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Cracked and curled with age, it was almost impossible to identify the figures in the dark, glossy photograph. One of the young women in artist smocks and french berets had to be Zora. Taken at The Buzza Greeting Card Company, where she started working when she was seventeen, it was found among the lifetime of art work piled in her basement. We pressed the photo for weeks under a pile of heavy books, then scanned it, enlarged the image, repaired it as best we could. Amid the Buzza cards and images tacked on a velvet draped wall, the two figures at work on drawing boards became more distinct. The desperate story of that time and that place began to emerge.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Bloodshed At the Buzza Greeting Card Company
To my dear, ever resourceful Robert who, among all his other gifts, brought Zora and Hughberta into my life.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 MunichBloodshed at the Buzza Greeting Card Company
Bloodshed At The Buzza Greeting Card Company
by Mary H Steenson
And, moreover, to succeed,
the Artist must possess
the courageous soul.
Kate Chopin
Copyright 2018 Mary H Steenson
all rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-9988349-2-4
This very damaged photograph inspired the ensuing tale.
Introduction
This is a work of fiction. It is a fable, a fanciful fabrication of my over-worked imagination, totally and utterly untrue, with the following exceptions:
Zora Mary Steenson was a real honest-to-goodness person; so was Hughberta Steenson, Devern Steenson, Jean (Mother), Orrie (Papa) Steenson, Myrtle and Clair Steenson as well as Grandfather, Samuel Orlando Steenson, and the various aunts and uncles. The Steenson clan settled in Minnesota. Orrie worked for the railroads, mostly for Great Northern (James J Hill) and followed the work across the Dakota plains into Montana and Washington State. His family sometimes came to live in the Dakotas so that he could join them every few weeks. He did work in Panama in the early 1920's, many years after the canal was completed.
The Buzza Greeting Card Company was an actual company, founded by George Buzza and established in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1910. By 1920, it was the largest greeting card company in America. Buzza Mottos was a brilliant concept by Buzza in the early 1920's, featuring poetry by the popular poets of the day, not the literary geniuses like T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound or Edna St. Vincent Millay; the poets featured on Buzza Mottos were the "homespun" types like James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar A Guest. The poetry may not be sublime, but much of the art illustration is lovely; some is really fine. Several Pinterest Boards are devoted to Buzza Mottos and occasionally a very nice piece is available on ebay.
My totally fictitious story is based on the utterly fanciful premise that Edgar A Guest and George Buzza were partners in coming up with the concept of Buzza Mottos. While poems by Edgar A Guest did appear on Buzza Mottos, he was not the only poet so published. He was not a financial partner in the business, in fact, he supplied writings to Buzza competitors. Ironically, the Edgar A Guest Mottos are among the most desirable and highly priced of the precious few that can be found on today's secondary market. In actuality, the Mottos were designed by specialized artists, probably not the young women who did most of the sketch work, coloring and editing for the greeting card industry.
Zora Steenson did indeed work for the Buzza Company at 1006 West Lake Street in Minneapolis. After Buzza sold his enterprise, presciently in 1929, she worked for his successor, other greeting card companies and as a free-lance artist for calendar companies and ad agencies. It is true that not every Buzza artist was allowed to sign her work; Zora did sign her images. She also wielded a rivet gun during World War II as a genuine "Rosie the Riveter" at a glider factory located in the Twin Cities.
Zora's sister, Hughberta, was also an artist. She was one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps when it was open to female recruits in 1943. The Marines trained Hughberta to disassemble and reassemble airplane engines, an activity as it turned out, that she was particularly good at. Later she transferred that skill to her art and Hughberta created a number of very fine, well thought out cubism paintings. After the Second World War, the two sisters moved to Los Angeles where they attended the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute. Independent women, they lived in Southern California for thirty years. During that time each artist produced a unique body of modernistic art.
