CHAPTER XLIXTERRE HAUTE AFTER THIRTYSEVEN YEARS
For good, bad, or indifferent, whether it had been painful or pleasant, the youth time that I had spent in Terre Haute had gone and would never come back again. My mother, as I remembered her then—and when is a mother more of a mother than in one’s babyhood?—was by now merely a collection of incidents and pains and sweetnesses lingering in a few minds! And my father, earnest, serious-minded German, striving to do the best he knew, was gone also—all of thirteen years. Those brothers and sisters whose ambitions were then so keen, whose blood moods were so high, were now tamed and sober, scattered over all the eastern portion of America. And here was I walking about, not knowing a single soul here really, intent upon finding one man perhaps who had known my father and had been kind to him; for the rest, looking up the houses in which we had lived, the first school which I had ever attended, the first church, and thinking over all the ills we had endured rather than the pleasures we had enjoyed (for of the latter I could scarcely recall any), was all with which I had to employ myself.
In the first place, the night before coming in, because it was nearly dark and because neither Franklin nor I cared to spend any more time in this southern extension than we could help, I wanted to find and look at as many of the old places as was possible in the summer twilight, for more than look at them once I could scarcely, or at least, would not care to do. It was not a difficult matter. At the time we lived there, the city was much smaller, scarcely more than one-third its present size, and the places which then seemed remote from the business heartwere now a five-minute walk, if so much. I could see, in coming in, that to get to Ninth and Chestnut, where I was born, I would have to go almost into the business section, or nearly so. Again, the house at Twelfth and Walnut, where the first few years of my life were spent—say from one to five—was first on our route in, and it was best to have Bert turn in there, for the street labelings were all very plain and it was easy to find our way. It was very evident that Terre Haute was another manufacturing city, and a prosperous one, for smoke filled the air and there was a somewhat inspiriting display of chimneys and manufacturing buildings in one direction and another. The sound of engine bells and factory whistles at six o’clock seemed to indicate a cheerful prosperity not always present in larger and seemingly more successful cities. Franklin, as I have said, noted a temper or flare of youth and hope about the town, for he spoke of it.
“I like this place. It is interesting,” he said. “I had no idea Terre Haute was so fine as this.”
As for me, my mind was recurring to old scenes and old miseries, commingled with a child’s sensations. Once in this town, in company with Ed and Al, I picked coal off the tracks because we had no coal at home. Somewhere here Ed and I, going for a sack of cornmeal, lost the fifty cents with which to buy it, and it was our last fifty cents. In a small house in Thirteenth Street, as I have elsewhere indicated, the three youngest of us were sick, while my father was out of work, and my mother was compelled to take in washing. In some other house here—Seventh and Chestnut, I believe—there was a swing in a basement where I used to swing all alone by the hour, enjoying my own moods even at that time. From a small brick house in Fourteenth Street, the last I ever knew of Terre Haute, I carried my father’s dinner to him in a pail at a woolen mill, of which he was foreman or manager or something. He was never exactly a day laborer for anyone. I remember a “carder” and a “fuller” and a “blower” and a “spinning jenny” and his explaining their functions to me. Somewhere in this townwas the remainder of St. Joseph’s School, or its site, at least, where at five years of age I was taken to learn my A B C's, and where a nun in a great flaring white bonnet and a black habit, with a rattling string of great beads, pointed at a blackboard with a stick and asked us what certain symbols stood for. I recall even now, very faintly, it is true, having trouble remembering what the sounds of certain letters were.
