.jpg "The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner")
The Golden Honeymoon
by Ring Lardner (1885-1933)
Approximate Word Count: 6758
Mother says that when I start talking I
never know when to stop. But I tell her the only time I get a chance is
when she ain't around, so I have to make the most of it. I guess the
fact is neither one of us would be welcome in a Quaker meeting, but as I
tell Mother, what did God give us tongues for if He didn't want we
should use them? Only she says He didn't give them to us to say the same
thing over and over again, like I do, and repeat myself. But I say:
"Well, Mother," I say, "when people is like you and I and been married
fifty years, do you expect everything I say will be something you ain't
heard me say before? But it may be new to others, as they ain't nobody
else lived with me as long as you have."
So she says:
"You can bet they ain't, as they couldn't nobody else stand you that long."
"Well," I tell her, "you look pretty healthy."
"Maybe I do," she will say, "but I looked even healthier before I married you."
You can't get ahead of Mother.
Yes, sir, we was married just fifty years ago the seventeenth day of
last December and my daughter and son-in-law was over from Trenton to
help us celebrate the Golden Wedding. My son-in-law is John H. Kramer,
the real estate man. He made $12,000 one year and is pretty well thought
of around Trenton; a good, steady, hard worker. The Rotarians was after
him a long time to join, but he kept telling them his home was his
club. But Edie finally made him join. That's my daughter.
Well, anyway, they come over to help us celebrate the Golden Wedding and
it was pretty crimpy weather and the furnace don't seem to heat up no
more like it used to and Mother made the remark that she hoped this
winter wouldn't be as cold as the last, referring to the winter
previous. So Edie said if she was us, and nothing to keep us home, she
certainly wouldn't spend no more winters up here and why didn't we just
shut off the water and close up the house and go down to Tampa, Florida?
You know we was there four winters ago and staid five weeks, but it
cost us over three hundred and fifty dollars for hotel bill alone. So
Mother said we wasn't going no place to be robbed. So my son-in-law
spoke up and said that Tampa wasn't the only place in the South, and
besides we didn't have to stop at no high price hotel but could rent us a
couple rooms and board out somewheres, and he had heard that St.
Petersburg, Florida, was the spot and if we said the word he would write
down there and make inquiries.
Well, to make a long story short, we decided to do it and Edie said it
would be our Golden Honeymoon and for a present my son-in-law paid the
difference between a section and a compartment so as we could have a
compartment and have more privatecy. In a compartment you have an upper
and lower berth just like the regular sleeper, but it is a shut in room
by itself and got a wash bowl. The car we went in was all compartments
and no regular berths at all. It was all compartments.
We went to Trenton the night before and staid at my daughter and son-in-law and we left Trenton the next afternoon at 3.23 P.M.
This was the twelfth day of January. Mother set facing the front of the
train, as it makes her giddy to ride backwards. I set facing her, which
does not affect me. We reached North Philadelphia at 4.03 P.M. and we
reached West Philadelphia at 4.14, but did not go into Broad Street. We
reached Baltimore at 6.30 and Washington, D.C., at 7.25. Our train laid
over in Washington two hours till another train come along to pick us up
and I got out and strolled up the platform and into the Union Station.
When I come back, our car had been switched on to another track, but I
remembered the name of it, the La Belle, as I had once visited my aunt
out in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where there was a lake of that name, so I
had no difficulty in getting located. But Mother had nearly fretted
herself sick for fear I would be left.
"Well," I said, "I would of followed you on the next train."
"You could of," said Mother, and she pointed out that she had the money.
"Well," I said, "we are in Washington and I could of borrowed from the
United States Treasury. I would of pretended I was an Englishman."
Mother caught the point and laughed heartily.
Our train pulled out of Washington at 9.40 P.M. and Mother and I turned
in early, I taking the upper. During the night we passed through the
green fields of old Virginia, though it was too dark to tell if they was
green or what color. When we got up in the morning, we was at
Fayetteville, North Carolina. We had breakfast in the dining car and
after breakfast I got in conversation with the man in the next
compartment to ours. He was from Lebanon, New Hampshire, and a man about
eighty years of age. His wife was with him, and two unmarried daughters
and I made the remark that I should think the four of them would be
crowded in one compartment, but he said they had made the trip every
winter for fifteen years and knowed how to keep out of each other's way.
