FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL MACHINERY, INCLUDING THE CITY HALL
DRAG NET OF DRUG STORES, COFFEE HOUSES AND DANCE HALLS.
April 11, 2018:—Mayor Kopensky is particularly deep in Singapore
learning. He conceals his well-beloved studies in public, as senators of
old used to conceal their wealth. He must, of course, get his majorities
from the University students, who are the majority of the population, so
many are studying even after marriage, and so many men continue their
studies after entering business.
In political hours the attitude even of the older students of the
University of Springfield is seemingly ungrateful. It is that of the
traditionally impudent college freshman toward the imaginary greasy
grind and toward the professor who eggs him on to scholarship. They
think the names of these City Commissioners: “Cave Man Thomas,” “Sparrow
Short,” “Coffee Kusuko,” “Montague Rock,” “Drug Store Smith,” “Jefferson
Radley,” “Mayo Sims,” mean dash and romance.
This is the “City Hall” block of seven people in the city commission of
eleven. The Mayor is the eighth. He seldom has occasion to use his
prerogative of the casting vote, for it is not often five to five on a
side. There are only three people in the commission who represent the
School Board, one of them is Black Hawk Boone.
Boone roars away with the others, who are on his right and left, like
Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses. And it is only at the end
of some long and well dramatized skirmish that Boone wins by forcing the
issues in his paper the _Boone Ax_ and scaring a more cowardly four in
Kopensky’s faction to vote with him temporarily on what seems a purely
educational issue. It is not always the same four he bulldozes and many
and obvious are his plots.
Drug Store Smith and Coffee Kusuko supply about one-fifth of cold
science to the Mayor’s City Hall stew. They represent the “slick” side
of Kopensky. They have natty ideas of dress and natty ideas of
administration. The remainder of Kopensky’s routine political workers
are slack in every way except in the matter of secret party-discipline.
The columnist Romanoff in a charitable mood says, in the _Boone Ax_ for
April 11, 2018:—“When we view the soggy-souled but amiable group of city
fathers around Kopensky, we rejoice. There is no sign of a complete
clean-up of the ages. The patriot is still at home in the government.
And, as Andrew Jackson knew, there is an intrinsic governing power in
any mass of humanity linked by friendship and under American skies.
Along with the City Hall dishonesty there goes a certain mercy and
fraternity, far from the sternness of the editor of this paper, who may
take my remarks for what they are worth, and he may fire me if he
chooses. Let my boss, the editor, admit, since he must, that the City
Hall gang keep our more angular truth-telling moods from torturing the
town beyond reason. As it is, I declare myself the only real jester
among all our children of light.”
April 15:—As I wander about, I am glad that in my former life I was a
member of the Anti-Saloon League of Central Illinois. There is no such
thing as a saloon to be seen. The bar room is as extinct as the
trilobite. Coca-Cola and Bevo have their new successors every day, along
with mysterious elaborations of coffee and tea, and spiced drinks from
the Jungles of South America. And, of course, after a hundred
non-alcoholic years the soda fountains have tremendous importance. Drug
Store Smith, member of the city council, is the local Soda Fountain
King. He is now the owner of all the drug stores, including Dodds’ Drug
Store, which keeps its old location at Fifth and Monroe.
I have indeed a curious impression as I go into Dodds’ for a soda. Fifth
and Monroe reminds me of a century before. It is still the street-car
center of our town. There are as of old long benches in Dodds’ where
people are waiting to take street cars and there are the same revolving
stools along the soda fountain counter but that counter is twice as long
and there are tables for customers now. The sodas are as good as those
wonders Jim Sylva used to mix, but no better.
Across the street is the old Coe’s Book Store, owned by some descendant
of the original Coe family. There is, as of old, a great counter of
magazines, some of them better, some of them rawer than the old list.
Many of them are now published in Springfield or near by. The majority
of the motion picture magazines are full of simpering photographs of Los
Angeles ladies in bathing suits. They are, of course, delightful to
behold but the mystery still remains as to what this has to do with the
art of the motion picture. Of the literary magazines, the _Atlantic
Monthly_ and _Poetry_, a _Magazine of Verse_, still survive. The
_Atlantic_ still keeps its brick red cover and its nippy New England
style and _Poetry_ still has Pegasus on the cover and new poets on the
inside. _Vogue_ and _Vanity Fair_ are still for sale. I wander out and
watch the Fifth and Monroe crowd again. It is Saturday, nine o’clock in
the evening, and the automobile horns are deafening and the crossing
policeman is quite busy.
