Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [98]
But, just as in the photographs, the city’s streets were still packed with every possible sort of car and truck and other exotic motorized vehicle, constantly honking, growling and scolding each other in some indecipherable and arcane machine language. Perhaps their foolish drivers thought the glass and steel of their beloved automobiles protected them?
Almost to a man, folks were dressed drably, in blacks, browns and grays. Elegant clothes were viewed as an unjustified extravagance in these dark times, when everything not absolutely essential should be reserved for “our boys” overseas. The only exception to this dull and conservative trend was the surprising new direction in women’s hemlines, which were tending decidedly upwards, but only because every inch of cloth saved from a civilian’s skirt translated into a little more material that could go to support the war effort. Max spotted one woman after another who was actually out in public with a scandalous three or four inches showing above her ankles.
Of course, everyone was wearing white cloth masks.
“They won’t help,” Max said to a random passerby. “My executioner is much too small to be filtered out by even the tightest weave of your ridiculous gauze and butter-cloth constructions.”
“Excuse me?” the startled woman said, but Max had already gone on his way.
Even in the daytime, much of the city was closed down. There were “Closed by order of the New York City Board of Health” signs on the doors of every school, church, theatre, moving picture house, dance hall and saloon that he passed. A man on one corner was standing on an apple box, brandishing an open and unloaded shotgun above his head.
“There’s no medicine known to doctors that can stop the Influenza,” he cried, quite truthfully (whether he knew it or not), “but placing a shotgun under your bed will save you! The gun’s fine steel will draw out the fever! It’s been proven!” Coincidentally perhaps, the fellow was ready with pamphlets to hand out, directing customers to a nearby gunsmith’s shop. Other impromptu street-side proselytizers broadcast their own ideas to fight the pestilence, with proposed cures ranging from hours of deep sweating, to standing outside stark naked, to inhaling the vapors from one woman’s proprietary pepper stew recipe — copies of which were also available, for a modest price. Each orator had a small crowd of spectators gathered around him, at least until roving police officers, or civic-minded busybodies shooed them away, citing the ordinances against public gatherings.
Max journeyed on, with a cockeyed smile on his lips and a jaunty kick to his stride. He ignored the rude stares he received from many passersby, perhaps incited by his outlandish dress in these funereal times, or his blatant lack of a cloth mask. He couldn’t say, nor did he care. The prettier ones among them received a tip of his boater in reply, which only seemed to increase the knife-edged looks of disapproval brandished at him.
The street-level shop windows, whether on businesses open or closed, were plastered with all manner of bills and signs. Some exhorted citizens towards desired behavior, such as, “Open-faced sneezing is against the law! Report all open-faced sneezers!” Another admonished him to “Give to the Our Boys in France Tobacco Fund!” And still another, apparently willing to leave the specific details up to each reader, simply demanded, “Do your share!”
A green grocer, serving as an ad hoc satellite office of the Bureau of Labor, posted a huge outdoor banner that advertised for city-dwelling coloreds who were willing to relocate out to the country’s farm belt states, to replace field hands who had gone to war or died of the flu. A boy