To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 15 - Torrid Twenties Threadbare Thirties

During the fifty-odd years on my personal time line from my rescue in 1982 to the start of the Time mission which aborted into my present predicament on this planet I spent time equal to about ten years in the study of comparative history, in particular the histories of the time lines that the Circle of Ouroboros attempts to protect, all of which appear to share a single ancestral time line at least through AD 1900 and possibly through to about 1940.

This sheaf of universes includes my own native universe (time line two, code Leslie LeCroix) and excludes the uncounted but far more numerous exotic time lines - universes in which Columbus did not sail for the Indies (or failed to return), ones in which the Viking settlements succeeded and ‘America' becomes ‘Great Vinland', ones in which the Muscovite empire on the west coast clashes with the Hispanic empire on the east coast (worlds in which Queen Elizabeth dies in exile), other worlds in which Columbus found America already owned by the Manchu emperors - and worlds with histories so exotic that it is hard to find even a remote ancestral line in common with anything we can recognise.

I am almost certain that I have slipped into one of the exotics... but of a previously unsuspected sort.

I did not spend all my time studying histories; I worked for a living, supporting myself first as a nursing assistant, then as a nurse, then as a clinical therapist, then as a student rejuvenator (all the while going to school), before I shifted careers to the Time Corps.

But it was this study of histories that caused me to think about a career in Time.

Several of the time lines known to ‘civilisation' (our name for ourselves) appear to split away about 1940. One cusp at which these splits show is the Democratic National Convention of 1940 at which Mr Franklin Delano Roosevelt either was or was not nominated by the Democratic Party for a third term as President of the United States, then either was or was not elected, then either did or did not serve through to the end of the Second World War.

In time line one, code John Carter, the Democratic nomination went to Paul McNutt... but the election to Republican Senator Robert Taft.

In the composite time lines coded ‘Cyrano', Mr Roosevelt had both a third and a fourth term, died in his fourth term and was succeeded by his vice-president, a former Senator from Missouri named Harry Truman. In my own time line there was never a senator by that name but I do remember Brian speaking of a Captain Harry Truman whom he knew in France. ‘A fighting son of a gun,' Briney called him. ‘A real buzz saw.' But the Harry Truman whom Brian knew was not a politician; he was a haberdasher, so it seems unlikely that it could be the same man. Briney used to go out of his way to buy gloves and such from Captain Truman. He described him as ‘a dying breed - an old-fashioned gentleman.'

In time line two, code Leslie LeCroix, my own native time line and that of Lazarus Long and Boondock, Mr Roosevelt was nominated for a third term in july 1940, then died from a stroke while playing tennis the last week in October, thereby creating a unique constitutional crisis. Henry Wallace, the Democratic nominee for vice-president, claimed that the Electors from the states that went Democratic were bound by law to vote for him for president. The Democratic National Committee did not see it that way and neither did the Electoral College - and neither did the Supreme Court - three different points of view. Four, in fact, as John Nance Garner was President from October on... but had not been nominated for anything and had bolted his party after the July convention.

I will return to this subject as this was the world I grew up in. But note that Mr Roosevelt was stricken ‘while playing tennis'.

I learned while studying comparative history that in all other time lines but mine Mr Roosevelt had been a poliomyelitis cripple confined to a wheel chair!

The effects of contagious diseases on history are a never ending subject for debate among mathematico-historians on Tertius. I often wonder about one case, because I was there. In my time line Spanish influenza killed 528.000 US residents in the epidemic of the winter of 1918-19, and killed more troops in France than had been killed by shot and shell and poison gas. What if the Spanish flu had struck Europe one year earlier? Certainly history would have been changed - but in what way? Suppose a corporal named Hitler had died? Or an exile who called himself Lenin? Or a soldier named Pétain? That strain of flu could kill overnight; I saw it happen more than once.

Time line three, code Neil Armstrong, is the native world of my sister-wife Hazel Stone (Gwen Campbell) and of our husband Dr Jubal Harshaw. This is an unattractive world in which Venus is uninhabitable and Mars is a bleak, almost airless desert, and Earth itself seems to have gone crazy, led by the United States in a lemming-like suicide stampede.

