“Father,” mother would say turning away from the telephone, “it’s a D.B.” And that only meant one thing when I was a little girl growing up in Peru, Indiana in the 1910s: a deadbeat. Father was a country doctor with a great big heart and a woeful inability to collect his fees. All the non-paying clients in town knew it. Mother, being less of a humanitarian and more aware of the butcher’s and baker’s bills, never quite reconciled herself to father’s charitable inclinations.
Mother knew all the deadbeats by their voices on the phone. We used to say that she could tell by the way the telephone rang whether or not it was a paying patient. But father would not be intimidated and in fair weather or foul, day or night, at meal time or not, he would set off to take care of the deadbeats.
One of the most offensive D.B.s was a Mrs. Bailey. The Baileys lived down by the Wabash river on Canal Street and Mrs. Bailey was very prolific. As long as I can remember Mrs. Bailey kept on having babies and father always attended the births. In fact, she named one of the boys Homer after Father. Father seemed rather flattered, but mother was furious — “an insult!,” she called it. “Polishing apples instead of paying their bills! Indeed!”
But the time came when we were very grateful for Mrs. Bailey. It happened like this:
One rainy day Father came home for lunch and announced that cousin Caroline in Fort Wayne was very ill according to a telephone call from cousin Edward that morning. The doctor in Fort Wayne had recommended an operation but cousin Caroline refused to go through with it unless Father gave his consent. So Father decided to leave that afternoon for Fort Wayne. He would stay overnight and return the next morning.
In those days in Indiana our chief means of transportation between towns was what was known as an inter-urban -- a sort of trolley car which ran on a schedule between small-towns. W always thought they were great fun and considered it quite cosmopolitan to take the inter-urban from Peru over to Wabash to visit my cousins. Father planned to take the 2:30 inter-urban to Fort Wayne.
That same afternoon I had been invited, along with several of my friends, to attend the movies with Claire Thurman and her mother. This was really an event because the Thurmans were the richest people in town and the only ones who had a chauffeur. To be called for after school by a chauffeur-driven car was sheer heaven. This was in the era of the silent movies when they would stop the film right at the most exciting point and flash special announcements on the screen like, “Will Mrs. James Brown please go home — your house is on fire,” or “War Declared!” So it was that while we sat there on that afternoon a special bulletin was flashed on the screen: “Inter-urban crash. Many persons dead or injured. No names or particulars available yet.”
I was frantic. I had to find out if Father was all right and I had to get home to Mother before she heard. I fled from the theater and Mrs. Thurman followed me and caught up with me in the lobby. “What in the world is the matter child?” she asked. After I told her about Father being on that trip, she hustled me across the street to the office of the Sentinel to get more information. No more details were available and they couldn’t get through to the next station because the crash had apparently knocked down some power or telephone poles. We decided to wait a while and maybe some word would come through. The waiting was a nightmare. Everyone was trying to be so kind but sort of looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, half expecting me, no doubt, to go into hysterics. I gritted my teeth and sat there not saying a word for what seemed like hours. But I could finally stand it no longer. “Mrs. Thurman,” I said, “Please take me home. The people here will surely let us know if they hear anything more.” They assured us they would.
Mrs. Thurman broke the news to Mother. I guess I couldn’t talk. Mother was wonderful. My sister started to cry and so did I. But mother sternly told us to stop the nonsense. There was a good chance that father was safe and we must be brave. Mrs. Thurman insisted on staying which was probably just as well. Mother and Mrs. Thurman had absolutely nothing in common except that they each had two daughters. They did not mix socially. In fact, the Thurmans didn’t mix with anyone socially. They just sat up there on their hill in their beautiful big, cold, foreboding house and looked down on the rest of us.
But that night, Mrs. Thurman really came through. She persisted in carrying on a rather practical conversation and we had to make a pretense of politeness. The time did pass more quickly than it would have had we been alone. We made ourselves a time schedule. We would call the Sentinel every 15 minutes but no more often than that, and we would all take turns. So the long night dragged on and on and still no word. We sat there for at least four more hours. I don’t believe any of us remembered the next day one word that had been spoken.
About nine o’clock the phone rang and we were all afraid to answer. Mother finally took a deep breath and slowly lifted the receiver. There was a gasp and a sob, and then, “Oh Father. Oh Darling!” And that was all she could say over and over again. When she hung up the tears of joy really flowed. Even Mrs. Thurman was crying.
Then the rest of the words came tumbling out of Mother’s mouth: “Father missed the 2:30. Mrs. Bailey had another baby and he didn’t get away until four, so he came along just in time to take care of all the injured people and that’s why he couldn’t call sooner. God bless Mrs. Bailey! I’ll never call her a deadbeat again."
But of course she did.
(Mary Scaramella was the Major’s mother. She died in 1998 at the age of 87.)
What a great story.