The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

AND THEN along came serious trouble: the stock market crash, bank holidays, business failures, unemployment, bread lines, declining Studebaker sales. Garth began letting people go: a mechanic, a salesman, the bookkeeper, two more salesmen, two more mechanics, the janitor, another salesman, until only he and Herb and Old Randolph were left. Old Randolph kept busy keeping old cars running, and Garth...

BECAUSE they were doing so well, they turned away from coarse goods, though their respective uncles tried nearly identical arguments to make them change their minds. “HERB, HERB,” said Ben, “you’re making the biggest mistake of your life. You are a mechanical genius , Herb. Will you just listen to me for a minute, please? ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Obser...

FOR A WHILE, the nation, the Studebaker Corporation, and Herb and Lorna were doing well. Herb sold Studebakers with the zeal of a fanatic. Because he loved selling for itself, it was a far stronger affection than the money he made could have inspired; it was the kind of affection that people develop for leisure activities, for following a basketball team, tending a garden, or trying to turn a lawn...

     As Proust probably says somewhere:      How surprising we find it that, numbered among the many attendants of Love, we do not always find Understanding, the pervasive understanding which we suppose ought to be a prominent member of the procession of Venus. We suppose, and certainly it seems to us perfectly reasonable so to suppose, that love begets, among the many offspring that we suppose it...

     Herb ran the tips of his fingers over May’s breasts. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. But I want to see her move, I want to see what she does. I want to see how she does it. But Lorna — what will I say to Lorna?  May pushed him, nudging him onto his back. “You just lie back,” she said. “I want to do something to you.” I knew it. He flopped onto his back, ready, eager. This is going t...

     Lorna had seen May walk off into the darkness. She had seen Herb watch May go. From the way he watched her go, Lorna thought she could tell what he was thinking. When, just a while later, she saw him walk off, as if he had no other object than to see what the sky looked like from outside the circle of firelight, Lorna was sure she knew what he was up to. He was a little drunk, she knew, and m...

WHEN GARTH turned thirty, May threw a birthday party for him on the beach. Guests arrived in a festive little flotilla, their boats decked out in bright bunting and paper streamers.      Oh, it was a perfect day, just a perfect day, perfect. Clear and hot, with a light breeze, just enough to keep one from sweating unattractively. We swam, of course, and we played some ball game or other — baseball...

     The beach was a wonderful place. It offered the pleasures of sea and sand and bay and the entertainments of people at their ease who are dependent on themselves and one another for their amusements. The clammies welcomed the vacationers, since they were open-handed and their pockets were deep. They liked to have a good time and did. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Exp...

AT MAY AND GARTH’S WEDDING, Herb was best man, Lorna was matron of honor, and Ella was flower girl. As a wedding gift, Garth gave May a cottage on the beach. At that time, the narrow barrier beach across Bolotomy Bay from Babbington was only sparsely developed. Strung along the bay side were a few shacks, shelters for clamdiggers, where they could get out of the weather when the weather was foul,...

     They drank their drinks and made plans for the wedding, and, very late, they went to their beds. Herb made such tender love to Lorna that she thought the proposal-and-acceptance scene must have touched him, and she smiled in the dark at his sentimentality. There was, however, another reason for his tenderness. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations...

ONE RAINY EVENING not long after, Garth and May and Herb and Lorna were settled in front of a fire in May’s living room, and Herb was telling the story of the arrival at the showroom, that morning, of Miss Decker. “She took me by surprise,” said Herb. “She was the last person any of us ever expected to buy a car. We used to joke about it.” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Exper...

     On the Babbingtonians’ final day in Chacallit, Richard and Lena served a buffet supper for everyone: Lester and Millie Piper, Luther Huber, Bertha and Richard Reuter, Clara and Harold Russell, Garth and May, Herb and Lorna.     Bertha was nervous. She was dressed in something she had made herself, without benefit of a pattern, after studying an illustration in a magazine. It was meant to be d...

     May had to elude Auntie Phipps to go out with Garth. She pretended that she went out only with Herb and Lorna, but they all went off to meet Garth, and a foursome was established that would endure for more than twenty years. They went to dances at the Boat Club (which, years later, became the Yacht Club, without a noticeable increase in the size or opulence of the boats that belonged to its m...