I dislike studying time line three; it is so horrid. Yet it fascinates me. In this time line (as in mine) United States historians call the second half of the twentieth century the Crazy Years - and well they might! Hearken to the evidente:

a) The largest, longest, bloodiest war in United States history, fought by conscript troops without a declaration of war, without any clear purpose, without any intention of winning - a war that was ended simply by walking away and abandoning the people for whom it was putatively fought;

b) Another war that was never declared - this one was never concluded and still existed as an armed truce forty years after it started... while the United States engaged in renewed diplomatic and trade relations with the very government it had warred against without admitting it;

c) An assassinated president, an assassinated presidential candidate, a president seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by a known psychotic who nevertheless was allowed to move freely, an assassinated leading Negro national politician, endless other assassination attempts, unsuccessful, partly successful, and successful;

d) So many casual killings in public streets and public parks and public transports that most lawful citizens avoided going out after dark, especially the elderly;

e) Public school teachers and state university professors who taught that patriotism was an obsolete concept, that marriage was an obsolete concept, that sin was an obsolete concept, that politeness was an obsolete concept - that the United States itself was an obsolete concept;

f) School teachers who could not speak or write grammatically, could not spell, could not cipher;

g) The nation's leading farm state had as its biggest cash crop an outlawed plant that was the source of the major outlawed drug;

h) Cocaine and heroin called ‘recreational drugs', felonious theft called ‘joyriding', vandalism by gangs called ‘trashing', burglary called ‘ripping off', felonious assault by gangs called ‘mugging' and all of these treated as ‘boys will be boys', so scold them and put them on probation but don't ruin their lives by treating them as criminals;

i) Millions of women who found it more rewarding to have babies out of wedlock than it would be to get married or to go to work.

I don't understand time line three (code Neil Armstrong) so I had better quote Jubal Harshaw, who lived through it. ‘Mama Maureen,' he said to me, ‘the America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens... which is opposed by the folly and-lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes for his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as "Bread and Circuses".

‘"Bread and Circuses" is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, the day marks the beginning of the end of that state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader - the barbarians enter Rome.'

Jubal shrugged and looked sad. ‘Mine was a lovely world until the parasites took over.'

Jubal Harshaw also pointed out to me a symptom that, so he says, invariably precedes the collapse of a culture; a decline in good manners, in common courtesy, in a decent respect for the rights of other people.

‘Political philosophers from Confucius to the present day have repeatedly pointed this out. But the first signs of this fatal symptom may be hard to spot. Does it really matter when a honorific is omitted? Or when a junior calls a senior by his first name, uninvited? Such loosening of protocol may be hard to evaluate. But there is one unmistakable sign of the collapse of good manners: dirty public washrooms.

‘In a healthy society public restrooms, toilets, washrooms, look and smell as clean and fresh as a bathroom in a decent private home. In a sick society -‘ Jubal stopped and simply looked disgusted.

He did not need to elaborate; I had seen it happen in my own time line. In the first part of the twentieth century right through the thirties people at all levels of society were habitually polite to each other and it was taken for granted that anyone using a public washroom tried hard to leave the place as clean and neat as he found it. As I recall, decent behaviour concerning public washrooms started to slip during World War Two, and so did good manners in general. By the sixties and the seventies rudeness of all sorts had become commonplace, and by then I never used a public restroom if I could possibly avoid it.

Offensive speech, bad manners, and filthy toilets all seem to go together.

America in my own time line suffered the cancer of ‘Bread and Circuses' but found a swifter way to commit suicide. I don't boast about the difference, as in time line two the people of the United States succumbed to something even sillier than ‘Bread and Circuses': the people voted themselves a religious dictatorship.

It happened after 1982, so I did not see it - for which I am glad! When I was a woman a hundred years old, Nehemiah Scudder was still a small boy.

The potential for religious hysteria had always been present in the American culture, and this I knew, as my father had rubbed my nose in it from an early age. Father had pointed out to me that the only thing that preserved religious freedom in the United States was not the First Amendment and was not tolerance... but was solely a Mexican stand-off between rival religious sects, each sect intolerant, each sect the sole custodian of the One True Faith - but each sect a minority that gave lip service to freedom of religion to keep its own One True Faith from being persecuted by all the other True Faiths.

