The past recaptured,” said Proust … nothing has happened to you that you can't remember. And I have just come from New Orleans, and the things I remember best are the wonderful eating places that I visited with the old man in 1919 and 1920, those years when Gramp and his Model T Ford were eating up the dust on the American highways of the period, and we decided— Gramp, Mama, and myself—to try to reach California by car!
It all came back to me in New Orleans. Count Arnaud's on Bienville Street—I remember Gramp talking about the opening in 1920. “Hell and high water, boy, what an opening night! The Count smelling of the best brandy and all of us testing the food of Madame Pierre. What a man was Arnaud Cazenave! Those dishes: Arnaud sauce on the shrimp, suprême de volaille en papillote—and don't say it's just chicken and white wine cooked in paper. Oysters Bienville, and at the end monts d'amour Rosalinde … The country is going to hell in a hack, Stevie, they don't feed themselves like that any more!”
Maybe, Gramp, but I had dinner at Arnaud's just last week with two beautiful ladies, Germaine Cazenave Wells, the Count's daughter, and Montez Tjaden. And Gramp, they were still serving filet de truise Vendôme, that claret wine with trout, and pineapple flambée. And in the flames of the last we toasted you and the Count.
And one other place, Gramp, we ate at on that great trip is there: the famous Commander's Palace. I bought my companion a nine-dollar flower, and we went and had the stuffed flounder and the turtle soup with lemon slices, and I remembered us again in 1919, you smoking your big cigar and me, knee high to the big bottle of champagne. They burned down the Commander's Palace a couple of times but they always rebuilt it, and it stands today, again, in the form and flavor you and I enjoyed so long ago …
It was 1919, we had just ended wars forever, it seemed, and Gramp came home one spring day and banged his cane against the Chinese gong in the hallway. “I've done it. I bought a stinking motor car!”
“They explode,” said Mama.
“Just had my first lesson. Destroyed a valuable tree and part of a garden wall, but I tell you this is the age of speed. Did twenty-two miles an hour.”
Uncle Willie was living with us then; he was between colleges. “Why don't you get a Stutz Bearcat? They're really something.”
Gramp scowled. “Nobody is going to get me to lie down on my back to drive a car.”
The Bearcat was a low car. Mama said. “Did it cost much?”
Gramp grinned and beat me playfully on the rear with the flat of his cigar case. “I've sold the horses, sold the carriage. We travel in style from now on!”
“Not I,” said Mama, who was watching her grammar that day.
Gramp winked at me. “I'm going to California by car. I'm taking Stevie, room for one more and the baggage. You always wanted CO visit relatives in St. Louie, Sari.”
Mama perked up and smiled her best smile. “Can't we go by train?”
“As well go by covered wagon! It's a new age, Sari, a new world. Didn't we just whip the Germans, save the French and English, bury the Tzar, and begin to import a Chablis Burgundy? It's the twentieth century, gal!”
Mama gave in with grace; she had a new fur coat and she wanted to test it on the eyes of the relatives in St. Louie (we never said St. Louis—just St. Louie).
The next morning there was the sound of braying in front of the house, and I ran out, buttoning as I went, and there in front of the while marble stepping stone labeled LONGSTREET was a shiny, brassy, square (and ugly) motor car. It was black and solid-looking, stood like a barn, and the brasswork. of which there was much, out-rivaled the feeble spring sun of a New York day. Behind the wheel sat a man wrapped in a brown duster, with a cap on backwards and huge goggles Strapped across a big nose. A cigar smoldered and spat fire, and the figure pumped air into a rubber ball, and the mooing sound came out and filled the street. The 1919 Ford was 1 product to dazzle the eye and numb the mind (it also did things to the rear of man's anatomy, as I found out).
Gramp (it was Gramp in his motoring costume) shouted, “How does it look, Stevie? How does it sound?”
“Nice and loud, Gramp.”
“Jump in and we'll try the fences.”