Examples of their mid-century art can be enjoyed on http://zoraandhughberta.com/
The stories of their lives is related in the memoir Art Alone Enduring, by Mary H Steenson.
Waiting
If Papa hadn't gone off to Panama, everything would be different. Oh, Papa. Why can't you stay put? You should have been there, to help when Mother's life nearly drained away. And if you had been with us, they would have had to let us stay at Grandfather's. One dreadful thing led to another ever since you went off and now Hughberta and Devern depend on me; I have to worry about making money, counting every nickel. If you hadn't gone away, I wouldn’t be sitting here in Mr. Buzza's office, scared to death. I would never have even heard of the Buzza Greeting Card Company. I would never have met Violet... Oh dear, dear heaven, Violet!
Mr. Buzza was standing, the manicured fingers of one broad hand methodically smoothing his mustache. With his other hand he stroked his gold watch chain. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Although he blinked rapidly as though the air were smoky and noxious, his expression remained impassive. His relentless motion was making Zora dizzy. She felt ill and averted her eyes from him, staring straight ahead trying to compose herself. In an impulse of inappropriate vanity she surveyed the framed greeting cards displayed on the dark wood paneled walls, hoping to spot one of hers. She had been in this room only once before, anxious then, hoping to make a good impression, but not as she was at the moment, terrified. That was seven months ago, when she resolutely opened her folio and displayed samples of her art work. It had taken all of her determination to walk into this room, stand firmly in front of the mahogany desk and lay sheets of drawing papers over its polished surface. She could hear Myrtle’s voice encouraging her: “You are every bit as good an artist as anyone at Buzza.”
She wished that Myrtle were here with her. Her calm, steady presence could help her get through this day.
Near the door arms crossed, lips tightly pursed beneath a gray-brown fringe, nostrils flared in his usual contemptuous expression, stood Mr. Hart, the art director. Sniffer, she thought, but without the giggle she and Violet could barely suppress behind his back. Instead, tears filled her eyes and her mind and her heart. She and the two gentlemen, her employers, were waiting for a member of the Minneapolis Police Force.
Crises are attended by waiting, the anticipatory space of time when the thing that is going to happen inevitably happens: waiting for the storm to hit, for the crack of the rifle, the final breath; waiting for the blood to stanch, the pain to subside, the law to arrive. A few months before, she had been waiting on a railway platform under a hot blue sky that stretched smooth and clear over the wide open prairie: a vast expanse turning golden green under the relentless sunshine of July. As she stared across the tracks, she waited for the long over-due 11:20; waiting, waiting to begin the journey to this very time and place, this calamity.
Mr. Buzza was rocking rhythmically back and forth as if he were standing in the aisle of a swiftly moving train, and Zora felt the motion, the sway of the train carrying her, her sister, her brother and their very ill mother away from South Dakota, away from a felicitous time and place. In spite of the fact that they always were moving, she somehow hadn't expected to have to leave South Dakota. She thought that they were finally home; that the ensuing days would just roll on like the endless Dakota horizon, one season following another as they grew and the garden grew and was harvested, as they went together to the one-room school and came home to their tall frame house to read or paint pictures with Mother.
It was lovely, the happiest time of their lives together. That year in Arlington, South Dakota, Papa was with them more often; he came home from building bridges and trestles with money, silver dollars and greenbacks, even. They really didn’t need much money. The seven-year rain had graciously fallen just after their garden was planted. Their dinner table was colorful and aromatic: bright green beans and peas, orange carrots, yellow squash, deep red beets, radishes, cheery red and icy white. On many an occasion, a plump roasted prairie chicken or pheasant was the centerpiece of their feast. Mother was well known as a crack shot as well as the best bread baker in the county. Shelves that Papa had built in the cellar displayed the bounty of the growing season in sparkling Ball jars. That year Mother didn’t have to go to work for neighbors as she almost always had to do in the past. She smiled and sang little songs and chatted with them about their lessons and their friends.
