The Zebra Derby Read online

  “So many people these days,” I said, “are thinking of economics. For those we have Hansen, Hadley, Keynes, Garver, Malthus, de Sismondi, Ruml, Quesnay, George, Ricardo, Gresham, Jevons, Marshall, and, of course, many others.”

  “Well,” said the farm wife, “if you’ll ask all them folks to come out of the trailer, I’ll fix a little potluck.”

  “Why, bless you,” laughed Alaric, “he wasn’t talking about people. Those are all books.”

  “Books!” she exclaimed, drawing her children behind her. “Books is the instrument of the devil. Abner, fetch me the shotgun.”

  chapter seventeen

  I packed my clothing in my suitcase and closed the lid. Nebbice sat in the love seat brooding over a newspaper. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider, Asa?” she said.

  “No,” I answered definitely. “I’m leaving, and if you try to tie me to the bed again, I’ll scream.”

  “Oh, go on, then,” she snapped. “Who cares?” She rustled the newspaper irritably.

  I picked up my suitcase and walked to the door. “Good-by, Nebbice. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m afraid it was never meant to be. We are worlds apart, Nebbice. There is a—”

  “Oh, get going, mealymouth,” she snarled.

  “—gulf between us that cannot be bridged. Although I have found in you much to admire, there is—”

  The door burst open and Alaric ran in. “I’ve got it, Asa,” he cried. “At last I’ve got it. I know what we’ve been doing wrong.”

  “I got a letter from Yetta Samovar this morning,” I said. “I’m going.”

  “It’s so obvious,” said Alaric, “that I’m embarrassed to admit it. It’s been staring us in the face all along.”

  “My mind is made up,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

  “A blind man could have seen it.”

  “It’s no use. You can’t stop me this time.”

  “Listen,” said Alaric. “What was everybody afraid of during the war? I’ll tell you: they were afraid that after the war was over men would be selling apples on the streets. The energies of the whole nation were directed to preventing men from selling apples on the streets. Selling apples on the streets became the great national bugaboo, a coast-to-coast phobia. Whatever happened, people said, men would not sell apples on the streets.

  “So today there isn’t a single man selling apples on the streets. An entire phase of our national economy is absolutely untouched, a whole industry ignored.”

  “Gee,” I said, “that’s right. A blind man could have seen it.”

  Alaric slapped me on the back. “It’s waiting for us, Asa. A whole great virgin market waiting to be sewed up. We’ll do it right, Asa. We’ll sell apples as nobody has sold apples before. We’ll have non-upsettable applecarts made of plastic. We’ll have the most complete stock this city has ever seen—Jonathans, Winesaps, Delicious, Northern Spies, Baldwins, Yakimas, russets, Gravensteins, greenings, Duchesses, Roman beauties.”

  “A veritable cornucopia,” I breathed.

  “Say, that’s good, Asa. The Cornucopia Mobile Apple Emporium. We’ll have a big neon cornucopia made—red, blue, yellow, and green. We’ll clean up. And the beauty part of it is that our investment will be so small.”

  “I have no more money,” I said.

  “That’s all right,” said Alaric. “We’ll sell your car. It looks just like the 1942 model anyway.”

  “The man came and took it back this morning.”

  “Oh. How about your bonds?”

  “Those went for the Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium.”

  “Your mustering-out pay?”

  “Whitefish.”

  “Your savings?”

  “Lamps.”

  “Not all of it?”

  “Cooky cutters.”

  Alaric sat down on the love seat. He turned to Nebbice. “Do you still want him?” he asked.

  “No. Let the jerk go.”

  “You’ll probably never find another.”

  “I’ll take cold showers,” she said.

  “It is not without a sense of sorrow,” I said, “that I take my leave. Although our association has netted me little materially, I feel nonetheless that I have been enriched by it.”

  “Say, let me see that paper a minute,” said Alaric to Nebbice. “Something down in the corner of the page looks interesting.”

  She gave him the paper.

