A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [86]
“Sure,” answered Johnny. “Didn’t he go up there and turn around and hang the American flag on it?”
Just then a small boy hollered out, “Here he comes!”
“Aw-w-w-w-w!”
Francie was thrilled by the sound of admiration that swayed the crowd when the car came past where they were standing. Carried away by the excitement, she yelled out shrilly:
“Hurray for Dr. Cook! Hurray for Brooklyn!”
26
MOST CHILDREN BROUGHT UP IN BROOKLYN BEFORE THE FIRST World War remember Thanksgiving Day there with a peculiar tenderness. It was the day children went around “ragamuffin” or “slamming gates,” wearing costumes topped off by a penny mask.
Francie chose her mask with great care. She bought a yellow Chinaman one with sleazy rope mandarin mustache. Neeley bought a chalk-white death head with grinning black teeth. Papa came through at the last minute with a penny tin horn for each, red for Francie, green for Neeley.
What a time Francie had getting Neeley into his costume! He wore one of mama’s discarded dresses hacked off ankle-length in the front to enable him to walk. The uncut back made a dirty dragging train. He stuffed wadded newspapers in the front to make an enormous bust. His broken-out brass-tipped shoes stuck out in front of the dress. Lest he freeze, he wore a ragged sweater over the ensemble. With this costume, he wore the death mask and one of papa’s discarded derbies cocked on his head. Only it was too big and wouldn’t cock, and rested on his ears.
Francie wore one of Mama’s yellow waists, a bright blue skirt and a red sash. She held the Chinaman mask on by a red bandana over her head and tied under her chin. Mama made her wear her zitful cap (Katie’s own name for a wool stocking cap) over her headgear because it was a cold day. Francie put two walnuts for decoys in her last year’s Easter basket and the children set out.
The street was jammed with masked and costumed children making a deafening din with their penny tin horns. Some kids were too poor to buy a penny mask. They had blackened their faces with burnt cork. Other children with more prosperous parents had store costumes: sleazy Indian suits, cowboy suits and cheesecloth Dutch maiden dresses. A few indifferent ones simply draped a dirty sheet over themselves and called it a costume.
Francie got pushed in with a compact group of children and went the rounds with them. Some storekeepers locked their doors against them but most of them had something for the children. The candy-store man had hoarded all broken bits of candy for weeks and now passed it out in little bags for all who came begging. He had to do this because he lived on the pennies of the youngsters and he didn’t want to be boycotted. The bakery stores obliged by baking up batches of soft doughy cookies which they gave away. Children were the marketers of the neighborhood and they would only patronize those stores that treated them well. The bakery people were aware of this. The green grocer obliged with decaying bananas and half-rotted apples. Some stores which had nothing to gain from the children neither locked them out nor gave them anything save a profane lecture on the evils of begging. These people were rewarded by terrific and repeated bangings of the front door by the children. Hence the term, slamming gates.
By noon, it was all over. Francie was tired of her unwieldy costume. Her mask had crumpled. (It was made of cheap gauze, heavily starched and dried in shape over a mold.) A boy had taken her tin horn and broken it in two across his knee. She met Neeley coming along with a bloody nose. He had been in a fight with another boy who wanted to take his basket. Neeley wouldn’t say who won but he had the other boy’s basket besides his own. They went home to a good Thanksgiving dinner of pot roast and home-made noodles and spent the afternoon listening to Papa reminisce how he had gone around Thanksgiving Day as a boy.
It was at a Thanksgiving time that Francie told her first organized lie, was found out