We got to Dover, Delaware, at midnight, and what we saw of the town in 1920, when Gramp and Mama and myself were touring in our old car, is most likely what the town looks like today. Perhaps it's gotten bigger; perhaps there are larger electric signs or even taller buildings. But in the main I remember it as being like almost any American town between California and New Jersey. This universal sameness; was at first to irk me, then amaze me, and later to impress on my mind the gradual drift of the nation into a pattern of conforming, of accepting and enjoying the same morion pictures, the same magazines, shapes of hats, color of ties, and size of doughnuts. In Texas the boots would he high-heeled, in Ohio the hat brims narrower, in Boston the beans drier, and in Florida frying a little too easy. But in the main when you had seen one American town, you had seen them all.
We were let into the Dover Mouse late at night and, after tying my pet hawk's leash to the brass bedrail, I fell asleep at once. I awoke in the morning to find the hawk making noises in his crop and shifting from leg to leg. Gramp had gone off on some business relating to his copper company, which had been incorporated in Delaware because Delaware makes it easy to form a corporation. Mama, too, was gone, having left early to see about buying milk-glass vases and lamp bases and plate to take back home to relatives. I don't know if they make it any more, but in my boyhood milk glass was a while, opaque glass, usually covered with small white bumps. A milk-glass shade for a bronze or brass student lamp diffused a soft, pleasant light, and roses and their long stems took on added charm in a milk-glass vast. It had some value in those days, but today good examples of it are rare and cost a great deal of money. I hate to think how much of it Gramp broke when he used to start talking on some subject—“ Just expressing myself, damn it!” Gramp would attract the attention of the grandchildren by banging a steak knife hard against a milk-glass lamp. It was a rare piece of glass that could take more than three or four of Cramp's angry bangs.
But in Dover, when Mama was collecting the glassware, none of us knew its real value, or its dismal destiny. I went down to breakfast, brought back a chunk of raw meat for my hawk, and fed it to him with wary skill, having learned to pull back my fingers with speed and agility from his sharp beak. At noon the phone rang in Our room. More stylish than effective, it hung on the wall and was made of fumed oak and black rabber; I had to stand very close to hear. It was Gramp calling.
“High noon, boy, high noon. Rise and shine.”
“I've been up for hours.”
“Stop bragging. You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“Hell, a growing boy should always be hungry. Sari around?”
“She left early to buy glass.”
“Well, you meet me at the Three Sisters for lunch. Bring my big cigar case in my tweed jacket. You get a hired car and tell him to take you to the Three Sisters. And don't forget the cigars.”
I quoted, “‘A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.’”
Gramp laughed and hung up with a bang. I figured mint juleps had been passed out at the stockholders' meeting. I found the cigar case and went down and ordered a car and, on the way to the Three Sisters Inn, I dreamed what I would do with my share of the copper millions I would inherit. We all expected to ge: very rich from Gramp's copper holdings. I decided I would marry a red-headed actress with very fat thighs and very small feet, like the Iadies on the colored pictures they gave out with Sweet Caporal cigarettes. I would raise long-eared hound-dogs, I would invent a shower that flowed just warm, not cold or scalding, and I would go to Yale and wear a turtle-neck sweater, smoke a bent pipe like Sherlock Holmes, keep a bulldog and grow a mustache that could be twisted into curling loops. All this hardly seemed to make a dent in the millions I would get some day, and I gave up thinking and decided I was hungry. It was just as well, as Gramp's Copper fortune never came into being, and after he was gone we all had to go to work to pile up our own millions. I hove always felt capable of making a million dollars for myself; but always, when I was on the verge of concentrating on it, the idea bored me, and I have written a hook instead, or painted a series of pictures.
The Three Sisters were really three sisters, Spanish-looking girls, the daughters, it was said, of a shipwrecked sailor who had drifted ashore, married, spawned, and then moved on, leaving the three dark beauties who had been taught cooking by their father. (“Proving,” said Gramp, “that all great chefs are men.” “Proving,” said Mama, “that give a fool a white cap and a big spoon and he'll act out Napoleon among the cold cuts.”)
