The Man Who Knew Coolidge

Front matter

BEING THE SOUL OF LOWELL SCHMALTZ, CONSTRUCTIVE AND NORDIC CITIZEN

BY

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Part I—The Man Who Knew Coolidge

—And I certainly do enjoy listening to you gentlemen and getting your views. That's one of the nice things about being on a Pullman like this: you can guarantee that you'll meet a lot of regular he-Americans with sound opinions and ideas.

And now let me tell you: the way I look at these things—

I don't mean to suggest for one second that I've got any better bean than the plain ordinary average citizen, but I've given a whole lot of attention to politics and such matters and— In fact, strikes me that it's the duty of all the better-educated citizens to take an interest in the affairs of the State, for what, after all, as a fellow was saying to us at the Kiwanis Club the other day—what is the Government but the union of all of us put together for mutual advantage and protection?

And me—why say, I read the political editorials in the Advocate—that's the leading paper in my town—Zenith—I read 'em like most folks read the sporting page. And as a result of all this and certain personal information that I can't disclose the sources of, I've come to the firm conclusion—

Here's something maybe you gentlemen never thought of:

They can all say all they want to about how President Coolidge—good old silent Cal Coolidge!—isn't maybe as flashy as some of these statesmen. Maybe he isn't as much given to shooting off his mouth as certain other public figures that I could name. Maybe he isn't what my daughter would call so "Ritzy"—

And say, by golly it's beyond me where the young generation of today, taking them by and large, get all this slang that they pull. Why, here just the other day my daughter was talking to her brother, and Robby— That's the boy's name; only fifteen; three years younger than his sister, but smart's a whip. There's certainly one up-and-coming kid, if I do say so.

Why say—

Now I never put him up to it, y'understand. The Lord knows I can afford to give him the best the land affords, at least to a reasonable extent, I mean as much comfort and even luxury as is good for him. I'd never made a peep about how maybe it'd be a good stunt for him to go out and maybe earn a little money on the side. But he comes in one evening just before supper—before dinner-time, with his hat on one side of his head, looking proud as Punch.

So I says to him, "Well, Robert Livingston—"

As a matter of fact, his middle name isn't Livingston at all, it's Otto, but we often call him Robert Livingston, jokingly.

"Well, Robert Livingston," I says to him, "who do you think you are? Thomas Edison or Napoleon or somebody? Or maybe Red Grange! Sit down, Mr. Grange, and let me hang up your hat."

You know, jokingly.

Well, he just looks at me—

I'm afraid if the truth were known the kid is pretty gosh-awful fresh, but he's so darn' cute about it that you can't get sore at him, the darn' little cuss—just as up-and-coming as I was at his age. He just stands and looks at me and sticks his hands in his pants-pockets and then—

Say, what do you think he went and done? He put a record on the Rectophone.

You know—that's this new kind of phonograph that reproduces every tone of the human voice or music. It's some kind of new scientific invention that for a long time the scientists couldn't ever achieve it. But they got it now so they don't miss any of these undertones—or overtones or whatever it is—that they used to miss by earlier methods of reproduction. It costs a lot more than the old-fashioned phonograph, but way I look at it, the best is the cheapest in the long run.

Well, Robby, the little rascal, he goes to work and puts on a record, something about "I may have been a private in the A.E.F., but believe me I'm a general with the dames." Then he says, "Dad," he says, "in me you behold the feline's robe de nuit. I've gone and—"

Mind you, 's I said, I'd never even suggested to him that he get a job out of school-hours and earn a little money. I most certainly do believe that it's a mighty fine thing for a boy to do a little work, no matter how well fixed his folks are, and learn the value of money; learn how doggone hard it is to sneak up on ole Mr. Dollar and get a strangle hold on him.

I swear, a lot of the young folks today seem to think the Old Man is simply made of money and don't have to sweat for every cent he makes. But same time, I hadn't figured it was time yet to explain this to Robby, though maybe that was a mistake on my part, and if it was, I'm perfectly will- ing to admit it—confession is good for the soul, as they say.

Maybe I should have drummed it into him long ago. I've got it on mighty straight inside information—in fact one of my best friends is acquainted with a man who knows the Rockefellers intimately—and he tells me that the Rockefellers, people with all their jack, they bring their families up to be just as careful of money as any of us: they don't let their kids run away with the notion that it don't take any trouble to collect the dough.

