My Own Two Feet (4 page)

“I am so happy,” I wrote in my diary and to Claudine. In my letters home I did not mention happiness. Of course, my parents did not want me to be unhappy, but I knew that Mother would prefer that I miss her and be, at least a little, homesick. She would not understand my relief at being able to come home from school without her questioning me about my day's activities, mulling them over, and later pointing out how I could improve my behavior.

When I came home from school in Ontario, I eagerly opened the mailbox. Claudine wrote from her dormitory, Jessica Todd Hall, which she referred to as Jessica Todd Hell, at Oregon State Teachers College in Monmouth, where she was a
member of the last class to earn a teaching credential in two years. She played the piano for dances so the school wouldn't have to pay an orchestra. Her letters were cheerful, but Claudine was always cheerful.

Another Portland friend, named Virginia, as was my cousin, was, like me, an only child of a possessive mother. This friend wrote of life in a University of Oregon sorority house, where girls who became engaged had to eat their pie without using silverware on the day they made the announcement. The girls held meetings to point out one another's faults. This Virginia's only fault was wearing face powder that was too light, but hard feelings festered among her sorority sisters. I was glad to be at Chaffey. Other friends, unable to continue their educations during the Depression, wrote briefer letters.

The biggest surprise was Mother's letters. She wrote of my friends, and sprightly, humorous accounts of goings-on in our Portland neighborhood. Mother had often said she would like to write, and her letters showed she had talent. I looked forward to her amusing letters, which she obviously enjoyed writing.

Gerhart wrote, too, with no encouragement from me. Part of my joy in life was the distance between us. Once when I stood in the Clapps'
front hall looking with distaste at an envelope from Gerhart, Fred told me I could have the post office return it unopened. I considered the consequences. A returned letter would be reported to Mother, who would write that Gerhart was lonely, that I must be nice to him. I gave in, read his boring letter, and answered in a few noncommittal sentences that I hoped would discourage him and satisfy Mother.

Once Mother wrote that Gerhart had driven the nine hundred miles to Ontario to see me, but when he reached the house, decided in an unusual moment of perception that I would not want to see him. He drove back to Portland. Mother was pleased and amused by this episode, which she considered flattering to me, but I was annoyed and refused to be made to feel responsible for Gerhart's happiness. I was free of him at last.

The Depression seemed to have evaporated in the hot sun of Southern California. No one worried about the cost of heating because houses so rarely needed heating. My two woolen dresses were pulled from the closet only two or three times that winter. Food was less expensive than in Oregon and more varied. Fred sometimes brought from Indio a flat of deglet-noor dates, fresh, moist, and mealy, unlike the dried dates I
was used to. A fruit new to me, persimmons, which Atlee swiped from a tree down the street, were sweet and so slithery we leaned over the sink to slurp them. The avocado tree beneath my window was bountiful. When we needed oranges, Atlee drove his red Rickenbacker into the grove his family owned with another Chaffey family. Virginia and I pulled oranges from trees until we filled the backseat. Sitting in the old car, I felt lap-deep in fragrant, golden luxury, oranges crisp and more flavorful than any I had ever eaten.

There was, however, one indication of the Depression in Ontario. Wives of men on the Chaffey faculty who also taught were allowed to work only half-time. Verna, the librarian of both the high school and the junior college, worked more than half a day for half pay, especially now that a new earthquake-proof library was under construction. I knew she felt this was unfair, but she enjoyed her work and did not complain. Often, in the evening, I would see her looking through the encyclopedia and other reference books, searching, searching, searching. Librarians, I was to learn, are always haunted by unanswered reference questions.

Verna maintained a remarkable calm toward her children. Once, when we walked home from school together, we found Atlee, Virginia, and
two of their friends battling with decayed oranges fallen from the trees across the driveway. The side of the house was thick with rotten oranges. Verna laughed and said, “All right. Now get the hose and wash it off.”

Another time, when Verna learned that Atlee had hopped rides on freight trains, she did not reprimand him. Instead she picked up the newspaper and pretended to read. “Why, here's a dreadful story about a boy who tried to hop a freight train, fell under the wheels, and was be-headed.” I wondered if Atlee caught on.