The Three Sisters lnn did not look impressive, but it had charm, and under the big elm tree. at a table covered with a snow-white tablecloth, sat Gramp, twisting his mustache back and respectfully contemplating the silver mint-julep mug in his fist. (“Never crush the mint leaves, Stevie, just bruise them. And always drink a julep from a silver mug.”)
“Pull up a chair. Stevie, Things went well at the stockholders' meeting. We're going to call in the outstanding debentures and pay dividends on the nonvoting sunk. Then we'll split the common stock, three tot one. You follow me?”
“No. Are we going to be rich?”
He looked at me closely and frowned, “Dues it matter?”
“I was thinking it over in the cab,” I said. “No. Not very much. There aren't enough things 1 want to buy.”
He slapped me on the back. “That's my lad … understands the futility of desire, the hollowness of material things. Let's eat!”
The sisters got busy inside; then two of them came out with trays and the third one stood in the doorway, holding her roasting fork like a marshal's baton. Gramp bowed to them and introduced me and we fell to. It was a fine lunch. Gramp as usual recorded most of it in his journals, which were becoming more mixed up. confused, dog-eared and tattered as time passed. I have dredged up the following about the food of the Three Sisters:
There was baked rockfish and a flounder, seasoned with garlic, bay leaf and thyme, with lots of butter in active service. The main dish was breast of chicken Three Sisters, cooked with wild rice. (“A grass, Stevie, not at all a true rice. Indians go out in the swamps with their dugout canoes, drift among the wild grass and beat the heads off it with their paddles. What falls into the dugouts they call wild rice.”) The chicken was cooked with sherry and cognac, large mushrooms, pimiento, green peppers, saffron and chopped parsley. Served in a timbale on a platter, with the sauce poured over, it was remarkable eating. The vegetable was asparagus Delaware; large white asparagus, garnished with hard-cooked eggs, grated cheese, and blanched almonds.
Dessert was apple charlotte: orange marmalade over tan apples, wonderful thick egg-white meringue, sprinkled with grated orange and lemon rind. The three sisters watched with pleasure while we ate. Gramp then presented each sister with a good cigar and, being a sailor's daughters and at least partly Spanish, they all lit up and smoked.
When we got back to the hotel. Mama was there with quantities of milk glass in the shape of vases and plaits and other brittle objects.
Mania said, “I spent lots of money.”
Gramp nodded and tested a bit of glass With a finger, tapping it sharply, and listening as it rang out. “Nice clear sound.”
“What does that mean.'” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Mama, pulling off her long gloves. “The only thing you tap and get an answer from is a melon. If it's ripe it echoes.”
“Cut glass,” said Gramp. “You can tell the lead content of cut glass by tapping it.”
Mama made a low bumm sound in her throat. “Cut glass, really Gramp, cut glass is just something you get free by cutting out soap wrappers.”
“Damn.” said Gramp, who had a huge collection of cut glass, and was well aware that fashionable people now considered it vulgar. I liked the feel of it, running my fingers over its facets, but I too thought it vulgar and, what was worse, ugly. But no one except Mama ever told Gramp his cut glass wasn't fashionable any more.
Mama said, “There's an old farm below town, people named Rodgers own it. They used to be very important, but have come down in the world. They arc selling their milk glass, and also some ruby glass. We'll drive out tomorrow.”
Gramp looked over the milk glass spread around the room and said, “Haven't we enough?”
“You have a lot of daughters-in-law, Gramp. They'll all want a few bits.”
Gramp gave in and went away muttering something about prime cut glass.
The Rodgers' place was one of those dilapidated farms on once good land, running to weed with wild breeds of hens and dogs and rusting farm tools. The house was white brick, but a wing had sagged, and a fire had destroyed the best part of it. The Rodgers still acted as if they owned slaves and productive acres, but it was only a matter of time before the bank kicked them off the family acres. Mrs. Rodgers was wide, fat and very charming. She smelled of peppermint and sage, and had fat hands full of rings from which some of the stones were missing. She took Mama in to see the milk glass, chattering away close to Mama's face, patting herself on the checks and making gestures against her chest.
