Herb ’n’ Lorna (A Love Story) | by Eric Kraft, as Peter Leroy |
Chapter 12: | |
In Which Coarse Goods Help Herb and Lorna Survive the Great Depression |
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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 into the lush carpet pictured
on bags of grass seed. Added to his love of selling was his fondness
for Studebakers, which grew and grew. He couldn’t seem to get enough
of them, know enough about them. In idle hours at the showroom, he
read and reread the sales brochures, and he even read all the technical
and repair manuals. He knew the cars so well that other salesmen
brought potential customers to him to have their questions answered and
gladly gave Herb a part of their commissions when he helped with a sale—a
small part, but they were glad to give it. It wasn’t unusual for
one of the mechanics, even for Old Randolph himself on occasion, to come
in from the shop wearing a puzzled look and holding some doohickey or other.
“Say, Herb,” he might say, “what the Sam Hill is this thingumabob supposed to do? God knows I never saw the like of it before now.” “This?” Herb might say, giving the part the once-over. “This gadget is part of the free-wheeling assembly. Brand new. We’ve only sold two cars with it so far. You don’t have one in for repair already, do you?” “To tell the truth, I’m not sure if it’s broke or not. Just makes a funny kind of noise.” “Whirrrr-ticka whirrrr-ticka?” “Yep, that’s it. Kind of a whirrrr-ticka whirrrr-ticka.” “That’s normal,” said Herb. “Button her back up.” It was at this time, when Herb had some money to spare, that tinkering for the sake of tinkering became his consuming leisure-time occupation. Earlier, the little projects he undertook had practical ends, however meandering may have been the routes he traveled to attain them. At this time, though, perhaps symptomatic of his infection by the attitudes endemic at the time—freedom, daring, aimless whoopee—Herb began undertaking more and more projects for the intricate work they promised, without much regard for the practicality of the result. He was at a critical point as a tinkerer. On the one hand, he had discovered how to increase the salutary distraction that comes from fiddling around, the distraction that, to take woodworking as an example, comes from cutting and sanding, producing a bunch of smooth rectangles and a nice pile of sawdust. On the other hand, however, Herb was losing sight of the need to justify such fiddling around by producing something that has enough utility to keep one from being considered a loony. (Just think of all the happy guys across America who are passing this moment making the chips fly with powerful and noisy routers. If asked by a neighbor, “What the hell are you up to, making all that racket?” they don’t have to be so frank as to say, “Oh, just fiddling around.” They justify the time they spend in their cozy workshops by making signs for the homes and cottages of their friends and neighbors, thereby demonstrating their generosity and, quite frequently, their reckless disregard for the plural and possessive forms of surnames.) Herb designed and built, to consider one example of his work during this period, an insert for kitchen drawers that, when the drawer was fully opened, raised itself from the drawer and presented the contents at an angle of about forty-five degrees. When one began pushing the drawer closed, the gadget began collapsing into the drawer again, its rate of collapse matching the rate at which one closed the drawer. Hour after happy hour went into the design, the construction of prototypes, the modification of the prototypes. They were hours when Herb whistled while he worked. Lorna, who loved his projects, sometimes sat beside him and talked or helped while Ella played with scraps and rejects, keeping always close beside her a Raggedy Andy doll with which she had fallen in love. Lorna took pleasure from Herb’s pleasure in the work, and she admired his ingenuity, his mechanical cleverness, which she considered the equal, in its way, of the work of the anonymous coarse-goods animator. These were wonderful, contented, worry-free hours, but the product of those hours was, May recalled, almost useless: Well, that folding-drawer gadget was an absolute scream. Herb outfitted our entire kitchen with them! Every time you opened a drawer, this handsome—and they were very handsome—wooden whatchamacallit would riiiise up—very gracefully—and tillllt forward—and dump everything on your feet. But it was a beautiful thing to look at, just the same, and it worked like a charm. It didn’t do anything that anyone in her right mind would want a gadget to do, but it did it remarkably well.It was also at this time that Herb began leaving projects half-finished. The most pleasant part of the work ended, for him, when he was going to have to turn out a product. Often, Lorna would step in at this point and finish up, while Herb went on to something else. She was curious to see how the project would turn out, and she loved adding her work to Herb’s. 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? You’ve been doing all right. Fine.