He said they was bound for Tarpon Springs.
We reached Charleston, South Carolina, at 12.50 P.M. and arrived at
Savannah, Georgia, at 4.20. We reached Jacksonville, Florida, at 8.45
P.M. and had an hour and a quarter to lay over there, but Mother made a
fuss about me getting off the train, so we had the darky make up our
berths and retired before we left Jacksonville. I didn't sleep good as
the train done a lot of hemming and hawing, and Mother never sleeps good
on a train as she says she is always worrying that I will fall out. She
says she would rather have the upper herself, as then she would not
have to worry about me, but I tell her I can't take the risk of having
it get out that I allowed my wife to sleep in an upper berth. It would
make talk.
We was up in the morning in time to see our friends from New Hampshire get off at Tarpon Springs, which we reached at 6.53 A.M.
Several of our fellow passengers got off at Clearwater and some at
Belleair, where the train backs right up to the door of the mammoth
hotel. Belleair is the winter headquarters for the golf dudes and
everybody that got off there had their bag of sticks, as many as ten and
twelve in a bag. Women and all. When I was a young man we called it
shinny and only needed one club to play with and about one game of it
would of been a-plenty for some of these dudes, the way we played it.
The train pulled into St. Petersburg at 8.20 and when we got off the
train you would think they was a riot, what with all the darkies barking
for the different hotels.
I said to Mother, I said:
"It is a good thing we have got a place picked out to go to and don't
have to choose a hotel, as it would be hard to choose amongst them if
every one of them is the best."
She laughed.
We found a jitney and I give him the address of the room my son-in-law
had got for us and soon we was there and introduced ourselves to the
lady that owns the house, a young widow about forty-eight years of age.
She showed us our room, which was light and airy with a comfortable bed
and bureau and washstand. It was twelve dollars a week, but the location
was good, only three blocks from Williams Park.
St. Pete is what folks calls the town, though they also call it the
Sunshine City, as they claim they's no other place in the country where
they's fewer days when Old Sol don't smile down on Mother Earth, and one
of the newspapers gives away all their copies free every day when the
sun don't shine. They claim to of only give them away some sixty-odd
times in the last eleven years. Another nickname they have got for the
town is "the Poor Man's Palm Beach," but I guess they's men that comes
there that could borrow as much from the bank as some of the Willie boys
over to the other Palm Beach.
During our stay we paid a visit to the Lewis Tent City, which is the
headquarters for the Tin Can Tourists. But maybe you ain't heard about
them. Well, they are an organization that takes their vacation trips by
auto and carries everything with them. That is, they bring along their
tents to sleep in and cook in and they don't patronize no hotels or
cafeterias, but they have got to be bona fide auto campers or they can't
belong to the organization.
They tell me they's over 200,000 members to it and they call themselves
the Tin Canners on account of most of their food being put up in tin
cans. One couple we seen in the Tent City was a couple from Brady,
Texas, named Mr. and Mrs. Pence, which the old man is over eighty years
of age and they had come in their auto all the way from home, a distance
of 1,641 miles. They took five weeks for the trip, Mr. Pence driving
the entire distance.
The Tin Canners hails from every State in the Union and in the summer
time they visit places like New England and the Great Lakes region, but
in the winter the most of them comes to Florida and scatters all over
the State. While we was down there, they was a national convention of
them at Gainesville, Florida, and they elected a Fredonia, New York, man
as their president. His title is Royal Tin Can Opener of the World.
They have got a song wrote up which everybody has got to learn it before
they are a member:
"The tin can forever! Hurrah, boys! Hurrah!
Up with the tin can! Down with the foe!
Up with the tin can! Down with the foe!
We will rally round the campfire, we'll rally once again,
Shouting, 'We auto camp forever!'"
Shouting, 'We auto camp forever!'"
That is something like it. And the members has also got to have a tin can fastened on to the front of their machine.
I asked Mother how she would like to travel around that way and she said:
"Fine, but not with an old rattle brain like you driving."
"Well," I said, "I am eight years younger than this Mr. Pence who drove here from Texas."
