It was spring all the time. Spring when it was summer and spring when it was autumn; because I was very young and Gramp was very old and Mama was very carsick that spring of 1919 when we crossed America in our Model T. Yes, it was always spring, and always blowouts and no gas, unpaved highways and insects in the field. and Gramp's cooking when we couldn't find a good place to eat.
“Hell, boy, I'd rather singe my own food than swallow the stable stews of some of these black holes called hotels.”
“My shoes are all muddy.” Mama would say. looking at her high-button shoes, about which. years later, I wrote a Broadway musical play.
Emma, our brass-bound Model T car, was ugly but game and she pushed mud and ate brook water and shouted like a “bull in fly time.” to quote Gramp from his old journal that I have before me as I write.
We passed Lancaster and Hagerstown and were boiling down the Potomac towards Washington. I was sitting at Gramp's side, and Mama sat in the back on the bearskin robe and the camping stove and her dignity.
“Did Washington really toss a silver dollar across the Potomac?” I asked.
“Hell, yes, ” said Gramp, setting fire to his cigar. “Today you can throw it twice as far because the dollar is worth half as much.” Which shows you that jokes of this kind aren't anything new.
“Gramp, ” said Mama in her baby-talk voice. “I think I'm dying.”
“You need some food stuck on your pretty ribs, Sari, ” said Gramp. “Some pig side, some good beer, a mess of fried fish, and some potatoes boiled in sour milk.”
“Oh, that sounds much too much and dreadful, ” said Mama, who always liked to be called pretty even if she was really beautiful. “How far to Washington.?”
Gramp shook his head. “Who knows? These sign posts don't mean a thing they say.”
Emma snorted, her hood suddenly exploded into a column of steam, a gun went off, it seemed, in the engine, and we rattled slowly to a stop. Gramp cursed, got out. and lifted his driving jacket exposing the wrenches and lengths of wires and other inner car plumbing he carried in his back pockets.
“What is it, Gramp, ” I asked brightly, “the yokinfloster or the mikilacutty?”
“It sounds like the satic,” he said, lifting the big hood. I must explain that we didn't know the names of any of the motor parts and Gramp and I had renamed them. The yokinfloster was what put gas into the motor, the mikilacutty was something wrong with the plugs, and anything else that was wrong was satic. Satic was also a color, I found out. Anything that Gramp saw that wasn't just red or blue or yellow was satic, a special color. This may all sound whimsy-whamsy now, but with no gas Station for miles, no repair shops except a few converted stables. 1919 was a hard year for travelers who did their own repairs.
“Satic, satic!— the— —satic!” said Gramp, as he burned a finger on the hot motor. “We can't fix this— let's find a blacksmith!” We found a blacksmith and left him with Emma, while we went after food.
We had lunch in the Ramdon Rifle Range, which I suppose was one of those places where the embassy people came out from Washington to hit clay birds and drink the cocktail of the period out of coffee cups. A country speak-easy it was, I found out later.
A large Italian with a proud stomach let us into the club.
“You are de member?” he asked Gramp, who looked questionable with car grease and soot on his face and hands.
“Just became one.” Gramp pointed to Mama, “Will you show the Countess to the Indies’ room? She's in delicate condition.”
The Italian washed his hands with phantom soap and bowed.
“De Countess, her condition, of course, de Countess.” Mama was used to Gramp's tricks and she did need the privacy and the comforts of retirement, so she followed a far finger pointing to an oak door marked Powder Room …
I don't suppose many people remember these early-age speakeasy decors. It had a raftered ceiling, fake grape leaves and glass grapes, lots of booths with little checked table-clotlis, and a smell of beer over everything.
Gramp said, “We are in a hurry to get to Washington so just give us the best. The Countess will join us in good rime. You do serve food here, I suppose?”
The Italian set two raffia-covered Chianti bottles on the table and said, “De best Italian cuisine. Grind my own polenta, import the pomidoro; I don't use de local tomato pulp and the pasta,” he beat his belly with his fist, “I eat here myself.”
Gramp said, “Give me antipasto, just the pickled mushrooms, the anchovy filets, artichokes, red pepper, and fennel with the cold veal and a white Falerno, or a strong Torre Giulia.”
The Italian looked at the grapes on the ceiling, then at Gramp, and wiped his face. “I lie to you- To a man who knows all tbis, I can not keep up the lie. I have, however. the Lucca olive oil. I will try a risotto alla milanese for you.”
“With the saffron?” Gramp asked, winking at me.
The Italian lowered his head as if kicked. “Look, I am a liar … this is just a dump, a dive, I sell bad wine, needled beer. I will not fool you or the Countess, I have not even a fritto misto or a gnocchi, not even a shred of Gorgonzola or Pecorino. The best I can do is give you mine own lunch I am cooking out back, ravioli di polio.”