But not long ago you weren’t doing so well, remember? Whenever you
were a little short or you wanted something for Lorna, or you needed something
for Ella, where did you turn? To me! You turned to me, Herb.
And I was happy to see you. Now you’re selling cars, and that’s fine,
just fine. You’re making some money. Everybody’s making some
money. Now is our big chance. While everybody’s got some money,
it’s our chance to expand! This is your chance to build a nest egg,
Herb—put some money away for little Ella.”
“LORNA,” said Luther, “forgive me for saying that I’ve heard this before.”
LYING IN BED at night in those moments when even the closest lovers turn to private thoughts in the privileged solitude of those about to fall asleep, Herb and Lorna felt—this is the honest way to put it—purer for having renounced something that had always been a guilty secret; they felt (individually, privately, secretly) proud of having put this bit of the past behind them and secure in the idea that if things did get bad, or if Ella needed something that cost an awful lot of money, if there were an emergency, then (“A mechanical genius,” he said, thought Herb), but only then (“An artist,” he said, thought Lorna), coarse goods would pull them through. |
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ND
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 filled his time keeping the salesroom
and the display cars tidy. Herb pursued potential buyers with undiminished
fervor, but fewer and fewer bought. One day, Garth asked Herb to
take a walk with him at lunch time.
“Herb,” he said. “We’re in big trouble.” “Sales have been slow,” said Herb. “Worse than slow,” said Garth. “I don’t know how long we can keep going.” “It’s that bad?” “I’m afraid so. We put a lot of money into remodeling the showroom. When cars were selling fast, we made a lot of deals that didn’t make us much but were—” “—good for the future,” said Herb. “Yeah,” said Garth, “good for the future. Well, the future’s here, and we need cash. We’re not selling enough cars to pay the mortgage, Herb. Hell, we can’t even pay the light bill.” “I didn’t realize—” “The partners were going to close the place, Herb.” “They—they were? How—why did—why did they keep it open?” “May’s been paying the bills.” “Oh.” “I can’t keep going back to her again and again. It makes me feel—like a kid—like asking my mother for money for a show. I don’t know what to do.” “Maybe I could help out,” said Herb. “Lorna and I have a little. We—” “No. I can’t take your money, Herb. You’ve got Ella to look out for.” “You won’t be taking it. I’ll be investing it—to save my job.” Herb and Lorna invested everything they had saved in Babbington Studebaker. Six weeks later, the Studebaker Corporation went bankrupt. The company was placed under the control of court-appointed receivers. The owners of the Babbington dealership locked the showroom doors, and Garth began spending his time at the beach, in Nosy’s bar. Herb cursed himself for having done a foolish Piper thing. Lying awake at night, he vowed that Lorna and Ella wouldn’t suffer for his foolishness. He would do what he had to do. He would design some new prototypes for coarse goods, and he would get Ben to let him have some goods to sell. Lying beside him, Lorna vowed that Herb would not suffer for having done what he had thought it best to do. She would do what she had to do. She would telephone Luther and tell him—ask him—to take her back. THE YEARS that followed were difficult ones. The Studebaker Motor Company began clawing its way back. The Babbington dealership reopened, for three days a week, with a staff of two: Herb and Old Randolph. Herb was working on straight commission. Garth Castle did not come back. He lived at the beach, avoiding the company of anyone who made him feel that he ought to shake off this setback, pick himself up, dust himself off, get a grip on himself, pull himself together, get back to work—especially May. Whenever Garth looked at her, he saw in her face, in her eyes, the admiration she still had for him, and that look of trust and confidence made him feel like a fake and a failure. In fact, he had been something of a fake, but May had never objected to that quality in him; she’d considered it part of his charm.
Herb (lower right, squatting
with hand on bumper) demonstrates the stability of the
The truth was that Garth was afraid to go back to
work. He was afraid of failing again. The world, the nation,
and Studebaker had pulled a dirty trick on him, letting him get his hopes
up and then letting him fall, like some wiseacre who pulls a chair out
from under a guy. Garth wasn’t going to fall for the same nasty gag
twice; he wasn’t even going to risk falling for it.
