Red Beans and Rainbows

By Walter Darring and S. L. Varnado

In this comic account of his familys misadventures during the Depression
of the 1930s, author S. L. Varnado proves the truth of Mark Twains
observation that the essence of comedy is tragedy. Contending that the
Depression was not the gloomy period portrayed by historians, Varnado
turns the spotlight of humor on such fantastic events as the night the
possum fell on his mothers head, his fathers imaginary bouts of catatonia,
his uncles hair breath escape from a maddened bull and the adventures
of Bicycle Man, super hero extraordinaire. Integrating historical footage
with comic personal narrative, Varnado creates a fresh interpretation of
an important era in our history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781477168073

Walter Darring

A professor of English at the University of South Alabama, S. L. Varnado has written comic articles for National Review, the New Oxford Review, the National Catholic Reporter, and Reader’s Digest. He writes a humor column for the Mobile Press Register and contends that humor is the answer to most of the world’s problems. “If the Germans had had a keener sense of humor,” he says, “they would have laughed Hitler off the stage.”

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Copyright © 2008 by S. L. Varnado.

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1—A Jazz Age Romance

Chapter 2—The Birth of the Depression (And Me!)

Chapter 3—The Reluctant Bankrupt

Chapter 4—Hard Luck Days

Chapter 5—The Episode of the Aristocratic Guinea Fowl

Chapter 6—Mother and the Protestant Work Ethic

Chapter 7—The Case of the Boarding House Thief

Chapter 8—The Puzzling Affair of the Gymnastic Possum

Chapter 9—The Fantasy of the Piper Cub

Chapter 10—The Curious Incident of the Catatonic Salesman

Chapter 11—Rites of Passage

Chapter 12—The Wild Blue Yonder

Chapter 13—Fantasyland

Chapter 14—The Urban Farmer

Chapter 15—The Iron Woman

Chapter 16—The Singular Affair of the Disappearing Ducks

Chapter 17—The Coming of the War

To my wife Mary and all my children:

Larry, Jimmy, Cathy, John, Pat, Charley

Introduction

The l930’s—the period of the Great Depression—has had a bad press. Historians, economists, and other chronic worriers have described it as a time of misery and gloom. It was awful, one commentator remarks and it packed a bigger wallop than anything else that happened to America between the Civil War and the Atom Bomb.

Images of the period are universally pessimistic. One thinks of Arthur Rothstein’s heart-rending photographs of Dust Bowl farmers, Edward Hopper’s pensive canvasses of silent streets and lonely men, or Steinbeck’s description of destitute Okies in The Grapes of Wrath. References to the l930’s conjure up memories of Hoovervilles, soup kitchens, hoboes riding freight cars, unemployed men milling around closed factories, and emaciated children in tenement houses.

Even the titles of books about the era convey a gloomy tone, e.g.: Caroline Bird’s The Invisible Scar, James D. Horan’s The Desperate Years, John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash, or Studs Terkel’s Hard Times. Reading these books, you get the feeling that the Depression was a combination of Dante’s Inferno and Gorky’s Lower Depths, with a commentary by Stephen King.

Of course you don’t have to disagree with the general outline of this picture to realize its distortions. It leaves out too much. True enough, the Depression was a desperate period in our history, but it had its happy moments. Once the initial shock was over, people adjusted to the new conditions and developed an attitude of protective optimism. There was a sudden change of emotional direction. The hectic hedonism of the 20’s gave place to humor, family feeling, sympathy, and a somewhat naive altruism seen in the sweeping reforms of the Roosevelt Administration. Even the songs of the period suggest this: Happy Days Are Here Again I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cents Store Whistle While You Work, and the ever hopeful Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

This neglected side of the Depression is the subject of my book. I must hasten to explain, however, that my credentials are not those of a historian, but rather of a witness. I was born on October 18, l929, precisely one week before the debacle started on Wall Street. This might be described as bad timing—whether on the part of my parents or of the national economy—but it gave me a ringside seat on one of the crucial periods of our history.

The story begins during the closing days of the l920’s, the Jazz Age.

*     *     *

The l920’s was a period of unqualified optimism. The stock market had been going up like a rocket for a year or so, reaching a peak in September of l929. Right up to the moments that stocks began falling on Wall Street, politicians, economists, and other members of the entertainment community were making their usual rosy comments about life in general and the economy in particular.

For example, Irving Fisher, a famous Harvard professor of economics, had just made a widely quoted statement: Stocks have now reached a permanently high plateau. This ill fated remark, which haunted the man’s later years, was reassuring at the time, and was received gratefully by the public. After all, Professor Fisher had statistics to back him up, and people adore statistics. Nobody ever seems to realize that a statistic is just a coincidence that has had a lot of experience.

Or take the case of John J. Raskob, financial pundit and chairman of the Du Pont Corporation. A few months before the Crash, Raskob wrote an article for the Ladies Home Journal that bore the rather seductive title Everybody Ought to Be Rich. Now who—with the possible exception of the IRS—would dispute such a noble sentiment as that? Certainly not the readers of the Ladies Home Journal.

