swifter way to commit suicide. I don’t boast about the difference, as in time line
two the people of the United States succumbed to something even sillier than `Bread
and Circuses’: the people voted themselves a religious dictatorship.
It happened after 1982, so I did not see it – for which I am glad! When I was a
woman a hundred years old, Nehemiah Scudder was still a small boy.
The potential for religious hysteria had always been present in the American
culture, and this I knew, as my father had rubbed my nose in it from an early age.
Father had pointed out to me that the only thing that preserved religious freedom in
the United States was not the First Amendment and was not tolerance… but was
solely a Mexican stand-off between rival religious sects, each sect intolerant, each
sect the sole custodian of the One True Faith – but each sect a minority that gave
lip service to freedom of religion to keep its own One True Faith from being
persecuted by all the other True Faiths.
(Of course it was usually open season on Jews and sometimes on Catholics and almost
always on Mormons and Muslims and Buddhists and other heathens. The First Amendment
was never intended to protect such outright blasphemy. Oh, no!)
Elections are won not by converting the opposition but by getting out your own vote,
and Scudder’s organisation did just that. According to histories I studied at
Boondock, the election of 2012 turned out sixty-three per cent of the registered
voters (which in turn was less than half of those eligible to register); the True
American Party (Nehemiah Scudder) polled twenty-seven per cent of the popular
vote… which won eighty-one per cent of the Electoral College votes.
In 2016 there was no election.
The Torrid Twenties… Flaming Youth, the Lost Generation, flappers, cake eaters,
gangsters and sawn-off shot-guns and bootleg booze and needled beer. Hupmobiles and
Stutz Bearcats and flying circuses. A joy hop for five dollars. Lindbergh and the
Spirit of St Louis. Skirts climbed unbelievably until, by the middle of the decade,
rolled stockings permitted bare knees to be seen. The Prince of Wales Glide and the
Finale Hop and the Charleston. Ruth Etting and Will Rogers and Ziegfeld’s Follies.
There were bad things about the Twenties but on the whole they were good years for
most people – and they were never dull.
I kept busy as usual with housewifely things of little interest to outsiders. I had
Theodore Ira in 1919, Margaret in 1922, Arthur Roy in 1924, Alice Virginia in 1927,
Doris Jean in 1930 – and they all had the triumphs and crises that children have,
and aren’t you glad that you don’t have to look at their pictures and listen to me
repeating their cute sayings?
In February of 1929 we sold our house on Bentos Boulevard and leased with the option
to buy a house near Rockhill Road and Meyer Boulevard – an old farmhouse, roomy but
not as modern as our former Nome. This was a hard-nosed decision by my husband who
always believed in making every dollar work twice. But he did consult me and not
alone because title was vested in me.
`Maureen,’ he said to me, ‘do you feel like gambling?’
‘We always have. Haven’t we?’
`Some yes, some no. This time we would tap the pot, shoot the works, shout Banco! If
I failed to bring it off, you might have to go out and pound a beat, just to keep a
Page 144
Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
potato soup on the table.’
`I’ve always wondered if I could make a living that way. Here I am, forty-seven in
July -‘
`Woops! Your age is now thirty-seven. And I’m forty one.’
`Briney, I’m in bed with you. Can’t I be truthful in bed?’
`Judge Sperling wants us to stick to our corrected ages at all times. And Justin
agrees.’
`Yes sir. I’ll be good. I always wondered if I could make a living as a
streetwalker. But how do I find a beat? I understand that a gal can get per eyes
scratched out if she just goes out and starts soliciting without finding out who