Poet in the Paint Store

FORTUNATELY, we still have a photograph of the paint store Papa started some forty years ago on Twelfth Street. Sometimes when Papa complains about the inefficient way his sons run the business, we bring the picture out in tolerant amusement. It shows Papa in the midst of unbelievable disorder, surrounded by piles of untidy merchandise distributed under the simple system that the merchandise most called for should be closest at hand. In the midst of this stood Papa in a characteristic pose of serenity and contentment: his elbow resting on an infinitesimally small cleared space on the showcase, his chin in his hand, and his finger at the side of his nose, looking — and he must have known it — like a learned writer of long, dull treatises.

My brother Harry must have inherited his business drive and indestructible demand for order from some unheralded ancestor, for three months after going into the business, at the age of nineteen, he was running the store; and within six months the store was operating efficiently. New shelves were built; stock was tidily rearranged according to type and size; floor space was cleared; all merchandise over ten years old was remaindered; inventory was taken once a year; and the cash register was checked every night. This last worked a hardship on the entire family, because up to then we had been in the habit of going to the register for all expenditures, from a penny for candy to the thirty-five dollars for rent money. Even under Harry’s regime, the register didn’t always check, but he could almost always find the mistake by painstakingly going over the day’s operations with Papa. He usually discovered that Papa had skipped a few columns and rung up ninety dollars instead of ninety cents or had extracted three dollars for a pair of teakwood book ends he had bought from a friendly peddler.

The reverberations of Papa’s business methods were not quickly silenced, however. In the efficient years that followed, Harry found, on two different occasions during inventory, a roll of bills, one behind the turpentine drum and one in an empty paint can. Both of them had been hidden against a possible burglary during Papa’s administration and promptly forgotten. Once, years after the business had grown to four prosperous stores, the bank account did not balance, an inconceivable catastrophe under Harry. Checking back, it was found that an entire deposit had never been entered on the bank statement. Without any other evidence, Harry went home and found the bank deposit — three thousand dollars in cash and checks — under the rug, where Papa had hidden it until the next morning and forgotten forever after.

We were four brothers, and as we finished school we all went into the business as unquestioningly as other sons entered Harvard. As each of us left school, a branch store would be opened for the brother with most seniority. This would make room at the Twelfth Street store for the incoming brother. I was the last to take over with Papa the management of the Twelfth Street store, and when I decided shortly thereafter to leave the paint business entirely, the regular movement of the family and business was tremendously jarred. We had completely run out of brothers.

After a family conclave, it was decided that only a daring move could solve the problem. Papa would run the Twelfth Street store. However, there were two great obstacles to be overcome before Papa could be left in sole charge. They were purchasing and the safe. Papa’s method of ordering merchandise was strictly emotional. He would order only from salesmen he liked, in direct proportion to their likability. It was eventually decided that all the ordering would be handled by one of the other stores. The only hitch was that once in a while a salesman, either purposely or unwittingly, would compliment Papa for his shrewdness in building and managing this huge business and giving his sons good jobs. Papa would modestly say that they were good boys and deserved it and would repay the compliment by ordering for immediate shipment a hundred and thirty-two cans of bathtub enamel, an eight-year supply for the average paint store. To avoid the humiliation of explaining to wholesalers that the president of our concern was not authorized to order merchandise, the matter would be solved by another lecture to Papa and a below-cost sale on bathtub enamel.

The safe was a more complex problem. The safe, old-fashioned when we bought it, had been in the store for twelve years, but Papa had never learned to work the complicated combination. So, during the last month I was there, Papa did his safe-opening exercises for a half hour every day. He would put on his reading glasses, open his notebook, and start out with three turns to the right, stopping at forty. Kneeling before the safe, his brow furrowed, he would work the combination over and over until his muscles cramped, turning around only to shush a customer who might be speaking loudly enough to distract him. After four days of practice, he managed to open the safe successfully two out of three times with an average elapsed time of four minutes. Three days before I left for good, however, when I was already getting bids from safe movers, I saw Papa walk to the safe with unaccustomed confidence and, without even putting on his glasses, twirl the knob and open the safe.

He accepted my congratulations with no false modesty. And, with the patronizing manner of one who has an unending store of resourcefulness

in coping with problems which might frustrate ordinary men, he explained that he had devised a short cut. He closed the safe by turning the dial a half turn to the right, whereupon he could open it by a simple half turn to the left. My objection that a burglar could open it just as easily he answered with equal logic. If the burglar turned the dial to the right instead of the left it would completely lock the safe, thereby cutting the risk fifty per cent. Since his reasoning was not entirely illogical and the cost of removing the safe would have been fifty dollars, I let the matter go, and Papa took over the management of the Twelfth Street store.