She and Zora would sit at the table, or if it was nice, on the wood planks that served as a porch for hours drawing and painting. They figured out how to boil and press some thick grasses that grew all around their place to make paper. Clear and direct the prairie sunshine dried and bleached it. Paints and dyes issued from vegetables and wildflowers and their paintings adorned the plank walls inside the house. Her younger sister, Hughberta, liked to weave strands of grass into interesting shapes and useful items like small baskets. She even conducted an art class one day, teaching their classmates to create mats and pouches.
Zora thought about their lovely school, a single building made of logs. It smelled like a welcoming hearth in the middle of a forest. The two younger Steensons sat at wooden desks in an open space with thirteen other children and Zora helped the little ones who were just learning to read and cipher. The teacher, Mrs. Blomquist, had books, novels by writers like Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen. Zora was permitted to take time to read in the afternoons. If things hadn’t changed, so abruptly, so precipitously, she would be sitting in that warm and genial place right now.
"Papa! Papa's home!"
Zora was always delighted to see her father trudging across the field, his battered leather case over his shoulder. Her younger sister and brother were not always as thrilled. When Zora was little, Papa was merrier, more inclined to return home with songs and presents. They, especially her brother, Devern, didn't see him like that now, not very often. Although the work was out in the Black Hills, more than two hundred miles away, her father was able to return home once a month. He could connect with the Milwaukee line at the Missouri River.
Orrie Steenson jumped off the platform at Arlington, and swung his lanky form across the young shoots covering the ground. It was mid-April and the prairie was spread in soft green grasses and the purple prairie crocuses that religious folk called Pasque flower because it opened up early, close to Easter Sunday. If Zora had been expecting her tuneful old Papa arriving with candy and presents in his bag, she was disappointed. The Papa who stood on the wooden planks in front of the house (Mother called it the "veranda", but she was making a joke) was the Papa who smelled strongly of whiskey and who might laugh in an unpleasant way and say unkind things to Mother and Devern.
He was spare, angular and given to sudden changes of temperament. Even though he was much older that her mother, Zora never thought of Papa as old, but that afternoon she saw creases in his face that she hadn't noticed before and his hair, grown past his collar was now, like his mustache, nearly white. Orrie Steenson set his scuffed, weather beaten leather bag down outside of the entrance. He rested on the sill. "Mr. James J Hill doesn't need me anymore," he announced. He didn’t seem all that unhappy about it.
That was the way the railroad industry worked: boom and bust, building and expanding in a frenzy responding to some external event, then halting activity when the crisis was over. The US had been supplying France and England with weapons and food well before declaring war on Germany in 1917, launching into high gear when American troops joined the fighting. Lead and copper, essential materials for early twentieth century warfare extracted from hills and mountains in South Dakota and Montana were heaped into railroad cars, shipped to foundries in the east; then loaded as finished products onto ships bound across the Atlantic Ocean. Even after the war was over, in 1919 and 1920, the railroads were transporting grain across the country to feed destitute Europeans. By 1921, Great Northern had erected all the trestles and bridged all the rivers and streams it was ever going erect and bridge. Orrie had been one of the cogs in that mighty war machine, as imperative initially, but ultimately as dispensable, as the casing of a rifle bullet.
“Oh Papa, you missed my birthday, but you will be here for Hughberta's in just three weeks!" As it turned out, he would not be, and it didn't distress him. He often seemed vaguely puzzled by Hughberta's presence, as if she were a small rescued animal enjoying temporary shelter.
"He doesn't even know I exist, Zora."
"Oh, of course he does, dear. He loves you with all his heart." Zora sounded reassuring, but in truth, her father's detached attitude troubled her.
