At two-thirty Mama, pale but game, wearing her best hat and the best feather that was brought out only for births and burials, came downstairs. I was starched and slicked, and Papa had brought his best collar home from the laundry….
Outside the door stood the Buick that was almost paid for, and the professor of law and shoe shining who acted as our colored butler and woodchopper in his spare time from his legal studies, had shined her up like a Winter Pippin.
Everything was very formal. Mama got into the car holding against her tiny body the questions that she was to ask Ogell-muggell. Papa drove, me by his side, and we slowly crossed the city to the Town Hall.
The Major and Silver Dollar had pulled a political trick. They had called an open meeting at the Town Hall for the questioning, and so not only the school board, but two hundred of the best citizens and worst ward heelers and their mobs had managed to crowd into the Town Hall, and a great many citizens milled around outside the hall.
Overhead a great cotton banner swayed in the warm wind … STATE CHAMPS AT LONG LAST! Mama spelled it out and grew paler. The Town Hall greeted Mama with silence. We went in. The school board sat, shaved and ready. Silver Dollar called the meeting open. Mama sat down and opened her folder and placed her paper before her. A door squeaked, and Ogell-muggell came in. He was as solid as ever, his face, for all the torture he had taken, was as numb as ever. His nose was skinned, and he sucked a puffed lip … but his board of experts who came with him showed more damage; these forerunners of the tattered, aged experts on the radio quiz shows did not look happy.
It was then Mama showed the stuff of which she was made. She looked round her and saw the people, saw Ogell-muggell waiting for the axe. And she leaned over and tore up her papers. It was still so suddenly you could have heard a cat drop.
Mama turned to the football player.
“You must answer three questions. If you pass, you play tomorrow. But you must answer all three.”
The board of experts groaned. Papa shifted in his seat and scowled at everyone.
Mama said, “In what way does football differ from baseball?”
Suddenly everyone cheered. Mama had given in! She wanted Ogell to answer the questions! Answer them right!
Ogell stood sweating. He began to think … or tried to come as near that process as he could. “Can you say that again?”
“Certainly,” said Mama, and repeated the question.
Ogell-muggell said, “Well, let's see … football? baseball? I think the balls ain't the same shape….”
Mama said, “I will accept that answer.”
After that, Ogell-muggell felt sure of himself. He told Mama that a goal post was something you ran between when you had the ball, and he said it was called football because you sometimes kicked the object referred to as a ball.
There was a cheer that almost lifted the rotted roof off the town hall, and the people left their seats and ran towards the center of the room. Ogell-muggell stood there waiting for them to lift him on their shoulders. He was almost the most amazed person in the room when they didn't … Mama was the most … when they lifted her off the floor and placed her on their shoulders. It was the high tide of her office-holding career.
That night the bonfire burned bright and high, and all of us kids who were to be bathed Saturday night had our baths a day sooner, and look them Friday, with or without protest (Mama cheated and worked in a few more baths for me during the week…. But mostly, in the past, our nation has believed that bathing more than once a week was unhealthy).
And Mama gave a dinner for Ogellmuggell and the school board, for Mama was made of stern stuff; if she sold out her ideals and wanted to be punished for it, she wanted to suffer in public.
The main dish was … can you guess? … ogell-muggell. Papa had invented it for the dinner and named it after the football player. It's a rare dish these days, and is sometimes called Terrapin Maryland, but we old-timers know its real name.
Papa took two female terrapin out of the Major's best terrapin pond. He made a sauce of two garlic cloves, bay leaves, shallots, four onions, four carrots, and a pint of raw bacon and ham. All this he simmered in a pot with a fistful of butter, and then added some salt and a pint of red wine.
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