Although Papa’s methods of doing business still remained peculiar, they were not nearly as disastrous as we had feared. And, since the important decisions were made in the other stores, the family could afford to be tolerant of his rugged individualism. Papa, for instance, had a simple method of deciding which customers were to get credit. He would trust any man who didn’t at the moment owe him money. This included strangers and customers who had paid their long overdue debts only after lawsuits. I wish I could say his faith was vindicated. Every January Harry would go through the pile of accounts receivable and patiently destroy all those over three years old; whereupon Papa would proceed to get the pile up to its usual height.

During the slow periods, Papa would sit at the large table in back and write poetry. He was going through a rather difficult period of conflict at the time, and his poems reflected it. The subject matter would be about equally divided between the unappreciated beauties of nature and customers who came in for a gallon of turpentine and refused to leave a deposit on the bottle.

From being a boot camp for training and indoctrinating sons, the Twelfth Street store now became the Siberia for undesirable employees. My brothers all had an inherent characteristic from a very obvious origin. If an employee was likable, they couldn’t bring themselves to fire him, no matter how inefficient he was. In a case like this they transferred him to the Twelfth Street store. If, like the detected gambler who is wordlessly handed a gun with one bullet and left alone behind closed doors, he would take the hint and efface himself from the scene, all was well. If not, after bewilderedly trying to follow Papa’s method of doing business, he would resign in desperation.

Strangely enough, in the years that followed, the Twelfth Street store usually broke even, didn’t lose money very often, and on rare occasions even showed a profit. Harry, after months of long harangues and orientation lectures to Papa, had finally given up, and pretended to himself that there was no store on Twelfth Street.

Things went along on this consistently uneven keel for years, until the morning of the holdup. Papa had just opened the store and was alone when the man entered, with gun drawn. He first asked for Papa’s wallet, in which he found but three dollars. He then waved the gun threateningly and ordered Papa to open the safe. Papa was more than willing. But in his nervousness he turned the dial to the right instead of the left and locked the safe. There was now nothing for Papa to do but put on his reading glasses, open his notebook, and start on the unaccustomed combination. There are some men who, in moments of great stress, rise to heights normally beyond them.

Papa was not one of these. He missed the first time, muttered an apology, and glanced fearfully at the gun.

“Hurry up,” growled the holdup man and waved his gun again. Papa tried twice more and failed. The man was beginning to be suspicious. “What’s going on here? Why don’t you open it?”

But by this time Papa’s frustration had overcome his fear. “How can I open a safe” he asked irritably, “if you get me nervous by yelling at me and waving the gun? If you’ll just be quiet for a minute, I’ll get it open.”

“You can’t expect me to stand here all day,” the holdup man complained righteously. “Somebody might come in and catch me.”

Papa was a reasonable man and could see the justice in this complaint. “OK, OK,” he said. “Just be quiet. I’ll get it this time for sure.” But he didn’t.

“What’s the matter with you? You got the combination right there in front of you. You blind or something?”

“OK, you’re so smart. Here” — Papa handed him the notebook — “you open it!”

So, with Papa at pistol length, the holdup man began on the combination. Despite the danger of violence if the man’s efforts proved fruitless, I’m sure Papa stood there hoping he’d be unsuccessful. To Papa’s undying shame, this man who obviously had none of the benefits of an education opened the safe on the first try.

As much to Papa’s surprise as to the other’s anger, the safe was empty. Papa thought fast. “I didn’t know,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not the boss.”

“You’re not the boss?”

“Just a clerk, that’s all. If I was the boss of a big place like this, do you think I’d have only three dollars in my pocket?”

It worked. The clay of which Papa was made was not all used up the day he was born. “Well, if you’re just a clerk” — the holdup man pocketed his gun — “here, take your three dollars back.”

“No, that’s all right,”Papa said. “You’re entitled to it.” The whole affair then took on the aspect of an argument between two friends over a restaurant check. But Papa was firm, and the other left with the three dollars.

It wasn’t until a week later that Papa discovered that previous day’s receipts. Like a well-kept dog who cannot forget the habits of a hungry youth, he had hidden the money in a roll of wallpaper and forgotten it. I never discussed this incident any further with my father, and it’s possible that I’m wrong, but I think that if that holdup man will show up at the Twelfth Street store, Papa will give him the money.