‘Mr Bard: Cheat is a terrible word. Honesty and GOOD CREDIT are a high-paid executive’s most important assets.’
‘Mr Bard: If there is some reason why you cannot pay, tell us what it is. We want to be FAIR WITH YOU! We want to give you every CHANCE!’
‘Mr Bard: PLEASE REMIT!’
‘Mr Bard: Unless full payment is made AT ONCE, this long overdue account will be turned over to our attorneys.’
Mr Bard, who by this time was scared to death, appealed to Gammy, who kept all her money in her Bible and could always be counted on to bail us out of any monetary difficulties. Gammy heard the story, read the advertisement, saw the accounting book and said, “Only robbers take things they can’t pay for. Never buy anything unless you have the money in your pocket. Now go gather everything up and we’ll send it back to these people. Imagine enrolling a boy your age. The big grafters.”
So Cleve and I started hunting up the stuff but somehow or other most of the paper had been marked on with crayons or used for scratch paper, the books and note-books all bore traces of apple core or puppy’s teeth and somebody had spilled a cup of cocoa on one of the biggest ledgers. So Gammy wrote and told the Big Grafters that she would pay for the books and supplies but not one cent for the instructions. She wrote, ‘In the future, I think you had better check on the qualifications of your high-paid-executives-to-be, the one in question is only in the seventh grade and has never to my knowledge, shown the slightest aptitude nor liking for numbers.’ (Gammy’s name for arithmetic in any form.)
After that we children sailed along with pretty good credit until my sister Dede got to be nine and answered a most enticing advertisement which said, ‘Sell these exquisitely coloured, beautiful Christmas seals and EARN MONEY! Fill in your name and address and we will send you without charge these beautifully coloured, gorgeously designed Christmas seals.’ The whole tone of the advertisement led Dede to believe that it wasn’t going to be a matter of her selling the gorgeous, exquisite Christmas seals, but rather a question of whether or not she would be strong enough to hold off the eager excited mobs who would be trying to grab them away from her.
The first disappointment was the seals themselves, which, when they came, proved to be neither gorgeously coloured nor exquisitely designed but sheets of poorly perforated, ugly, dun-coloured seals, so carelessly printed that angels and wise men wore blank faces while their eyes and mouths appeared like large black flies on the flanks of Santa Claus’ reindeer gracing the seal just above.
The next tragedy was when little sister Alison found the seals, tore them apart in spite of their faulty perforation, licked most of them and stuck them to the doll bed and the wallpaper. Then last, but not least, Dede, who at nine had not had a great deal of business experience, thought that the money made from the sale to a kind neighbour, of the few that were left, belonged to her and spent it. Around January second, the mailman delivered the first big white business letter addressed to Daisy Bard. Mother, resigned through the years to being addressed as Mrs Daisy Bard, instead of Mrs Darsie Bard, thought the letter was for her and opened it. It was a stern but straightforward request for three dollars.
4 pkg. of Xmas Seals @ $1.00 ea.
$4.00
Less Commission
$1.00
Balance due
$3.00
it read. Mother was mystified and asked the family that night at dinner if they knew anything about any Christmas seals. Nobody did.
The next month there was another bill marked PLEASE REMIT. Again Mother asked if any of us knew anything about these mysterious Christmas Seals. Nobody did. In the meantime my sister Dede, who was a very nervous little girl and often thought she saw Jesus with a candle walking around her room at night, began having big black circles under her eyes and crying for no reason at all! Mother took her to a paediatrician, who said to put her on buttermilk, which didn’t help, and Gammy said that milk had nothing to do with it. Dede’s trouble was too much talent in music, so Mother stopped her piano lessons, which didn’t help either because Dede still kept seeing Jesus at night, only now he was carrying Christmas seals instead of a candle.
Then one day a letter came addressed to Miss Daisy Bard and it was threatening. ‘Are you playing the game on the square?’ it said. ‘We have done our part—Daisy, why don’t you do yours? Where is your money? Unless action is taken on this matter immediately, we will take steps.’
