EVENINGS AT HOME
At last I dozed off and when I awakened late the next morning
there was great commotion downstairs. We were going on a picnic.
I threw myself into the preparations so gleefully that my mother was
taken aback and said,
"If
you like picnics so much I'm surprised
you haven't mentioned them before."
Another week has passed and I have found the temerity to see
some of my old friends. They are all somewhat skeptical of me but
not for the right reasons. It is a great relief to learn that I am
thought of only as "radical" and though I know that
is
not meant
to be a compliment it seems quite the happiest way out and so I
try to keep that aspect of my past in the public mind on the theory
that nice people demand only one transgression and if they find a
suitable sin they won't go snooping around for more. Perhaps I have
over-played it a little, become too dogmatic and angry. (Extremes
of any sort embarrass small-town people. They are dead set against
overexertion and for that reason even opera singers and violinists
make them uncomfortable because it seems a pity the notes won't
come forth without all that fuss and foolishness.)
Even I was taken in by my act and it did seem to me that
when I lived here I thought only of politics. One afternoon, over–
whelmed by nostalgia and yearning for the hopeful, innocent days
in which we used to talk about the "vanguard of the future," I went
to the old courthouse. Here our radical group, some six or seven
snoring people on a good night, used to meet. I found the court–
house unchanged; it is still the same hideous ruin with the familiar
dirt and odor of perspiring petitioners and badgered drunks who
have filed in and out for a hundred years, the big spittoons, the sag–
ging staircase. When I left I heard the beautiful bells ringing to an–
nounce that it was five o'clock and I went home in a lyrical mood, ad–
mitting that I had spent many happy, ridiculous days in this town.
For some reason I could not wait to reach the garage next to
our house where my father keeps his fishing equipment. I saw there
the smooth poles painted in red and green stripes and I intended to
rush into the house, throw my arms around my father's neck, and
tell him how many times in New York I had thought of him bent
over his workbench, and that I despised myself for criticizing him
for going fishing instead of trying to make money.
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