(Of course it was usually open season on Jews and sometimes on Catholics and almost always on Mormons and Muslims and Buddhists and other heathens. The First Amendment was never intended to protect such outright blasphemy. Oh, no!)

Elections are won not by converting the opposition but by getting out your own vote, and Scudder's organisation did just that. According to histories I studied at Boondock, the election of 2012 turned out sixty-three per cent of the registered voters (which in turn was less than half of those eligible to register); the True American Party (Nehemiah Scudder) polled twenty-seven per cent of the popular vote... which won eighty-one per cent of the Electoral College votes.

In 2016 there was no election.

The Torrid Twenties... Flaming Youth, the Lost Generation, flappers, cake eaters, gangsters and sawn-off shot-guns and bootleg booze and needled beer. Hupmobiles and Stutz Bearcats and flying circuses. A joy hop for five dollars. Lindbergh and the Spirit of St Louis. Skirts climbed unbelievably until, by the middle of the decade, rolled stockings permitted bare knees to be seen. The Prince of Wales Glide and the Finale Hop and the Charleston. Ruth Etting and Will Rogers and Ziegfeld's Follies. There were bad things about the Twenties but on the whole they were good years for most people - and they were never dull.

I kept busy as usual with housewifely things of little interest to outsiders. I had Theodore Ira in 1919, Margaret in 1922, Arthur Roy in 1924, Alice Virginia in 1927, Doris Jean in 1930 - and they all had the triumphs and crises that children have, and aren't you glad that you don't have to look at their pictures and listen to me repeating their cute sayings?

In February of 1929 we sold our house on Bentos Boulevard and leased with the option to buy a house near Rockhill Road and Meyer Boulevard - an old farmhouse, roomy but not as modern as our former Nome. This was a hard-nosed decision by my husband who always believed in making every dollar work twice. But he did consult me and not alone because title was vested in me.

‘Maureen,' he said to me, ‘do you feel like gambling?'

‘We always have. Haven't we?'

‘Some yes, some no. This time we would tap the pot, shoot the works, shout Banco! If I failed to bring it off, you might have to go out and pound a beat, just to keep a potato soup on the table.'

‘I've always wondered if I could make a living that way. Here I am, forty-seven in July -‘

‘Woops! Your age is now thirty-seven. And I'm forty one.'

‘Briney, I'm in bed with you. Can't I be truthful in bed?'

‘Judge Sperling wants us to stick to our corrected ages at all times. And Justin agrees.'

‘Yes sir. I'll be good. I always wondered if I could make a living as a streetwalker. But how do I find a beat? I understand that a gal can get per eyes scratched out if she just goes out and starts soliciting without finding out who owns that territory. I know what to do in bed, Briney; it's the merchandising of the product that I must learn.'

‘Don't be so eager, slippery bottom; it may not be necessary. Tell me... Do you still believe that Ted - Theodore - Corporal Bronson - carne from the future?'

I suddenly sobered. ‘I do. Don't you?'

‘Mo, I believed him as quickly as you did. I believed him before his prophecy about the end of the War proved true. Now I'm asking you this: do you believe in Ted strongly enough that you are willing to risk every cent we own that his prediction of a collapse in the stock market will be right on the button exactly like his prediction of Armistice Day?'

‘Black Tuesday,' I said softly. ‘29 October. This year.'

‘Well? If I take this gamble - and miss - we'll be broke. Marie won't be able to finish at Radcliffe, Woodie will have to scratch for a college education, and Dick and Ethel - well, we'll cross those bridges later. Sweetheart, I'm into this bull market up to my ears... and I propose to get deeper into it on the firm assumption that Black Tuesday takes place on the dot and exactly as Ted said it would.'

‘Do it!'

‘Are you sure, Mo? If anything goes wrong, we'll be right back to fried mush. Whereas it is not too late to hedge my bets - pull half of it out and stash it away. Gamble with the other half.'

‘Briney, I wasn't brought up that way. You remember Father's harness racer Loafer?'

‘I saw him a few times. A beautiful beast.'