Mother sat right down and wrote the company and told them that they had made a mistake and nobody in our family had bought any Christmas seals and would they please not bore us with any more of their bills or letters. By return mail came a letter from the company enclosing a laboured little pencilled request for the Christmas seals and signed, ‘We remain cordially yours, Darsie Bard.’ Mother, in true Mother fashion, said nothing about the Christmas seals or the three dollars but asked Dede why in the world she had signed her letter, ‘We remain cordially yours.’ Dede, who was crying, said, “That’s the way we sign our invitations to the PTA.”
Mother paid the Christmas seal company and accompanied her cheque with a few pointed comments on the quality of their merchandise, and the age of the commission salesman they employed. Gammy told Dede that only robbers took things they couldn’t pay for.
Years passed and then I came winging in from a farm, where budgeting had been simply a matter of subtracting the feed from the eggs, adding the sacks, subtracting the petrol, adding the potatoes, subtracting the buttermilk and adding the pig, and tried to cope with a system where I was paid every two weeks, the main bills came once a month, Mother’s little business men came every week or every day or by the seasons, insurance payments were quarterly, taxes were yearly, and no matter how many times we had macaroni and cheese there was always somebody left over. Somebody who came at dinner-time and announced in ringing tones, ‘Collect for the Times! . . . Collect for the sewing machine! . . . Collect for the slab wood! . . . Collect for the sheep guana! . . . Collect for the Saturday Evening Post! . . . Collect for the Belgian hares!’
We all pooled our money and Mary and Mother and I distributed it to the best of our ability and Mother’s reasons, but it was a losing game. Like climbing up a rock slide. We’d just get to the top and the front porch would sag, or the toilet would overflow or the downspouts would leak or Christmas would come and we’d go to the bottom again.
Then of course there were things like the five green party dresses I charged in the course of one winter.
My darkest memories are of that spring after my first winter of charge accounts. For months, as I rode to and from work on the streetcar, I had been confronted at exactly eye level with advertisements that pleaded ‘Use your credit! Don’t go without! Buy from US—take a year to pay! NEVER SAY HOW MUCH—SAY CHARGE IT!’
So one day I did. I opened a charge account at a large department store and bought a hand-woven tweed coat on sale for fifteen dollars. “A charge account,” I told the family, “really saves you money. This coat was a marvellous bargain and I never could have got it if I hadn’t had a charge account. After this we’ll charge whatever we need and pay at the end of the month.”
‘Good idea!’ ‘Sound reasoning’ ‘Oh boy’, said the family.
At first we were very careful and limited our charges to pots and pans, stockings, water glasses and bathmats. The small bills came in, I paid and said, “You see, a charge account makes life much simpler.” So I opened a few more, and a few more and a few more and then came Christmas. “Charge it, charge it, charge it”, I said all over town and if I hesitated the least little bit the clerks said, “Don’t worry, honey, things bought in December aren’t billed until February.” In December, February seems as far away as July, and so I staggered through the Christmas crowds, my arms loaded with rich gifts, the smells of fog and pine tingling my nostrils, certain disaster dogging my heels.
Then Christmas was over and so was Lumber and bearing down upon me as surely and relentlessly as death, was February tenth.
Mother said, “Go down and talk to them. Explain that you have lost your job and won’t be able to pay until you find something permanent.” I said, “Yeah, something permanent that pays about five thousand dollars a month. Somebody must have been charging on my accounts.”
Mary said, “Pay each one a little bit. That’s what I do. Even fifty cents lets them know that you owe the bill and intend to pay.”
How could I give Mr Beltz of the fishy eye, reluctant credit and five green party dresses, fifty cents? I said I’d handle it my way.
My way was to lie awake all night in the bed I shared with Mary, flinching as occasional raindrops bounced from the sill of the open window to my face, and watching the street light through the window make prison bars on the wall. My way was to toss and turn and beat my brains and wail, “Why did I do it? What was I thinking of? What will I do now?”
The raindrops hitting the ground at the bottom of the narrow black crevasse between our house and a neighbour’s with a heavy spull-lit! spull-lat! plup, plup, plup, like ripe fruit falling from the trees, seemed to my tortured brain to be saying, ‘Charge-it, charge-it, charge-it—payup, payup, payup.’