And now I have gone to a good old slapstick movie, by a descendant of
Charlie Chaplin, and I am standing again on the corner and it is half
past ten. Many people are looking up at the passing figures in the dance
hall in the third story over the theatre. Windows are open and wild
Singaporian music pours out into the streets. There are great yellow
Singaporian lanterns hanging in front of the open windows and yellower
light is pouring from the hall itself. It is one of the chain of Yellow
dance halls in the syndicate owned by Kusuko and part of his political
machine, along with his chain of Coffee houses. This particular place is
called “The Hall of Velaska.”
There was a man who sat by me in the movie laughing like a boy. He is
now beside me again. He is a gigantic black haired but aged Jew,
obviously the Rabbi Terence Ezekiel, heretic, and planter of the Oaks of
Springfield. He is in most matters a henchman of Boone and a political
“scrapper,” whose deeds have set the town ringing. We are friends in a
minute. He has seen me with Avanel in his synagogue—takes me as a matter
of course, asks me to go with him to the Tom Strong Coffee House and
Restaurant, just east of the Gaiety Theatre. There we encounter Boone
and the over-sensitive quivering Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third.
They are enjoying eleven o’clock salt mackerel together. They take along
with it the knockout coffee of Kusuko, who owns all the coffee houses
under whatever name, new or old.
And so the Rabbi and I join in these refreshments and have a jolly
midnight with the heart of political and educational Springfield and, as
long as the Rabbi leads the argument, there is more than enough wit in
the assembly. He has the Jewish turn for puns and it is plain that
Doctor Mayo Sims and Kopensky have a second laughing foeman.
But amid the jokes the Rabbi is not a bit backward about hatching local
empires along with this inbred Michael and this black-haired descendant
of Daniel Boone. Their present campaign, which they do not conceal in
its tactics from me, their “cousin,” is, of course, an effort to
out-maneuver the Mayor. Kopensky wants to bring cheap unskilled labor to
town, leaving out the usual University entrance-examination. His
ostensible reason is that the World’s Fair buildings will not be
completed August 15, the date of opening, without this aid. It is
obviously but a maneuver to bring more City Hall votes to town and votes
of a manageable type.
And so I talk politics with these three. Boone proclaims that the
presence this evening of Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, is an
evidence that the Boones and the Michaels can pull together from time to
time and the Rabbi and the lad seem completely ruled by this headlong
Boone who cannot eat mackerel without glowering as though he were
devouring his enemies.
The other two are jollying him out of his intensity and he seems to
thank them for it. He really relaxes a little toward midnight, as
though, after all, this is a festive occasion of red blooded lads in a
coffee house. As I think it over, walking home alone, there is an
elusive impression that young Michael was being given an extra show of
confidence for “reasons” by the apparently headlong older gentlemen.
April 17:—I have been asking questions about Drug Store Smith. It seems
this person, Smith, has aspirations, and values his exceedingly nominal
place among the scientific chemists of America and will leave the town
any time to attend a congress of such, where he receives due
invitation:—and it is part of the tactics of Boone to lure him out when
his vote will be an inconvenience. But it is not always easy to get him
sufficient honors of this kind for he is not a benevolent scientist. The
charm of his tonics and beverages is deemed specious, though some of
them are discreetly marked: “Highly recommended by Doctor Mayo Sims.”
“They say” he did some sound chemical and biological research in his
youth in the Springfield University laboratories.
I have been asking questions and am beginning to understand Coffee
Kusuko. He has a chain of coffee houses as long as Smith’s chain of
pharmacy-post-office-street-car-station-patent-medicine-confectionery-
cigar-stand-and-soda-fountain establishments. Kusuko has made the black
demi-tasse the special Springfield vice and there are no deeper addicts
than those who fight him politically.
People feel quite sure his drink contains some more sinister ingredient
from the Malay peninsula. And he it is who sees to it that all the
business offices are equipped with coffee urns that whistle through the
late afternoon:—the custom of mixing business and coffee having
originated with his great great grandmother, a famous local
stenographer, who in the end became lady mayor, through her
stenographers’ guild. Politics and coffee are hereditary with Kusuko.
In the legitimate organization which ministers to this drinking habit,
Kusuko has concealed his henchmen, who bring him all needed information
and carry abroad all necessary orders. And they have a considerable
opportunity to serve him. Drinking begins in the offices at 4.30 P. M.
and in the more fastidious business groups with many forms, till it is
near to resembling the Japanese tea-ceremony. Stenographers, some
austere and some luxurious, mingle with women political leaders, such as
Orator Carrie Moore, Portia, the Singing Aviator, and others. These help
materially to make up the sum of grace and bedevilment of the business
and political day. A little later people who are still restless and do
not want to go home drift off toward the motion picture houses, or the
drug stores or the coffee houses of Kusuko.