Well, this gentleman related a significant little incident regarding the Rockefellers that he heard personally. Seems he was right there at the time. Here was old John D., probably with half the money-kings in the world waiting to see him, talking to young John D., just as simple and quiet as any one of us. And he said, and I've never forgotten his words—in fact I repeated them to Robby that day—the old gentleman looked at young John D., and prob'ly I imagine he put his hand on his shoulder, and he looked at him and said, "My boy, waste not, want not!"

Yes sir!

But anyway—

I'm afraid I'm getting a little off the subject of Coolidge, and if there's anything I hate it's a fellow that if he starts to talk about a subject he can't stick to it.

I remember one time we had one of these book-authors speaking at the Kiwanis Club, and say, that fellow, maybe he could write all right (though at that I'd like to see him sit down and dictate a letter to some fellow that would make him pay his account and yet not make him get sore!)—and as I say, I don't know anything about his writing, but when it came to talking, why say, he wandered all round Robin Hood's barn! Shows what a lack of business-training does to these fellows that think they're so gosh-awful smart and superior!

Well, as I say, Robby puts this record on the Rectophone—and that's an instrument you gentle- men certainly want to try—and he looks at me, and he says, "Well, Dad, I've got me a job in Zabriskie's Drug Store for Saturday afternoons, and I draw down one and one-half bucks for each and every said same!"

Pretty good, eh? I'll say it is! And him only fifteen.

But what I started to say was: The way that kid and his sister torture the English language to death just about gets my goat. Here him and his sister was talking one time, and he starts kidding her about some bird she was sweet on, and he says, "That guy's all wet."

But she come back at him, quick's a flash, "Yeh, he's wet like a Methodist Sunday School!"

Yes sir, it beats the cars how this new generation takes the Queen's English like you and I was brought up to speak it in the good old-fashioned schools where there was some thoroughness and discipline and not just a lot of these flashy fads, and they just practically ruin it, and as I was saying, if Sister—that's what we often call my daughter—if she was talking about Coolidge, she'd probably say he wasn't "Ritzy."

Well, if you want to look at it that way, all right. Maybe he isn't as highfalutin as some people I could name. But I wonder if any of you gentlemen ever thought of this?

He may not shoot off a lot of fireworks, but do you know what he is? He's safe.

★

Yes sir, Cal is the President for real honest-to-God Americans like us.

There's a lot of folks that pan him, but what are they? You can bet your sweet life he isn't popular with the bums or yeggs or anarchists or highbrows or cynics—

I remember our pastor saying one time, "A cynic is a man who sneers, and a man who sneers is setting himself up to tell God that he doesn't approve of God's handiwork!" No sir! You can bet Coolidge ain't popular with the Bolsheviks or the lazy boob of a workman that wants fifteen bucks a day for doing nothing! No sir, nor with the cocaine fiends or the drunkards or the fellows that don't want the prohibition law enforced—

Not that I never take a drink. What I say about prohibition is:

Once a law has been passed by the duly elected and qualified representatives of the people of these United States, in fact once it's on the statue books, it's there, and it's there to be enforced. There hadn't ought to be any blind pigs or illegal stills. But same time, that don't mean you got to be a fanatic.

If a fellow feels like making some good home-brewed beer or wine, or if you go to a fellow's house and he brings out some hootch or gin that you don't know where he got it and it isn't any of your business, or if you have a business acquaintance coming to your house and you figure he won't loosen up and talk turkey without a little spot and you know a good dependable bootlegger that you can depend on, why, then that's a different matter, and there ain't any reason on God's green earth that I can see why you shouldn't take advantage of it, always providing you aren't setting somebody a bad example or making it look like you sympathized with law-breaking.

No, sir!

But now to come down to the point of my story, I hope to be able to give you gentlemen an agreeable little surprise.

I know Coolidge personally!

Yes sir, in fact I was a classmate of his! Sure as I'm telling you! I'll give you gentlemen an inside view of him, not only as I saw him in college but as I've studied him at the White House!

When I say I was a classmate of his—

Well, the fact is that certain unfortunate family circumstances, that I needn't go into and that wouldn't interest you, prevented me from completing my college course—

My father, and a fine, upstanding, cultured gentleman of the old school he was, too, always ready with a helping hand for any mortal that needed it, a man of A 1 standing in his community —Fall River, Mass., that was; in fact I was born and brought up in Fall River, which is, as you may know, one of the most beautiful and enterprising and go-ahead communities in the fair state of Massachusetts—he was, in fact, the leading corn and feed merchant in all his section of Fall River.

But I'm afraid he put a little too much confidence in the advice of an alleged friend.

Fact is, he invested his savings in a perpetual motion machine company that had little or no value. He died, and it was quite sudden, in December of my Freshman year, so I had to go back home and take up the burden of helping support the family.