Fred understood boys. Atlee had a large room over the garage connected to the bathroom with a door about three feet high. His room was a jumble of tools, comic books, and other boyish clutter that no one told him to clean up, at least as far as I knew. When people criticized Fred for letting Atlee drive around town in his red Rickenbacker, Fred answered, “What do you expect a fifteen-year-old boy to do—hang around Gemmell's drugstore?” He found a broken-down motorcycle for Atlee to tinker with. Atlee worked hard on his motorcycle, and one day, with pops and bangs, got it to run. We all rushed outside to see the miracle: Atlee riding around and around the house on his red motorcycle. He lent me a pair of pants and took me for a wild ride—
at least, it seemed wild—down Euclid Avenue. Everyone who saw us cheered.

Fred, brimming with vigor, was always busy with one project or another. While I lived there, he built a fireplace for barbecuing near the pergola beneath my bedroom windows. He also moved a two-room cottage from Upland, the town that separated Ontario from the mountains, and set it on his property for rental income.

Another time Fred brought home five gallons of cleaning solvent, cleaned the family's clothes, and asked if I had anything that needed cleaning. I did, the navy blue dress with the white collar I had traveled in. The next time I wore the dress, it exuded solvent fumes as my body heat warmed it. I am sure Paul was amused, but he did not comment.

Most amazing of all, to me, was Fred's help with housework. Except for my father's polishing floors, I had never known a man to touch housework. Every morning Fred made a broilerful of crisp toast. Once a week he charged into the laundry room, which was built onto the rear of the house. He churned several loads of laundry through the washing machine and, with the help of anyone who happened to be around, hung them, sometimes by moonlight, on lines in the backyard. Ironing was a social event, or so it
seemed to me, with Verna ironing shirts while Atlee, Virginia, and I lined up in front of an ancient commercial-sized mangle, which was heated by gas. “Now!” Fred would order. The three of us fed napkins, sheets, and towels into the contraption while Fred pulled a lever that lowered the top and pressed the linens as they rolled through.

Then one day Fred came home driving a fourth Rickenbacker, which he had bought for twenty-five dollars from a man who heard he was collecting Rickenbackers. Fred laughed about this, and so did the rest of the family. Fred had bought it for spare parts. These automobiles were becoming extinct.

My part in family duties, as outlined by Verna before I came to California, was keeping my room clean and baking two cakes a week. I had brought with me a file of Mother's cake recipes—Oregonians in those days were great cake bakers because cake was a Depression luxury that usually could be assembled from whatever was in the cupboard. I am ashamed to say I did not always bake the two cakes a week expected of me, but I am sure I baked at least one and usually filled in with brownies or apple crisp.

One day Verna brought home an electric mixer, which I found fascinating when the batter rose higher and higher as the beaters spun.
This
was
going to be the lightest, fluffiest cake I had ever baked, a cake that would dazzle the family with my skill. Unfortunately, when I removed the cake from the oven, it exhaled all the air I had beaten into it and sank into a flat, dry slab. I tried, not very successfully, to lubricate it with butter-and-powdered-sugar frosting. The family was game and ate it anyway. As Mother said, Verna always did have a sweet tooth.

That cake was not the only kitchen failure that year. Virginia's home economics teacher required girls to cook at home recipes they had studied in class and to bring a note from a parent telling of the result. One afternoon Virginia baked a fragrant chocolate cake, but when she took it from the oven, it looked more like fudge than cake. Together we studied the recipe and discovered that Virginia had forgotten to include flour. She was as crestfallen as her cake.

“Never mind,” said Fred. “We'll eat it like candy.” Unfortunately, Virginia's cake did not taste like fudge; it tasted like Crisco. Only Fred managed to eat a piece in an attempt to cheer his daughter.

Mother Clapp, who spent most of the day sitting in a low rocker in her room reading her Bible, crept downstairs late afternoons to start dinner. I often joined her to make salad and to
set the table. Mother Clapp was such a quiet woman we found little to say to each other, but I felt she was friendly toward me. I enjoyed sharing peaceful moments with her as I laid out the red-and-white place mats and set the table with Blue Willow dishes.

