Part 8

Almost immediately after my conversion, or at least as soon as it had become noised about that I had consigned my holy relative to what some of our more finicky Sisters, unable to bring themselves to say “Hell,” referred to coyly as “the bad place,” I abandoned myself to a life of sin and became a total spiritual loss in the eyes of all Farmington except members of my immediate family and certain of my intimate friends who collaborated with me in various wicked but pleasant enterprises. That is to say, I cast aside the taboos and the inhibitions that religion had thrown about me, and became for the first time in my life a normal boy. I existed simply to play and raise hell generally, and for some curious reason the activity which gave me the most pleasure was throwing rocks at the church or in some manner interrupting the service.

It was not long before even the most hopeful had ceased their talk of sending me to a theological school and fitting me to carry on the family labors, for I began to smoke cigarettes, play cards, swear, drink when I could find a bartender willing to ignore the law forbidding the sale of liquor to a minor, and to cock an appreciative and appraising eye at the girls. It was then agreed that it was too late to do anything with me or for me, and on the Sunday morning that I mounted my new bicycle and rode brazenly past the Southern Methodist church as the Brothers and Sisters filed with bowed heads into the edifice for worship, I was consigned body and soul to the sizzling pits of Hell.

I suffered a great deal of physical agony before I learned to smoke cigarettes, and it was some time before I learned to blow smoke through my nose with the nonchalant ease affected by the group of older boys and young men who loafed in Doss’s barber shop and around the Post Office Building and McKinney’s peanut and popcorn machine. My older brother had learned a year or so before, and he frequently made himself very offensive to me by boasting that he could smoke a whole package of Sweet Caporals or Drums without becoming ill. I yearned to try, but he would not give me a cigarette, and neither would any of the other boys, and my finances were in such shape that I could not purchase any. And, of course, such wicked things could not be purchased and charged to my father; I could have charged a plug of chewing tobacco to him, but not cigarettes.

But one day I was loafing hopefully in McKinney’s when my brother came in and produced a dime that he had amassed by laborious work chopping wood at home, and bought a package of Sweet Caporal Little Cigars. These were really nothing but cigarettes wrapped with tobacco instead of paper, but they resembled a cigar and were thought to be infinitely more stylish and manly than the ordinary cigarette. I asked him for one, and he said he would not give one to John the Baptist himself. But I persisted, and followed him home, aghast at his determination to hide behind the barn and smoke the whole package one after the other.

“I’ll light one from the end of the other,” he boasted.

Finally as we came opposite Brother Nixon’s house just south of Elmwood Seminary, he relented and very carefully opened the box and handed me a Little Cigar. It was a great moment. The yard of Elmwood Seminary fairly swarmed with girl students, including the young lady who at the time represented everything that was desirable in the female sex, and I visioned their cries of startled admiration as I passed, puffing nonchalantly, blowing smoke from my nose and perhaps from my ears.

I had no doubt of my ability to handle the innocent-looking Little Cigar; indeed, at that time I considered no problem insurmountable. My brother instructed me to fill my mouth with smoke and then take a long, deep breath, and after that blow the smoke out gently and slowly, holding the Little Cigar between the first and second finger and crooking the little finger as we did when we drank tea or coffee, that being a mark of gentility and refinement. As we came in front of the old Clardy homestead less than half a block from the Seminary I struck a match and applied it to the end of the Little Cigar, while my brother watched anxiously and from time to time gave me advice. I puffed as he directed.

“Got a mouthful?” he asked.

Unable to speak, my cheeks bulging, I nodded.

“Now take a long breath.”

But, alas, I did not breathe; I swallowed, and while the smoke penetrated me and spread throughout my interior, it did not take the correct route. I began to strangle, and my brother got excited.

“Blow it out, you damn fool!” he cried. “You’ll choke!”

I did choke. I did even worse; I became very ill, and the spectacle which so intrigued the young ladies of the Seminary that day was not that of a young gentleman going nonchalantly to Hell by the cigarette route. Instead, they saw a very sick boy rolling on the sidewalk trying desperately to stem a distressing internal upheaval.

It was several days later before I had enough courage to try again, and I debated within myself whether or not God had caused me to be so ill in order to show me that smoking was a sin. But I had definitely committed myself to the Devil, so a few days later I begged a dime from my father and bought a package of Drums and another of Sweet Caporals, the two most popular brands of cigarettes. With these, and a supply of matches, I went behind the barn. I made a neat pile of sawdust to lie upon, and there I remained the whole afternoon, smoking one cigarette after another. I was terribly ill at first, but gradually improved until the last three or four gave me no trouble. I did not have much appetite for dinner that night, but I had conquered the cigarette and I felt a glow of pride at the fact that I had got a very good start in the direction of the bad place.

