28
PARTISAN REVIEW
or an alarm clock, so we worked out a system: he tied a string onto his
toe and threw it out of the third-story window of his house.
I'd waken
him by yanking on the string, which hung from his window.
It must have been about four o'clock in the morning when the sirens
announced the end of the World War.
I dressed and went out to pull
the string dangling near the porch.
Half the town was already on the streets.
I thought it would be a
good idea if Louie and I could be at the head of a parade, so I phoned
the leader of the Socialist Party local, Dan Linehan (a lanky cigarmaker
who called himself a manufacturer because he employed one helper) and
asked hIm if it would be O.K. for me and Louie to take the big bass
drum out of the headquarters and use it to start an Armistice Day parade.
D. V., as we in the local called him, said he couldn't see any "real
objection" to it, provided we took good care of the bass drum, because "it
was the property," he said, of the Socialist Band.
The Glendale
Times
was owned by an influential citizen named
Addison G. Colbert, who also owned the Glendale Trust Company.
I
never did find out whether it was true or not, but some folks in town
said that when Addison G. Colbert was state treasurer under Gov. Rich-
ards, some money disappeared.
The Glendale Trust Company was the bank on Glen Street, right
opposite the Y.M.C.A.
It had those glass-topped tables with fine ball-
pointed pens where you filled out the deposit slips.
This is the bank
where my father got loans from time to time, provided he got some re-
liable business man to endorse a note for him.
Once he got the lumber
firm of Kendall
&
Green to endorse a promissory note for him so he
could purchase lumber to build his bakery.
After that, whenever my
father saw Kendall on the street-even if Kendall was on the opposite
side-he always doffed his cap and said, "Hello, Mr. Kendall and Green."
It seems my father didn't realize it was the firm name.
Of course my father, who had read a good deal, knew that they
were all a bunch of crooks, but he also knew they were powerful: they
could decide whether to call in that "payable on demand" note of $100,
so he always doffed his cap whenever he saw Mr. Kendall on the street.
The Socialist Band was quite a help to us in our work.
The Pru-
dential Insurance man, Gib Wendell, was the bandmaster.
He didn't
charge to train the band because, Gib said, there was no reason on God's
green earth why anyone shouldn't learn to play a musical instrument in
a couple of months, especially if he agreed with our ideals.
\Vhenever August Claessens, Steve Mahoney or Mary McVicker