‘Yes. Just not quite as fast as he looked. Father regularly bet on himself. Always on the nose. Never to place or show. Loafer could usually come in second or third... but Father would not bet that way. I've heard him talk to Loafer before a heat, softly, gently: "This time we're going to take ‘em, boy! This time we're going to win!" Then later I've heard him say, "You tried, old fellow! That's all I can ask. You're still a champion... and we'll take ‘em next time!" And Father would pat him on the neck and Loafer would whinny and nicker to him, and they would comfort each other.'

‘Then you think I should bet across the board? For there isn't going to be any next time.'

‘No, no! Shoot the works! You believe Theodore and so do I. So let's do it!' I added, as I reached down and grabbed his tool, ‘If it's fried mush time again, it need not be for long. You can knock me up, uh, let me see' - I counted - ‘next Monday. Which would mean that I would unload about' - I stopped to count again - ‘oh, a couple of weeks after Black Tuesday. Then we will receive another Howard Foundation bonus shortly thereafter.'

‘No.'

‘Huh? I mean, Excuse me? I don't understand.'

‘Mo, if Ted's prediction is wrong, the Foundation's principal assets may be wiped out. Justin and Judge Sperling are betting that Ted's prediction is correct; Chapman is bucking them. There are four other trustees... and two are Hoover Republicans, two were for Al Smith. Justin doesn't know which way it will go.'

Selling our house when we did was part of the gamble. It was a hard-nosed decision as it involved what came to be known as ‘block-busting'. We lived in an all-white neighbourhood, but Darktown was just north of us, not far away, and had been growing steadily closer in the twenty-odd years we had owned that house. (Dear, sweet house! - stuffed with happy memories.)

Brian had been approached by a white real estate agent who said he had an offer from an undisclosed client: how much did Brian want for his house?

‘Darling, I did not ask about his client... because, if I had asked, it would turn out that the client was a white lawyer who, if pushed, would be acting for a client in Denver or Boston. In this sort of a deal the cover-up is about six levels deep... and the neighbours are not supposed to find out the colour of the new owner's skin until the new owner moves in.'

‘What did you tell him?'

‘I told him, "Certainly 1'm willing to sell my house if the price is right. But the price would have to be attractive, as we are comfortable where we are and moving is always expensive in time and in money. What price does your client offer? In cash, I mean - not a down payment and take back a mortgage. If I am going to have to find another house for my large family - eleven of us - I'll need cash to work with. I may have to build, rather than buy - not too many houses can handle big families today; I probably would have to build. If I do this. So the price would have to be attractive and it would have to be in cash."

‘This false face points out that any bank would discount the paper on such a property; a mortgage is as good as cash. "Not to me, it isn't," I told him. "Let your client arrange the mortgage directly with his bank and bring the cash up front. My dear sir, I'm not anxious to sell. Give me a cash figure and, if it's big enough, we'll go straight to escrow. If it's not, I'll tell you no just as quickly."

‘He said that escrow would not be necessary, as they were satisfied that I could grant good title. Mo, that told me more than the words he said. It means that they have already run a title search on us... and probably on every house in our block. It means to me that this is probably the only house in this block that does not have a mortgage against it... or some other legal matter that would have to be cleared in escrow, such as lifetime tenancy under a will, or the property is currently in probate, or involved in a pending divorce, or there is a lien against it, or a judgement, or something. A man trying to put together this sort of a deal doesn't like escrow, because it is during that waiting period that the "Gentlemen's Agreement" sort of people can find out what is going on, and move in to stop it... often with the connivance of a sympathetic judge.'

‘Briney, maybe you had better explain "Gentlemen's Agreement" to me. I don't recall it from that course in commercial law we took.'

‘You would not have heard of it there because it is extralegal. Not against the law, just not covered by law. There is no covenant in your deed to this house that forbids you to sell to anyone you wish to, black, white, or green polka dots... and it might not stand up in court if there was. But, if you were to ask our neighbours, I guarantee that they would assure you that there is indeed a gentlemen's agreement binding you not to sell your house in this block to a Negro.'

I was puzzled. ‘Have we ever agreed to anything of the sort?' My husband made all sorts of commitments and rarely told me. He simply assumed that I would back him up. And I always did. Marriage is not a sometime thing; it's whole hawg or you're not married.

‘Never.'