HERB SOLD quite a few Studebakers. The work he had put into making himself known and respected began paying off. He began capitalizing on the store of knowledge he’d accumulated about Babbingtonians. He also had the Piper talent in such abundance that he became, in an important sense, his own best customer. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Le...

ELLA WAS ADORABLE from birth. She had the robust good health and pink plumpness that one sees in rubber baby dolls, a resilient firmness that real flesh doesn’t ordinarily exhibit, the rubber-doll bounce of bouncing babyhood. Herb was hugely proud of her. At work, he recounted each of her little triumphs. Several times. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observa...

LORNA PROFITED from the move in an unexpected and wonderful way. She found a lifelong friend: May Castle (then May Hopper).      Oh, good! It’s time I stepped in. Well, there I was, all alone in the handsomest house in Babbington, because, you see, my parents were dead, poor things. They had died in Paris, well, just outside Paris, in a train wreck, a disaster , really. Hundreds killed. And they l...

AND SO they decided to move. Lorna wanted to tell Mrs. Mikszath herself, when they were alone. She invited her for coffee, sat her down, and fussed over her, putting a pillow behind the small of her back, insisting that she kick off her shoes and put her feet on the ottoman, buttering a roll for her, putting a third lump of sugar in her coffee. And then, when she thought that the pillow and ottoma...

Chapter 10 In Which Herb and Lorna’s Daughter Is Born WHEN DR. STICKLER gave them the news that Lorna was pregnant, Herb and Lorna felt, immediately, that this made everything just perfect — not that either wanted things to remain forever as they were, but each felt that for now, with a baby on the way, everything was perfect. But then Herb began to worry. He worried that Lorna might not want a ch...

     Garth provided the solution. One day, when Herb was between trips, Garth asked him to meet him after work. They drove to the rattiest section of the ratty wharf area of Babbington.     In Seafood and Sex , his study of life in “a small coastal town somewhere in America,” T. Wallaston (Stretch) Mitgang, the pioneering psychohistoricosociologist, wrote:      The waterfront area — that is, the a...

     Herb’s table was much longer than the old one. At the head, in place of the sliding door, was a cylinder with an opening in one side of approximately the same dimensions as the opening behind the old door. A crank allowed the doorman to turn this cylinder. As the opening rotated past the opening to the clam bin, the cylinder filled with clams, and, as the opening rotated over the table, the c...

A CURIOUS KIND of cottage industry sprang up in the sunny room behind the Mikszaths’. During the day, while Herb was away, Lorna would work for a couple of hours at a little folding work table that Herb built for her. Building the table had been a labor of love, two loves: love of Lorna and love of tinkering. Along the back of the table, in tiers, were small bins that held all of Lorna’s tools and...

     They astonished each other. Lying in the dark, later, when each thought the other had fallen asleep, Herb asked himself the question Lorna had feared: Where on earth did she get those ideas? He couldn’t help wondering whether Lorna had had more experience than that provided by Andy Proctor, the hero of Chacallit. He knew about the back-seat session with Andy because Lorna had told him one eve...

A MONTH OR TWO LATER, while on a visit to Chacallit, Lorna accepted Luther’s invitation to visit the mill one morning to “say hello to the girls in Links,” and to see “some of the new products we’re going to be making in ivory.” She knew what he must have in mind, and she was curious to see what the unknown designer of animated coarse goods had been up to lately.     “Lorna,” said Luther, holding...

Chapter 9 In Which Herb Becomes a Studebaker Salesman “THIS IS — this is — astonishing , Herb,” said Ben, on the first of Herb’s visits. In his hand he held one of Herb’s prototypes.     This one, the first Herb had created since his marriage to Lorna, represented something quite new. It set a style that would define the course of development for animated coarse goods for nearly two decades. Insid...

LIKE AN ARTIST who finds, to his excitement and terror, that he’s come up with an idea so large and consuming that he may have to spend the rest of his life trying to realize it, who wakes in the night terrified and thrilled, having seen in his dreams a vision of his busy future, Herb saw how much work he was going to have to do before he made even the smallest of public steps in selling, because...