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Show 'Cured- CY J1P . THE STORY THUS FAR: Amos Croy gettled on a farm In Missouri, where lie married and a son. Homer, was born. Sunday meant church, company for dinner din-ner and steer weight guessing. Dehorning Dehorn-ing of the calves, curing of hams, weaning wean-ing of calves, sausage making, and helping help-ing Newt break In the mules were all part of his work. He won a prize for writing his "most unusual dream." The Croys attended the Omaha Exposition, where Homer saw his first horseless carriage, first "hula dancers" and first motion picture. The motion picture scared blm at first, but later he came to be thrilled by it as well as the dance and the "horseless carriage." It was not long before he was to produce a picture. CHATTER XIII Most of the hired men talked sex almost continuously with the sons of the men they worked for. 'Renzo had a finer streak. He thought of girls and he talked of girls. But he didn't go past a certain point. Some innate in-nate fineness held him back, there. A girl lived behind our farm; to go to town, she had to drive through our farm to get to the main road. Each time she went by, 'Renzo must have .thought his thoughts, but he never said anything that told me what was going on in his mind. Once, as we were trimming hedge near her house, we saw one of her undergarments under-garments on the clothesline. It set my mind jumping and it must have fired 'Renzo's too, but he made only some mild remark and went on whacking. The girl became aware of us, plucked the undergarment off the line and darted back into the house. "I guess we can do a better job now," said 'Renzo and although I tried to lead him into more talk, when we rested, it was all he would say. It may have been he thought I was too young, or that my father fa-ther would not approve; but on the whole I think it was a bit of fine-cess fine-cess in humble 'Renzo. He bought a buggy, with the spokes staggered in red hubs, spread his lap robe on the back of the seat, and asked the girls to try his new buggy. But they found excuses. He was too smart not to understand and, at times, had depressed spells 'Renzo who had always been so cheerful and the life of our fireside. He became secretive and wrote letters and took them down to the mailman and handed them to him personally. On the day he expected an answer he would manage to meet the carrier before he got to our box. But in spite of this, now and then there would be a nice neat little envelope en-velope addressed to Lorenzo Davis among our farm papers and incubator incuba-tor catalogues. He would put the letter into his hip pocket, as if it didn't amount to much. Sometimes, at the barn, I would see the ends he had ragged oft. In the meantime he continued to trade. In a big businessman this would have been called "financial shrewdness." We called it "dickering." "dicker-ing." On the Fourth of July he put in his lapel a celluloid button which said Girl Wanted, and walked slowly from one group of girls to another. Other boys were also wearing the button, but his really meant something some-thing to 'Renzo. Finally he said he had been offered of-fered a job in Holt county; when he left he had two horses and two or three pieces of farm machinery, and some money in the bank. We hated to see him go. It was lonesome lone-some that evening without 'Renzo and his violin. Two years later, possibly, he drove up in a spring-wagon, a girl beside him. "How do you like her?" he asked proudly. He stayed for dinner and we talked over old times, delighted de-lighted to have 'Renzo at our table again. The girl, we found, was a hired girl working for a farmer who had a sickly wife. We liked the girl. She was all right. But the one we really liked was 'Renzo. We telephoned the neighbors and several sev-eral of them came in. He introduced her proudly. Once there was a slip, for one of the neighbors pretended that 'Renzo had sparked every girl in the neighborhood. I think this hurt 'Renzo a little, for the real truth of it must have flashed before him. We went out and had a stock weighing and Pa let him guess the closest so 'Renzo could impress his girl. When time came to leave, 'Renzo drove away with his own team, waving wav-ing to us as he whirled out of the : lot. A bit later he sent us a three-Une three-Une newspaper item, pasted on his ' letter with white of egg, saying that I Lorenzo Davis and Miss So-and-So ; had been married and had rented such-and-such a farm where they would soon move and set up housekeeping. house-keeping. Two or three years passed. Now nd then we would get a letter written writ-ten by his wife asking us how we were and, as she put it, "expressing "express-ing my husband's best wishes." One j day we were surprised and delighted I to have 'Renzo swirl up in our drive j lot with a very dashing team cov-i cov-i ered with expensive fly nets. He could hardly wait to tell us the news. He had bought the So-and-So farm in our neighborhood! And he exactly had. He hadn't had much money to put down, but he had nade the deal and maybe with good to be could PuU through. Well, Henxo pulled through. Ho lives in the neighborhood which once wouldn't have him, and is one of its leaders. And so is his wife. She is a member of the "Knabb Country Club," she "entertains," "en-tertains," and does it very well. The favorite kind of home entertainment is the "covered-dish luncheon." Which means that the women arrange ar-range to meet at a member's home and each member takes along a "covered dish"; this is usually a hot dish. These are put on the table and luncheon is announced. The women go in and someone says grace and the lunch is served. Well, Mrs. 'Renzo has as good covered- dish luncheons as anyone, and is as well thought of as anyone. And the very girls now women who once turned up their noses at 'Renzo now accept him fully and so does the neighborhood, for he now belongs to the land aristocracy. Our farmers felt immensely inferior in-ferior to "city people," as we thought of those who lived in town. There was good reason for it.. For when we clunked in in our mud-spattered wagons, the "city people" were dashing around on vitrified brick paving in carriages with high-stepping horses and with buggy whips that stood up straight. As we would pull up in front of the grocery store and get out our half-bushel measure of oats, the city people would smile Talk together as we ate our cheese and crackers. superciliously. Sometimes, as we stood in the back part of the grocery fishing the eggs out of the oats, the city people would come in and purchase pur-chase things we couldn't even dream of buying. When we went in to trade, the merchants wore fine