A wave of economic insanity had gripped the country. People who would have blushed at the thought of betting on a horse race or entering a gambling casino could be seen lined up at brokerage houses around the country, eager to bet on GM, AT&T, Icarus Airlines or Swampland Realty Corporation.

And you could buy stocks on incredibly thin margin. You paid ten percent down, and after the stock went up you paid the remainder out of your profits. Of course, it was generally agreed that the only direction stocks could go was up. That was what made the whole thing such fun. It was like a national Happy Hour.

Of course, there were a few pessimists in the deck. A few weeks before the Crash, for instance, Roger Babson, a rather churlish investment advisor from Wellesley, Massachusetts, made a statement that caused some public uneasiness. One of these days, he remarked, a big fall in the stock market is coming, and people are going to lose heavily. This was an unexceptional remark, like saying that someday it was going to rain. But it troubled the investing community, and for a few days the market sold off. Then it started up again, and people breathed a sigh of relief. This little ripple in the market became known as the Babson Break, and people began referring sarcastically to Babson as the sage of Wellesley. That is the way things always go for pessimists whether it is the Hebrew Prophets or the man who said I don’t like the way that thing is smoking, a few days before Vesuvius erupted. Historically speaking, pessimists are members of an endangered species.

Like most Americans of that day and time, my parents were caught off guard by the Depression. They got married in l928, right at the peak of the Roaring 20’s when the world looked like the Garden of Eden at apple picking time. Father owned a prosperous grocery business in Hammond, Louisiana; mother had a job as a school marm; and life, according to a popular song of the day, was just a bowl of cherries.

Then suddenly the Depression struck—like a rainstorm at a Sunday School picnic. Father’s grocery business went belly up, mother lost her teaching position, and their lives were turned upside down. Perhaps it was the element of surprise that was the worst part of the Depression: like getting ready to take a nice hot shower and discovering that there was no hot water.

My parents had a pretty hard time during the Depression, and I wish I could honestly say that I had a hard time too. But I didn’t. My problem was that I did not realize that we were poor. Poverty is a state of mind, as the sages tell us (mostly affluent sages), and I never got into the proper state of mind. When I used to ask mother if we were poor, she would reply (in the euphemistic style of the day) that we were living in reduced circumstances—which didn’t sound half bad. After all, who wanted to live in expanded circumstances?

In fact, I may as well state openly, and at the risk of appearing callous, that I rather enjoyed the Depression. I know this is a scandalous thing to say. When I decided to write a book about the period, I fully intended to produce another of those hand wringing, chest beating tomes of the kind already mentioned. I intended to load it with gloomy statistics and discouraging events, and give it a title like Gotterdammerung. But as I continued to write, the story kept taking on a happy tone. I would remember some tragic incident in my family’s history, write it down, and—behold—it would come out sounding happy. This was maddening. I was reminded of the story related by James Boswell about the young man who set out to become a philosopher but who had to give up the endeavor because cheerfulness kept breaking through.

This is a highly subjective book, not so much a history of the period as a collection of stories. The stories—such as the night the possum fell on mother’s head, father’s mysterious bout of catatonia, or Uncle Felix’s epic struggle to escape the enraged bull—are intended primarily to amuse. In addition, of course, I hope that they shed a sort of general light on the period.

Of course, the book includes a certain amount of historical footage. For this material, I am indebted to the standard treatises on the period—treatises which I must admit that I read with less than a scholar’s acumen. In addition, I have spent many hours in the microfilm room of my local library, reading newspapers and magazines of the 30’s. This was a pleasant task—especially when the microfilm machine was working properly—but it often gave me the strange illusion that I was reliving the past, like H. G. Wells’ Time Traveler. On one occasion, as I gazed in horror at falling stock prices and muttered excitedly to myself, the librarian tip-toed up behind me and asked, Sir, are you all right?

What’s that? I muttered, looking up at her blurred image through my glasses. Yes. Yes, I’m all right. But could I use your phone? I need to call my broker at once.

Readers who make their way through this farrago of rather fantastic material may wonder if the stories I relate are true. The answer is, in general, yes. I have rearranged things here and there and tinted the picture in places, but the drawing itself is reasonably accurate. Grandmother’s epic battle with the killer ants, mother’s sterling devotion to The Protestant Work Ethic, and father’s escapades with pigs, possums, and laboratory rats are true events that all members of my family will vouch for. If some of the incidents seem a bit outlandish by modern standards, my only excuse is that the 1930’s was a rather outlandish period.

Chapter 1

A Jazz Age Romance

It was always something of a mystery to me why mother turned father down the first time he asked her for a date.

After all, he was what people in the l920’s referred to as a good catch. His handsome black hair was always carefully slicked down with Brilliantine, he was a natty dresser, and—most important of all—he had plenty of spending money.

He owned a prosperous grocery store in the small south Louisiana town of Hammond, and was referred to by the solid citizens of the community as an up and coming young business man. In addition, he was considered to be a very desirable jelly bean by most of the town’s flappers, many of whom were quite eager to go out with him for a bit of sparking in his grocery van.