"Yes," she said, "but he is old enough to not be skittish."
You can't get ahead of Mother.
Well, one of the first things we done in St. Petersburg was to go to the
Chamber of Commerce and register our names and where we was from as
they's great rivalry amongst the different States in regards to the
number of their citizens visiting in town and of course our little State
don't stand much of a show, but still every little bit helps, as the
fella says. All and all, the man told us, they was eleven thousand names
registered, Ohio leading with some fifteen hundred-odd and New York
State next with twelve hundred. Then come Michigan, Pennsylvania and so
on down, with one man each from Cuba and Nevada.
The first night we was there, they was a meeting of the New York-New
Jersey Society at the Congregational Church and a man from Ogdensburg,
New York State, made the talk. His subject was Rainbow Chasing. He is a
Rotarian and a very convicting speaker, though I forget his name.
Our first business, of course, was to find a place to eat and after
trying several places we run on to a cafeteria on Central Avenue that
suited us up and down. We eat pretty near all our meals there and it
averaged about two dollars per day for the two of us, but the food was
well cooked and everything nice and clean. A man don't mind paying the
price if things is clean and well cooked.
On the third day of February, which is Mother's birthday, we spread
ourselves and eat supper at the Poinsettia Hotel and they charged us
seventy-five cents for a sirloin steak that wasn't hardly big enough for
one.
I said to Mother: "Well," I said, "I guess it's a good thing every day ain't your birthday or we would be in the poorhouse."
"No," says Mother, "because if every day was my birthday, I would be old enough by this time to of been in my grave long ago."
You can't get ahead of Mother.
In the hotel they had a card-room where they was several men and ladies
playing five hundred and this new fangled whist bridge. We also seen a
place where they was dancing, so I asked Mother would she like to trip
tne light fantastic toe and she said no, she was too old to squirm like
you have got to do now days. We watched some of the young folks at it
awhile till Mother got disgusted and said we would have to see a good
movie to take the taste out of our mouth. Mother is a great movie
heroyne and we go twice a week here at home.
But I want to tell you about the Park. The second day we was there we
visited the Park, which is a good deal like the one in Tampa, only
bigger, and they's more fun goes on here every day than you could shake a
stick at. In the middle they's a big bandstand and chairs for the folks
to set and listen to the concerts, which they give you music for all
tastes, from Dixie up to classical pieces like Hearts and Flowers.
Then all around they's places marked off for different sports and
games--chess and checkers and dominoes for folks that enjoys those kind
of games, and roque and horse-shoes for the nimbler ones. I used to
pitch a pretty fair shoe myself, but ain't done much of it in the last
twenty years.
Well, anyway, we bought a membership ticket in the club which costs one
dollar for the season, and they tell me that up to a couple years ago it
was fifty cents, but they had to raise it to keep out the riffraff.
Well, Mother and I put in a great day watching the pitchers and she
wanted I should get in the game, but I told her I was all out of
practice and would make a fool of myself, though I seen several men
pitching who I guess I could take their measure without no practice.
However, they was some good pitchers, too, and one boy from Akron, Ohio,
who could certainly throw a pretty shoe. They told me it looked like he
would win them championship of the United States in the February
tournament. We come away a few days before they held that and I never
did hear if he win. I forget his name, but he was a clean cut young
fella and he has got a brother in Cleveland that's a Rotarian.
Well, we just stood around and watched the different games for two or
three days and finally I set down in a checker game with a man named
Weaver from Danville, Illinois. He was a pretty fair checker player, but
he wasn't no match for me, and I hope that don't sound like bragging.
But I always could hold my own on a checker-board and the folks around
here will tell you the same thing. I played with this Weaver pretty near
all morning for two or three mornings and he beat me one game and the
only other time it looked like he had a chance, the noon whistle blowed
and we had to quit and go to dinner.
While I was playing checkers, Mother would set and listen to the band,
as she loves music, classical or no matter what kind, but anyway she was
setting there one day and between selections the woman next to her
opened up a conversation. She was a woman about Mother's own age,
seventy or seventy-one, and finally she asked Mother's name and Mother
told her her name and where she was from and Mother asked her the same
question, and who do you think the woman was?
