Maw's Vacation: The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone

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  +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

  MAW'S VACATION

  THE STORY OF A HUMAN BEING

  _in the_

  YELLOWSTONE

  _by_

  EMERSON HOUGH

  AUTHOR OF: The Sagebrusher, Hearts Desire, The Covered Wagon, Curly of the Range, etc.

  ILLUSTRATED

  SAINT PAUL J. E. HAYNES, Publisher 1921

  COPYRIGHT 1920 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT 1921 EMERSON HOUGH

  "Maw"]

  Times has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like whatthey used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and wedidn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither.The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself--cooking,sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundaysbecause I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'dbring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken--it won'tcook itself. Weekdays was one like another, and except for shovelingsnow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and wintercome. There was no movies them days--a theater might come twice awinter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of theinside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't havemuch other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now andthen, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more thanpaid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and ifwhen I was down town after the groceries I'd 'a' stepped into the drugstore and bought me a lemonade--and they didn't have no nut sundaesthen--they'd of had me up before the church for frivolous conduct.

  Of course Paw kicks about the crops and prices, but I've been livingwith Paw forty years, and I dunno as I can remember a time when hedidn't kick. He kicks now on the wages he pays these city boys that comeout to farm; says they're no good at all. But somehow or other, thingsgets raised. I notice the last few years we somehow have had moreclothes and things, and more money in the bank. When Paw bought theautomobile he didn't ask the minister if it was right, and he didn'thave to ask the bank for a consent, neither. Cynthy's back fromcollege, and it's all paid for somehow. Jimmy's in a mail-order storein Chicago. I've got a girl to help me that calls herself a maid, whichis all right enough, though we used to call Judge Harmsworth's help agirl and let it go at that, law me! My other girls, Hattie and Roweny,are big enough to help a lot, and Paw reasons with them considerableabout it. I've always been so used to work that I think I can do itbetter myself. I always like to do for my children.

  But Paw, ever since I married him, has been one of those energetics.They call him an aggressive business man. Some of them call him adominant man, because of his whiskers, though he knows well enough abouthow scared of him I am. Only time I ever was scared of Paw was when hegot the car. I thought he would break his fool neck and kill Roweny,that had clim in with him. He did break down the fence in front of thehouse and run over the flower beds and all.

  The Park-Bound Throng of Maws

  But this summer we allowed we all would get in the car and take a bigtrip out West--go right into some of the parks, if nothing happened.

  We borrowed our tent from the Hickory Bend Outing Club that Paw belongsto back home. The poles go along the fenders and stick out a good waybehind. I could always cook without a stove, from experience at picnicswhen I was younger. The dishes goes in a box. Paw nailed a rack on topof the fenders, and we carry a lot of stuff that way. Cynthy always hasher suitcase on the outside because it's the newest one. The other girlsset on the bedding on the rear seat, and I ride in front with Paw. Wemostly wear overalls.

  Yes, times has changed, says Maw.

  As a dispassionate observer in one of our national parks, expressing thebelief in modern speech, I'll say they have. I have met Maw thissummer, ninety thousand of her, concentrated on a piece of mountainscenery about fifty miles square--Maw on her first vacation in a life ofsixty years. Dear old Maw!

  Ninety thousand replicas of Maw cause the rest of us to eat copiously ofalkaline dust and to shiver each time we approach a turn on the roads ofYellowstone Park, which were laid out on a curling iron. You cannotescape seeing Paw and Maw, and Cynthy in her pants, and Hattie andRoweny in overalls and putties. I have seen their camp fire rising onevery remaining spot of grass on all that busy fifty miles. I havephotographed Maw and Cynthy and the other girls, and Cynthy hasphotographed me because I looked funny. Bless them all, the whole ninetythousand of them--I would not have missed them on their vacation thissummer for all the world. They are, I suppose, what we call the newpeople of America, who never have been out like this before. They'vebeen at home. Maw has been getting the Sunday dinner. Paw has beenplowing, paying the taxes which this Government has spent for him. Butnow Paw pays income tax also; and both he and Maw construe this fact tomean that they can at last read their title clear to a rest, and a car,and a vacation. So they have swung out from the lane at last, afterforty years of work, and on to the roads that lead to thetranscontinental highway. They have crossed the prairies and come upinto the foothills--the price of gas increasing day by day, and Pawkicking but paying cash--and so they have at last arrived among thegreat mountains of which Maw has dreamed all her long life of cookingand washing and ironing.

