answer. Or it might be the last really dumb thing Charlie ever got a chance to do. Not seeing him might be good luck rather than bad.
Or I might be imagining things, making up a story where there isnât one.
Charlie had been trying to convince himself of the same thing ever since the convention. On good days, he managed to do it for a little while. On bad days, he couldnât come close. On bad days, he told himself it wouldnât matter once Joe Steele took the oath of office. Now he had to hope he was right.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
M ike Sullivan stood on the White House lawn, waiting for Herbert Hoover and Joe Steele to come out and ride together to the new Presidentâs inauguration. It was almost warm and almost spring: Saturday, March 4, 1933. The lawn still looked winter brown; only a few shoots of new green grass pushed up through the old dead stuff.
This was the last time a President would take office five months after he won the election. The states had just ratified the Twentieth Amendment. From now on, January 20 would become Inauguration Day. Winter for sure then, not that it was usually so bad down here in Washington. With telephones and radio, with trains and cars and even planes, things moved faster than they had when the Founding Fathers first framed the Constitution.
A military band struck up the national anthem. As if he were at a baseball game, Mike took off his hat and held it over his heart. A door opened on the White Houseâs column-fronted entrance. The President and the President-elect walked out side by side.
Hoover, a big man, stood several inches taller than Joe Steele. He didnât tower over his successor by quite so much as Mike had thought he would. Had Joe Steele put lifts in his shoes? If he had, they were good ones; Mike couldnât be sure at a glance, the way you could with a lot of elevator oxfords.
One thing that did make Hoover seem taller was his black silk top hat. He also wore white tie and a tailcoat. He might have been an Allied leader dictating terms to defeated Germany at Versailles in 1919. Or he might have been one of the European diplomats who dickered the Treaty of Berlin between Russia and Turkey forty years earlier.
Joe Steele, by contrast, was unmistakably a man of the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. Yes, he had on a black suit and a white shirt, but they were the kind of clothes a druggist might have worn to dinner. The shirtâs collar was stand-and-fall; it wasnât a wing collar. He wore a plain black necktie, not a fancy white bow tie. And on his head sat not a topper, not even a fedora, but a gray herringbone tweed cap.
Hooverâs clothes said
Iâm important. I have money. I tell other people what to do.
Joe Steeleâs outfit delivered the opposite message, and delivered it loud and clear. His suit said
Iâm an ordinary guy. Iâm getting dressed up because I have to.
Wearing a cloth cap with the suit added
But I donât think itâs all that important even so.
All around Mike, people gasped when they saw what the new President had chosen to put on. âShameful!â somebody muttered. âNo, he has no shame,â someone else replied. Mike chuckled to himself. If those reporters werenât a couple of old-guard Republicans from somewhere like Philadelphia or Boston, he would have been surprised. Whenever folks like that deigned to notice the world changing around them, they, like Queen Victoria, were Not Amused.
Well, Queen Victoria had been dead for a long time now. He wondered whether the rock-ribbed (and rock-headed) GOP stalwarts had noticed yet.
Photographers snapped away. Flash bulbs popped. Joe Steele genially touched the brim of his scandalous cap. Hoover looked as if he were sucking on a lemon. Heâd looked that way in every photo of him taken since November that Mike had seen.
Behind the men came their wives. Lou Hoover had been the only woman majoring in geology at
Or I might be imagining things, making up a story where there isnât one.
Charlie had been trying to convince himself of the same thing ever since the convention. On good days, he managed to do it for a little while. On bad days, he couldnât come close. On bad days, he told himself it wouldnât matter once Joe Steele took the oath of office. Now he had to hope he was right.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
M ike Sullivan stood on the White House lawn, waiting for Herbert Hoover and Joe Steele to come out and ride together to the new Presidentâs inauguration. It was almost warm and almost spring: Saturday, March 4, 1933. The lawn still looked winter brown; only a few shoots of new green grass pushed up through the old dead stuff.
This was the last time a President would take office five months after he won the election. The states had just ratified the Twentieth Amendment. From now on, January 20 would become Inauguration Day. Winter for sure then, not that it was usually so bad down here in Washington. With telephones and radio, with trains and cars and even planes, things moved faster than they had when the Founding Fathers first framed the Constitution.
A military band struck up the national anthem. As if he were at a baseball game, Mike took off his hat and held it over his heart. A door opened on the White Houseâs column-fronted entrance. The President and the President-elect walked out side by side.
Hoover, a big man, stood several inches taller than Joe Steele. He didnât tower over his successor by quite so much as Mike had thought he would. Had Joe Steele put lifts in his shoes? If he had, they were good ones; Mike couldnât be sure at a glance, the way you could with a lot of elevator oxfords.
One thing that did make Hoover seem taller was his black silk top hat. He also wore white tie and a tailcoat. He might have been an Allied leader dictating terms to defeated Germany at Versailles in 1919. Or he might have been one of the European diplomats who dickered the Treaty of Berlin between Russia and Turkey forty years earlier.
Joe Steele, by contrast, was unmistakably a man of the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. Yes, he had on a black suit and a white shirt, but they were the kind of clothes a druggist might have worn to dinner. The shirtâs collar was stand-and-fall; it wasnât a wing collar. He wore a plain black necktie, not a fancy white bow tie. And on his head sat not a topper, not even a fedora, but a gray herringbone tweed cap.
Hooverâs clothes said
Iâm important. I have money. I tell other people what to do.
Joe Steeleâs outfit delivered the opposite message, and delivered it loud and clear. His suit said
Iâm an ordinary guy. Iâm getting dressed up because I have to.
Wearing a cloth cap with the suit added
But I donât think itâs all that important even so.
All around Mike, people gasped when they saw what the new President had chosen to put on. âShameful!â somebody muttered. âNo, he has no shame,â someone else replied. Mike chuckled to himself. If those reporters werenât a couple of old-guard Republicans from somewhere like Philadelphia or Boston, he would have been surprised. Whenever folks like that deigned to notice the world changing around them, they, like Queen Victoria, were Not Amused.
Well, Queen Victoria had been dead for a long time now. He wondered whether the rock-ribbed (and rock-headed) GOP stalwarts had noticed yet.
Photographers snapped away. Flash bulbs popped. Joe Steele genially touched the brim of his scandalous cap. Hoover looked as if he were sucking on a lemon. Heâd looked that way in every photo of him taken since November that Mike had seen.
Behind the men came their wives. Lou Hoover had been the only woman majoring in geology at
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