“Lord love yo', we don't get much quality any more out here. Seems the nature of people isn't what it once was. Yo' just come in here and I'll show you what we have … we wouldn't sell it, only Sam. he wants to move into town to be near his club, and where can you find an old house like this to keep treasures in? Watch yo' step, that board is loose.”
Sam Rodgers was a short man with a beak nose and a rubber-band mustache. He dressed like an English squire: leggings, shooting jacket and a tweed hat. Like his farm, he was shabby, and trying to give the impression that he found poverty on lean acres amusing. He saw the hawk on my wrist and came over to me.
“We used to have our own hawks years ago. Mine if I have him ferret out a rat in the barn for me?”
It wasn't polite to say no, so Mr. Rodgers set the hawk on his wrist and went into the barn. Gramp lit a cigar and shook his head. “They never had any hawks. You don't borrow a hawk, and no self-respecting hawk would hunt for a stranger.”
I said, “Ben likes hunting rats.”
There was a curse from the barn, a clatter of feet, a howl of pain. The hawk came flying through the huge door, closely followed by Mr. Rodgers holding his nose and waving a pitchfork.
The hawk settled on my wrist and Mr. Rodgers showed his badly clawed nose and shouted: “I'll wring the neck of that buzzard! I'll nail his tail feathers to a barn door! Give me that varmint.”
Gramp stepped between us. “Mr. Rodgers, a hawk is a gentleman. If you borrow him to hunt rats, you insult his breeding. I hear you distill a bit of 'shine from time to time. I'll stand treat to a pint.”
The men went off arm in arm, and I looked at Ben. He shifted on his scaly feet, and his co.d eyes viewed me with great contempt. The hawk could not forgive me for having lent him to a stranger. The whole afternoon seemed wasted. Mama found that Mrs. Rodgers' glass was not worth much, Gramp said that the 'shine wasn't much better, and we all felt happy to leave the run-down farm and its once grand people settling in their decay.
The next morning we started north. In the back, the glass, packed in straw and crated, rested on our luggage. In front, the three of us cheerfully looked forward to getting home. We crossed the bay to Cape May, and we tried to get through to the house by phone. One of the maids answered and said the family had gone to the summer place in Pittsfield, up in Massachusetts. Gramp frowned and shook his head. “We'll never make it. The car is wearing out.”
“Let's try,” said Mama. “She can't let us down.”
“Sari, a machine has no soul. You can't appeal to its emotions.”
“Maybe if we lightened the load?”
Gramp nodded, “Well ship the glass and most of the luggage express to Pittsfield. Maybe we'll make it.”
So we got rid of most of our luggage. Then we went back to the local hotel to get Mama. The hotel clerk said she had gone to pick dogwood blossoms down by the crick (the natives never say creek, only crick).
Mama was there under the flowering dogwoods, and, as she saw us, she waved her red sunshade. Somebody had left a bull down there, near the creek, and he saw Mama wave the sunshade too and he started for Mama. Gramp yelled and picked up a two-by-four fragment of lumber. I followed. Mama saw the bull, she turned, looked around her and very bravely Stood her ground. It would have been foolish to run on the boggy soil. As the bull came near, she ducked behind a tree. The bull skidded, braked, and turned to meet Gramp swinging the two-by-four timber. The two-by-four hit the bull on (he nose and the creature bellowed and backed. Gramp stepped forward and banged again and the bull, outraged, went off rubbing his sore nose in the cooling mud. I've never been much impressed by bullfighters since.
The encounter cheered everyone and we drove up and over the sand roads north, singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Mama admitted she had been afraid. “But the thing that worried me most was the fear he would disfigure my face, and that I would look a horror in my coffin. Somehow, I don't fear death, Gramp; it's dying I find a problem.”
Gramp looked proudly at Mama, and paid her the highest compliment he could think of. “Sari, what a man you would have made.”