I remember the church attached to this school, and a bell in a tower that used to get turned over and wouldn’t ring until some one of us boys climbed up and turned it back—a great treat. I remember boating on a small, muddy pool, on boards, and getting my feet very wet, and almost falling in, and a serious sore throat afterwards. I remember a band—the first I ever heard—(Kleinbind’s Terre Haute Ringold Band as my father afterwards explained was its official title)—marching up the street, the men wearing red jackets with white shoulder straps and tall black Russian shakos. They frightened me, and I cried. I remember once being on the Wabash River with my brother Rome in a small boat—the yellow water seemed more of a wonder and terror to me then than it does now—and of his rocking the boat and of my screaming, and of his wanting to whip me—a brotherly bit of tenderness, quite natural, don’t you think? I remember, at Twelfth and Walnut, a great summer rainstorm, when I was very young, and my mother undressing me and telling me to run out naked in the great splattering drops making bubbles everywhere—an adventure which seemed very splendid and quite to my taste. I remember my brothers Paul and Rome as grownups—men really—when they were only boys, and of my elder sisters—girls of thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, seeming like great strong women.
Life was a strange, colorful, kaleidoscopic welter then. It has remained so ever since.
Here I was now, and it was evening. As we turned into Walnut Street at Twelfth I recognized one of the houses by pictures in the family and by faint memoriesand we stopped to give Franklin time to sketch it. It was a smoky, somewhat treeless neighborhood, with a number of children playing about, and long rows of one-story workingmen’s cottages receding in every direction. Once it had a large yard with a garden at the back, apple, pear and cherry trees along the fence, a small barn or cow shed, and rows of gooseberry and currant bushes bordering several sides. Now all that was gone, of course. The house had been moved over to the very corner. Small houses, all smoky, had been crowded in on either hand so tightly that there were scarcely sidewalks between them. I asked a little girl who came running over as the car stopped and Franklin began sketching, “Who lives over there?”
“Kifer,” she replied.
“What does he do?”
“He works. They keep boarders. What are you making?”
“A picture.”
“Of that house?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Well, I used to live there and I’ve come back all the way from New York to see it.”
“Oh!” And with that she climbed up on the running board to look on, but Franklin shooed her off.
“You mustn’t shake the car,” he said.
Terre Haute from West of the WabashTERRE HAUTE FROM WEST OF THE WABASH
TERRE HAUTE FROM WEST OF THE WABASH
TERRE HAUTE FROM WEST OF THE WABASH
She got down, but only to confer with six or seven other children who had gathered by now, and all of whom had to be enlightened. They ran back for a moment or two to inform inquisitive parents, but soon returned, increased in number. They stood in a group and surveyed the house as though they had never seen it before. Obviously, it had taken on a little luster in their eyes. They climbed up on the running boards and shook the car until Franklin was compelled to order them down again, though it was plain that he was not anxious so to do. Bats were circling in the air overhead—those fine, ricocheting winged mice. There were mosquitoes about, annoyingnumbers of them—horrible clouds, in fact, which caused me to wonder how people endured living in the neighborhood. People walked by on their way home from work, or going out somewhere, young men in the most dandified and conspicuous garbs, and on porches and front steps were their fathers in shirt sleeves, and women in calico dresses, reading the evening paper. I studied each detail of the house, getting out and looking at it from one side and another, but I could get no least touch of the earlier atmosphere, and I did not want to go in. Interiorly it held no interest for me. I could not remember how it looked on the inside anyhow.
After leaving this house, I decided to look up Ninth and Chestnut, where I was born, but not knowing the exact corner (no one in our family having been able to tell me) I gave it up, only to notice that at that moment I was passing the corner. I looked. There were small houses on every hand. Which one was ours, or had been? Or was it there at all any more? Useless speculation. I did not even trouble to stop the car.
But from here I directed the car to Eighth and Chestnut, a corner at which, in an old red brick house still standing, my mother, as someone had informed me, had once essayed keeping borders. I was so young at the time I could scarcely remember—say six or seven. All I could recall of it was that here once was a little girl in blue velvet, with yellow hair, the daughter of some woman of comparative (it is a guess) means, who was stopping with us, and who, because of her blue velvet dress and her airs, seemed most amazing to me, a creature out of the skies. I remember standing at the head of the stairs and looking into her room—or her mother’s, and seeing a dresser loaded with silver bits, and marveling at the excellence of such a life. Just that, and nothing more, out of a whole period of months. Now I could only recall that the house was of brick, that it had a lawn and trees, a basement with a brick floor, and a sense of abandonment and departed merit. Finding it at this late date was not likely, but we ran the car around there andstopped and looked. There was a brick house there, old but improved. Was it the same? Who can tell, or what matter, really? The difference was to me.
