1940s Archive

Mama Fights Love

Originally Published March 1944

Everybody in our town knew the Billpens. They lived in a small house Mr. Billpen had hammered together by the side of the railroad tracks, about two miles out of town, and there were so many Billpen kids that no one knew really how many. The little house was just full of them. Mama told me (in great secret) they were found in cabbages.

Mr. Billpen was a lean, tall man with blond hair almost white, and a face all pinfeathers between his weekly shaves… and the face was always smiling. Mrs. Billpen was a round little woman always with a baby in her arms, and a few ducks that she was taking to market to sell. And the Billpen kids were every place—cutting wood, selling newspapers, cutting lawns. They laughed at the cabbage story.

The Billpens were history, you see. There had been a Billpen with Washington at the Battle of Trenton, and there had been a Captain Billpen with Grant in the Wilderness… he never came back, and the family got along the hard way, but managed to live by the railroad track and raise up their brood and go along being part of the town, even out where they were. They did not drink out of the nose of the teapot as some railroad families did.

Mr. Billpen had built the house after the river flooded and washed out the old one, taking all the pigs and hens with it. Mr. Billpen and the kids gathered old boards and built a good, solid little house, and then found roofing paper beyond their means… so they cut river hay, and Mr. Billpen tied it into bundles and put on a hay roof, just the kind he had seen in a book about England.

Now, the trouble between Mama and the Billpens, and love, really started when Jed Billpen started to be seen around the better roads Sundays, with my Aunt Fran.

Mama was all for love. She spoke very highly of it to Papa, and Papa would nod and agree with her; it was a wonderful thing. It certainly was for Mama and Papa… because everyone always said it must be love that kept Mama staying with Papa… he was always failing in business, and he never read the best authors or collected art. Papa was just a man who wanted to do two things: stay in love with Mama and make a lot of money. Anyway, Mama always said her sister Fran wouldn't make the same mistake she did, and marry just for love.

“There is something higher than that, Mr. L.,” Mama would say.

“Yes,” said Papa. “Heaven is over us all.”

Mama couldn't answer that one, but she looked at Papa as if he were trying to put a hot one over on her. “Now this Jed Billpen.”

“Fine second baseman,” said Papa. “We saw him play against Milltown. Remember?”

“Fran is seeing too much of him.”

“Been swimming again, have they?”

Mama did not think Papa was a wit. “Never mind the bar-room humor. I want Fran to take up with someone better. More in her class.”

Mama came from an old family… not Indians, of course—the only real Americans… but she always thought of anyone who came after 1890, or who didn't have sixteen bent spoons and a bad old clock, as not being part of the American past. The Billpens fooled her by being old-stock natives… but they didn't have any spoons or old clock to prove it… “You must find a young man for Fran.”

Papa said he would, and went in to see how supper was coming.

A good soufflé would always take Papa's mind off Mama's worry over Aunt Fran. Soufflé Longstreet was something he was very proud of. He would beat four egg yolks. To this he would add two ounces of melted bacon fat, half a pint of milk, and salt, white and red pepper, and grated nutmeg to taste.

Still beating, Papa would add a pound of finely chopped cooked pork, as lean as he could get, one grated red onion, and one clove of garlic rubbed to a paste. In this he folded the whites of the eggs well beaten, and a fistful of minced parsley, green and red pepper, chive, and chervil.

Then he would butter the best half-dozen sea shells I had collected at Atlantic City (when Mama and I paid our first visit to the Million Dollar Pier that season). He would pack them with the mixture and put them in a hot oven for thirty-five minutes. They came out fit for gobbling, and Papa would call Mama and we would sit down and eat two each… after which I washed the sea shells.

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