I
This story is told because others need to know it. They need to know
it now, when all the world is making a blind struggle to find youth-a
new creative spirit.
It is the experience of just a common, everyday man-myself. But
thousands of others have gone through my same experience. They are
not finding the help, though, that I found. It is because I found
this help-found something that man has always been seeking-that I
feel impelled to tell my story.
My name is Harvey Allen. I was born in New York City and had
lived there all my life. When the Big Thing happened, I was sixty
years old. My wife and I had two sons, both married. We had six
grandchildren.
We had lived in the same Harlem apartment for twenty years-with
front windows looking out on the street, side air-shafts, and a rear
view of clotheslines and fire-escapes. I never see a clothesline now
that I don’t think of that day in October.
The neighborhood had changed since our coming. The Ghetto had
expanded and taken us in. The color-line was drawn just a block away,
in the next street. But the place was home, and we had stuck there.
One of our sons, Walter, lived in Yonkers. The younger son, George,
lived over in Brooklyn. We didn’t see either of them often. They both
worked hard to support their families. Evenings and Sundays they
had their different family interests; and their wives had their own
relatives to visit.
My wife, however, made frequent trips to their homes. She helped our
daughters-in-law by doing most of the sewing for the grandchildren.
But she always returned in time to have my dinner ready at night,
when I got home tired from my day’s work. She has never neglected
me. Our youthful love affair was a good deal romantic, and we have
always been real pals. She is a descendant of one of the old New York
families of the best American pioneer blood.
Sometimes of an evening we went to a picture-show. But we had dropped
into the habit of spending most of our evenings at home. Occasionally
some old friend would call; or Miss Marsh, who had a small room in
the apartment across the hall, would drop in for a few minutes. But I
usually read aloud, and my wife sewed. We both have always been great
book-lovers.
I have never lost my youthful satisfaction in just being with my
wife. I liked to look and see her seated there by the table, her
white head bent above her sewing, and the rays from the droplight
falling across her hands. Her slight figure always carried an air
about it; and her hands were shapely and delicate, in spite of all
the hard work she had done. Her hair still kept its girlish curl, and
she wore it in a loose Grecian knot at the back of her head. She
wore her cheap clothes, too, with the distinction of a New Yorker.
Whenever she felt my gaze, she would lift her eyes and smile at me
across the table. I waited for this smile. A certain light in her
soft brown eyes has never failed to fascinate me.
Whenever Miss Marsh dropped in, I would let my wife entertain her. I
would smoke my pipe and read to myself. Miss Marsh got on my nerves.
She was from the South; had seen better days, but was now clerking
in a dry-goods store on One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street. She was
a thin, little old maid, who tried to be girlish. She laughed and
gushed a good deal, and dyed her hair and painted her face. But my
wife, who is kind to everyone, always defended her.
“Poor little thing! If she didn’t try to keep up her spirits and look
as young as possible, she’d lose her position in the store. And she
does say some sharp, bright things. She leads a lonely life. And I
don’t believe she has enough to eat.”
I can tell these things now about Miss Marsh; for later she and I
came to understand each other better.
I worked in a downtown printing-plant. It was an old established
concern, and I had worked there for years. I had been foreman in one
of the departments until they put in a younger man. When the old
proprietor died, and his son stepped into the father’s shoes, a good
many changes were made. The son was a modern efficiency man.
It cut pretty deeply into my pride to be shifted around from one
job to another-each a little inferior to the former and commanding
less pay-and then being always finally misplaced by a younger man.
But I swallowed it all and stayed on. I knew that jobs were not
lying around loose for men of my years. My long experience mended
a good many blunders made by the younger chaps in the plant. They
acknowledged it, too, whenever I jokingly told them. But at the same
time they smiled indulgence of “old Pop,” as they all called me.
I took this title goodnaturedly, but something in me always shrank
from it a little. It was from the patronage of youth that I shrank-a
patronage just tinged with contempt for my years. But I shrank more
from their pity the day that I finally got my discharge. And they did
pity me, for they all liked me. I know that my sense of humor made me
popular with them.
The discharge came unexpectedly, though I had been fearing and
dreading it for a long time. This fear and dread had begun to look
out of my eyes. I caught it sometimes in the mirror, and felt a pride
of resentment against it, as something that hurt my self-respect.
But what hurt me worse was the knowledge that my wife saw it, too. I
shrank sensitively from any depreciation of myself in her feelings.
My masculine pride wanted to keep her always impressed with my
strength.
She never said anything; but at times I could feel her anxiously
watching me. There was a sympathetic encouragement in her smile, and
in the press of her hand on my arm after she had kissed me good-bye
when I was starting to work in the morning. I always met this smile
with one of whimsical reassurance. But we both had the feeling of
bluffing some menacing calamity. And when I walked away, my shoulders
drooped under this cringing new self-consciousness, and my feet
shuffled heavily. I had always walked upright and with a spring. I
realized these changes in myself and resented them. But somehow I
didn’t seem to have the power to throw them off.
The boss who discharged me hated to do it, and was as kind about
it as he possibly could be. He assured me that it was not because
I wasn’t doing my work well. Then, realizing that this was an
unnecessary thing to say, he cleared his throat, embarrassed.
They all knew there was no part of a printer’s work that I didn’t
understand and couldn’t do. But the new management’s policy was for
young men. My only fault was accumulated years.
“You’ve done your share of work, anyhow, Pop,” he said; “now it’s up
to your two boys to take care of you. You worked hard for ’em, and
fitted ’em with the best kind of training to make their own way.”
That’s the conventional balm always put on this kind of hurt. Guess
I smiled a little ironically. My two boys were having a pretty hard
struggle to take care of the responsibilities they already had.
George had had a good deal of sickness in his family, and Walter was
supporting his wife’s parents. I had been letting them both have
money.
It wouldn’t have been quite so hard if they had waited until Saturday
night to discharge me. But they didn’t. It was Tuesday morning. And
they were going to give me a full week’s pay because of my long
service. They meant to be kind, of course, in their way-trying to
let me down easy. But the offer of the full week’s pay added to my
humiliation and stirred in me a lot of bitterness. My head went hot
for a minute and the blood drummed in my ears. But I managed to speak
quietly, and smiled when I said,-
“I only want what’s owing me. I’ve always worked for all I got.”
In going over this scene so many times since, I know that I felt
something deeper than just my own bitter resentment. I had a vague
sort of feeling that it was up to me to stand for the justice due to
other men of my years, in my same fix. These fraternal bonds are in
our blood.
The boss tried to expostulate. I stood firm. And they finally made
out my time. I took what was due me, and the boss and I shook hands.
I could feel him watching me until I got out of the office. I knew
the kind of look that was in his face, but I didn’t turn around to
see.