  Studies in Mountain Pants

  I shall not inquire by what miracle of grace Paw has learned to find hisway about on these curling-iron mountain roads. I am content to eat abarrel of dust a day rather than miss the sight of Maw, placid andbespectacled, on the front seat of the flivver. Without her the mountainroads would never be the same for me, and my own vacation would bespoiled. Frankly, I am in love with Maw; and as for Cynthy in herpants----

  Times has changed. Maw also wears pants today. She says that they areconvenienter when she sits down round on the grass. Sometimes her pantsare fastened round the ankles with large and shiny safety pins,apparently saved from the time when Jimmy was a baby. Sometimes theyhang straight down _au naturel_, and sometimes they stop at the knee--inwhich case, as Maw's _au naturel_ is disposed to adipose--they make astartling adjunct to the mountain scenery. But, bless her heart, Mawdoesn't care! She is on her way and on her vacation, the first in allher life. There rest on her soul the content and poise which her ownsquare and self-respecting mind tells her are due her after forty yearsof labor, including the Lord's Days thereof. I call Maw's vacation herLord's Day. It ought to be held a sacred thing by all who tour ournational parks, where
Maw is gregariously accumulated in these days. Iused to own this park, you and I did. It's Maw's park now. Forty yearsof hard work!

  Has she earned a vacation? I'll say she has. Is she taking it? I'll sayshe is.

  Maw has company in the park--not always just the company she or I wouldselect, were it left to us. Some of these do not go out by motor car. Ofcourse Abe Klinghammer, of the Plasterers' Union, Local Number Four,being rich, goes out by rail on a round trip. He can go to the tentsand log cottages of the Camps Company. He does not kick any more thanMaw kicks. To tell the truth, in spite of the front he throws, Abe is alittle bit scared at all this sudden splendor in his life. He is alittle uneasy about how to act, how to seem careless about it, as thoughhe had been used to it all his life. Abe takes it out in neckties.Having bought a swell one of four colors and inserted a large cameo init, he loses his nerve and begins to doubt whether he is getting by. Youwill always see Abe looking at your necktie.

  And there is Benjamin D. O'Cleave of New York--with a flourish under iton the register. He and his wife take it out in diamonds. You wouldnever see one of the O'Cleave family at a roadside camp fire such asthat where Maw fries the trout and Rowena toasts the bread on a fork.The original O'Cleave came over in the Mayflower, as I am informed--but,without question in my mind, came steerage. You will find Mr. O'Cleavein the swellest hotel, in the highest-priced room. He is first in war,first in peace, and first in the dining room.

  Mr. O'Cleave pays a plenty a head for all his family, for rooms withbath and meals. The hotel company would gladly charge him more, and Mr.O'Cleave gladly would pay more. He confides to the hotel clerk--who is aY. M. C. A. secretary back East--that he should not care if it was evenfifty dollars a day, he could pay it. But, if so, he would already wantfor his money more service, which he waits five hours and not enoughcars to get him over to see the Giantess Geyser play, which the Giantessmaybe didn't play again for eight days, and should a business man andtaxpayer wait eight days because of not cars enough by a hotel, which isthe only place a man has to go with his family? Is it reasonable?

  Maw in War Paint

  The highly specialized hotel clerk admits that it is not reasonable,that nothing is reasonable, that he has spoken to the Giantess a dozentimes about her irregular habits; but what can he do? "I would gladlycharge you one hundred dollars a day, Mr. O'Cleave, if I had the consentof the Interior Department. It isn't my fault."

  I wish I had a movie of the Y. M. C. A. hotel clerk when he is off dutyat the desk. I wonder if his faith upholds him when he recalls thethreat of Benjamin D. O'Cleave to go to Europe next year. Ah, well, evenif he does, Maw will remain.

  I know that next year I shall again see Maw leaning against a big pine,as she sits upon the ground drinking real handmade coffee of her ownfrom a tin cup with the handle cut so it will nest down in the box.Maw's meals do not cost her four bits a throw, because they broughtthings along. Paw catches a trout sometimes on the cane pole that hangsalongside the car; not always, but sometimes, he catches one. And Maw,once she had conquered the notion that you ought to skin a trout the wayyou do a bullhead back in Ioway, took to cooking trout naturally; andher trout, with pancakes and sirup, to my notion beat anything the hotelchef in the best hotel can do. Maw does not worry about a room withbath, though sometimes when the rain comes through the old wall tent shegets both. The pink and green war paint which you sometimes see beneathMaw's specs when you meet her on the road represents only the mark ofthe bedquilts, where the colors were not too proud to run.