Well, sir, it was the wife of Frank M. Hartsell, the man who was engaged
to Mother till I stepped in and cut him out, fifty-two years ago!
Yes, sir!
You can imagine Mother's surprise! And Mrs. Hartsell was surprised, too,
when Mother told her she had once been friends with her husband, though
Mother didn't say how close friends they had been, or that Mother and I
was the cause of Hartsell going out West. But that's what we was. Hartsell left his town a month after the engagement was broke off and
ain't never been back since. He had went out to Michigan and become a
veterinary, and that is where he had settled down, in Hillsdale,
Michigan, and finally married his wife.
Well, Mother screwed up her courage to ask if Frank was still living and
Mrs. Hartsell took her over to where they was pitching horse-shoes and
there was old Frank, waiting his turn. And he knowed Mother as soon as
he seen her, though it was over fifty years. He said he knowed her by
her eyes.
"Why, it's Lucy Frost!" he says, and he throwed down his shoes and quit the game.
Then they come over and hunted me up and I will confess I wouldn't of
knowed him. Him and I is the same age to the month, but he seems to show
it more, some way. He is balder for one thing. And his beard is all
white, where mine has still got a streak of brown in it. The very first
thing I said to him, I said:
"Well, Frank, that beard of yours makes me feel like I was back north. It looks like a regular blizzard."
"Well," he said, "I guess yourn would be just as white if you had it dry cleaned."
But Mother wouldn't stand that.
"Is that so!" she said to Frank. "Well, Chancy ain't had no tobacco in his mouth for over ten years!"
And I ain't!
Well, I excused myself from the checker game and it was pretty close to
noon, so we decided to all have dinner together and they was nothing for
it only we must try their cafeteria on Third Avenue. It was a little
more expensive than ours and not near as good, I thought. I and Mother
had about the same dinner we had been having every day and our bill was
$1.10. Frank's check was $1.20 for he and his wife. The same meal
wouldn't of cost them more than a dollar at our place.
After dinner we made them come up to our house and we all set in the
parlor, which the young woman had give us the use of to entertain
company. We begun talking over old times and Mother said she was
a-scared Mrs. Hartsell would find it tiresome listening to we three talk
over old times, but as it turned out they wasn't much chance for nobody
else to talk with Mrs. Hartsell in the company. I have heard lots of
women that could go it, but Hartsell's wife takes the cake of all the
women I ever seen. She told us the family history of everybody in the
State of Michigan and bragged for a half hour about her son, who she
said is in the drug business in Grand Rapids, and a Rotarian.
When I and Hartsell could get a word in edgeways we joked one another
back and forth and I chafed him about being a horse doctor.
"Well, Frank," I said, " you look pretty prosperous, so I suppose they's been plenty of glanders around Hillsdale."
"Well," he said, "I've managed to make more than a fair living. But I've worked pretty hard."
"Yes," I said, "and I suppose you get called out all hours of the night to attend births and so on."
Mother made me shut up.
Well, I thought they wouldn't never go home and I and Mother was in
misery trying to keep awake, as the both of us generally always takes a
nap after dinner. Finally they went, after we had made an engagement to
meet them in the Park the next morning, and Mrs. Hartsell also invited
us to come to their place the next night and play five hundred. But she
had forgot that they was a meeting of the Michigan Society that evening,
so it was not till two evenings later that we had our first card game.
Hartsell and his wife lived in a house on Third Avenue North and had a
private setting room besides their bedroom. Mrs. Hartsell couldn't quit
talking about their private setting room like it was something
wonderful. We played cards with them, with Mother and Hartsell partners
against his wife and I. Mrs. Hartsell is a miserable card player and we
certainly got the worst of it.
After the game she brought out a dish of oranges and we had to pretend
it was just what we wanted, though oranges down there is like a young
man's whiskers; you enjoy them at first, but they get to be a pesky
nuisance.
We played cards again the next night at our place with the same partners
and I and Mrs. Hartsell was beat again. Mother and Hartsell was full of
compliments for each other on what a good team they made, but the both
of them knowed well enough where the secret of their success laid. I
guess all and all we must of played ten different evenings and they was
only one night when Mrs. Hartsell and I come out ahead. And that one
night wasn't no fault of hern.
