9. More About Mama

There are a few stories about my mother in her advanced years—stories well-known in the small Indiana town where she lived so long—which will a little better acquaint you with her stalwart individualism and her witty eccentricities—interesting items about her which did not fit very well into the pattern of the earlier chapters. They are disconnected, but worth telling, I think.

One of the typical stories about her was told of an occasion, in her ninetieth year, when, cane in hand, and a basket on her arm, she had toddled down to the post office to mail a letter. Consistent with her frugality, she never bought more stamps than she needed at the moment. On this day she asked for a three-cent stamp and tendered a twenty-dollar bill in payment. It so happened that the post office’s cash reserve was low, and they couldn’t handle that much money. They were quite willing to trust her, but Mama abhorred indebtedness and the thought of owing anybody three cents was insupportable.

Directly behind her stood a tall, well-dressed, amiable man who said, “Madam, if it will be a convenience to you, I can change your money.” She thanked him graciously; and when the transaction had been completed she said, “I see that you are a stranger among us. I am Mother Douglas. Perhaps you will tell me who you are.”

Said he, “I am Reverend so-and-so, the new minister of the United Brethren Church.”

Mama offered him a wrinkled little hand and said “I am glad to meet you, sir. I want to shake hands with a preacher who is able to change a twenty-dollar bill!”

My mother was conspicuously old-fashioned. Never, in my recollection, did she change her manner of dress, or her habits, or her opinions. By refusal to alter the fashion of her clothing, she claimed that she could be in style—for a brief period—about once every twenty years.

I often tried to give her a few modern conveniences in her little home, but she preferred a primitive mode of living, and had no use for labor-saving gadgets or electrified gimcracks.

Once I bullied her into consenting to have an electric range installed in her kitchen; but, as soon as I was out of town, she ordered them to come and get it, and bring back the little old oil stove.

I made use of all the persuasive powers I possessed to be allowed to build an up-to-date bathroom in her home, but she steadfastly refused, because, she said, a bathtub made her faint. Then I asked her to consider my welfare; that I wasn’t used to going out of doors to a little wooden house on the back of the lot, and that some dark night when I was visiting her I would fall down and break my neck. This did not move her, either, but it must have made an impression. For the next time I was there, and before going to bed, was gropingly making my way in the darkness to her comfort station, she amazed and startled me by turning a switch in the kitchen which flooded this area with light. “Now,” she called, “you’ll not fall.”

When the Great Depression first struck, and the banks all over the country were closing, and people by the thousands were becoming bankrupt overnight, Mama took her cane in hand and walked down Monroeville’s main street, first on one side and then the other—going into every place of business. They tell me she shook her cane in the face of each proprietor (with all of whom she had a first-name acquaintance) and said: “People are in a panic. They are taking all their money out of the banks everywhere. This is what makes banks fail. All the money I possess is in the bank here in Monroeville. I am not taking out one penny, and I don’t want you to. If all the businessmen leave their money in the bank, it will not fail.” I am happy to add that the businessmen followed her good advice and the bank continued to function.