I climbed, and cars were high in those days. (“On a clear day, Stevie, you can see Sandy Hook from up here.”) I sat down at Gramp's side, and he let down the outside brake, did something with a gas lever (no foot feed in those cars), did a short lap dance on some piano levers set on the car boards, and the car shook, gasped, moaned, and began to smoke. Then we moved, moved, quickly eating up the street at fifteen miles an hour, twenty, and when we hit the ice wagon we were doing thirty, but the brakes gripped at last. (it cost us ten dollars for the ice and twenty dollars to repaint the fender—it was solid steel in those days.)
Gramp limped a little at dinner that night, and I had a black eye where I had hit the dashboard, but no one noticed it because Gramp was in a growling mood. The sons and the daughters-in-law and the small fry not too damp to cat in the children's room all sat and waited for Gramp to thank God for the roast beef and clear soup, the baked white-fish and the slewed meatballs in sweet and sour sauce. the water-cress salad and the spiced peaches, the apple pie as big as a wagon wheel and the heavy cups of very black coffee. It was an ordinary meal for a family at home without company. Real eating called for the Spode china, the handmade silver service, the soup tureen of rare Ming, filet mignon Clomenceau, oysters, and crêpes Suzette Longstreet (Gramp's way of burning sugar in the sauce).
Gramp looked up and rubbed his hurt leg. “I'm leaving for California in two weeks. I'm taking Sari and Stevie, nobody is to do any business until I get back, and Henry, get me a thousand dollars in ten-dollar bills for the trip.”
Papa sighed, “Now Father, you know things are bad, postwar depression.”
“Get it.” said Gramp. “And Willie, I want six bottles of good brandy and find me a case of Veuve Clicquot.”
“Papa, you know America has given up drinking. It's against the law.”
“What arc those bootfooter fellows selling?”
“Bootleggers? You wouldn't buy from them, Gramp.” Mama said.
“Wouldn't I?” (So Gramp became the first scofflaw in our family.) “And see if he has any Clos de Vougeot.”
Willie said very low, “I'd like to see that come out of Tony's bathtub.”
The car behaved very well for a stone-age car. It had to be wound up like a clock to start. Papa usually cranked her while Gramp shouted orders and gripped the wheel. Once it started, Papa usually flew a few feet aside. The car started in jerks or leaps like an eager rabbit. Gramp sat over the wheel, wearing his driving cap backwards—he was an admirer of Barney Oldfield, the great racing driver, and dressed like him. I was on the shake-down trip we made around Central Park the night before we set off across the plains of New Jersey. There were no traffic lights in those days, and the police all knew Gramp (and carried his cigars close to their hearts just over their long underwear). We found out that the car didn't like to steer left, so Gramp invented a way of touring by right turns only. We went to California by making right turns only, and to this day I don't know how it was done. Gramp was ahead of his times, most likely, and had stuff on the ball Einstein never dreamed of.
We didn't damage Central Park, much, it's stood up to a lot of blows, but we did change a spark plug. Gramp had become an expert repairman. He carried wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers in his fountain-pen pockets, and the big pockets in the back of his pants were full of short lengths of wire, cotter pins, steel nuts, and bits of wire.
Papa and Uncle Willie loaded the car that night, and we named her “Emma” after a departed cook who always got overheated when we had company and used to put her head in the icebox to cool off. The bootleg stuff went on the floor boards, and on this went Mama's trunks and Gramp's bags and mine. On the running board (dear departed running boards) were clamped a camp stove, a small icebox, and three steel cans marked: Water, Gas, Oil. There were also a folding tent and an oil lamp, a red railroad oil lamp in case the gas failed us. The lamps were lit by gas, and a small tank of gas was hung like a modern-day bomb under the right running board. We put up the top, a “one-man top” it was called, as it took one man for each corner; made of heavy black canvas on oak frames set into steel elbows and held down by tanned leather belts, the top took as much trouble to furl as the sails of a prize yacht.
But at last we were ready: Gramp at the wheel, a gleam in his goggles, the usual cigar held by the neck in his strong teeth; me at his side seated on a sack of onions (Gramp was going to camp and eat out a lot); and in the back on the buffalo robes and luggage. Mama, small, scared, but game, her best hat on her best hairdo, waving goodbye weakly.