But I certainly got a lot of value out of even that comparatively short time at Amherst, and the fellows at the Kiwanis Club tell me that they can see certain educational advantages in the quality of such speeches or motions as I may be called upon to deliver at the club, and welcomes to the speakers.

So it was at college that I was able to get an inside view of Cal Coolidge that has maybe been denied to even his more intimate associates in these later busy years when he has been so engrossed in the cares of the nation.

I don't suppose I could have been called one of Cal's closest friends in college, but I knew him pretty well. In fact we lived not far from each other, and I used to see him frequently. I'll admit that I never had any notion that he'd climb to his present high position and international and historical fame, but even in those days you could see from the way he worked, and the way he looked at a thing from all sides before he went off half-cocked, that in whatever department of life he might choose, he would make his mark. And the next time you hear one of these birds criticizing Coolidge, you just tell 'em that, will you, from one who knew him in the days when he wasn't surrounded with adulations!

I can remember just's well as if it was yesterday, Cal and me happened to come out of a class together, and I said, "Well, it's going to be a cold winter," and he came right back, "Yep."

Didn't waste a lot of time arguing and discussing! He knew!

And another time: I never could get along any too good in Latin. My talent, you might say, is more along practical lines. I asked Cal—we happened to be going into class together, and I asked him, "Say, what's the Latin for 'defy'?"

"Don't know," he said. No beating around the bush and pretending and four-flushing, but coming right out with it, bang! That's the kind of man he is, you take it from one who knows him!

Yes sir, I knew the boy and had the greatest affection and respect for him, like all of us who had the rare opportunity of understanding him!

And to think that I might not have gotten acquainted with him if we hadn't been chums together in one of the smaller colleges!

I tell you gentlemen, the way I figure it: the great, you might say the invincible advantage of the smaller educational institutions is that they throw the boys together in such intimate contact and—as Dr. Frank Crane says in one of his pieces somewhere—they provide that close knowledge of human beings which fits a boy for supremacy in the future walks and struggles of life. That's been my experience.

Still, same time—

These great modern universities, with their laboratories and stadiums and everything— They do have an advantage; and fact is, my son is preparing to enter the state university.

But anyway:

★

Naturally, considering that I had the privilege—through no virtue of my own, mind you—of being in my modest way rather chummy with Coolidge, I've watched his rise to world-wide fame with peculiar interest, and after he became President I often said to my wife, "By golly, I'd like to see the boy and just shake hands with him again."

Not, mind you, because he was President. After all, I've reached a position where I'm just as independent as the other fellow. An American citizen doesn't have to bow down and kowtow to anybody, whether it be the President or a millionaire or Queen Marie of Bulgaria or anybody—

By the way, Queen Marie made quite a stay at Zenith. She stopped over pretty near an hour between trains, and say, we certainly gave her a good time. The mayor read her an address and presented her with a gold-mounted polished cow's-foot combination ink-well, thermometer, and daily text calendar that I'll bet she's showing the folks in her palace right now. But I mean:

It wasn't because he was President, as I explained to the wife, but—

"Besides," I said to her, "just between you and me, I bet it would give the boy a real kick, after having to associate with ambassadors and generals and Frank Kellogg and all those high-up guys, to be able to let down for a minute and shake the mitt of a fellow that he used to laugh and joke with in the old care-free days before we both assumed the responsibilities of our present careers."

So here about six months ago, when we were planning to take a little trip to New York—

I had to go to New York to look over a new mimeographing machine. You see, I'm in the office-supply business, and let me tell you gentlemen that though I'm the first to respect other professions, though I honor the surgeon who can snatch you from the very gates of death, the lawyer who can so brilliantly argue your case—though personally I always think it's better to settle out of court—or the great banker or department-store owner, yet in all fairness let me put this to you:

Who is it that enables these gentlemen to do business and get their great ideas across in an up to-date, efficient, time-saving manner? Who is it but the office-supply man! Yes sir, I'm proud of my profession, and as a matter of fact I have the honor of representing the office-supply category in our great Zenith Kiwanis Club!

Just take filing-cabinets alone!

