early and turn instructor to help train the new ones with no military experience…
and if I will, I go from second to first lieutenant in a hurry. No promise in
writing. But that’s the policy. Beau-père, can you be here next year? Why don’t you
just stay on? No point in your opening up your flat again, and I’ll bet that Mo’s
cooking is better than the restaurant cooking at that Greek joint under your flat.
Isn’t it? Careful how you answer.’
`It’s somewhat better.’
`”Somewhat!” I’ll burn your toast!’
We had a small war on our southern border in 1916; `General’ Pancho Villa raided
across the border again and again, killing and burning. ‘Black Jack’ Pershing, of
Mindanao fame, who had been jumped by President Roosevelt from captain to
brigadier-general, was sent by President Wilson to find and seize Villa. Father had
known Pershing when they were both captains in the fight against the Moros; Father
thought well of him and was delighted with his meteoric rise (with more to come).
Father pacified a small war at home, for he did stay on with us, and largely took
Woodrow out of my hands, with full authority to exercise on Woodrow the low, the
middle, and the high justice without consulting either of his parents. Both Brian
and I were relieved.
Father took a shine to my sixth child, and that left me free to hold Woodrow as
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favourite in my heart, with no need or temptation to let it show. (My children were
all different, and I liked each one of them differently, just as with other
people… but I did my utter best to treat them all with even justice, without any
favouritism in act or manner. I tried. Truly I tried.)
At this great distance, more than a century, I think I at last know why my least
likeable son was my favourite: because he was most like my father, both in his good
points and his bad. My father was by no means a saint… but he was `my kind of a
scoundrel’… and my son Woodrow was almost his replica, sixty years younger, the
same faults, the same virtues – and the two most stubborn males I have ever met.
Perhaps an unbiased judge might think that we three were ‘triplets’ – aside from the
unimportant fact that we were father, daughter, and daughter’s son… and that they
each were as emphatically male as I am female (I am so totally every minute a set of
female glands and organs, that I can cope with it only by carefully simulating the
sort of `lady’ approved by Mrs Grundy and Queen Victoria).
But those two males were stubborn. Me? Me stubborn? How could you think such a
thing?
Father clobbered Woodrow as necessary (frequently), took over his education as he
had taken over mine, taught him to play chess at four, did not need to teach him to
read – like Nancy, Woodrow taught himself. It left me free to rear my other,
civilised, well-behaved children with no difficulty and with no need to raise my
voice. (Woodrow could have pushed me into being the sort of screaming scold I
despise.)
Father’s ‘adoption’ of Woodrow left me more time with my lovely and loving and
lovable husband. All too soon it was time for him to leave again for Plattsburg.
Then I settled down for a truly dry spell. Nelson had been in town part of the time
the year before. But now Brian Smith Associates had moved its physical location to
Galena where Nelson was supervising a new mine that Brian had bought into, when his
survey showed its worth but its developer needed more capital. Anita Boles had
married and left us; our KC office was now just a post office box number, a
telephone number transferred back to our house, and a little clerical work I could
handle with ease, as my biggest boy, Brian junior, now twelve, picked up the mail
from the box on his bicycle each day on his way home from school.
So Nelson, my only utterly safe `relief husband’ was too far away… and my father,