“Henry,” Cramp showed.
Papa took the crank, and Gramp figured on spark and gas and nodded. Papa Spun the crank. Nothing. Papa spun again, the car howled, the body shook. Papa landed five feet away but on his feet, holding his arm tenderly to his chest as if it were of great value. Everybody shouted goodbye. Mama turned a shade lighter and greener and waved back, the car jackrabbited down the block, and then went on headed for the ferry station. Behind us a feeble cheer rang out, and I turned and thumbed my little nose at my little cousins. It was ten o'clock on (and an old journal gives me the date) April 18, 1919.
Steering only right, we made the ferry station and got on board behind a pair of big brewery horses; “a good Omen,” Cramp said. Mama had a little “mal de mer” as she called it in her high-school French, but Cramp held her head while I held a horse. We landed in New Jersey, a New Jersey before the big paved highways and skyways and traffic cops. We headed south, past Newark, the slaughtering houses smelling, as they still do; we went past Elizabeth (which turned out to be a city and not a girl, as I had expected) and past our summer place in New Brunswick, which Cramp saluted by tooting twice and running over a large dog, who got up. dusted himself, and bit one of our tires.
“Where,” asked Mama, “are we heading for?”
“Philadelphia, what a place to spend a night, but it's the nearest civilization, ” said Cramp.
“I'm hungry.” I said.
Gramp grinned, “All stomach and no brains. You'll go far, boy. We're heading for the Red Lion Inn near Trenton. Great place.”
Gramp kept a huge journal of the trip, and I have it open before me as I write. It's full of the great eagle tracks that Gramp used as script and some of my early drawings, of which there is yet no demand by the museums. Gramp had drawn in a map and was trying to follow it. It was before the fancy folded road map with its varicose veins in all colors showing the best roads. Mostly there were no roads.
Gramp scowled at the map. “Damn it, I was sure I had Princeton marked on this map.”
“Uncle Willie went to Princeton.” I volunteered.
Gramp said, “He's even been to Harvard and to the dogs, but that doesn't get us to the Red Lion Inn.”
“I'm dusty.” said Mama.
“Shake yourself, Sari.” (That was a family joke for years, not funny any mote, bur part of the flavor of the trip.) Anyway, we went on and lost Trenton a few times and met a few lady cows that seemed amazed at Gramp's command of language. But at last we saw a low brown barn of a place and outside it a big red sign with a golden lion rampant on it and the letters: YE OLDE RED LION INN …
We drove up, Emma snorting in tired glee, her brass front steaming. We stopped and Mama said she had to collect herself; Gramp leaped down and hammered on the big oak door until it opened and a large old man came out and shook his head.
“Hain't opened for the season yet.”
“Hain't!” shouted Gramp. “Hell. man. I've risked life and limb to get here. You remember me, Kimmil, Captain Longstreet.”
“— — —,” said Mr. Kimmil, an old Army man himself. “You ole — — —.”
“— — —!” said Gramp, already in the spirit of the first day at Gettysburg.
“Really.” said Mama, “There are women and children present.”
“Kimmil, my daughter-in-law and grandson, Sari and Stevie.”
“Pleased to meet up with you. Come in and I'll roust out the cook and get some food out of the spring house.”
The Red Lion was very nice inside if you liked elk horns, wolf skins, wagon wheels, old guns and cobblestone fire places and pictures of old circuses and Civil War people and dead fish with glass eyes in cases.
The spring house, I must explain, was the home freezer of that day, and kept things just about as fresh as our modern electric coffins.
First Mr. Kimmil (Major Kimmil, Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor with Cramp) brought up two bottles of wine.
“Never mind that French stuff,” he said, “the last of the real good Rheingau wines, Spatlese. And here, look at this, Captain.”
Gramp nodded, “Beerenauslese … it can't be! And the vintage year 1907.” Yep, the real McCoy, from Riidesheim.“ He saluted.