clothes and had elegant polished manners. When we wanted to buy a pair of shoes, we would feel sensitive because of the milk stains. One day Pa took me in the Bee Hive and said, "I'd like to get a pair of Sunday shoes for my boy." The man said, "Sit right down. I'm sure we can fit you out with any dress shoe you want." We noticed such things. All of us country boys felt a dreadful dread-ful sense of inferiority and, when we met on the street or walked together, to-gether, we didn't laugh and joke and have a good time the way we did Sunday afternoons on the farm. We could spot a town boy coming a block and we could see him nudge his friend and make funny remarks. We'd pretend we didn't see, or slink out of sight on the stairway going up to a photographer's, and talk in low, constrained tones. Sometimes we would meet at dinnertime in the back of the grocery store and talk together as we ate our cheese and crackers. But not the hearty way we did on the farm. The town girls would sweep down the street, three abreast, arms locked; when we saw them coming, we would swing over so they could pass. In the paper was a department called "Society," where we would read about the people as if they were titled foreigners. No farmer ever got into Society. On another page was a department called "Selected Jottings." A farmer could get into that, but usually he had to top the hog market, or have a two-headed calf. But there was one place we felt at ease; the Pavilion. This was the arena where, every other Saturday afternoon, horses and mules and cattle cat-tle and sheep were auctioned off. Sometimes household plunder. The farmers would stand around in their muddy boots and their caps with earlaps and feel at home; no city man ever came there unless he wanted want-ed to see us queer people. Sometimes, Some-times, however, the city boys would come. But this was a different world our world and they didn't monkey mon-key around long. Only one other boy from Knabb had ever gone to the high school at the county seat; no Croy ever had. It was a new world for Pa to think In, but he said, "If you want to go. Homer, I'll manage to send you." I knew how much was behind this. Someone must do the work I had been doing; some way must be provided pro-vided to get me back and forth, six miles twice a day. When I had gone to Uncle Will Sewell's to visit, it had been twelve miles, a tremendous tre-mendous distance. Now I must travel trav-el that far each day. Ma drove in to town with me to see the professor and I was enrolled. As the day approached, I became more and more concerned. Could I hold up my end among the smart city boys? On top of this was another an-other millstone: all my life I had been shy and self-conscious and I had the feeling that all the country boys in our section had: inferiority. And I was awkward and ill at ease and gulpy-throat when I met new people. There was the problem of clothes. And the problem of money to buy them with. "You can wear my Sunday Sun-day pants, Horner." I protested and yet I did want to wear them. "You go ahead and wear them. I've been thinking of getting a new pair, anyway." Pa must have sensed the violent change that was coming into my life. "Homer, I'll drive you in Mon day morning and bring you back. I've got some things I want to do in town." I knew that was a polite lie, but it made me like Pa. Sometimes he seemed so indifferent and impersonal imper-sonal and hard-driving that I almost al-most hated him; then he would do something that made a warm flash come in my heart. He drove me up in front of the schoolhouse and I climbed down out of the hack. "I'll be up around the Square at noontime." Then he shook the lines and drove slowly away. I did not speak to a soul I didn't have to. I was taller and older than the boys in the freshman class, as I soon discovered, and knew nothing noth-ing about the ringing of the classroom class-room bells and the constant marching march-ing here and there. At noon one of the teachers sat down at a piano and played for us to march out. I thought I had just about reached the top in education. Pa was standing In front of the grocery where we always met. "How did you fare, son?" "All right, I guess." "Well, I guess we'd better eat. We'll go to the short order today." No eating in the back of the grocery gro-cery today. It was where the farmers went and where we felt at home. He said proudly to one of the men, "My son's just startin' a term of school." The man looked me over. "Ain't he goin" to be a farmer?" "Sure he is," said Pa confidently. At the end of the meal he said, "You needn't hurry when school dismisses. dis-misses. I'll be around the grocery." There he was, when school was out, patiently waiting. The next day I was on my own. In my ill-fitting clothes, I moved about in this new and complicated world in a sort of daze. When I arrived each morning I hated to go in, and when school dismissed I darted away to where I had my horse stabled sta-bled and clunked off for home as fast as I could. Mornings were worst. As I rode in on old Dave, I would have to pass students on the way to schooL I felt horribly ashamed of big-footed Dave who had a way of making distressing dis-tressing noises. I was the only one who had to clump in on horseback and when Dave rumbled by, the students stu-dents would turn their eyes on us, and it seemed to me I would die. I soon discovered the streets most frequented, and veered my course so I wouldn't be seen by so many students. Now and then a boy would come out of his home, fresh from breakfasi and fall in with friends on the way to school. It seemed to me the very epitome of luxury to be. able to live in town, get up late, and have gay friends to walk to school with. At noon the boys and girls went to their homes, but I went to the widow's stable where I kept Dave. I would water him and put his feed in his box, then sit down near him and the two of us would eat. The barn was so gloomy and fly-filled fly-filled that I wanted to take my paper-wrapped lunch somewhere else. But there was the problem of the other students who always seemed to be smiling at me. I began putting my lunch in my pocket and going behind the Methodist Meth-odist Church. But now and then someone would come through the alley al-ley and stare. Finally I hit on a new plan. There was an areaway back of the church and I would lower low-er myself into it and unwrap my lunch. I would go back to the school ground where the other boys were playing, and would stand around, wanting to play but not knowing how to go about it. Now and then one of the boys would make a friendly friend-ly advance, but I would be brief with him to show I was getting along all right. I (TO BE CONTINUED) |