As to the coffee houses, I make my tours through many and find these
places extraordinarily varied in design, though the same general average
of a crowd is in most of them. There is a Chinese-looking place called:
“The Opium Fish.” There is a place hung with copies of Velasques, Goya,
Sorolla, and others, called: “The Spanish Gypsy.” This is a place
quieter than most. Then there is a kind of a Jazz emporium with copper
and brass decorations, called “The Whing Whang Tree.” There are two
other places that specialize in chop suey, called: “The Mock Duck” and
“The Fire Cracker King” and then I loaf in “The Pig and the Goose,” and
“The Sword of the Skallawag,” etc. In these last two on slightly raised
platforms the Malay storytellers sit cross-legged. They unroll the
beautiful ensnaring legends of the Malay peninsula and the islands
around it. These storytellers appear occasionally in some of the other
coffee houses, also, along with negro singers, etc.
And now comes Kusuko’s last touch, where he has completely replaced the
old political functions of the American saloon, as an acceptable harness
for the social brigands. There is always some allusion in the coffee
houses, some implication, that the next real thing to do will be
dancing, later in the evening, in wonderful Yellow Dance Halls. These
are also owned by Kusuko and are the very keystone of his system. I
follow the drifting tide of jolly good fellows several evenings and it
leads me inevitably to the halls before midnight.
They are never too near the coffee houses and soda fountains and never
too far away. There is nothing on the surface to make one apprehensive
in the halls, except some very daring social dancing. There is often a
motion picture show for part of the evening just off the lounging
hallway and place of promenade. The crowd is not much below the average
of the regular Fifth and Monroe crowd of all kinds of people.
April 20:—I attend this evening, at the invitation of two prospective
art students, a session of the Board of Education. They explain the
session to me, while we sit in the gallery and look down upon the
general tempestuousness.
Boone is not only the presiding officer but has the impression that he
is the whole Board of Education. Despite this they are fond of him on
the board, but row with him till the men cuss before the ladies in
desperate efforts to hold him down, and keep him down, and prevent his
bullying the whole assembly out of existence. He insults everybody
mercilessly and wags his black beard at them till they quail and quake.
It is a joy, a sorrow, an amazement, and a wonder to me to see people
who look so much like the old Prognosticator’s Club, fighting away, and
when I meet them all at the end of the verbal war none of them see me
except as a casual bystander.
April 21:—I have had a jolly evening at Tom Strong’s with my beloved
Rabbi. Boone is our inevitable theme in the end. The Rabbi, as we drink
the black coffee and eat the salt mackerel, confirms my tentative remark
that Boone, as president of the Board of Education, enforces its edicts,
though few of the decrees are those into which from the standpoint of
strategy, or even conviction, he can put his private heart. But, the
Rabbi points out, they are all clubs with which Boone can pound the
Mayor’s majority in the city commission and he backs the board’s edicts,
every one, in _The Boone Ax_, and ever so often forces something through
the council.
Boone is also University Professor, one hour a week, and in his
professorial special pleading, which he excludes from his activities as
chairman of the Board of Education, he presents to the University and
the world a new doctrine of health and economics, called: “Boonism” by
his followers, and “The Complete Healing” in his text book.
The Rabbi expounds: “Boonism denounces metal money for a starter.
Boone’s aversion to it has come through millionaires burying their money
and bringing out coins one at a time. Boone advocates a special system
of paper currency for an economic remedy, and as a means of abolishing
millionaires. So Kusuko allows only metal money to be used in his
places, which regulation Boone, after some contests, has accepted with a
sense of humor, since he likes black coffee and cannot deny it and wants
a jolly place to meet his friends. And meanwhile millionaires, though
forbidden by the constitution to exist, keep on hiding money.”
According to the Rabbi:—“The most outstanding prescription in the
personal health chapters of ‘The Complete Healing’ is the Apple Amaranth
orchard. The devotee is to walk in the orchards summer and winter,
breathing the breath of the bark, blossoms, apples, and leaves, with
certain well-worded philosophic meditations. In general Boone condemns
drugs, so there is a personal reason for making war on him on the part
of Smith and Sims and their followers.
“The Amaranth Apple orchard, around the grave of the Sangamon County
pioneer and saint, Hunter Kelly, is particularly esteemed by the Boone
following.”
But I cannot imagine Boone or any remotely resembling imitator indulging
in philosophic meditations. I could rather imagine him climbing a tree
like a cinnamon bear, only with more speed and fidgets.