The basis of my overwhelming desire to smoke cigarettes was the fact that cigarette-smoking when I was a boy in Farmington was one of the major sins. It ranked with adultery and just a little ahead of murder and theft. The Preachers called them coffin nails and delivered violent sermons against them, and every once in a while an evangelist would come to town with medical charts showing the effect of tobacco upon the interior human organs. But the fact that it was bad physically for growing boys was seldom stressed at all; we were impressed instead with the fact that God thought it a sin to smoke cigarettes, although it did not appear that it was a sin for the tobacconist to sell them. That was business.

Many efforts were made to reform me after I had begun to smoke. My mother said she had hoped I wouldn’t, but that was all she said, and my father said he did not give a hoot whether I smoked or not, but that he hoped I would not be a fool and overdo it. He himself had learned the art of chewing tobacco when he was a boy of seven in Mississippi, and so far as I have ever been able to learn, God had never called him to account. He died at the age of seventy-nine, suddenly, and a slab of plug-cut was in his pocket. It is impossible for me to believe that God refused him entrance into whatever Heaven there may be on account of his habit, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

But the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters did not agree with my parents, nor would they admit that it was none of their business. On the contrary, they said that it was the Lord’s business, and since they were the duly accredited agents of the Lord, appointed by Him to lead Farmington into the paths of righteousness, it was their business also. When Brother Fontaine was our Methodist pastor he did not look with disfavor upon chewing, because he himself was seldom without a chew and presumably had an indulgence from God, but he looked upon the cigarette as an invention of the Devil. In this view he was upheld by the Ladies’ Aid Society and the Farmington branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. And the W. C. T. U., with the possible exception of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, was and is the world’s best example of an organization maintained for the sole purpose of minding other people’s business.

The hullabaloo over my smoking only made me more determined to smoke until my insides turned black and I was called home by Satan and transformed into a tobacco demon. For that reason I probably smoked too much. As a matter of principle I always lighted a cigarette just in front of the Southern Methodist church, and in front of the home of my uncle, who was an enemy of anything that provided physical pleasure and contentment. I always smoked another as I passed the Northern Methodist church, the scene of the McConnell revival orgy, and still another in front of the Christian church, in memory of Brother Nations. That was four in half a mile, and of course was too many, but sometimes I was not permitted to finish all of them. Frequently a Brother or a Sister, seeing me thus flaunting my sin on the public highway, snatched the nasty thing from my mouth and gave me a lecture that dripped religion and was principally concerned with the fate of boys who defied God and Jesus Christ by smoking cigarettes. One Sister asked me:

“Where did you get the vile things?”

I told her that I had bought them at her husband’s store, and she shrieked:

“You saucy, blasphemous boy!”

But on that particular occasion I was not lectured, although she telephoned my mother that I had been impudent to her. My mother told her it was too bad.

2

I learned to play pinochle when I was about fifteen, only a few months after I had become an accomplished cigarette fiend and was generally considered a fine prospect for Satan, and thereafter was a regular participant in the game that went on every night in the back room of Karl Schliesser’s cigar factory. This was a notable den of evil, and while religion had me in its clutches I thought black magic was practiced there, and that its habitués had communion with the Devil; among us it was believed that God had doubtless never heard of the place or He would have destroyed it with a withering blast of lightning. It was frequented by Germans and other low forms of life, and they were principally Catholics and Lutherans, with a sprinkling of renegade Protestants like myself. The Brothers and Sisters held the opinion that if this crowd had a God at all he must have been a very queer being, for bursts of ribald laughter came from Schliesser’s back room, and there was card-playing, and I do not doubt that occasionally someone gambled.

Schliesser was the Town Socialist, and was looked upon with grave suspicion by the better element, as in those days it was generally recognized that a Socialist was an emissary of the Devil. But the Brothers and Sisters and the Preachers looked with even more suspicion upon Victor Quesnel. In this attitude they had the support of the Catholics. Victor Quesnel was born in France, but he had lived in Farmington for many years. He frequently quoted Voltaire, and appeared to believe that a man’s religion and his belief or disbelief in God was a matter of his own personal taste, and he was therefore regarded as an atheist. As a matter of fact he was probably more truly religious than most of the pious Brothers and Sisters; the principal difference was that he did not try to compel everyone he met to embrace his creed.