The drops that went splink, splink, as they bounced off the window sill, and ploop, ploop, ploop, as they searched for and found the empty flower pots Mother kept underneath the cutleaf maple at the corner of the house, seemed to be saying, ‘The clink, the clink, the clink, you Fool! Fool! Fool!’
I turned my pillow over and over trying to find a cool side and was resentful of the rest of the family blissfully suspended above reality in their hammocks of sleep. The house was as quiet and depressing as a vault, but outside the rain, apparently to make up for the fact that it couldn’t be heard on the roof, splashed noisily on the sills, splatted down between the houses, hissed on the pavements, slurped into the drainpipes, raced in the gutters and finally went gulping into the sewer. How harsh and unmusical were its noises compared to those of country rain. Country rain thrummed like a woodpecker, pit-a-patted across the roofs with quick light strokes like bird’s feet, swished moaning through the orchards, slid like quicksilver from leaf to leaf, thudded hopefully against windows like June bugs and plopped in the dusty roads like small toads. City rain sounded businesslike and as though it were metered and I hated it—I hated everything about the city. Why had I ever left the farm? What would I do?
Mary had said, “You are a victim of circumstance and you are not alone. There are millions of Americans who have suddenly lost their jobs and owe bills. I imagine the people we owe money to, owe money themselves to someone else. Think of that.”
I did and it wasn’t comforting because I reasoned that if Mr Beltz, for instance, was as worried about the bills he owed as I was, then he’d get the money out of me for those party dresses if he had to chisel it out of my bones. Five green party dresses. What had I been thinking of? I must have been crazy. I hardly ever went to formal parties and even if I did was there any reason I always had to be in a charged green?
I finally got through February, which was a short month, but I lost twelve pounds, was as jumpy as a cricket and had such circles under my eyes I looked like a marmoset. I had to do something immediately.
Then one day I was walking along the street and right up ahead of me on a huge signboard was an awfully nice-looking man. His outstretched hands were filled with ten-and twenty-dollar bills and in a big white bubble to the right of his head he was begging me to come on down to the Friendly Loan Company. “We want to help you”, he said. “We want to make life easy for you. Stop worrying. Come down and let us share our money with you.” There it was. The answer.
I hurried right up to the small, dark office housing the Friendly Loan Company.
“Whaya want?” said the friendly little lady at the desk, whose mouth should have been set out in the woods to catch raccoons.
“I want to borrow some money,” I said, adding with a gay little laugh, “a lot of money.”
Miss Friendly Loan looked at me coldly, threw her lips over to the left and yelled, “Chawrlie! Customer!”
Chawrlie, who had close-set, pale green eyes and a small head, took me into his office and shot questions at me for about an hour. I had intended to lie about my job, my salary, my bank account, my bills, everything, but I found that I couldn’t lie to Chawrlie. He caught me up every time, picked the lie up in two fingers, handed it back to me still wriggling and told me to keep it.
When I had finally told all, Chawrlie had me sign a note for a hundred dollars and then handed me only sixty-two. The other thirty-eight, he said, went for carrying charges, up-keep, risk insurance and probably that great big advertisement. The interest was twelve per cent and I was to pay five dollars every two weeks. I thanked Chawrlie profusely and skipped out to distribute the sixty-two dollars among my charge accounts and to make rash promises about future payments.
When I got home, I bragged to the family about my great financial acumen, told them about darling old generous Chawrlie and that night slept soundly for the first time in weeks.
It was fortunate I did, because from then on my life became the living hell. My jobs were all temporary—a week here, a week or two there, and though I was almost always paid, there was something about that temporary money, usually in cash, that made it seem as if I’d won it on a punchboard. I’d use my salary to buy little presents for the family, a string of gold beads, take us all to a show, buy candy, and pay Mother’s ‘at the doors’ and tell myself, ‘When I get a permanent job I’ll start in on the big bills.’
It was the other way around, of course, the big bills started on me. Each of my charge accounts had a collector, equipped apparently with second sight. They knew about my jobs before Mary had found them for me and would often be milling around the door before I’d been properly hired.
“Who in hell are all those people?” one of my short-term bosses asked me.
“Bill collectors”, I told him humbly.