  Maw finds it wonderful in these mountains. I know she does, because shehas never yet told me so. Maw throws no fits. But many a time I haveseen her sitting, in the late afternoon, her hands, in the firstidleness they have known in all her life, lying in her ample lap, herfaded eyes quietly gazing through her steel-bowed far-lookers at thevast pictures across some valley she has found. It is her first valleyof dreams, her first valley of rest and peace and quiet. The lights onthese hills are such as she did not see in Ioway, or even in Nebraska,when she went there once, time Mary's baby was born. The clouds are sostrange to Maw, their upturned edges so very white against the blackbody of their over-color. And the rains that come, with hail--but hereyou don't need worry, for there are no crops for the hail to spoil. Andsometimes in the afternoon, never during the splendor of the mellowmorning such as Maw never before has seen, comes the lightning and ripsthe counterpane of clouds to let the sun shine through.

  I know Maw loves it all, because she never has told me so. She is veryshy about her new world in this new day. She wouldn't like to talkabout it. We never do like to talk about it, once we really have lookedout across our valley of dreams.

  You can't fail to like Hattie and Rowena and Cynthy. Often I walk withCynthy and her Vassarrority on the Angel Terrace, when the moon is up,when it is all white, and Cynthy is almost the only angel left there.Such a moon as the Interior Department does provide for the summer here!I defy any Secretary of any other Department--War, Navy, Commerce, Laboror anything--to produce any such moon as this at six dollars and fiftycents a day with bath; or four dollars and fifty cents a day with twotowels; or four bits a day at Maw's camp on the Madison. So though Iknow Cynthy would prefer the young park ranger--who really is the son ofa leading banker in Indianapolis--to explain the algae and the Algys, Ido the best I can at my age of life with Cynthy.

  Rowena, the younger, seventeen now, who wears hers with spirals, tellsme that Cynthy keeps a diary, because she herself found it in the toolbox. "And once," says Rowena to me, "Cynthy, after coming into camp froma walk through the moonlit pines, wrote in her diary: 'August 12,11 p. m. Trout for supper. Walked with ---- toward the Hymen Terrace, justbeyond Jupiter Hill, I think it is called. The moon wonderful what womanis there who has not at some time in her life longed to be swept off herfeet by some Strong Man!'"

  I copy this as Rowena did, punctuation and all. Rowena has not yet goneto Vassar.

  Cynthy is the one who thinks the family ought to have a six-cylinder carnext year, with seats that lie back, and air mattresses. Maw does notagree with her, and says that four cylinders are plenty hard enough forPaw to keep clean. By what marvel Cynthy is always so stunning; andHattie so nurselike in denim and white; and Rowena always so neat inhers with spirals, which she bought ready made at the store for sevendollars and fifty-two cents--I cannot say; but when I see these marvelsI renew my faith in my country and its people, even though I do wishthat Paw would pause at some geyser and have a Sunday shave. He says heforgot his razor and left it home.

  In the Grip of the Law

  Speaking of room with bath, Maw solved the ablutionary problem forherself the other day at Old Faithful Ranger Station. The young men whomake up the ranger force there have built a simple shanty over theriver's brim, which they use as their own bathhouse. As there is nosentinel stationed there Maw thought it was public like everything else.She told me about it later.

  "I went in," said she, "and seen what it was. There was a long tub and atin pail. There was a trapdoor in the floor that was right over theriver. I reached down and drew up a pail of water, and it was rightcold. Then I seen a turn faucet, end of a pipe that stuck out over thetub. It brought in some right hot water that come up within six feet ofthe door. It didn't take me long to figure that this was the hot-waterfaucet. So there was hot and cold water both right on the spot, and Ireckon there ain't no such natural washtub as that in all Ioway. I gotme a wash that will last me a long while. There wasn't no towels, and soI took my skirt. Now, Cynthy----"

  But Cynthy was writing notes in her diary. All college girls write notesin diaries, and sometimes they take to free verse. Of course writing ina diary is only a form of egotism, precisely like writing on a geyserformation. They both ought to be illegal, and one is. Maw knows allabout that. Sometimes, even now, she will tell me how she came to befined by the United States commissioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.

  "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down withher hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19]
>
  You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she lovingthem all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin,Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after thatPaderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted tosee where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath herfeet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At asudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on thegeyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.

  For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had beenanybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on hervacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and hadoriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old,happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote: Margaret D.Hanaford, Glasgow, Iowa.

  She was looking at her handiwork and allowing she could have done itbetter, when she felt a touch on her shoulder, and looked up into thestern young face, the narrow blond mustache, of the ranger fromIndianapolis. The ranger was in the Engineers of the A. E. F. When Mawsaw him she was frightened, she didn't know why.

  "Madam," said the ranger, "are you Margaret D. Hanaford?"

  "That's me," answered Maw; "I don't deny it."

  "Did you write that on the formation?"

  Maw could not tell a lie any more than George Washington when caught, soshe confessed on the spot.

  "Then you are under arrest! Don't you know it's against the regulationsto deface any natural object in the park? I'll have to telephone in thenumber of your car. You must see the commissioner before you leave thepark."