Frequently, and without particular regard as to who heard him, Quesnel discussed the advantages of sleeping naked, or, as we say in present-day journalism, undraped. That was his hobby. He said he thought it was a healthful practice, that he slept better without clothing, and that come what might he was going to continue to sleep that way. This was considered heathenish doctrine; some of our finest church members owned stores in which they sold nightgowns and pajamas, and it was felt that Quesnel’s attitude was not only a direct affront to God but was also injurious to business. Moreover, the Brothers and Sisters did not consider such a practice modest; there were scores, perhaps hundreds of people in Farmington who had never in their lives removed all of their clothing. Once at a meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society I heard an old Sister say that she had reached the age of sixty and had never been entirely undressed; and that when she bathed she kept her eyes closed as she applied the sponge to her body. A great deal of juicy conversation could be overheard at these Ladies’ Aid meetings by a bright young lad who knew where the best keyholes were located.

3

Sunday was much more enjoyable after I had become a sinner and had left Sunday school and the Church to whatever fate the Lord had in store for them. I arose a little later, had a leisurely breakfast and a refreshing quarrel or fight with my brothers and sister, and then went leisurely to my room and as leisurely put on my Sunday suit, with no intention of removing it until I retired for the night. Curiously enough, as soon as I quit going regularly to church and Sunday school I began to wear my Sunday suit all day, and the little voice that I had in the selection of this garment I raised in hopeful pleas for loud checks and glaring colors. No longer did I wish to clothe myself in the sombre blacks suitable for church wear and religious activity; I desired to blossom and bloom in the more violent and pleasant colors of Hell.

Once arrayed in my Sunday suit, I left the house, a cigarette dangling from my lower lip, and my hat, carefully telescoped in the prevailing mode, sitting just so on the side of my head. I tried to time my march downtown so that I would reach Elmwood Seminary just as the young lady students resident there marched across the street, after Sunday school, from the Presbyterian church; they were not permitted to remain at the church during the fifteen or twenty-minute interval because they attracted such hordes of feverish boys intent upon everything but religion. Usually I reached the scene in time, and leaned nonchalantly against the Seminary fence, puffing vigorously and ostentatiously on a cigarette and winking at various and sundry of the girls as they passed in their caps and gowns.

For these smart-aleck activities I was presently placed upon the school’s black list and was not permitted to call upon the one night each month allotted to such social intercourse, but as I soon learned to climb a rope ladder this did not annoy me greatly. Anyhow, calling night at Elmwood Seminary was not very exciting. The procedure was to place a dozen or so chairs about a big room, in pairs but with at least twelve inches between them, in which sat the girls and their callers. In the center sat a gimlet-eyed teacher, constantly ready with Biblical and other uplifting quotations and seeing to it that nothing scandalous occurred. From eight to ten the caller was permitted to engage his lady love in conversation, but it was a rule that everything that was said must be audible to the teacher on guard. Whisperings and gigglings were taboo, and resulted in the young man being placed on the black list, and forbidden thereafter to darken the doors of the institution. But occasionally the teacher relaxed her vigilance for a moment, providing an opportunity to arrange a clandestine meeting. That was the principal reason that the boys of Farmington went to Elmwood on calling nights.

The regular Sunday incident of the Seminary girls having been brought to a satisfactory and successful conclusion, I went on downtown. I was very young then, and I considered myself, in my Sunday suit, a very striking and elegant figure. I thought of myself as a parade, and felt morally certain that the eyes of every girl were upon me, and that their hearts were fluttering with amatory admiration. The Methodist church was only two blocks south of the Presbyterian edifice, and I generally reached it as the Sunday-school pupils trooped out with their arms full of lesson pamphlets and their souls full of salvation, Golden Texts and catechisms. I regarded them pityingly, puffed vaingloriously at my symbol of sin, and went on past the Christian church and the Northern Methodist church and so to McKinney’s, the Post Office Building and the fascinating popcorn and peanut machine.

In the winter time Doss’s barber shop was generally open until noon so Billy Priester could shine the shoes of the young bucks who proposed to defile the Sabbath by gallivanting around with young hussies. It was a favorite loafing place for all abandoned wretches who did not care for the glory that was free in all churches. But in summer we generally sat in front of McKinney’s and the Post Office Building and, when finances permitted, ate popcorn and peanuts, envying Riley Hough as he hurried out now and then to attend to the machine and stuff his mouth with popcorn before hastening back into the store.

All of the young sinners of the town loafed there during the church services, and at twelve o’clock noon we rose in a body and walked down the street to Pelty’s Book Store, where the Sunday papers were distributed. The afternoons were devoted to baseball games and amatory pursuits, and occasionally we went fishing. But this was considered a Cardinal Sin, and was frowned upon by even our liberal element; it was felt that it was a desecration of God’s Day to drag one of His creatures from the river with a cruel fishhook. On week days, of course, fishing was all right, although a waste of time, but on Sunday an expedition to Blumeyer’s Ford, or to Gruner’s Hole, was followed the next morning by buzzing comment all over town, and only a grown man could hope to indulge in such sinful adventures and escape subsequent punishment.