I always say, and sometimes the boys laugh at me at the Athletic Club, but good-naturedly, because I've got as fine a lot of friends as anybody I know, and believe me I'm mighty good and proud of them, and I tell 'em, "Boys," I say, "excuse me if I get flowery, but you must always remember I'm a great reader of Colonel Bob Ingersoll—though I'm the first to deprecate the unfortunate religious ideas and skepticism that marred that otherwise great philosopher and public speaker, and probably it's from him that I got the idea of talking without having to resort to cheap and vulgar phrases, besides being a college man and—

"Excuse me if I get highfalutin," I often say to them—you know, at lunch at the Athletic Club—you know how a lot of fellows will get to remi- niscing and chewing the rag when maybe they ought to be beating it back to their offices and getting on the job, but—

"Maybe you think I'm getting kind of woozy about it," I tell 'em, "but to me the beauties of modern filing-systems, which enable a man to instantly and without the least loss of time or effort find a letter on which, perhaps, depends the closing of an important deal, is in its practical way, to say nothing of the physical appearance of modern up-to-date filing-cabinets, no longer mere wooden boxes but whether in steel or fireproofed wood, the finest example of the cabinet-maker's art and imitating perfectly the rarest woods— To me," I often tell them, "these filing-systems are in every way as beautiful as the poet's song, as the flush on the maiden's cheek when she first hears the first whispered words of love, or the soft chirp of the mother bird at eveningtide, chirping to her birdlings. Yes sir, you bet your sweet life they are, and you can laugh all you want to!"

So as I say, I had to go on to New York to look over—

I usually do my buying in Chicago, but this was a new caper that the wholesalers in Chicago hadn't got hold of yet. I'd been working pretty hard, and my wife was kind of a little run down from the after-effects of the flu—

And say, God, what a curse that is! I wonder if you gentlemen ever stopped to think that though the flu is in each individual case so much less fatal than diseases like the plague or brain-fever, yet considering the number of those afflicted with it—and after all, when you look at a subject, you've got to go into the statistics of it—of course naturally an office-supply man has great advantages that way, being in the business— When you think how many folks get flu, it seems like one of the most important of all diseases.

I tell you, I'm as religious as the next fellow, and I never'd for one moment dream of criticizing the preachers' doctrines—let them figure out theology and religion, I say, and I'll stick to the office-supply business. But don't it sometimes almost make you question the workings of Providence when you see the mysterious way in which disease smites down the just with the unjust?

Why, my wife went on sniveling and subject to constant headaches for more than six weeks after the doctor said he'd got her all cured of the flu!

So I said to her, "Honey," as I often call her, "what say you and me and Delmerine—"

Delmerine, that's my daughter's name. Don't know, by the way, that I've introduced myself. Lowell Schmaltz is my name—

Funny! Whole lot of people take Schmaltz for a German name, but of course as a matter of fact, when you look into the matter, it isn't German at all but Pennsylvania Dutch, which is almost the same as saying New England Yankee and—

Well, I figured Delmerine could get away all right, because she's finished high school.

I'd asked her if she wanted to go to college—I could perfectly well afford to send her, of course—but she thought it over and she felt more kind of called to the musical line, and she was taking vocal and piano. But I figured she could drop them all right for a few weeks and I said—

Robby (that's my son), of course he couldn't get away, because he was in school, but—

I says to my wife, "Mamie, how'd it strike you—I've simply got to go to New York on a business trip and things are kind of slack now, and how'd it be if Delmerine and you went along and saw the sights and everything?"

Say, she was tickled pink! She'd never seen New York, and of course—

Not that I'd want to live in the Big Burg. What I always say is: New York is a swell hang-out for a few days' visit, and theaters and all like that, but when it comes to living there—say, I wouldn't live there if they gave me Times Square and threw in Riverside Drive to boot. Compared with Zenith—

And believe me, gentlemen—

I don't believe in going around boosting your own burg all the time. I don't suppose Zenith is any better, practically, than Minneapolis or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, say. But it certainly is one high-class city, and you may or may not know that not only do we lead the world in the manufacture of loud speakers and overalls, but we have, since Lindbergh's trans-oceanic flight, made all the plans and raised quite a lot of the money to construct the largest and finest flying-field between Chicago and New York, excepting Detroit and Dayton of course, and we plan to have a restaurant at the areodrome there serving short-orders twenty-four hours a day.

And I must say Mamie and I are pretty well fixed there. Believe me, we don't have to travel to get any ideas how to live! Just a couple of years ago I finished building a dandy little Italian villa-style bungalow, with a Spanish mission entrance. We've got two bathrooms, and a fireplace, and everything fixed up first-rate, and in the basement I've installed an electric washing-machine and a garbage-incinerator, and we got something that you don't find in many houses: in both bathrooms I've got a slit in the wall, right by the stationary bowls, for the disposal of safety razor blades.

