enough car left to bait a goat…”
Fran was moaning in Mama's arms. “He's a fiend… a fiend…”
“Sh, sh,” said Mama.
Fran sobbed. “He insisted on going thirty miles an hour all the way!”
Papa took the farmer into the kitchen for a drink. “She all gone, that car?” he asked the farmer.
“Not enough left to patch a bucket…”
Papa sighed. “Well… it's no goo thinking you can't replace the horse… But anyway, in this family, the event has been delayed.” And he had two more with the farmer, and I helped Mama push Fran upstairs.
So passed our first Model T. And Mr. Eloy married the dark-haired girl (who really smoked cigarettes and read Henry James and wanted to collect Gibson girl prints). She made him very happy.
Mama felt Fran would remain an ol maid… nineteen years old and not married yet… but Fran said she could afford to wait until she was twenty-one… and Mama never mentioned the Model T again.
Papa must have felt she had forgotten it… but just before dusk one day, while we were sitting on the front porch watching the fireflies light up, Mama turned to Papa and asked, “Henry, is a Buick something connected with a car? Mrs. Estabrook was talking Buicky all afternoon at tea.”
Papa said he had to see how supper was going and went in to make a sauce…