Gramp said it would do if the wine was not too bad, and when the poor man was gone, Gramp turned to me and said, “Let this be a lesson to you. Never talk big or fancy. Never use big words you can't back up. Or somebody will eat your lunch.”
I never forgot that poor man, and how badly beaten down he was and how good his lunch was—a fine ravioli in chicken broth that he had prepared for himself. Mama kept saying, “It's the real thing, Gramp. A bit of the old country, and how he respects us. A bit of the old country.”
“A bit of Old Hoboken, ” said Gramp, feeling better after the lunch and eating the poor man's own Mortadella bologna and finishing off with a small glass of Crema di Timo, 2 liqueur scented with thyme which I can still smell across the years.
The sad Italian suffered as we ate his lunch and said he was sorry he had to be such a liar as he had to make a living and the police had to be paid off and the boys who sold the beer had to be paid protection money. But he was happy to serve the Countess and serve us all, and did we mind if he sort of spread it around that the Countess had been to his place.
Gramp said, “Not at all. Let's have the bill.”
But he wouldn't take any money, and he said to Mama,
“I hope it is a boy … a real big boy.”
Mama said, “What?”
And Gramp said. “I'll tell you later.”
The blacksmith found us on the porch and said there wasn't much the matter with the car.
“I know that,” said Gramp. “I can put that car together blindfolded.”
The native nodded. “You must have, you forgot to connect the spark plug on the end to the wire. Two dollars.”
Which shows two things: that Gramp should have done things the easy .way and that the car doctors of those days were still moderately honest.
We got to Washington in one of those hot, wet evenings that Washington is famous for. and we stayed at a big hotel whose name I no longer remember. It had big whirling fans in the ceiling and chains attached to the fans that led off to a small steam engine that had been built in 1842, in an age well before air-conditioning.
Mama was tired, so after a dinner of the expected fried chicken and hot biscuits and the canned fruit and the usual extra service such as laving the bread-crumbs brushed off your tablecloth by a colored man with a silver crumb-scraper, Mama went up to bed and Gramp and I went for a walk. The city was warm and dark, and the heavy stone buildings were hidden in the dusk as we walked to the White House. Gramp and I stood against the railing and looked in.
“We, that is the people who fought the war, saved the Union. Grant saved the Union, never forget it, boy, and then later we had to save the Union from President Grant. Keep the generals out of the White House. It's a lesson we have to learn ever)’ two or three generations—keep the generals out of the White House. Grant was a fine man but a failure in politics. Washington was a fine country village in Civil War days, the streets smelling of the best horses, troops marching, and the old chain bridge across the river. They used to pull up the planks at night so no one could cross over or get out of the city.”
He stopped to light his cigar. “Life had a flavor then, Stevie. You were for the Union or against the Union, and all the women were beautiful. They still are, thank God, for these old eyes, but they had a sway and a way … but you'll learn about that later, the hard way. We marched down this street when Abe Lincoln lay dead in there in a big black coffin, and the drums were muffled and the horses had black ribbons on their bridles, and it was a sad day and the people stood and cried on the sidewalks. A big country was born that night … A bunch of farmers and city slickers and factory hands knew they were burying a great man and that as one union they were growing up. You listening, boy? I want you to remember all this.”
“I'm listening, Gramp. Was it a hard war?”
“They are always hard wars. Maybe not for some fat people, and Washington was full of fat people in clover. But out there in Virginia mud, with the fever and smoked bacon and the ground horse corn and the wormy hard-tack, it was hard. We all looked like smoked hams after the war, and it took us years to get back to sleeping in beds and using forks and getting over chewing tobacco. Your grandmother never liked iliac and spent her last ten years painting forget-me-nots and roses on tin spittoons for me.”
“Were you a brave soldier?”
“Hell, they didn't come no braver. I ate the army food, fired horse pistols made by contractors who never heard of steel, and I rode in the wilderness with Grant at twenty-four and my beard was black and long.” He stopped and took my hand. “I was young. Stevie, young as a courting rooster, and the juices in me were alive. Come on, it's time an old man was in bed snoring through his few remaining teeth …”
Gramp's pity for himself and his wild youth happened about twice a year, and we always expected it. And waited until he got over it. The next morning I found him in the hotel bar, already red of face and bourbon, and [ respectfully stood aside and waited, knowing the old man always got out of his depressive periods with the aid of good whisky. He saw me and grinned.
“Great day, huh?”
“Yes, Gramp. Can I have a drink?”