Gramp saluted and opened the bottle and poured. I had two drops in a big glass of water. By this time two colored boys had set a table, and a chicken broth with rice was steaming. We attacked it. and in came a roast chicken with bread sauce. Then followed a huge platter of Wiener Schuritzel garnirt, with Nockerl dumplings that I still dream about, and a Haeuptel Salat, the famous wilted lettuce salad that was a treat in a day before people ate salads. Except for my eating a pepper gherkin, which I shouldn't have, and Mama's getting a caraway seed stuck between her beautiful little teeth, the dinner went off well, finished off with an Austrian Gebäck that Mr. Kimmil had taught the boys to make. Mr. Kimmil said he was sorry the ten story Dobosch Torse wasn't ready bur he did have a Sacber Torte, that wonderful chocolate cake.
There wasn't much use trying to stay awake after that, and Mama and I retired to our room, the one with the stuffed wildcat with real teeth on the wall. Downstairs we could hear Gramp and Mr. Kimmil over the Munich Bier relighting Little Round Top and recalling how the dead piled up in the peach orchard so long ago.
Morning came cold and too early. and Mama washed us both in bottled mineral water. I remember breakfast as being Indianer Krapfen, a kind of cruller filled with custard and vanilla and covered with chocolate. When we were finished and Gramp and Mr. Kimmil had exchanged a last round of brandies, we went out and had relays of colored boys work to crank Emma into life. It took twenty minutes and only worked after Gramp jacked up a back wheel (a starting trick of the early Model T days), and we were off, Mr. Kimmil waving and weaving.
We drove in the direction of Philadelphia. and Mania moaned and kept her feet on two hot bricks wrapped in a blanket. I had out my air rifle and banged away at fence posts and Bull Durham signs, a sign, by the way, of a well-hung bull stallion that was the pride of any farmer who could get it on his barn wall. Gramp sang questionable ditties in the remains of a flawed voice. but loud.
“Gramp! Little pitchers.”
“Let's find the Delaware River.” said Gramp, scowling at Mama. “If Washington could, so can we.”
We found the river at last, and a ferry to carry us across, and on the other side was Philadelphia all right, but Emma had a flat tire. We were no place near those signs reading Free Air (a novelty just then), so Cramp got out the hand pump and we both took turns putting air into the tire. But it was no use so we got out iron ham bono and husked the tire off the wheel ( no demountable rims on this car; the iron ham bones were the only tools for this work) and found a Philadelphia nail in the inner tube. Gramp patched it and pressed it tight from a smelling tube of repair parts, and we got it on and pumped …
We got to Gettysburg late in the afternoon and stopped Emma on a high ridge. Gramp got out and shouldered his cane like a gun and looked across at another ridge.
“Here I was on the ridge here, looking down and across. Fifty thousand butternut rebels hell for leather, firing, firing … down there are the peach orchards, and Meade rides up and he says who the devil is in those peach orchards … Rebels, I say … Git cm out. he yells, yes sir, I say, and I wave my sword and I start running and the boys start running after me and it's bayonets in the peach orchard and the second day at Gettysburg …”
“Were you brave, Gramp?”
“We were all brave. Americans on both sides …, even across there. I know every foot of this battlefield …”
An old man with a cap labeled GUlDE came up to us. Gramp waved him off, “Don't need a guide. Fought on this Yankee ridge myself.”
The guide ate a corner off a square of eating chaw. “You musta fought a damn funny battle. This is the rebel ridge, the Union one is over there.”
Gramp smiled and handed the guide a cigar. “I mean it was Union when we took it after the battle. Well, let's move on and find lodgings for the night. California. here we come!”
I never did find out if Gramp had mistaken the ridges, and Mama said I mustn't ask Gramp about it again as old soldiers have a way of fading away into dreamlike states and not always remembering the facts. Gramp didn't talk about the Civil War for a week. And we both worked over the map in the journal and figured we only had a few more thousand miles to California. The map is old and torn now but still marked on it in Gramp's handwriting arc the words: “Booneville, bought a genuine signature of Geo. Washington for ten dollars.”
I still have that, too. A Los Angeles City College professor told me it's the rarest of all Washington signatures, being the only one signed to a paper bearing the 1903 watermark …