  “Look here,” he said excitedly. “A contest. Hey, this is a cinch. All you have to do is find all the Oxydol boxes concealed in this painting of the Sistine Madonna and, in ten words or less, complete this sentence: ‘I like Oxydol because—’”

  “I go now,” I said, “to travel up the people’s way into the sun. I wish that I could prevail upon you, my friends, to come hand in hand with me. But you are intent upon following the snare-lined path of capitalism that leads to the abyss. Someday you will be awakened, and I hope the awakening is not too rude, for I am beholden to you for many kindnesses.”

  “How’s this, Alaric?” asked Nebbice. “Listen: ‘I like Oxydol because it is delicious with some kind of canned or fresh fruit.’”

  “That’s eleven words,” said Alaric. “How’s this? ‘I like Oxydol because of the finespun yet potent gossamer of its faerie suds.’”

  “That’s beautiful, Alaric,” said Nebbice.

  “O.K.,” said Alaric. “That’s done. Now you look for the Oxydol boxes in the painting, and I’ll look through the rest of the paper for some more contests.”

  “A struggle, yes,” I said. “But there is joy in the people’s movement, joy in communal labors, joy in sharing the fruits of toil, joy in the folk arts. Strong, bronzed people working side by side, singing as they work, clapping one another on the back with simple heartiness, dancing madrigals in the village green on feast days.”

  “Here’s another one,” said Alaric. “Oh boy, this is even better. You don’t have to find any boxes and you get twenty words to complete the sentence, ‘I like Quaker Oats because—’ Let me see now … I got it! Listen, Nebbice: ‘I like Quaker Oats because it makes breakfast such a tranquil interlude. No snap, no pop, no crackle—not a murmur. It’s quiet Quakers for me!’

  “We’ll make millions,” said Alaric. “And to think I was wasting my time with that little jerk Ezra or Asa or whatever the hell his name was.”

  “This is not good-by,” I said, “but rather au revoir. For we will meet again. We will be together again. You two will be one of us. When the eyes of the nation are opened by our achievements, so will your eyes be opened too. You will come unto us, and I say come not shamefaced for your deeds, but come proudly with heads high, for truly you have never strayed from us—how can one stray from humanity?—and what you come to claim is not another’s but yours, because it is all mankind’s and you are of mankind and it is duly yours to share. Nor come with fear and trembling at the new ways you will have to learn. The new ways will not be difficult of learning. It is the old ways that were difficult, for they were artificial ways, the ways of duplicity and deception, the ways of dissimulation and deceit, the hollow ways of a hollow culture. With us you will find naturalness, the expression of man’s potential, the realization of man’s destiny. With us you will at last come into the human estate.”

  “Look,” said Alaric. “Here’s another one. Ten words or less. ‘If I were a rat I would rather be killed by Pomeroy’s Paris Green than any other poison because—’”

  “Au revoir,” I whispered, and closed the door behind me.

  chapter eighteen

  Thirty-eight miles north of Minneapolis, on a section of land belonging to a man named Olaf Qvistbergholm, is a small but high-grade deposit of quartz. Before the war Qvistbergholm conducted a modest business of making quartz crystals for radio sets. He worked alone in a little shack at the mouth of the quartz mine, fashioning the crystals by hand. His business was not large. He worked slowly and carefully, and the price of his crystals, compared to those of other manufacturer
s, was high. A few special jobs from radio makers came his way, enough to provide him with a little ready cash. For the rest, he had a truck garden, two cows, some hogs and chickens. His dwelling was a log hut, built by hand.

  Then came the war, and Qvistbergholm suddenly had more business than he could possibly handle. He fell hopelessly behind in his orders. One day an army officer came to see why he was so far behind schedule. The army officer looked over Qvistbergholm’s shack, his primitive hand tools, and said, “Mr. Qvistbergholm, I’m afraid we are going to have to change all this. Your quartz is of a very fine grade, just the kind we need for our Signal Corps radios and other communications equipment. We need at least ten thousand times as many crystals as you can produce by your present methods. We will have to have a big factory here, mass production, assembly lines, thousands of workers. Your country is at war, Mr. Qvistbergholm, and we are going to have to mobilize you.”