And say! I've got a great plan. Some day I'm—I am, by golly, no kid!—sounds crazy, but it'd be the greatest luxury you gentlemen ever heard of; just think, when you were taking a nice, long, lazy hot bath; some day I'm going to put a radio in my bathroom! But that's an ideal to be worked out in the future. Maybe it'll be my contribution to American progress. But still, let that pass, for the moment. As I say, we don't live so bad.

And of course I drive a Chrysler myself and I gave my wife a Chevrolet coop—

Say, I certainly got a rise out of her. She's one darn' nice little woman, if I do say so; been an A 1 wife in every way, even if she does kick a little sometimes about my driving too fast. Well, here her last birthday I come home and I could see she was mouching around skittish as a wasp, because 'most always on her birthdays I've got something tucked inside my pocket for her.

"Do you know what day this is?" I finally says to her, after I'd looked over the paper and listened in on the radio a little—though I remember there wasn't anything on then except the daily stock-receipt reports from the Omaha packing yards.

She brightens up and tries to look kittenish and makes out like she doesn't know, and she says, "No, what?"

"It's the day—or it will be the evening—of the Kid Milligan—Pooch Federstein fight, and we better invite in some of the folks and listen to the fight on the radio," I says.

Well sir, the poor kid, she certainly did look awful' down in the mouth. I didn't know whether she was going to be plucky, or whether she'd bawl me out—I got to admit she does, sometimes. But she was game and didn't say anything, and pretty soon, 'long about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, I suggested we go out and have a little walk before dinner. Well, meantime, you get me, I'd had the fellow bring this Chevrolet coop around and park it right in front of the house.

"Here's a nice little car?" I says when I sees the Chev. "Wonder how she runs."

And I goes and gets in and starts it!

Well sir— You know how women carry on. She cusses me out, and she beefs, and she gets on a rampage, and she says, "Why Lowell Schmaltz," she says, "what do you mean! What'll the owner say?"

"I'll bet he'll do a lot of saying," I laughs, "if he—or she—happens to see me in it!"

"Why, I never knew you to do a thing like that!" she says. "You get right out of that car!"

Say, I had her wild!

"So that's how a fellow gets treated, is it," I says, and I pretend to look hurt, and I gets out, and then I draws her attention to a little card that I'd had tied on the door handle—'d tied it on myself, matter of fact—that said, "To Mamie on her birthday from Woofums"—Woofums—kind of a nut name, but that's what she calls me sometimes when we're kind of fooling around.

Say, maybe she didn't pretty nearly keel over!

Yes sir, you bet, both of us have our own cars, though mine—

It ain't the fault of the Chrysler itself, I'm certain of that, certainly a high-grade A 1 machine, but the garage got to fooling with it, and my car's got a squeak in it somewhere that I by golly simply can not locate, and say, if there's anything gets me wild when I'm driving—

I can stand the big gaff— Why say, when I had a tire blow out on me after only two thousand miles (any of you gentlemen ever try the Melps tire? Well, don't, that's my advice to you, and believe me I know, I've tried two of them, and in my opinion this monkey-business they advertise about wrapping the fabric crosswise or whatever it is is all the bugs; don't get the result they claim at all)—

I can stand those big things, but say, even the littlest squeak, why say, it simply drives me crazy when I'm driving.

Why, here just last Sunday I was driving the family out to a cousin of ours that lives in Elm- wood for Sunday dinner, and it was as fine a day as you ever saw, but just about the time I began to enjoy myself, and I was going past the Seven Corners and looking at the new filling-station they got there—say, man, I'll bet that's one of the finest filling-stations in the United States: twelve pumps they got, and a comfort station fixed up to look like an old-fashioned log cabin, and a supply store with a great big huge enormous fish-aquarium simply chuck full of goldfish right in the window. And geraniums.

And just when I was calling it to Mame's attention—by golly all of a sudden that squeak started again.

Well say, I couldn't enjoy anything all day. After dinner, I took Cousin Ed out for a drive, to see if he could locate the squeak, and we drove right down through a woods, a park they got there, mighty pretty and I'd 've enjoyed it like the dickens—I always was a great believer in Nature—but every time I looked at a tree or a nice rustic-style bench or something like that, that darn' squeak would start in again, and Cousin Ed—he thinks he's such a wiz at cars, but Lord love you, he couldn't locate that squeak any more'n I could.

★

But's I say: I guess we're about as well fixed as most folks and we certainly don't have to get away from home to enjoy ourselves, but when I said to my wife, "I kind of got an idea you and Delmerine might come along with me and give New York the once-over," she looked like somebody'd left her a million dollars.