“None o' your cheap busses for us any more!”
And in the plain red brick business street was this motley and yet charming collection of people. I have indicated farmers and farmers' wives in (the equivalent of) homespun and linen. Behold, now, your town dandy, bustling into the bank or bookstore at two P. M. of this fine afternoon, a veritable village Beau Brummell, very conscious of his charms. He is between twentyone and twentythree, and very likely papar owns the book or the clothing store and is proud of his son’s appearance. In my day son would have had a smart runabout, with red or yellow wheels, in which he would have arrived, picking up a very pretty girl by the way. Now he has an automobile—even if it is only a Buick—and he feels himself to be the most perfect of youths.
And here come three girls, arm in arm, village belles, so pretty in their bright, summery washdresses. Do you think New York can teach them anything—or Paris? Tush! Not so fast. Look at our skirts, scarcely below the knees, with pointed ruffles, and flaring flounces, and our bright grey kid slippers, and the delicate frills about our necks, and the soft bloomy gaiety of our “sport” hats. New York teach us anything? We teach New York, rather! We are down for mail, or stationery, or an ice cream soda, and to see and be seen. Perhaps Beau Brummell will drive us home in his car, or we may refuse and just laugh at him.
And, if you please, here is one of the town’s young scarlet women. No companionship for her. She is dressed like the others, only more so, but to emphasize the difference she is rouged as to cheeks and lips. Those eager, seeking eyes! No woman will openly look at her, nor any girl. But the men—these farmers and lawyers and town politicians! Which one of them will seek her out first tonight, do you suppose—the lawyer, the doctor, or the storekeeper?
How good it all tasted after New York! And what a spell it cast. I can scarcely make you understand, I fear. Indiana is a world all unto itself, and this extreme western portion of Ohio is a part of it, not by official, but rather by natural arrangement. The air felt different—the sky and trees and streets here were sweeter. They really were. The intervening years frizzled away and once more I saw myself quite clearly in this region, with the ideas and moods of my youth still dominant. I was a “kid” again, and these streets and stores were as familiar to me as though I had lived in them all my life.
Franklin and I were looking in at the window of the one combined music and piano store, to see what they sold. All the popular songs were there—"I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier," “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary,” “He’s a Devil in His Own Home Town,” and others such as “Goodbye, Goodbye” and “Though We Should Never Meet Again.” As I looked at these things, so redolent of small town love affairs and of calling Wednesdays and Saturdays, my mind went back to all the similar matters I had known (not my own—I never had any) and the condition of the attractive girl and the average young men in a town like this. How careful is their upbringing—supposedly. How earnestly is the Sunday School and the precept and the maxim invoked, and how persistently so many of them go their own way. They do not know what it is all about, all this talk about religion and morality and duty. In their blood is a certain something which responds to the light of the sun and the blue of the sky.
Did you ever read “The Ballad of the Nun,” by John Davidson? See if this doesn’t suggest what I’m talking about:
"The adventurous sun took heaven by storm,
Clouds scattered largesses of rain,
The sounding cities, rich and warm,