A Genius in the Family

I Suspect I had one of the most unusual fathers anybody ever had. I was
his firstborn. He knew considerably less than nothing about children and
he had to learn how to be a father. He learned on me.

He did not learn easily. In fact, as I look back upon it, he never
thoroughly learned how to be a father. As for me, although I had no
previous experience, I do not remember having very much difficulty in
learning to be a son. I accepted my father as a general run-of-the-mine
father; he wore trousers, had a deep voice and a beard, and otherwise
looked like other fathers. When we first met he did not impress me
particularly. Indeed, either he was so colorless or I was so unobserving
that it was well over two years after we first met that I noticed he was
a member of the family.

As the reader will discover, he was anything but colorless. I must have
been unobserving, because I utterly failed to note the adding of such an
important item to our family as my sister Florence. I distinctly remember
when there were but three of us, my father, my mother, and myself; but to
save my life I cannot remember the occasion of my sister's joining the
family, although I was nearly four at the time. As for my second sister,
who arrived two and a half years later, I remember her coming very
clearly, as I had the impression the house had caught on fire.

My father saw to it very early in my life that there should be an
erroneous impression in my mind concerning the words "papa" and "man." I
was allowed to acquire the impression that the words were synonyms. On a
certain occasion this led to a misunderstanding between me and the driver
of a coal-truck. I happened to be out on the sidewalk in front of our
house in Brooklyn, New York, when this driver delivered our coal.
Shoveling the coal down the coal-hole was an interesting operation to me.
I became impressed also with the evident importance of our family,
because of the large amount of coal which we seemed to need. I spoke to
the driver of the coal-truck on the subject, addressing him as "papa." It
surprised him very much. He denied that he was a papa, was very positive
that he was not my papa, and went so far as to state that he was not
married. What being married had to do with it was not plain to me, and I
maintained that because he wore trousers and had a mustache he must be a
papa. I am told that I added that most papas of my acquaintance did not
have such dirty faces as his.

When the coal had all been put in this person took the matter up with my
mother, stating that I had called him "papa." My mother explained to me
after this little colloquy that I had only one papa, that he was not the
driver of a coal-truck, but, instead, was the papa who lived with us.

Younger readers would do well to realize that in the days of which I
write there were no telephones, no electric lights, no electric street
cars, no bicycles, no automobiles, no skyscrapers, no radios, and no
airplanes. To go anywhere one either walked or was hauled by a horse or a
steam-locomotive. We were living on Third Street near Smith Street in
Brooklyn at this time. Even in the large cities--and Brooklyn was
one--the streets had a very small amount of traffic in them, except in
downtown districts. No one ever thought of stop lights and traffic
policemen. The average street car or wagon moved at about five miles per
hour. No one ever thought of being run over and killed. The streets were
clear and open. Indeed, there were very few overhead wires on poles,
except in downtown New York. The streets were lighted with gas-lamps and
men came around every evening on every street in the city and lighted
them, and came again in the early morning and put them out.

The streets in many places were paved with rounded cobblestones. Probably
there was not a rubber-tired vehicle in all the world. Had there been
bicycles, they could not have been ridden in most city streets.

Our house on Third Street, was a few doors from Smith Street There was a
horse-car line on Smith Street. In one direction it ran to Fulton Ferry,
which, in my estimation, was a very long way off. My father went to his
business in New York on the Fulton Ferry. In the other direction the
Smith Street horse cars ran to Ninth Street, where they turned and
crossed the Gowanus Canal, the water in which was indescribably dirty. I
used to marvel that water could be so dirty.