  The next day a man came from the War Production Board and told Qvistbergholm that the government would lend him ten million dollars to build a factory and quarters for the workers. Then came surveyors who surveyed the land and marked off where the factory would be, where the workers’ dwellings would be, where the roads would run, and where the sewers would flow. Next came engineers to dig the cellars and the sewers and to lay the roads. Then carpenters and steelworkers came to build the factories and homes. Plumbers and painters and electricians followed.

  In four months the job was done. Beside the mine entrance stood a large square factory, windows reaching halfway down all four walls, and filled inside with gleaming new machinery. Extending from the factory were six streets, each a mile and a half long. On each side of the streets were rows of one-story prefabricated houses. The houses were built on four-foot stilts and were divided into two three-room apartments each. They were so designed that the kitchens of the two apartments were back to back and in a small connecting vestibule stood an icebox that both families could use. The apartments were furnished with lodge-type pine furniture in the living room, pine double beds and chests of drawers in the bedrooms, and deal tables and coal stoves in the kitchens. In each house was one indoor flush toilet and a washstand, no bath. For every six houses there was a building containing showers, two on each side of a partition. There were entrances for men and women in each shower building. All the buildings, both showers and houses, were covered with green tar paper and roofed with black tar paper.

  Directly in front of the factory stood the town square. Along this square were two-story buildings marked “Town Hall,” “Church,” “Infirmary,” “Movie,” and “School,” each appropriately furnished. There was one four-story building marked “Commissary,” where all manner of groceries, hardware, dry goods, and home furnishings were to be sold and which contained a bowling alley, a beer tavern, and an ice-cream bar.

  Where the six streets ended was a large sector of arable ground for victory gardening.

  Now that the town was completed, it remained to populate it, which was accomplished in this manner. Into Minneapolis rolled a huge trailer bearing forty Hollywood stars, the Ninth Naval District Band, and six marines who had been wounded at Guadalcanal. The trailer stopped on street corners in every precinct in Minneapolis. The Hollywood stars presented comic skits, and those who were singers sang and some who were not. Then the Ninth Naval District Band played several songs of the services and some dance tunes. Next the wounded marines from Guadalcanal spoke and said that it would be nice if more people at home would take war jobs. Then ushers passed among the spectators handing out application cards for jobs at Qvistbergholm’s quartz-crystal factory. Finally a man from the state Selective Service office spoke and said he was notifying local boards to induct all men under thirty-five not engaged in war work, and the trailer rolled on to the next precinct.

  In nine weeks 5,968 workers enrolled and they were transported with their families in army trucks to the quartz-crystal factory. They were assigned their homes, and sandwiches for all were provided by the commissary. The next morning the workers joined the Quartz Crystal Workers of America (A.F. of L.) and reported to work at the factory. During the first week instructors from the War Production Board taught the workers their jobs. They learned quickly, for the assembly line made each individual job a matter of stepping on a treadle or turning a crank or watching a gage.

  Qvistbergholm was installed in a tastefully furnished office in the rear of the plant. At first he moved his old worktable into the office and continued to turn out a few crystals himself, but he was interrupted so frequently to sign papers that he gave it up. He took to sitting at his desk and twirling his watch chain between signing papers.

  When the factory was operating routinely, the workers turned fuller attention toward their civic life. They named their community Bonanza and organized a municipal government, electing as mayor an energetic and handsome young man named Prosper Feinhaut. A campaign of city beautification was conducted; shrubs and flowers were planted in front of the houses. An auxiliary fire department was organized. Social clubs were formed, and there were sometimes amateur theatricals at the movie theater. Births and marriages occurred, upon which occasions the entire community joined in celebration.

  Bonanza worked and thrived. The life of the town moved busily and harmoniously. To be sure, there was one small strike at the factory, but Qvistbergholm quickly acceded to the demands for higher pay, making the extra payments deviously so as not to violate the Little Steel formula. Production was entirely satisfactory; an Army-Navy “E” waved beside Old Glory. A man from Life magazine came and took pictures of the town, which gratified the citizens although the photographer was curt in his refusal to supply prints to those who asked.