When we had been down there about two weeks, we spent one evening as
their guest in the Congregational Church, at a social give by the
Michigan Society. A talk was made by a man named Bitting of Detroit,
Michigan, on How I was Cured of Story Telling. He is a big man in the
Rotarians and give a witty talk.
A woman named Mrs. Oxford rendered some selections which Mrs. Hartsell
said was grand opera music, but whatever they was my daughter Edie could
of give her cards and spades and not made such a hullaballoo about it
neither.
Then they was a ventriloquist from Grand Rapids and a young woman about
forty-five years of age that mimicked different kinds of birds. I
whispered to Mother that they all sounded like a chicken, but she nudged
me to shut up.
After the show we stopped in a drug store and I set up the refreshments
and it was pretty close to ten o'clock before we finally turned in.
Mother and I would of preferred tending the movies, but Mother said we
mustn't offend Mrs. Hartsell, though I asked her had we came to Florida
to enjoy ourselves or to just not offend an old chatter-box from
Michigan.
I felt sorry for Hartsell one morning. The women folks both had an
engagement down to the chiropodist's and I run across Hartsell in the
Park and he foolishly offered to play me checkers.
It was him that suggested it, not me, and I guess he repented himself
before we had played one game. But he was too stubborn to give up and
set there while I beat him game after game and the worst part of it was
that a crowd of folks had got in the habit of watching me play and there
they all was, hooking on, and finally they seen what a fool Frank was
making of himself, and they began to chafe him and pass remarks. Like
one of them said:
"Who ever told you you was a checker player!"
And:
"You might maybe be good for tiddle-de-winks, but not checkers!
I almost felt like letting him beat me a couple games. But the crowd would of knowed it was a put up job.
Well, the women folks joined us in the Park and I wasn't going to
mention our little game, but Hartsell told about it himself and admitted
he wasn't no match for me.
"Well," said Mrs. Hartsell, "checkers ain't much of a game anyway, is
it?" She said: "It's more of a children's game, ain't it? At least, I
know my boy's children used to play it a good deal."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "It's a children's game the way your husband plays it, too."
Mother wanted to smooth things over, so she said:
"Maybe they's other games where Frank can beat you."
"Yes," said Mrs. Hartsell, "and I bet he could beat you pitching horse-shoes."
"Well," I said, "I would give him a chance to try, only I ain't pitched a shoe in over sixteen years."
"Well," said Hartsell, "I ain't played checkers in twenty years."
"You ain't never played it," I said.
"Anyway," says Frank, "Lucy and I is your master at five hundred."
Well, I could of told him why that was, but had decency enough to hold my tongue.
It had got so now that he wanted to play cards every night and when I or
Mother wanted to go to a movie, any one of us would have to pretend we
had a headache and then trust to goodness that they wouldn't see us
sneak into the theater. I don't mind playing cards when my partner keeps
their mind on the game, but you take a woman like Hartsell's wife and
how can they play cards when they have got to stop every couple seconds
and brag about their son in Grand Rapids?
Well, the New York-New Jersey Society announced that they was goin' to give a social evening too and I said to Mother, I said:
"Well, that is one evening when we will have an excuse not to play five hundred."
"Yes," she said, "but we will have to ask Frank and his wife to go to
the social with us as they asked us to go to the Michigan social."
"Well," I said, "I had rather stay home than drag that chatterbox everywheres we go."
So Mother said:
"You are getting too cranky. Maybe she does talk a little too much but she is good hearted. And Frank is always good company."
So I said:
"I suppose if he is such good company you wished you had of married him."
Mother laughed and said I sounded like I was jealous. Jealous of a cow doctor!
Anyway we had to drag them along to the social and I will say that we
give them a much better entertainment than they had given us.
Judge Lane of Paterson made a fine talk on business conditions and a
Mrs. Newell of Westfield imitated birds, only you could really tell what
they was the way she done it. Two young women from Red Bank sung a
choral selection and we clapped them back and they gave us Home to Our
Mountains and Mother and Mrs. Hartsell both had tears in their eyes. And
Hartsell, too.