Dinner conversation was cheerful, centering on the events at the high school and junior college. One day Verna brought home an example of her day's work, a can of soy loaf given her by a man who was using the school library to research soybeans, which he felt had undiscovered possibilities. Material for automobile tires, for example. The can was opened, the soybean loaf was heated. We bravely prepared to eat the whole thing because Fred did not approve of waste. Then Atlee threw down his fork and said, “Why don't you say it? It's just like dog food.” He was so right we couldn't help laughing, and Guard finished the loaf for us.

Laughter at the dinner table was a new experience for me. My parents often smiled, but laugh out loud, never. The Depression had left us with little to laugh about. And then one day a letter arrived from home. Verna, Mother told me, had written that it was so discouraging to come home from the library to a house with carpets that needed vacuuming and bouquets of dead flowers
gathering dust in the living room. Mother said I must run the vacuum cleaner and empty out wilted flowers. I was willing to do this, but why, I wondered, did Verna involve Mother? I loved Verna and was hurt, but after that, when I vacuumed my room, I vacuumed the living room as well. Verna acted as if this were not unusual, and I was too busy being happy to brood about my shortcomings. I had Paul to think about.

When the first issue of the school paper came out, there on the front page was the editor's picture. Paul. He had not said a word to me about being editor when I had so generously shared with him the wisdom gained from my high school journalism. He was amused by my embarrassment; I told him he did not play fair. We both laughed, and Paul chugged down Princeton Street in his Model T coupe to take me to movies in Pomona, to school dances, and out for something to eat afterward. To me he seemed sophisticated because he drank coffee; to him I was amusing because I ordered milk. Afterward he parked in front of the Clapps' privet hedge, where we enjoyed what I referred to in my diary as “long rambling conversations” about school, our lives, our hopes. We both wanted to write.

One evening Paul told me that other men were asking how far our relationship had gone. I was
too shocked to do anything but gasp. Paul smiled, rumpled my hair, and said, “I think I know what you like.”

What I liked, and for the first time in my life was enjoying, was the companionship of a humorous, congenial young man. After sulky Gerhart and the serious high school boys and Reed College freshmen who trampled my feet at dances, or I trampled theirs, and never seemed particularly congenial, the company of Paul was a joy, and he was understanding of my girlish innocence and enthusiasm. With Paul I did not have to pretend I was having a good time. I really was having a good time. Paul was restoring my faith in young men by helping me to see that a man could be a companion. All I wanted was his company, lots of it.

Sharing a sense of humor was a new experience for me. Paul and I both thought the words of the school song were funny, a song that began, “Chaffey, where the fronded palm uplifted to the sky…” The tree we sang about was a scruffy fan palm in front of the building. It had a few green fronds rising above generations of withered fronds drooping against the trunk below.

Although I doubted if Paul really enjoyed dancing, he took me to all the school dances, which I found much more fun than the few dances I had
attended at Grant High, where girls were possessive of boys, couples rarely traded dances, sometimes not at all, and persuading myself I had enjoyed the evening had scarcely been worth the effort of cleaning black shoe polish off my white pumps the next morning.

At Chaffey we had dance programs, which I had heard Mother tell about but which I thought had gone out of fashion along with hatpins, corset covers, hair receivers, and other artifacts of Mother's youth. We circulated, talked to other couples, agreed which dances to trade, and marked them on our programs with tiny pencils attached with silk cords. Then we danced away to “Red Sails in the Sunset” and “A Little Bit Independent,” “Blue Moon,” and other popular tunes of the 1930s. Paul and I always sat out “Tiger Rag” because it was too fast, and at the end of the evening, when the band played “Goodnight, Sweetheart,” Paul held me close.

Sometimes, after the dance, if it was a moonlit night, we went for a short drive eastward toward the desert, where ghostly spheres of tumbleweed rolled across the road. Real tumbleweed, something I had never expected to see, but there it was, rolling along, the tumbling tumbleweed, just as in the words of the song.