4

It was the custom of our pastors and pious brethren, and of the professional sorcerers who were imported from time to time to cast their spells and shoo the demons away from our housetops, to proclaim loudly and incessantly that our collective morals were compounded of a slice of Sodom and a cut of Gomorrah, with an extract of Babylon to flavor the sorry stew. They worried constantly and fretfully over our amorous activities; in their more feverish discourses appeared significant references to the great difficulty of remaining pure, and in effect they advised our young women to go armed to the teeth, prepared to do battle in defense of their virginity.

In Farmington and other small towns of the Middle West this sort of thing was the principal stock in trade of those who would lead their brethren to the worship of the current god; the evangelist assured his hearers that their town was overrun by harlots, and that brothels abounded in which prominent men abandoned themselves to shameful orgies, while church attendance dwindled, and collections became smaller and smaller, and chicken appeared less and less frequently upon the ministerial table. His tirades were generally in this fashion:

“Shall we permit these painted daughters of Jezebel, these bedizened hussies, to stalk the streets of this fair city and flaunt their sin in the face of the Lord? Shall we permit them to lure our sons and brothers into their vile haunts and ply their nefarious trade in the very shadow of the House of God? No! I say NO! Jesus Christ must live in this town!”

Immediately everyone shouted “Amen, Brother!” and “Praise the Lord!” But it was sometimes difficult to determine whether the congregation praised the Lord for inspiring the evangelist so courageously to defy the harlots, or for permitting him to discover them. If the Man of God could find them, why not the damned, too? Certainly there were always many who wondered if the brother had acquired any good addresses or telephone numbers since coming to town. Not infrequently, indeed, he was stealthily shadowed home by young men eager to settle this question.

These charges and denunciations were repeated, with trimmings, at the meetings for men only which were always a most interesting feature of the revivals. At similar gatherings for women, or ladies, as we called them in small-town journalism, his wife or a devout Sister discussed the question from the feminine viewpoint. What went on at these latter conclaves I do not know, though I can guess, for I have often seen young girls coming out of them giggling and blushing. The meetings for men were juicy, indeed. The evangelist discussed all angles of the subject, and in a very free manner. His own amorous exploits before he was converted were recited in considerable detail, and he painted vivid word pictures of the brothels he had visited, both as a paying client and in the course of his holy work. Almost invariably they were subterranean palaces hung with silks and satins, with soft rugs upon the floor, and filled with a vast multitude of handsome young women, all as loose as ashes. Having thus intimated, with some smirking, that for many years he was almost the sole support of harlotry, he became confidential. He leaned forward and said:

“There are such Dens of the Devil right here in your town!”

This was first-hand information, and immediately there was a stir in the audience, many of his hearers betraying an eagerness to be gone. But before they could get away the evangelist thundered:

“Shall we permit them to continue their wicked practices?”

I always hoped to be present some day when the audience forgot itself and answered that question with the thought that was so plainly in its mind, namely, “Yes!” But, alas, I never heard it, although there was much shouting of “Amen!” and “Glory to God!” These meetings for men only were generally held in the afternoon, and their net result was that the business of the drug store increased immediately, and when night fell bands of young good-for-nothings scurried hither and yon about the town, searching feverishly for the Dens of the Devil. They searched without fear, confident that modern science would save them from any untoward consequences, and knowing that no matter what they did they would go to Heaven if they permitted a preacher to intercede for them in the end, or a priest to sprinkle them with holy water.

But the Dens of the Devil were not found, neither in Farmington nor in any other small town in that region, for the very good reason that they did not exist. The evangelist did not know what he was talking about; he was simply using stock blather which he had found by experience would excite the weak-minded to both sexual and religious emotions. He knew that when they were thus upset they would be less likely to question his ravings--that they would be more pliable in his hands and easier to convert.

Our small towns were not overrun by harlots simply because harlotry could not flourish in a small town. It was economically impossible; there were not enough cash customers to make the scarlet career profitable. Also, the poor girls had to meet too much competition from emotional ladies who had the professional spirit but retained their amateur standing by various technicalities. And harlots, like the rest of us, had to live; they required the same sort of raiment and food that sufficed their virtuous sisters; it was not until they died that they wore nothing but the smoke of Hell and were able to subsist on a diet of brimstone and sulphur.