Well, some way or another the chairman got wind that I was there and
asked me to make a talk and I wasn't even going to get up, but Mother
made me, so I got up and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said. "I didn't expect to be called on for a
speech on an occasion like this or no other occasion as I do not set
myself up as a speech maker, so will have to do the best I can, which I
often say is the best anybody can do."
Then I told them the story about Pat and the motorcycle, using the
brogue, and it seemed to tickle them and I told them one or two other
stories, hut altogether I wasn't on my feet more than twenty or
twenty-five minutes and you ought to of heard the clapping and hollering
when I set down. Even Mrs. Hartsell admitted that I am quite a
speechifier and said if I ever went to Grand Rapids, Michigan, her son
would make me talk to the Rotarians.
When it was over, Hartsell wanted we should go to their house and play
cards, but his wife reminded him that it was after 9.30 P.M., rather a
late hour to start a card game, but he had went crazy on the subject of
cards, probably because he didn't have to play partners with his wife.
Anyway, we got rid of them and went home to bed.
It was the next morning, when we met over to the Park, that Mrs.
Hartsell made the remark that she wasn't getting no exercise so I
suggested that why didn't she take part in the roque game.
She said she had not played a game of roque in twenty years, but if
Mother would play she would play. Well, at first Mother wouldn't hear of
it, but finally consented, more to please Mrs. Hartsell than anything
else.
Well, they had a game with a Mrs. Ryan from Eagle, Nebraska, and a young
Mrs. Morse from Rutland, Vermont, who Mother had met down to the
chiropodist's. Well, Mother couldn't hit a flea and they all laughed at
her and I couldn't help from laughing at her myself and finally she quit
and said her back was too lame to stoop over. So they got another lady
and kept on playing and soon Mrs. Hartsell was the one everybody was
laughing at, as she had a long shot to hit the black ball, and as she
made the effort her teeth fell out on to the court. I never seen a woman
so flustered in my life. And I never heard so much laughing, only Mrs.
Hartsell didn't join in and she was madder than a hornet and wouldn't
play no more, so the game broke up.
Mrs. Hartsell went home without speaking to nobody, but Hartsell stayed around and finally he said to me, he said:
"Well, I played you checkers the other day and you beat me bad and now what do you say if you and me play a game of horseshoes?"
I told him I hadn't pitched a shoe in sixteen years, but Mother said:
"Go ahead and play. You used to be good at it and maybe it will come back to you."
Well, to make a long story short, I give in. I oughtn't to of never
tried it, as I hadn't pitched a shoe in sixteen years, and I only done
it to humor Hartsell.
Before we started, Mother patted me on the back and told me to do my
best, so we started in and I seen right off that I was in for it, as I
hadn't pitched a shoe in sixteen years and didn't have my distance. And
besides, the plating had wore off the shoes so that they was points
right where they stuck into my thumb and I hadn't throwed more than two
or three times when my thumb was raw and it pretty near killed me to
hang on to the shoe, let alone pitch it. Well, Hartsell throws the awkwardest shoe I ever seen pitched and to see
him pitch you wouldn't think he would ever come nowheres near, but he
is also the luckiest pitcher I ever seen and he made some pitches where
the shoe lit five and six feet short and then schoonered up and was a
ringer. They's no use trying to beat that kind of luck.
They was a pretty fair size crowd watching us and four or five other
ladies besides Mother, and it seems like, when Hartsell pitches, he has
got to chew and it kept the ladies on the anxious seat as he don't seem
to care which way he is facing when he leaves go.
You would think a man as old as him would of learnt more manners.
Well, to make a long story short, I was just beginning to get my
distance when I had to give up on account of my thumb, which I showed it
to Hartsell and he seen I couldn't go on, as it was raw and bleeding.
Even if I could of stood it to go on myself, Mother wouldn't of allowed
it after she seen my thumb. So anyway I quit and Hartsell said the score
was nineteen to six, but I don't know what it was. Or don't care,
neither.
Well, Mother and I went home and I said I hoped we was through with the
Hartsells as I was sick and tired of them, but it seemed like she had
promised we would go over to their house that evening for another game
of their everlasting cards.
Well, my thumb was giving me considerable pain and I felt kind of out of
sorts and I guess maybe I forgot myself, but anyway, when we was about
through playing Hartsell made the remark that he wouldn't never lose a
game of cards if he could always have Mother for a partner.