‘Are you going to ask our neighbours what they think about this?'

‘Mo, do you want me to? It's your house:

I don't think I hesitated as long as two seconds. But it was a new ides and I did have to decide. ‘Briney, several houses in this block have changed hands since we moved in here, uh, twenty-two years ago. I don't recall that we were ever asked our opinion about any of those transactions.'

‘That's right. We never were.'

‘I don't think it is any of their business to decide what a Negro can or can't buy. Or to tell us. What they do with their property is their business; what we do with ours is our business - as long as we obey the laws and abide by any open covenants that run with the land. That twenty-five-foot setback rule, for example. I can think of just one way they can legitimately keep us from selling this house to anyone who wants to buy it.'

‘What way is that, Mo?'

‘By coming to us before we are committed with the same sort of offer that Mr False Face has made but with more money. If they buy this house from us, they can do with it as they wish.'

Tm glad you see it that way, my love. A year from now every house in this block will be occupied by a Negro family. Mo, I could see it coming. Population pressure works much like a rising river. You can put up dikes or levees, but the day comes when the river has to go somewhere. Kansas City's Darktown is terribly crowded. If the whites don't want to live next door to Negroes, then the whites must back off and give them room. I'm not especially concerned about Negro problems; I've got problems of my own. But I don't fight the weather and I don't bang my head against a stone wall. You and I will see the day when Darktown will run south all the way to 39^th Street. There is no use fussing about it; it is going to happen.'

Briney did get a good price for our old home. After figuring in the rise in prices from 1907 to 1929 there was only a modest profit, but Briney did get the price in cash - gold certificates, not a cheque; the recorded price was ‘ten dollars and other valuable considerations' - and Briney put the money straight into the stock market.

‘Sweetheart, if Theodore's predictions are correct, in a year or so we'll be able to take our pick of big houses in the Country Club district at about a third of the going prices today... because it will turn out that Black Tuesday will leave about half of the nominal owners unable to meet their mortgage payments. In the meantime try to stay happy in this old farmhouse; Justin and I have to go to New York.'

I did not have any trouble staying happy in that farmhouse; it reminded me of my girlhood. I told Father so, and he agreed. ‘But put that second bathroom in. Do you remember why we had two outhouses? You can't afford to encourage piles and constipation.'

Father was not formally living with us - he got his mail elsewhere - but, since 1916 and Plattsburg, Brian had insisted that we always keep a room for Father. When Brian went to New York to stay closer to his stock-market gambling, Father did agree to sleep (usually) at our house, just as he had when Brian was away in France. But by then I had had that second bath installed and a washroom downstairs and the outhouse out back, limed and filled.

My children readjusted to the change with little fret. Even our resident cat, Chargé d'Affaires, accepted it. He fretted on the long trip there, but he did seem to understand that the moving vans meant that home was no longer home. Ethel and Teddy kept him fairly well soothed during the move - I was driving that load; Woodrow had the rest of the family in his jalopy. Chargé looked over our land as soon as we got there, then came back, got me, took me with him while he went all the way around the inside of the fence. He sprayed all four comer posts, so I knew that he had accepted the change and his new responsibilities.

It was from Woodrow that I had expected the most fuss as he was due to enter his senior year at Central High School in September 1929 and was a likely candidate for cadet commander of the ROTC battalion at Central, especially as both Brian Junior and George had each commanded the cadet battalion in their senior year.

But Woodrow did not even insist on finishing the second semester; he transferred in mid-term to Westport High School - somewhat to my dismay, as I had counted on him to drive Dick and Ethel to Central, one in junior High there, the other just entering Senior High. So, willy-nilly, they had to transfer in mid-term, too, as I did not have time to drive them and it was an impossible trip by streetcar. Teddy and Peggy I put in Country Day School, an excellent private school, as Eleanor suggested that she could handle two more in her car along with the three she had in that school.

It was several years before I realised that Woodrow's willingness to switch schools abruptly had to do with a renovated cow pasture still farther south that had a sign on it: ACE HARDY'S FUING SCHOOL. Woodrow had acquired (I think that is the right word) his unlikely automobile in the summer of 1928, and after that we had seen little of him other than at meals. But I discovered later that Woodrow had learned to fly while still in high school.