“Set 'em up for my grandson, ” Cramp said to the barman, “a slug of lemonade with a jigger of sugar … and don't spare the lemons, the kid can take it.”
I was let down. “Can I smell your breath, Gramp?”
Gramp nodded, and I inhaled good bourbon and sipped my lemonade.
“We're taking your mother to the Hungarian Embassy for lunch. Be sure she's dressed to the nines and curried and combed. A nice filly, Sari, too good for your father. Poor Henry, he's a clod and will always be one … he didn't get any of my red blood, just my baby-blue eyes.” Gramp laughed and ordered another drink.
I went up and gave Mama her marching orders, and she said, “He's drunk!”
“He's high.” I admitted, expressing myself in one of Uncle Willie's phrases.
“And the Hungarian Embassy? Are you sure we arc invited, or is he too drunk to know?”
“Jo lstenem” I said. “Magyarul beszél tern”
Mama went pale. “Where did you learn iliac?”
“From Gramp, it's Hungarian, he learned it when he was building railroads in Europe. He also taught me how to swear, Te nem jo bolond …”
“Stevie, has he been letting you smell his breath?”
“Just a whiff.”
Mama cried a bit and said I would end up a drunkard like Uncle Roc. But she dressed very well and did up her face (she was one of the first respectable women to use lipstick). And being Mama, she began to enjoy the idea of having lunch at the Hungarian Embassy. I must confess it was years later that I learned that it was the old Austro-Hungarian Embassy, but Gramp didn't like the Austrians and so left them out.
I remember the Embassy; it was just after the war and it wasn't really open yet, but some people were getting ready to open it up. It was a grand place, so full of china and pictures and gold that it seemed to sink at least a foot extra into the ground. According to Gramp's journal, we were the guests at lunch of Count Sandor Lászlo Miklos Horváth; “a genuine Hungarian” was what Gramp called him. There were several other guests at a long table, and the footmen did not have their knee pants and white-wigs on, bur it was very fancy. Gramp was still high and getting higher. He always was very elated and high after getting depressed about his long-lost youth.
There was Danubian carp and Lake Balaton fogas imported on ice and by steamship from the old sod. I must admit I don't know whether these Magyars had any Tokay that day, but there was a fine strudel, I know, because I got a little ill from overeating. That and the Liptauer cheese. There was chilled Köménymagos Leves. a caraway soup, and the end for me, anyway, was a Dobos Torta, fifteen layers of chocolate and mocha cream with a roof of caramel icing over it all. I remember eating my third slice and looking up into Gramp's face in the taxi going back to the hotel and saying, “We gotta save the Union from President Grant … ”
“You bet, ” said Gramp, “We gotta lick 'em once and for all.”
“Men are beasts, ” said Mama, rubbing my aching brow.
I had the king of all bellyaches that night, and Gramp fell asleep after feeding me slugs of castor oil and orange juice, and it was a few days before we could travel, Gramp said his old war wounds were troubling him, and I wondered why he wore an icepack on his head because he had no scars there. I lived on milk and crackers, and Gramp and I refought the last days before Richmond in 1865.
Mama came home in a new hat with feathers on it, and Gramp said we were ready to move west. “Washington is certainly no place for civilized people. The pace is killing …”
“And the whisky expensive, ” Mama said crisply.
“That hurts, Sari, ” Gramp said, going up behind Mama and putting his arms around her, “But I'll cell you what I'll do. You neglect to write home all the details of our visit here, and I'll pay for that hat …”
“How do you like it?” said Mama.
“On toast with hard-boiled eggs, ” said Gramp.
Mama said he was still high but she smiled at the idea of his paying for the hat, and we all made our peace, and I tested out my new stomach on a steak at lunch. It held.
The car was in front of the hotel, and as Gramp tried to get behind the wheel.Mama shook her head and pushed him aside.
“I'm driving, Gramp, you're still a little, well, full of medicine.”?
Gramp couldn't make a scene, and I could see his head was still aching, so he moved over and Mama got us under way with a series of jerks and jumps, and somehow we got out of town and headed west. Gramp suddenly came alive and said, “Sari, where did you learn to drive?”
“I didn't. I've just been watching you. I wasn't going to trust my life and the life of my innocent child to your sprees.”
Gramp looked mad, got out a cigar, set it alight, and refused to speak for fifty miles, until he had to get out and change a tire. Mama walked me down the road and out of car range.
“I'm glad we're out of Washington, baby boy. It's a town I wouldn't care to live in. Promise me you'll never be President of the United States.”
I promised. Several times in the last few years I've been tempted to retract, but I've never given in. A boy's promise to his mother is pretty sacred, to me, anyway …