  Early in 1945, orders for quartz crystals were cut back rather sharply. Nobody at the plant was laid off, but in most cases overtime ceased. There were worried expressions now in Bonanza, and much sober talk in the beer tavern. The mayor, Prosper Feinhaut, did not shy from the situation. He studied the circumstances carefully; he interpreted the portents honestly. When he had laid his plans, he called a mass meeting of the townsfolk.

  “Citizens of Bonanza,” he said, “we are not here tonight to kid ourselves. The cutback at the plant is only an indication of what is coming. The war is ending. Soon it will be over, and it won’t be cutbacks that we’ll have to worry about—it will be shutdown. What are we going to do about it?

  “Well, there are two things we can do. We can say that we’re helpless and wait for the end of the war and then go back to Minneapolis and look around for work. Or we can fight; we can keep Bonanza alive and prosperous.

  “Bonanza has been a great experience for us. We’ve not only helped to win the war, we’ve had fun. We’ve gotten to know each other and like each other. We’ve built a fine little community here that we can all be proud of. Well, then, why must it end?

  “We’re a swell team, citizens. We ought to stick together. We’ve shown what we can do during the war; now let’s show what we can do in peace. Let’s stick with Bonanza and grow with Bonanza, our own town.

  “Yes, I know the factory will shut down. But look here. We are 5,968 workers and our families—roughly ten thousand people. How many communities of ten thousand people do you find where everyone is employed by one factory? Look at all the towns of ten thousand that don’t even have a factory. How do these people live? Simple. They live by selling each other goods and services. The shoemaker fixes the shoes of the lawyer who buys his meat from the butcher who has his shop built by the carpenter who buys his nails from the hardware merchant who has his tonsils taken out by the doctor—and so on. Each man has a service or commodity that another man wants. Some are employers, some are employees. Everybody works and makes a living.

  “Here we have the ideal setup. Here is a city that was started by us. This is our city. Are we going to let it die? Are we going to walk out on Bonanza and go fight for work in Minneapolis? I say no!

  “I’ve talked about this to Mr. Qvistbe
rgholm. He is perfectly willing to let us buy our land and houses. He’ll charge us reasonable rates and give us plenty of time to pay. There’s also a lot of land outside the city that he’ll sell to anyone who wants to farm.

  “Now, I’m not asking you to run to Mr. Qvistbergholm and lay your money on the line. I’m not asking you to go into this thing blindly, trusting me. What I want to do is make a scientific survey before we take any action. I want to poll everybody in this town. I want to find out what kind of businesses you would like to go into and how many people each of you will employ. Do you want to start a garage or a bakery or a grocery or a fixit shop or a haberdashery or a barbershop, or what, and how many people, if any, will you have working for you? Next, I want to find out how much money everybody in this town will want to spend for postwar commodities and services and what kind of commodities and services they will spend it for. Will it be for a new car, a new radio, a new roof, a college education, a vacuum cleaner, or what?

  “When this poll is finished, we’ll have all the answers. We’ll know whether or not we can keep Bonanza alive. We’ll know how many people will be working at what kind of jobs. We’ll know how much money will be spent for what kind of goods and services. We’ll be able to make adjustments. Say, for example, that six people intend to sell new radios, but that the demand for radios will support only two merchants. Well, then, four of the merchants will go into some other line of business where the demand is greater.

  “In other words, friends, we are going to make a blueprint for the future. Are you with me?”

  “Yes,” thundered the crowd, and later in the beer tavern and on the stoops of the houses men were saying to their wives, “You damn right. Why go back to Minneapolis and look for work? We can stay right here and be independent. This is our town. He’s got a head on him, that Feinhaut.”

  The Bonanza Blueprint Poll, as it came to be called in the press of the nation, was conducted by the ladies of the Parent-Teacher Association. They went about their work carefully and systematically. They asked each resident what kind of business he wanted to go into and how many people he would employ. They asked each family how much money they would spend for postwar commodities and services and what kind they would spend it for. (The names of all those questioned, of course, were kept confidential.) When the ladies had completed their poll they painstakingly tabulated the results, had them printed into a handsome brochure, and turned over the brochure to Mayor Feinhaut.