As everyone knows, Black Tuesday arrived on the dot. Briney called me long distance a week later. ‘Frau Doktor Krausmeyer?'

‘Elmer!'

‘Children okay?'

‘Everyone is fine but they miss their Papa. As do I. Hurry home, dear; I'm honing to see you.'

‘Didn't that hired man work out?'

‘No staying power. I let him go. I decided to wait for you.'

‘But I'm not coming home.'

‘Oh.'

‘Don't you want to know why?'

(Yes, Briney, I do want to know why. And some day I'm going to put itch powder into your jock-strap for these guessing games.) ‘Buffalo Bill, you'll tell me when it suits you and whatever suits you.'

‘Rangy Lil, how would you like to go to Paris? And to Switzerland?'

‘Hadn't you better make it South America? Some country where there is no extradition?' (Damn you, Briney! Quit teasing me.)

‘I want you to leave tomorrow. Take the C and A to Chicago, then the Pennsy to New York. I'll meet your train and take you to our hotel. We sail for Cherbourg on Saturday.'

‘Yes, sir.' (Oh, that man!) ‘About our children - Seven, I believe. Are you interested in the arrangements I make for them? Or shall I just use my judgement?' (What arrangements can I make with Eleanor?)

‘Use your judgement. But if Ira is there, I'd like to speak to him.'

‘To hear is to obey, Effendi.'

After Brian spoke to him, Father said to me, ‘I told Brian not to worry, as Ethel is a competent cook. If she needs help, I will hire help. So, Maureen, you mo run along and have fun; the youngsters will be safe. Don't pack more than two bags, because -‘ The phone rang again.

‘Maureen? Your big sister, dear. Did you hear from Brian?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good. I have the train schedules and the Pullman reservations; Justin arranged them from New York. Frank will drive us to the station. You must be ready by ten tomorrow morning. Can you manage it?'

‘I'll have to manage it. I may be barefooted and my hair in a bath knot -‘

I became addicted to travel in a luxury liner in nothing flat. The Île de France was a wonderful shock to little Maureen Johnson whose idea of luxury was enough bathrooms for seven - usually seven; it varied - children and enough hot water. Briney had taken me to the Grand Canyon two years earlier and that was wonderful ... but this was another sort of wonderful. A concierge who seemed anxious to swim back and fetch anything Madame wishes. A maid who spoke English but understood my French and did not laugh at my accent. A full orchestra at dinner, a chamber music trio for tea, dancing to live music every night. Breakfast in bed. A masseuse on call. A living-room for our suite bigger and much fancier than Eleanor's at home, and two master bedrooms.

‘Justin, why are we at the Captain's table?'

‘I don't know. Because we have this suite, maybe.'

‘And why do we have this suite? Everything in first class looks luxurious; I would not have complained if we had been in second class. But this is gilding the lily. Isn't it?'

‘Maureen my sweet, I ordered two outside double staterooms, first class, which were confirmed and we paid for them. Then two days before sailing the agent telephoned and offered me this suite at the price we had paid plus a nominal surcharge, one hundred dollars. Seems the man who had reserved this suite had not been able to sail. I asked why he had cancelled. Instead of answering he cut the surcharge to fifty dollars. I asked who had died in that suite and was it contagious. Again instead of answering he offered to eliminate the surcharge if we would just let the New York Times and L'Illustration photograph us in our suite-which we did, you remember.'

‘And was it contagious?'

‘Not really. The poor fellow jumped out a twenty-storey window - the day after Black Tuesday:

‘Oh! I should keep my mouth shut.'

‘Mo darling, this suite was not his home, he was never in it in his life; it is not haunted. He was just one of many thousands of chumps who became paper-wealthy gambling on margin. If it will make you feel any better, I can assure you that both Brian and . I made no secret of our intention of getting out of the market when we did because we expected the market to collapse before the end of October. Nobody would listen.' Justin shook his head, shrugged.

