Blackie and Danny Go To See The President (Cont)
Screen 2 of 5But our happiness and enthusiasm were short-lived. They were not to be supported and continued by what was to come. The whole trip was beset with troubles from the very beginning; and now that I look back upon it after these 62 years, I feel sure that those guinea pigs should not have gone to see President Wilson after all. For they certainly did not learn anything of use to them; nor did they enjoy the huge crowd on that hot day in August of 1916. I must add quickly, however, that I have always been most grateful--especially after I was grown--that Mother insisted that Gooch and I go to see the President. For later when I knew more about him, I became thoroughly convinced that Woodrow Wilson was one of our greatest presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And had I not seen him at that particular time and place, when I was just under five years old, it is more than likely that I would never have seen him at all. I am also very appreciative that my mother let us take the guinea pigs--even though they did not learn much from the trip--for it demonstrated her awareness of what was important to my brother and me at the early ages of six and four. And her consent to let us take Blackie and Danny endeared her to us.
But now back to the trip. I seem to remember much of it rather well. I wore a freshly washed and starched white sailor suit with short pants, low red, white and blue socks to match the stripes on the collar of the middy-blouse, and a new pair of black, patent-leather shoes. I still had bobbed hair with bangs cut straight across the forehead. The rest of it, dark and well groomed, hung to a uniform length just below my ears. I'm sure I must have looked like "Little Lord Fauntleroy." Detracting from this image, however, was a large cardboard hat box I was sometimes carrying but mostly dragging at my heels. In it were Blackie and Danny. It was their special coach, we pretended. Women's hat boxes in that period had to be large, because most of their hats were very big--especially the broad brimmed panama hats so popular at the time. All this was very fortunate for us, since we needed a big box to accommodate both these active guinea pigs for this long trip.
Gooch and I had remodeled the box the night before we left, cutting small air holes in the side and top, and running heavy cord under and through it for carrying. We had also put some shredded paper in the bottom to make it more comfortable for Blackie and Danny. This paper would also catch and partially absorb their droppings. We later learned the hard way that the thin bottom of such a hat box is not very strong??at least not strong enough when wet to support the weight of two healthy and scampering rodents.
What a rig! And here I was trying to carry it to the train on that early August morning. Since Gooch was older and bigger than I was, I thought he should carry it, or at least help me. For after all, his pet was in there too. But he refused. He said it would "embass" him to carry something like that where everyone could see him. I didn't know what all that meant, but Mother taught me to spell "embarrass," the word he was trying to say. In any case, I agreed to be responsible for getting the "guinea pig coach" to the train, for I was set on Blackie seeing the President. Besides, it wasn't very heavy, and I enjoyed looking through the air holes and talking to our pets.
We walked to the train from our house that morning. We always walked wherever we went. That was our only means of transportation. We did not own an automobile (very few people did in 1916) and taxis were far too expensive for us to use. But we didn't mind. Walking was fun, and nearly all our friends walked.
We arrived at the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Station promptly at five o'clock, after a brisk half-hour walk. The north-bound "L. and N." (that's what everybody called the railroad) train was scheduled to stop at Bowling Green at 5:15 A.M. It was usually late but not very much this morning, and all of us boarded it about 5:30--our mother (we always called her "Nelle" when we were young), Gooch, Blackie, Danny, and I. The heat of the day had not yet set in, and the light sweater I wore over my navy suit felt good, especially while we were walking to the station. Later in the day, however, the temperature soared to well above 100 degrees, along with a relative humidity that must have been in the 80's, causing Gooch and me to shed not only our sweaters, but our shoes and socks as well. I wanted to take off my middy blouse when it became so hot, but my mother said no. That would not be decent in public, she said. And it was because of all this trouble with the weather that I later lost my sweater. I think I left it just outside Lincoln's log cabin while I was chasing Blackie after he had escaped from the hat box while the President was speaking. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
The train left the Bowling Green station shortly before six o'clock that morning. I shall never forget the noisy beginning. Steam engines in those days seemed to have much trouble starting. The inertia of those heavy and clumsy "iron horses" was almost insurmountable, especially when the train was long and well loaded. The typical attempt to start, and this morning was no exception, was a long, labored "choo," as black smoke poured out of the stack, all this resulting in no movement of the train. Just noise, smoke, and no action. Then came in slow order one or two more puffing efforts to turn the stubborn wheels on the tracks, and the train nudged slightly ahead. Following all this ceremony came a fast series of "choos" (or perhaps "shoos" describes it better) and a screeching, hair-raising noise made by the wheels spinning on the cold steel tracks. After a brief moment, the wheels developed some traction and the whole train suddenly lunged forward--not much distance covered, just a severe jerk that threw many passengers violently against the backs of their seats and sent our hat box sliding down the center aisle into the feet of a lady who was standing at the time. When she saw the moving box and heard the cries of the guinea pigs, she screamed in fright and called for the conductor who was nowhere around.
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