So I said:
"Well, you had a chance fifty years ago to always have her for a partner, but you wasn't man enough to keep her."
I was sorry the minute I had said it and Hartsell didn't know what to
say and for once his wife couldn't say nothing. Mother tried to smooth
things over by making the remark that I must of had something stronger
than tea or I wouldn't talk so silly. But Mrs. Hartsell had froze up
like an iceberg and hardly said good night to us and I bet her and Frank
put in a pleasant hour after we was gone.
As we was leaving, Mother said to him: "Never mind Charley's nonsense,
Frank. He is just mad because you beat him all hollow pitching
horseshoes and playing cards."
She said that to make up for my slip, but at the same time she certainly
riled me. I tried to keep ahold of myself, but as soon as we was out of
the house she had to open up the subject and begun to scold me for the
break I had made.
Well, I wasn't in no mood to be scolded. So I said:
"I guess he is such a wonderful pitcher and card player that you wished you had married him."
"Well," she said, "at least he ain't a baby to give up pitching because his thumb has got a few scratches."
"And how about you," I said, "making a fool of yourself on the roque
court and then pretemiding your back is lame and you can't play no
more!"
"Yes," she said, "but when you hurt your thumb I didn't laugh at you, and why did you laugh at me when I sprained my back?"
"Who could help from laughing!" I said.
"Well," she said, "Frank Hartsell didn't laugh."
"Well," I said, "why didn't you marry him?"
"Well," said Mother, "I almost wished I had!"
"And I wished so, too!" I said.
"I'll remember that!" said Mother, and that's the last word she said to me for two days.
We seen the Hartsells the next day in the Park and I was willing to
apologize, but they just nodded to us. And a couple days later we heard
they had left for Orlando, where they have got relatives.
I wished they had went there in the first place.
Mother and I made it up setting on a bench.
"Listen, Charley," she said. "This is our Golden Honeymoon and we don't want the whole thing spoilt with a silly old quarrel."
"Well," I said, "did you mean that about wishing you had married Hartsell?"
"Of course not," she said, "that is, if you didn't mean that you wished I had, too." So I said:
"I was just tired and all wrought up. I thank God you chose me instead
of him as they's no other woman in the world who I could of lived with
all these years."
"How about Mrs. Hartsell?" says Mother.
"Good gracious!" I said. "Imagine being married to a woman that plays
five hundred like she does and drops her teeth on the roque court!"
"Well," said Mother, "it wouldn't be no worse than being married to a
man that expectorates towards ladies and is such a fool in a checker
game."
So I put my arm around her shoulder and she stroked my hand and I guess we got kind of spoony.
They was two days left of our stay in St. Petersburg and the next to the
last day Mother introduced me to a Mrs. Kendall from Kingston, Rhode
Island, who she had met at the chiropodist's.
Mrs. Kendall made us acquainted with her husband, who is in the grocery
business. They have got two sons and five grandchildren and one
great-grandchild. One of their sons lives in Providence and is way up in
the Elks as well as a Rotarian.
We found them very congenial people and we played cards with them the
last two nights we was there. They was both experts and I only wished we
had met them sooner instead of running into the Hartsells. But the
Kendalls will be there again next winter and we will see more of them,
that is, if we decide to make the trip again.
We left the Sunshine City on the eleventh day of February, at 11 A.M.
This give us a day trip through Florida and we seen all the country we
had passed through at night on the way down.
We reached Jacksonville at 7 P.M. and pulled out of there at 8.10 P.M.
We reached Fayetteville, North Carolina, at nine o'clock the following
morning, and reached Washington, D. C., at 6.30 P.M., laying over there
half an hour.
We reached Trenton at 11.01 P.M. and had wired ahead to my daughter and
son-in-law and they met us at the train and we went to their house and
they put us up for the night. John would of made us stay up all night,
telling about our trip, but Edie said we must be tired and made us go to
bed. That's my daughter.
The next day we took our train for home and arrived safe and sound, having been gone just one month and a day.
Here comes Mother, so I guess I better shut up.
.jpg "How To Write Short Stories, With Examples by Ring Lardner")
