household drudgery, that a woman could run a home and have a career, that husbands could and should share household and child-raising duties.
This all sounded pretty good, but when I plugged Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam into the equation, something didn’t add up—I couldn’t quite picture either one of them doing a dish or pushing a sweeper, and I figured both were too self-centered to ever have a kid.
But it made for a good, mildly controversial speech, which received a standing ovation, the Coliseum director returning to the microphone to let the crowd know that, shortly, Miss Earhart would be signing copies of her book in the lobby. Soon I was making change and dispensing full-price copies of a three-year-old volume that was available in a cheaper edition, but not here.
Amelia signed three hundred and some copies of her book, and spent time with every customer, shaking hands, laughing, listening, each treated as an individual, and if she felt any condescension for any of her public, her eyes did not betray it; she did the same with those who bought no book, merely came through the line with a program to sign.
With Amelia piloting her big, powerful, twelve-cylinder Franklin, we left the Coliseum shortly after ten o’clock and, following the practice that was a constant over our two weeks of appearances, set out immediately for the next stop on the schedule—Mason City, the easiest drive of the tour. We checked in at the Park Inn, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, around midnight.
Usually we drove all night, checking into hotels at dawn, frequently granting the press an interview over a room-service breakfast prior to getting in a few hours of sleep before the next lecture. She gave the reporters more outspoken stuff than her lecture audiences.
“If women were drafted,” the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist modestly proposed to a gaggle of golfball-eyed Iowa scribes, “they would share the privilege with men of killing, suffering, maiming, wasting, paralyzing, impoverishing, and dying gloriously. There’d soon be an end to war.”
For the first several days and nights, she and I had said little, nothing beyond polite conversation; Amelia was cordial, if not quite friendly, and seemed distant, if not quite cold. I didn’t understand it, since I felt we’d hit it off pretty well at the Field’s opening and at the Palmer House dining room, after.
But driving through the night, in the Franklin, with her at the wheel more often than not (she loved that big car, loved to drive it, and I didn’t mind letting her, because it handled like a boat), we sat in silence. I didn’t take offense; hell, I just worked here.
Everywhere we went, it seemed, Amelia was claimed as a native daughter—whether at a Women’s Christian Temperance Union meeting in Lawrence, Kansas (“What a pleasure to welcome home a Kansas girl”), a Zonta International tea at St. Louis, Missouri (“This outstanding woman grew up here and really took our ‘Show me’ state motto to heart!”), even an American Association of University Women lecture in Minneapolis (“Minnesota’s own!”).
She got $250 for each appearance—I was frequently handed the payment checks, as I was mistaken for her manager—and she earned her dough. Detroit was particularly grueling.
At the Hotel Statler (where we’d arrived at 2:00 A.M . the night before, Battle Creek being our previous stop), Amelia held a press conference in her suite over an omelet, six pieces of toast, a cantaloupe, and a pot of hot chocolate. A morning tour of the Hudson auto plant (where the Essex was made—the car she was currently endorsing, despite the Franklin she preferred, which was from a previous endorsement deal) was followed by a Women’s Advertising Club luncheon in the Detroit-Leland Hotel dining room, where she did not speak but received a warm ovation as guest of the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association. This made necessary a mid-afternoon tearoom
This all sounded pretty good, but when I plugged Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam into the equation, something didn’t add up—I couldn’t quite picture either one of them doing a dish or pushing a sweeper, and I figured both were too self-centered to ever have a kid.
But it made for a good, mildly controversial speech, which received a standing ovation, the Coliseum director returning to the microphone to let the crowd know that, shortly, Miss Earhart would be signing copies of her book in the lobby. Soon I was making change and dispensing full-price copies of a three-year-old volume that was available in a cheaper edition, but not here.
Amelia signed three hundred and some copies of her book, and spent time with every customer, shaking hands, laughing, listening, each treated as an individual, and if she felt any condescension for any of her public, her eyes did not betray it; she did the same with those who bought no book, merely came through the line with a program to sign.
With Amelia piloting her big, powerful, twelve-cylinder Franklin, we left the Coliseum shortly after ten o’clock and, following the practice that was a constant over our two weeks of appearances, set out immediately for the next stop on the schedule—Mason City, the easiest drive of the tour. We checked in at the Park Inn, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, around midnight.
Usually we drove all night, checking into hotels at dawn, frequently granting the press an interview over a room-service breakfast prior to getting in a few hours of sleep before the next lecture. She gave the reporters more outspoken stuff than her lecture audiences.
“If women were drafted,” the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist modestly proposed to a gaggle of golfball-eyed Iowa scribes, “they would share the privilege with men of killing, suffering, maiming, wasting, paralyzing, impoverishing, and dying gloriously. There’d soon be an end to war.”
For the first several days and nights, she and I had said little, nothing beyond polite conversation; Amelia was cordial, if not quite friendly, and seemed distant, if not quite cold. I didn’t understand it, since I felt we’d hit it off pretty well at the Field’s opening and at the Palmer House dining room, after.
But driving through the night, in the Franklin, with her at the wheel more often than not (she loved that big car, loved to drive it, and I didn’t mind letting her, because it handled like a boat), we sat in silence. I didn’t take offense; hell, I just worked here.
Everywhere we went, it seemed, Amelia was claimed as a native daughter—whether at a Women’s Christian Temperance Union meeting in Lawrence, Kansas (“What a pleasure to welcome home a Kansas girl”), a Zonta International tea at St. Louis, Missouri (“This outstanding woman grew up here and really took our ‘Show me’ state motto to heart!”), even an American Association of University Women lecture in Minneapolis (“Minnesota’s own!”).
She got $250 for each appearance—I was frequently handed the payment checks, as I was mistaken for her manager—and she earned her dough. Detroit was particularly grueling.
At the Hotel Statler (where we’d arrived at 2:00 A.M . the night before, Battle Creek being our previous stop), Amelia held a press conference in her suite over an omelet, six pieces of toast, a cantaloupe, and a pot of hot chocolate. A morning tour of the Hudson auto plant (where the Essex was made—the car she was currently endorsing, despite the Franklin she preferred, which was from a previous endorsement deal) was followed by a Women’s Advertising Club luncheon in the Detroit-Leland Hotel dining room, where she did not speak but received a warm ovation as guest of the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association. This made necessary a mid-afternoon tearoom
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