XXXIII Welcome Home — And Shut Up!
There are a few weeks which bid fair to be pretty trying ones in our national life. They will mark the return to the city of thousands and thousands of vacationists after two months or two weeks of feverish recuperation and there is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.
In the first place, they are all so offensively healthy. They come crashing through the train-shed, all brown and peeling, as if their health were something they had acquired through some particular credit to themselves. If it were possible, some of them would wear their sun-burned noses on their watch-chains, like Phi Beta Kappa keys.
They have got so used to going about all summer in bathing suits and shirts open at the neck that they look like professional wrestlers in stiff collars and seem to be on the point of bursting out at any minute. And they always make a great deal of noise getting off the train.
“Where’s Bessie?” they scream, “Ned, where’s Bessie?... Have you got the thermos bottles?... Well, here’s the old station just as it was when we left it (hysterical laughter).... Wallace, you simply must carry your pail and shovel. Mamma can’t carry everything, you know.... Mamma told you that if you wanted to bring your pail and shovel home you would have to carry it yourself, don’t you remember Mamma told you that, Wallace?... Wallace, listen!... Edna, have you got Bessie?... Harry’s gone after the trunks.... At least, he said that was where he was going.... Look, there’s the Dexter Building, looking just the same. Big as life and twice as natural.... I know, Wallace, Mamma’s just as hot as you are. But you don’t hear Mamma crying do you?... I wonder where Bert is.... He said he’d be down to meet us sure.... Here, give me that cape, Lillian.... You’re dragging it all over the ground.... Here’s Bert!... Whoo-hoo, Bert!... Here we are!... Spencer, there’s Daddy!... Whoo-hoo, Daddy!... Junior, wipe that gum off your shoe this minute.... Where’s Bessie?”
And so they go, all the way out into the street and the cab and home, millions of them. It’s terrible.
And when they get home things are just about as bad, except there aren’t so many people to see them. At the sight of eight Sunday and sixty-two daily papers strewn over the front porch and lawn, there are loud screams of imprecation at Daddy for having forgotten to order them stopped. Daddy insists that he did order them stopped and that it is that damn fool boy.
“I guess you weren’t home much during July,” says Mamma bitterly, “or you would have noticed that something was wrong.” (Daddy didn’t join the family until August.)
“There were no papers delivered during July,” says Daddy very firmly and quietly, “at least, I didn’t see any.” (Stepping on one dated July 19.)
The inside of the house resembles some place you might bet a man a hundred dollars he daren’t spend the night in. Dead men’s feet seem to be protruding from behind sofas and there is a damp smell as if the rooms had been closed pending the arrival of the coroner.
Junior runs upstairs to see if his switching engine is where he left it and comes falling down stairs panting with terror announcing that there is Something in the guest-room. At that moment there is a sound of someone leaving the house by the back door. Daddy is elected by popular vote to go upstairs and see what has happened, although he insists that he has to wait down stairs as the man with the trunks will be there at any minute. After five minutes of cagey manoeuvering around in the hall outside the guest-room door, he returns looking for Junior, saying that it was simply a pile of things left on the bed covered with a sheet. “Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Then comes the unpacking. It has been estimated that in the trunks of returning vacationists, taking this section of the country as a whole, the following articles will be pulled out during the next few weeks:
Sneakers, full of sand.
Bathing suits, still damp from the “one last swim.”
Dead tennis balls.
Last month’s magazines, bought for reading in the grove.
Shells and pretty stones picked up on the beach for decoration purposes, for which there has suddenly become no use at all.
Horse-shoe crabs, salvaged by children who refused to leave them behind.
Lace scarfs and shawls, bought from itinerant Armenians.
Remnants of tubes formerly containing sunburn ointment, half-filled bottles of citronella and white shoe-dressing.
White flannel trousers, ready for the cleaners.
Snap-shots, showing Ed and Mollie on the beach in their bathing suits.
Snap-shots which show nothing at all.
Faded flowers, dance-cards and assorted sentimental objects, calculated to bring up tender memories of summer evenings.
Uncompleted knit-sweaters.
Then begins the tour of the neighborhood, comparing summer-vacation experiences. To each returning vacationist it seems as if everyone in town must be interested in what he or she did during the summer. They stop perfect strangers on the streets and say: “Well, a week ago today at this time we were all walking up to the Post-Office for the mail. Right out in front of the Post-Office were the fish-houses and you ought to have seen Billy one night leading a lobster home on a string. That was the night we all went swimming by moon-light.”
“Yeah?” says the stranger, and pushes his way past.
Then two people get together who have been to different places. Neither wants to hear about the other’s summer—and neither does. Both talk at once and pull snap-shots out of their pockets.
“Here’s where we used to take our lunch—”
“That’s nothing. Steve had a friend up the lake who had a launch—”
“—and everyday there was something doing over at the Casino—”
“—and you ought to have seen Miriam, she was a sight—”
Pretty soon they come to blows trying to make each other listen. The only trouble is they never quite kill each other. If only one could be killed it would be a great help.
The next ban on immigration should be on returning vacationists. Have government officials stationed in each city and keep everyone out who won’t give a bond to shut up and go right to work.