Abroad At Home Part 11

Taking up our suit cases, we thanked Miss Buck for the a.s.sistance she had rendered us.

"I'm sure you're quite welcome," she replied. "I meet all kinds here--including kidders."

That was some months ago. No doubt Miss Buck may have forgotten us by now. But when she sees this--as, being a news-stand lady, I have reason to hope she will--I trust she may remember, and admit that truth has triumphed in the end.

CHAPTER IX

KALAMAZOO

I had but one reason for visiting Kalamazoo: the name has always fascinated me with its zoological suggestion and even more with its rich, rhythmic measure. Indian names containing "K's" are almost always striking: Kenosha, Kewanee, Kokomo, Keokuk, Kankakee. Of these, the last two, having the most "K's" are most effective. Next comes Kokomo with two "K's." But Kalamazoo, though it has but one "K," seems to me to take first place among them all, phonetically, because of the finely a.s.sorted sound contained in its four syllables. There is a kick in its "K," a ring in its "L," a buzz in its "Z," and a glorious hoot in its two final "O's."

I wish here to protest against the abbreviated t.i.tle frequently bestowed upon the town by newspapers in Detroit and other neighboring cities.

They call it "Ka'zoo."

Ka'zoo, indeed! For shame! How can men take so fine a name and treat it lightly? True, it is a little long for easy handling in a headline, but that does not justify indignity. If headline writers cannot handle it conveniently they should not change the name, but rather change their type, or make-up. If I owned a newspaper, and there arose a question of giving s.p.a.ce to this majestic name, I should cheerfully drop out a baseball story, or the love letters in some divorce case, or even an advertis.e.m.e.nt, in order to display it as it deserves to be displayed.

Kalamazoo (I love to write it out!) Kalamazoo, I say, is also sometimes known familiarly as "Celery Town"--the growing of this crisp and succulent vegetable being a large local industry. Also, I was informed, more paper is made there than in any other city in the world. I do not know if that is true, I only know that if there is not more _something_ in Kalamazoo than there is in any other city, the place is unique in my experience.

From my own observations, made during an evening walk through the agreeable, tree-bordered streets of Kalamazoo, I should have said that it led in quite a different field. I have never been in any town where so many people failed to draw their window shades, or owned green reading lamps, or sat by those green-shaded lamps and read. I looked into almost every house I pa.s.sed, and in all but two, I think, I saw the self-same picture of calm, literary domesticity.

One family, living in a large and rather new-looking house on Main Street, did not seem to be at home. The shades were up but no one was sitting by the lamp. And, more, the lamp itself was different. Instead of a plain green shade it had a shade with pictures in the gla.s.s, and red bead fringe. Later I found out where the people were. They were playing bridge across the street. They must have been the people from that house, because there were two in all the other houses, whereas there were four in the house where bridge was being played.

I stood and watched them. The woman from across the street--being the guest, she was in evening dress--was dummy. She was sitting back stiffly, her mouth pursed, her eyes staring at the cards her partner played. And she was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "If _I_ had played that hand, I never should have done it _that_ way!"

Kalamazoo has a Commercial Club. What place hasn't? And the Commercial Club has issued a booklet. What Commercial Club hasn't? This one bears the somewhat fanciful t.i.tle "The Lure of Kalamazoo."

"The Lure of Kalamazoo" is written in that peculiarly chaste style characteristic of Chamber of Commerce "literature"--a style comparable only with that of railway folders and summer hotel booklets. It is the "Here-all-nature-seems-to-be-rejoicing" school. Let me present an extract:

Kalamazoo is peculiarly a city of homes--homes varying in cost from the modest cottage of the laborer to the palatial house of the wealthy manufacturer.

The only place in which the man who wrote that slipped up, was in referring to the wealthy manufacturer's "house." Obviously the word called for there is "mansion." However, in justice to this man, and to Kalamazoo, I ought to add that the town seemed to be rather free from "mansions." That is one of the pleasantest things about it. It is just a pretty, unpretentious place. Perhaps he actually meant to say "house,"

but I doubt it. I think he missed a trick. I think he failed to get the right word, just as if he had been writing about brooks, and had forgotten to say "purling."

But if I saw no "mansions," I did see one building in Kalamazoo the architecture of which was distinguished. That was the building of the Western Michigan Normal School--a long, low structure of cla.s.sical design, with three fine porticos.

Having a Commercial Club, Kalamazoo quite naturally has a "slogan," too.

(A "slogan," by the way, is the war cry or gathering cry of a Highland clan--but that makes no difference to a Commercial Club.) It is: "In Kalamazoo We Do."

This battle cry "did" very well up to less than a year ago; then it suddenly began to languish. There was a company in Kalamazoo called the Michigan Buggy Company, and this company had a very sour failure last year, their figures varying from fact to the extent of about a million and a half dollars. Not satisfied with dummy accounts and padded statements, they had, also, what was called a "velvet pay roll." And, when it all blew up, the whole of Michigan was shaken by the shock.

Since that time, I am informed, the "slogan" "In Kalamazoo We Do" has not been in high favor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "If _I_ had played that hand, I never should have done it _that_ way!"]

Among the "lures" presented in the Commercial Club's booklet are four hundred and fifty-six lakes within a radius of fifty miles of the city.