Brian added, ‘I almost had to strangle one broker to get him to execute my orders. He seemed to think it was immoral and possibly illegal to sell when the market was going steadily up. "Wait till it tops," he said. "Then sell. You're crazy to quit at this point." I told him that my grandmother had read the tea-leaves and told me that now was the time to unload. He again said that I was crazy. I told him to execute those orders at once... or I was going straight to the governors of the Exchange and have him investigated for bucket shop operations. That really got him angry, so he sold me out... and then got still angrier when I insisted on a certified cheque. I took the cheque and cashed it at once. And changed the cash to gold... as I recalled all too clearly that Ted said that banks would start to go boom.'

I wanted to ask where that gold was now. But I did not.

Zurich is a lovely city, prettier than any I had seen in the United States. The language there is alleged to be German but it is not the German spoken by my neighbour from Munich. But I got along fine once I realised that almost everyone spoke English. Our men were busy; Eleanor and I had a wonderful time being tourists.

Then one day they took us with them and I found myself the surprised owner of a numbered bank account, for 155.515 grams of fine gold (which I had no trouble interpreting as one hundred thousand dollars, but it was not called such). Then I found myself signing powers of attorney over ‘my' bank account to Brian and to Justin, while Eleanor did the same with a similar account. And a limited power of attorney to someone I had never heard of in Winnipeg, Canada.

We were not placed in that fancy suite because we were high society; we were not. But the purser was carrying in his safe I do not know how many ounces of gold, most of which belonged to the Ira Howard Foundation, and some of which belonged, personally to Brian, and to Justin, and my father. That gold was moved by the Bank of France from Cherbourg to Zurich, and we rode with it.

In Zurich Brian and Justin, as witnesses and trustees for the Foundation, saw the shipment opened, saw it counted and weighed, and then deposited with a consortium of three banks. For the Foundation had taken very seriously Theodore's warning that Mr Roosevelt would devalue the dollar, then make it illegal for American citizens to own or possess gold.

‘Justin,' I asked, ‘what happens if Governor Roosevelt does not run for the presidency? Or does but is not elected?'

‘Nothing. The Foundation would be no worse off. But have you lost confidence in Ted? On his advice we rode the market up, and then cashed out before it crashed, and now the Foundation is about six times as wealthy as it was a year ago, all through depending on Ted's predictions.'

‘Oh, I believe in Theodore! I was just wondering.'

Mr Roosevelt was elected and he did indeed devalue the dollar and made it illegal for Americans to possess gold. But the assets of the Foundation had been placed out of reach of this confiscation. As was my own numbered bank account. I never touched it but Briney told me that it was not simply lying idle; he was using ‘my' money to make more money.

Brian was now a trustee of the Foundation, vice Mr Chapman, who had been removed from the board for having lost his own money in the stock market. A trustee of the Foundation had himself to be qualified for Howard benefits (four living grandparents at time of marriage) and a money-maker. If there were other requirements, I do not know what they were.

Justin was now chairman of the board and chief executive, vice judge Sperling, who was still a trustee but was past ninety and had elected not to work quite so hard. When we got back to Kansas City, Justin and Brian set up offices in the Scarritt Building as ‘Weatheral and Smith, Investments' while ‘Brian Smith Associates' took an office on the same floor.

We never again had money worries but the decade of the Depression was not a time when it was fine to be rich. We strove to avoid the appearance of being rich. Instead of buying a fancy house in the Country Club district we bought that farmhouse at a bargain price, then rebuilt it into a more satisfactory structure. It was a period when skilled craftsmen were eager to get work at wages they would have sneered at in 1929.

The nation's economy was stuck on dead centre and no one seemed to know why and everyone from bootblack to banker had a solution he wanted to see tried. Mr Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 and, yes, the banks did close but the Smiths and the Weatherals had cash under the mattress and groceries squirrelled away; the bank holiday did us no harm. The country seemed invigorated by the energetic actions of ‘The New Deal', the new President's name for a series of nostrums that came pouring out of Washington.

In retrospect it seems that the ‘reforms' that constituted the New Deal did nothing to correct the economy - yet it is hard to fault emergency measures that put food into the mouths of the destitute. The WPA and the MA and the CCC and the NRA and the endless make-work programmes did not cure the economy and may well have done damage... but in Kansas City in the 1930s they almost certainly served to avoid food riots by desperate people.

On 1 September 1939, ten years after Black Tuesday, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Two days later Britain and France declared war against Germany. World War Two had started.