Well, it was horrible, simply horrible. You have to understand that he wasn’t inviting me to sail off to Tahiti to join him in living some idyllic island life, some carefree existence—coconut milk and mangoes and grass huts, that sort of thing. No, nothing like that. He was asking me to be a bum, like him, like those smelly, lumpy men. A bum! He wanted me to join him so that he’d know it was all right to be what he had become. Well, not on your life! I ran from there, ran.She did. She bolted for the door in her nightgown. Garth made a grab for her as she went by, a drunk’s try at an embrace, but she stepped aside and he lost his balance and fell. May pushed the screen door open and ran along the boardwalk toward the boat. Behind her, she could hear Garth laughing. I cried all the way across the bay. I was running away from him. I was disgusted by him. And I was furious with him. The bastard was still so handsome. I can close my eyes now and see him slumped in that chair, asking me to live at the beach, and he looks like a damned movie star. I think I ran because I was afraid I might stay. Well. Maybe. Who knows?Lorna and Herb sat up with May and listened to the whole horrible tale. “This is the end,” May said. “It really is. I can’t do anything for him, he won’t let me do anything for him, and he won’t do anything for himself. There’s nothing that can be done, nothing.” “May,” said Herb, “let me try just one thing.” He took her hands and squeezed them. “Hear me out, May,” he said. “Hear me out. My father was a failure, you know. He lost everything in cork furniture. When he knew he was ruined, that there wasn’t any hope, he sank into a chair. He wouldn’t get out of that chair, just sat there. He wouldn’t leave it except, well, you know.” May smiled despite herself. “Let me go to see Garth,” said Herb. “Let me go to see him alone, and tell him the whole story about my father. Maybe if he sees someone else’s mistake, he can benefit from it.” Herb went to see Garth, but he didn’t say anything about his father. He found Garth at Nosy’s, and when Garth suggested that Herb have a drink with him, Herb said, “Gee, Garth, it’s pretty early in the day for me.” From his pocket he pulled what looked like a pocket watch. He flipped the case open and said, “Oops, wrong one.” “Say, what is that?” asked Garth. He leaned across the table. “This?” said Herb. “Oh, sort of a toy.” Herb had never before taken such a risk. He had never even shown a piece of coarse goods to anyone he knew. He winked. He extended the Watchcase Wonder toward Garth and began turning the stem slowly. “Just look at the workmanship,” he said. Garth watched, amazed. “You think you could sell these, Garth?” Garth lifted his eyes from the animated couple and looked at Herb. He was wearing a twisted grin, and in his eyes, behind the blankness that had settled there, Herb could see an ambitious gleam. “NOW, HERE’S THE WAY I SEE IT,” Herb said on the trip to Boston.
“Since the dealership’s open again, you ought to come back. Start
selling Studebakers again.”
ON THE FIRST of July in 1933, Albert Erskine, who had been president
of Studebaker when it went into bankruptcy, killed himself. The news
sent a shudder through Garth, who imagined, unrealistically, that he might
have felt driven to such an act if Herb hadn’t halted his downward slide.
Herb and Garth heard the news about Erskine while they were in Boston,
picking up a supply of coarse goods from Uncle Ben.
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Wonderfully
Odd, Comically Rich
A
Funny, Sexy Story Told with Consummate Skill
Herb ’n’Lorna is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin's Press, at $13.00. You should be able to find Herb ’n’ Lornaat your local bookstore, but you can also order it by phone from: Bookbound at 1-800-959-7323You can order it on the Web from
Libros en Español: Herb ’n’Lorna is also available in Spanish from Ediciones Destino. |
LITTLE
FOLLIES
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Herb ’n’Lorna copyright © 1988 by Eric Kraft Herb ’n’Lorna is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Now available in paperback from Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press. The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile. Photo of the “Rigid Rockne” reprinted from The Studebaker Century,
copyright
© 1983 by Dragonwick Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Used
by permission of Asa E. Hall and Richard M. Langworth. Photo from the collection
of Asa E. Hall.
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