When I went to New York, I had in mind for myself a flashy career right out of a woman's slick magazine plot. I would have an office on at least the fifty-ninth floor of a skyscraper and would get ahead so fast that vice-presidents would shiver over their breakfast coffee daily in fear that when they got to their offices I would have usurped their swivel chairs. Friends in California were going to hear about me clear across the continent and marvel and envy. "Just think--and we never really appreciated her genius. She lives in a penthouse now...." I was going to be one of the noisiest trumpets in The Manhattan symphony, and wear a John-Frederics hat with a rose on top.
When I went in for my placement interview at Columbia, however, I was almost as startled as the counselor when I heard myself announce with burning sincerity that I'd like a job in the hinterland.
"Do you mean that you'd leave New York?" she demanded sternly, as if she were giving me a sobriety test.
"Yes," I said. "The subways smell. And I'd like to go some place where cultivation is on a larger scale than in the window boxes at Bonwit Teller. I'll live in the country and come back here on my vacations just to be quaint."
"Of course," the counselor warned me, "the opportunities for advancement probably won't be as plentiful if you take a job in a small town. I think you might be quite successful right here."
"You know," I said, "confidentially, I don't think I really want to get ahead. Yesterday I visited some bright young friends of mine. They've all got fascinating jobs and they are all forging ahead fast. They live five in one apartment. To get into their bathroom, you have to fight your way through damp stockings that are as thick as Spanish moss growing on old oaks in a Louisiana swamp. I'll take less money in a spot where it goes farther and where people sometimes stroll. Of course, I'd just as soon have s job that's interesting."
"Well, the Fels research Institute at Antioch College in Ohio wants a secretary who can also edit their publications."
On my way to California for the summer, I stopped in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and had an interview with Dr. Sontag, the director of the Fels Research Institute. It is one of the leading childstudy centers in the country, making a long-range inquiry into the effects of prenatal and postnatal environment. I wanted a job there very much.
Just to face the issue immediately and have it over with, I said to Dr. Sontag, "I hope that my handicap doesn't come as too great a shock to you. It really isn't hampering to me at all, and I assure you that you won't have to make any allowances for me in assignment of duties, if you should decide to give me a chance here."
Dr. Sontag, with dignified solemnity said, "As a physician there is very little that shocks me."
Had I known him better at the time, I would have recognized a slight shift in the level of his right eyebrow that implied amusement. If he had possessed a beard I am sure he would have chortled into it. He hired me a few-days later by telegram. When I returned to Ohio to take up my duties, I had a chance to see my reference letters that had been in the Doctor's possession when he interviewed me. There was no doubt; my handicap certainly didn't come as a surprise to him!
Every single reference letter went into flowery rhetoric about my physical condition. Curiously enough, the letters all treated my handicap like some kind of subtle virtue. It was dwelt upon much more fully than any of my good, sterling secretarial qualification. The letters were flattering enough, but I still marvel that anyone ever hired me--as a secretary anyway-on the basis of them. They certainly weren't typical recommendations.
They contained choice eulogies similar to these: "...and she can carry a cup of hot tea across a room as gracefully as anyone else." "...she can chin herself sixteen times on a bar." (It didn't specify what kind of a bar.) "...this girl can actually beat me at tennis." Ideally, the letters would have been most persuasive pleading the case of a somewhat bright slugger applying for a job as bouncer in a night club. I asked Dr. Sontag whatever possessed him to take a chance on someone whose gentlest talent was carrying a cup of tea and who otherwise sounded thoroughly muscle bound and probably had two cauliflower ears concealed under her hat. "I figured we could always use you to put down an insurrection." That was all the satisfaction I ever got out of him. My job had everything I like best--except a big salary. However, money stretched twice as far in a village as it would have in New York. I could wear comfortable shoes to work and I didn't have to put on a hat in the morning and race for the subway, and nobody cared whether or not I had a good little black dress from Saks. The staff at the research foundation and at the college were friendly and interesting people. The subjects of the study--about one hundred children of all sizes and shapes and varieties--breezed in and out of the offices on schedule to liven up my routine The work was varied, and I learned all manner of fascinating things while I corrected the spelling and punctuation of the scientists who did the research and wrote the publications. When I looked out my office window, I saw green grass with crocuses pushing through it in the spring and red leaves lying on it in the fall. There was air enough for everyone to breathe deeply. The vacations were long, with pay. And the Antioch atmosphere was so thoroughly congenial and stimulating that many people exposed to it go through the remainder of their lives with a retrogressive psychosis--a wistful tendency forever to look back on "the good old days."
I am quite sure I would have grown old and toothless, but not rich, quite contentedly on that job, if I hadn't happened onto the one thing that had more appeal.
During my second summer's vacation, my college roommate, Lucile Hutton, came East and together we drove my car all over Quebec and Ontario in Canada and through New England. It was on Cape Cod, in Provincetown, that the feeling came over me strongly that maybe my job in Ohio didn't have absolutely everything. We stayed in Provincetown much longer than we had planned, while I humored this whim which wasted no time developing into a lifetime conviction.
I met a Man. I have met quite a few in my day, but this was different. It was a pick-up. Who picked up whom is still a moot family question. Anyway, we met in the Provincetown Museum and wasted at least an hour acting interested in old Sandwich glass and whalebones. We haven't yet been formally introduced, but we've gotten by all right on an informal basis. I recognized the encounter as important. That very night I wrote a postcard to an attractive friend of mine in New York. "Having a wonderful time. Met a magnificent man in a museum. Terribly glad you aren't here."
She replied by postcard. "Is magnificent man in museum a mummy? If so, glad I'm not there too." "Magnificent man not a mummy, but would make a fine pappy. I think his name is Herman. but that's all there is against him."
His name wasn't Herman. It was Sherman--so, all faults thereby eliminated, he turned out to be perfect. To indicate my complete enthusiasm for him, I must admit that I accepted his proposal of marriage while still believing him to be Herman.
I wasn't nearly as impetuous as he was, however. He didn't even have an approximation of my given name when he proposed. And he made his declaration, of necessity, at the top of his lungs.
We were riding horseback along the Cape Cod dunes. He suggested that we get off our horses, but since I was so unimpressive on the remount and didn't have a crutch with me, of course. I refused. I show a regrettable simple-mindedness at times. In addition to my own lack of cooperation, another deterrent to romance was my horse. He didn't feel so friendly disposed toward the other horse, as I did toward the other rider. In fact, my unobliging nag stayed at least two lengths ahead or two lengths behind his stablemate.
Still "Herman" was a man of action who was determined to overcome all odds. He wished he knew my first name since he felt the situation might be cozier under the circumstances. But nothing could defeat him when his inspiration came. He yelled down the dunes after me. "Mrs. Harris! Mrs. Harris!" he called. "Will you marry me?" "Oh, Herman," I yelled back. "I would simply love to marry you and you may call me Louise, now that we are formally engaged." "And you may call me Sherman, if you want to," he said. "That's my name." So I did, and he did--and three months later we were married.
The only reason we waited that long was because my father sent me a stern parental wire. "Insist you get acquainted with this stranger before marrying him."
As I said to Father. "You just don't know how easy it was to get acquainted with him. Besides, I'm terribly good at it."