We think of life as a definite, enduring thing, some of us; but what a thin shadow, or nothingness, it must be, really, when the past and your youth and all connected with it goes glimmering thus like smoke. I always think of that passage in Job (XIV: 1-2) “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” When I think of that, and how ideas and notions and fames and blames go glimmering, I often ask myself what is it all about, anyhow, and what are we here for, and why should anyone worry whether they are low or high, or moral or immoral. What difference does it really make? And to whom? Who actually cares, in the long run, whether you are good, bad or indifferent? There is much talk and much strutting to and fro and much concealment of our past ills and shames, and much parading of our present luxuries and well beings. But, my good friends, the wise know better. You cannot talk to a man or woman of capacity or insight or experience of any of these sharp distinctions. To them they do not exist. We are all low or high according to our dynamic energy to get and keep fame, money, notoriety, information, skill—no more. As for the virtuous, and those supposedly lacking in virtue—the honest and those who are dishonest—kind heaven, we haven’t the first inklings of necessary data wherewith to begin even to formulate a theory of difference! We do not know, and I had almost said we cannot know, though I am not one to be cocksure of anything—not even of the impossibility of perfection.
Allons! Then we moved the car to Seventh and Chestnut Streets, where had stood another house near a lumber yard. In this house was the swing in the basement where I used to swing, the sunlight pouring through a low cellar window, such days as I chose to play there. Outside was a great yard or garden with trees, and close at handa large lumber yard—it seemed immense to me at the time—pleasingly filled with odoriferous woods, and offering a great opportunity for climbing, playing hide and seek, running and jumping from pile to pile, and avoiding the watchman who wanted to catch us and give us a good beating for coming into it at all.
And beyond that was a train yard full of engines and cars and old broken down cabooses and a repair shop. When I was most adventurous I used to wander even beyond the lumber yard (there was a spur track going out into this greater world), staring at all I saw, and risking no doubt my young life more than once. At one time I fell off a car on which I had adventurously climbed and bruised my hand quite seriously. At another time I climbed up into a worn out and discarded engine, and examined all the machinery with the utmost curiosity. It all seemed so amazing to me. Engineers, firemen, brakemen, yard men—how astonishing they all seemed—the whole clangorous, jangling compact called life.
But this house was now a mere myth or rumor—something that may never have existed at all—so unreal are our realities. It had gone glimmering. There was no house here anything like that which I had in mind. There was a railroad yard, quite a large one, probably greatly enlarged since my day. There was a lumber yard adjoining it, very prosperous looking, and enclosed by a high board fence, well painted, and a long, old, low white house with green shutters. We stopped the car here and I meditated on my mother and sisters and on some laughing school teachers who took meals with us here at this time. Then we moved on. I was glad to go. I was getting depressed.
The last place we tried for was that much mentioned in Thirteenth Street, Thirteenth between Walnut and Chestnut, as some one of my relatives had said, but I could not find it. When we reached the immediate vicinity we found a hundred such houses—I had almost said a thousand—and it was a poor, sorrowful street, the homesof the most deficient or oppressed or defeated. I wanted to hurry on, and did so, but musingly and romantically, in passing, I picked out one which stood next to an alley—an old, small, black, faded house, and said to myself, that must be ours. But was it? Because of uncertainty my heart could not go out to it. It went out only to that other house back in the clouds of memory, where my mother and my sisters and brothers were all assembled.
And this street—yes, my heart went out to it—oh, very much. I felt as though I would be willing to trade places with and take up the burden of the least efficient and most depressed of all of those assembled here, in memory of—in memory of——