So why did mother continue to turn him down for a month after they first met?

I asked mother that question in later years but could never get a straight answer from her.

It’s hard to explain, she would say, chewing her fingernail the way she did when she was perplexed. You see, I was always a worrier—got it from my mother. Worrying was an old family tradition, part of my Methodist upbringing. All my aunts and uncles and cousins were Methodists—and worriers. But your father was not a worrier. He was a Baptist—the most relaxed Baptist I had ever met. And that worried me.

You worried because he was a Baptist?

No. I worried because he wasn’t a worrier. I had been brought up to believe that life was a serious business and should be worried about. Most of the people in town that I looked up to were worriers, including the Baptists. But your father simply didn’t know how to worry. And that worried me.

Such baffling and ambivalent emotions, which may be related to that interesting phenomenon that professor Max Weber termed the Protestant Work Ethic, formed no part of father’s make-up. He was simple, direct, and relaxed. When he first met mother he decided on the spot that he was going to marry her, and he began to court her in a simple and relaxed manner.

But he quickly ran into trouble. He had not counted on the web of complex worrying that he would encounter in mother’s family, the Addisons. Your mother came from a long line of professional worriers, father told me later. They had passed it down through the years, like antique china. Your grandmother, for instance, was a champion worrier. It’s true she had plenty to worry about. She was a young widow trying to raise three daughters on her own, no easy task in those days. But there was more to it than that. She enjoyed worrying, she reveled in it, and it was her favorite form of recreation. She kept a mental list of things to worry about and would tick them off on demand: accidents, sickness, taxes, bills—even ants. Worrying about ants was one of her chief delights in life.

When mother and father first met in September of l927, it was Ant Season in Hammond. Ant Season (also known as Deep Summer) was a trying time in south Louisiana. Mosquitoes, cicadas, and honeymoon bugs mustered their forces and patrolled the area in full strength. Roaches partied all night, and during the day ants formed long columns, marching in and out of the houses in military fashion. It was a buzzing, humming saturnalia of the insect world, and it never failed to rouse my grandmother’s worrying instincts.

On the afternoon that mom and dad met, dad had driven his Ford delivery van to grandmother’s big Carpenter Gothic house at 604 East Charles Street to deliver a chicken and a twenty-five pound block of ice (his grocery carried ice as a convenience to customers). As he came in the back door of the house lugging the dripping block of ice with his tongs, he found mother and grandmother preparing supper. Mother did not see father at first; her back was turned to him.

Put that ice in the sink, Larry, grandmother said in her abrupt way. And chip it up for me, if you please. Father took out the ice pick he always carried with him and began to chip the ice. At that moment, mother turned around. Father saw her—and froze, ice pick in hand.

Larry, this is my oldest daughter, Wilda, grandmother said, unaware of father’s bewilderment. I don’t think you’ve met her.

Father made no reply. He stared at mother, lowering the ice pick to his side. This was not an unusual reaction. Mother was not beautiful, but she often had this hypnotic effect on young men. She was small and perfectly formed, with cornflower blue eyes, yellow hair, and an expression of ethereal energy. When she came in a room, someone said of her in later years, it was as if a light had been turned on.

Leave the bill on the table when you’ve finished chipping the ice, grandmother said, rolling a piece of pie dough.

Father said nothing. His mind was working overtime, trying to figure out a way to get grandmother out of the kitchen so that he could be alone with mother.

Mrs. Addison, he said at last, what are you doing about that ant hill in your front yard?

Ant hill? Ant hill? grandmother said nervously. What ant hill are you talking about, Larry?

Haven’t you noticed it? father asked. It’s right next to the big live oak tree. Never have I seen such an ant hill. Lawyer Spiller was passing along the sidewalk as I pulled in your driveway, and the ants actually attacked him. He was fighting them off with his cane.

This whetted grandmother’s appetite for battle. She was an expert in ant warfare. She knew how to put jar lids filled with kerosene under the legs of the kitchen table to frustrate the ants. She knew the poisons they hated most, how to destroy their hills, decimate their larvae, and take their queen hostage. She would discuss ants endlessly with anyone who showed the least interest.

I’d better have a look, she said, grabbing a tin squirt can and sallying forth to do battle. This was exactly what father wanted. Now he was alone in the kitchen with mother. He pushed his white straw sailor hat back on his head and smiled pleasantly.

Could I ask you something? he said.

Yes, mother replied, wiping her hands on her apron and glancing around in her nervous way.

Do your eyes bother you?

No. Why do you ask?

Because they sure bother me.

This was a familiar joke of the twenties, but mother made no sign of amusement. She looked straight at father and gave him what, in those days, was known as the ice.

Father pointed to the chicken lying on the table. That chicken is mighty fresh, he said.

So are you, mother replied coldly.

Father took the insult in his stride and returned to the attack. "Look here, I have two tickets to the dance at the Oaks Hotel this Saturday. The girl I was supposed to go with broke