I didn't count the lakes myself. I didn't count the people either--not all of them.

The "World Almanac" gives the population of the place as just under forty thousand, but some one in Kalamazoo--and I think he was a member of the Commercial Club--told me that fifty thousand was the correct figure.

Now, I ask you, is it not reasonable to suppose that the Commercial Club, being right _in_ Kalamazoo, where it can count the people every day, should be more accurate in its figures than the Almanac, which is published in far-away New York? Errors like this on the part of the Almanac might be excused, once or twice, on the ground of human fallibility or occasional misprint, but when the Almanac keeps on cutting down the figures given by the Commercial Clubs and Chambers of Commerce of town after town, it begins to look like wilful misrepresentation if not actual spitework.

That, to tell the truth, was the reason I walked around and looked in all the windows. I decided to get at the bottom of this matter--to find out the cause for these discrepancies, and if I caught the Almanac in what appeared to be a deliberate lie, to expose it, here. With this in view, I started to count the people myself. Unfortunately, however, I did not start early enough in the evening. When I had only a little more than half of them counted, they began to put out their lights and go upstairs to bed. And, oddly enough, though they leave their parlor shades up, they have a way of drawing those in their bedrooms. I was, therefore, forced to stop counting.

I do not attempt to explain this Kalamazoo custom with regard to window shades. All I can say is that, for whatever reason they follow it, their custom is not metropolitan. New Yorkers do things just the other way around. They pull down their parlor shades, but leave their bedroom shades up. Any one who has lived in a New York apartment house in summer can testify to that. Probably it is all accounted for by the fact that in a relatively small city, like Kalamazoo, the census takers go around and count the people in the early evening, whereas in New York it is necessary for those who make the reckoning to work all night in order to--as one might say--get all the figures.

CHAPTER X

GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"

I know a man whose wife is famous for her cooking. That is a strange thing for a prosperous and charming woman to be famous for to-day, but it is true. When they wish to give their friends an especial treat, the wife prepares the dinner; and it _is_ a treat, from "pigs in blankets"

to strawberry shortcake.

The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed, and not without a mild amus.e.m.e.nt, that when we praise it past a certain point he begins to protest that there are lots of other things that she can do. You might think then, if you did not understand him, that he was belittling her talent as a cook.

"Oh, yes," he says, in what he intends to be a casual tone, "she can cook very well. But that's not all. She's the best mother I ever saw--sees right into the children, just as though she were one of them.

She makes most of their clothes, too. And in spite of all that, she keeps up her playing--both piano and harp. We'll get her to play the harp after dinner."

People are like that about the cities that they live in. They are like that in Detroit. They are afraid that in considering the vastness of the automobile industry, you'll overlook the fact that Detroit has a lot of other business. And in Grand Rapids they're the same; only there, of course, it's furniture.

"Yes," they say almost with reluctance, "we do make a good deal of furniture, but we also have big printing plants and plaster mills, and a large business in automobile accessories, and the metal trades."

They talked that way to me. But I kept right on asking about furniture, just as, when the young husband talks to me about his wife's harp playing, I keep right on eating shortcake. That is no reflection on her music (or her arms!); it is simply a tribute to her cooking.

Grand Rapids is one of those exceedingly agreeable, homelike American cities, which has not yet grown to the unwieldy size. It is the kind of city of which they say: "Every one here knows every one else"--meaning, of course, that members of the older and more prosperous families enjoy all the advantages and disadvantages of a considerable intimacy.

To the visitor--especially the visitor from New York, where a close friend may be bedridden a month without one's knowing it--this sort of thing makes a strong appeal at first. You feel that these people see one another every day; that they know all about one another, and like one another in spite of that. It is nice to see them troop down to the station, fifteen strong, to see somebody off, and it must be nice to be seen off like that; it must make you feel sure that you have friends--a point upon which the New Yorker, in his heart, has the gravest doubts.

Consider, for example, my own case. In the course of my residence in New York, I have lived in four different apartment houses. In only two of these have I had even the slightest acquaintance with any of the other tenants. Once I called upon some disagreeable people on the floor below who had complained about the noise; once I had summoned a doctor who lived on the ground floor. In the other two buildings I knew absolutely no one. I used to see occasionally, in the elevator of one building, a man with whom I was acquainted years ago, but he had either forgotten me in the interim, or he elected to do as I did; that is, to pretend he had forgotten. I had nothing against him; he had nothing against me. We were simply bored at the idea of talking with each other because we had nothing in common.

Any New Yorker who is honest will admit to you that he has had that same experience. He pa.s.ses people on the street--and sometimes they are people he has known quite well in times gone by--yet he refrains from bowing to them, and they refrain from bowing to him, by a sort of tacit understanding that bowing, even, is a bore.

That is a sad sort of situation. But sadder yet is the fact that in New York we lose sight of so many people whom we should like to see--friends of whom we are genuinely fond, but whose evolutions in the whirlpool of the city's life are such that we don't chance to come in contact with them. At first we try. We paddle toward them now and then. But the very act of paddling is fatiguing, so by and by we give it up, and either never see them any more, or, running across them, once in a year or two, on the street or in a shop, lament at the broken intimacy, and make new resolves, only to see them melt away again in the flux and flow of New York life.