“All of them?” he asked in amazement.
“Yep,” I said, “and I’ve more that haven’t found me yet.”
“And I thought I had troubles”, he said and was very kind about my shorthand.
I might have been able to duck a few of my bill collectors if it hadn’t been for Mother. When they called at the house, she invited them in for coffee and they told her about their wives and children and sicknesses and ambitions, and Mother retaliated with where I was working, had worked, hoped to work and could no longer work. “Don’t tell them anything”, I used to scream at her.
She’d say, “Now, Betsy, you’re taking the wrong attitude entirely. Mr Hossenpfiester knows all about Mr Chalmers’ office closing and what a hard time we’ve had this winter, and about having to buy a new gas heater and taking Sandy (our collie) to the veterinary, and all he wants is for you to talk to him and explain when you can pay and how much.”
“He’s very nice when he’s drinking your coffee,” I said, “but when he comes to my office he yells and calls me ‘sister’. Don’t you dare tell him about this job.”
But Mother did and pleaded with me to go down and talk to all my creditors. I wouldn’t. Only too well I remembered what Gammy had said about only robbers buying things they couldn’t pay for. I was ashamed of owing money, I was scared to death of all credit managers and I hated my bill collectors. I sneaked around town, jumping six feet if anyone touched me on the arm, getting tears in my eyes every time I was called to the phone and dashing for the rest-room if a stranger came into my office.
Then I got behind on the payments to the Friendly Loan Company and I learned what trouble really was. The Friendly Loan collectors were everywhere. They yelled at me in the lobby of movie theatres when I had dates, shouted at me on the streetcar, and the woman with the coontrap mouth called me on the telephone three or four times a day no matter where I was working.
One time I lied to old Coontrap and told her that she had called me so much I’d been fired. I went up to her office after work and crie
d real tears and she said she was sorry, but the next day at work she called and when I answered the phone she said, “Well, hello, you dirty little sneak. You better come up here tonight after work or else.”
Then I went to work for the Government and the first week so many bill collectors came roaring into the office or called me on the phone that I expected to be fired, but instead my boss took me down to the Federal Employees Union and they not only loaned me the money to pay all my bills, but paid them for me.
They paid the Friendly Loan exactly twenty-seven dollars—the difference between the thirty-five I had paid them, which they had apparently credited to cleaning the rugs, new draperies, etc., instead of the principal, and the sixty-two dollars I had actually received, and told them that if they didn’t like it they could come into court and fight charges of usury.
In all my life I will never forget the deliriously free, terribly honest feeling I had the day the Federal Union notified me that all my bills had been paid and that from that day forward, except for a little matter of several hundred dollars I owed them, and was to pay back so much out of each pay cheque, I was solvent.
Is it any wonder that I love the Government and don’t mind paying my income tax?
12
‘Bundles for Bards’
I READ THE OTHER DAY that some women solve the clothes problem by giving a designer $100,000 a year to dress them. All I can say for that designer is that he must be sewing together old hundred-dollar bills and using them for interlining. Clothes are a problem to almost every woman but sans a designer and a cheque for $100,000, the problem is usually how to turn the dentist bill money into a tweed suit without a certain party noticing.
Naturally during the depression clothes were more of a problem. If it is hard to be well dressed on $100,000, imagine how hard it was to be well dressed on nothing. Fortunately, we could all wear each other’s clothes (the first one up was the best dressed), but our wardrobe even when combined had nothing in common with the ‘early evening’, ‘country living’, ‘an afternoon at the museum’ or ‘something for the symphony’ categories depicted by the fashion magazines. Our clothes had categories but they were ‘clean’, ‘dirty’, ‘work’, ‘date’ and ‘terrible’ (which we wore around the house). Our problems were not the knotty ones of trying to choose between a Dior or a Carnegie, or deciding whether to wear a peplum even if it made our hips look big. Our problems were first getting something, anything, and then trying to keep it away from Alison and her high school friends, who descended on our closets like moths the minute we left the house. We threatened Alison with torture, we ordered her friends from the house, we even yelled at Mother, but it was all wasted effort and for Alison’s four high school years, nothing Mother or Mary or Dede or I owned ever got really cool.