Papa stayed around for a month, helped with the garden, patched a section of the roof, walked to the general store and came back with a bag of lime for the privy and a new dress for mother. It occurred to Zora that her father may feel the urgency of the passing years; that he had to keep moving, "lest the devil catch him" slowing down. He was restless, always had been; unless there was a specific piece of work that was his to plan, execute and complete, he just couldn't stay in one place. He left a stack of greenbacks on the table with a note. He was going to Panama; he would return with a pocketful of gold coins like the fistful his cousin had showed him. In his absence, his family’s life went on as usual. Within a few weeks school was out; they were eating from the garden and creating their own pursuits.
Zora walked miles, scouring the land for color: flowers and berries for her palette. She moved through a sea of green undulating stalks like a diver scanning the ocean floor for sunken treasure. What exquisite gold and gems she discovered, as she moved deliberately, staring downward. Spiderwort, deep blue, miniature orchid-like flower on a tall, thick stalk, yellow ladies' slipper, pink columbine, prairie cone flower, some blue, some yellow, delicate white lobelia, orangey scarlet mallow, and the astonishing prickly pear, with thick yellow petals and cactus-like leaves that produced an ashy green. She learned the names for some of these plants from Mrs. Blomquist, but the names didn't matter, it was the juice, the wonderful colors that she harvested that excited Zora.
She was on the "veranda" grinding flower petals to a pulp with a stone. The sun glowered overhead as though it had taken a great dislike to South Dakota and everyone impertinent enough to claim it as their home. Devern and Hughberta were asleep on the wide bed inside, sheltered from the angry ball of fire.
“Zora, Zora, come in here, please, quickly."
She did as she was asked, then hurried around for rags and a pail of water. Mother’s petticoat and the sheets were soaked with blood that continued to flow, dark and clotted. This was no ordinary monthly bleeding; it was the kind of situation that women died of, especially out there where doctors might be a week’s journey away. Mother looked very pale. Her voice sounded like she was speaking into a strong wind, faint and wavering.
“Where are the children? Keep Devern away from this room. Tell Hughberta to get Mrs. Blomquist. Tell her to run and say that I need her help right away.”
Hughberta was a little out of sorts at being awakened form her midsummer nap but she took pride in being the fastest runner in the school and she carried out her mission with the speed and grace of a hare leaping through the fields between their house and the cottage next to the log schoolhouse. The robust and fair-haired Mrs. Blomquist might have been stranded in Dakota when her husband died, but instead she became the teacher at the country school and as Zora learned that day, a woman who knew how to deliver babies. The midwife lost no time in collecting her black leather bag although she halted their progress along the way for a few minutes. With Hughberta’s help she pulled up stalks bearing a scrubby mustard colored flower. It was a plant that sprang up all over the prairie in the summer that could make a person sneeze when the wind blew its yellow dust around.
"My sister brings these home," Hughberta said. "They're kind of messy.”
"We're not going to be painting with the Goldenrod today. This plant could save your mother's life."
Hughberta threw the bundle of stalks she had gathered on the ground.
“What do you mean?” she screamed at her teacher. “is mother going to die?”
Hughberta’s outburst startled Mrs. Blomquist. She knew her student as a very smart, sometimes prickly, occasionally sullen little girl, but she checked the impulse to reprimand her insolence. Hughberta, she realized, had been sent on an errand without knowing why. There was no time to embark on a science lesson; her skills were needed urgently.
“Hughberta, you must act like the very intelligent, compassionate person I know you to be. Sometimes before a baby can be born, something goes wrong. It can endanger the mother’s life. Right now your mother is in serious trouble and you and I are going to do everything we can to help her. Stop sniveling. Pick up the flowers. We must run.”
When they reached the house, Hughberta was told to wash the roots and soak the whole plant in boiled water. Mrs. Blomquist knew how capable her sister was. She had been her classroom aide and she presumed that her young student could function as her assistant, even though the patient was her own mother.
“We need more rags. If you must, tear up your dresses.” That was no great sacrifice. Her flour-sack dresses, Hughberta’s as well, were methodically ripped into strips. Some were put to soaking in the goldenrod poultice. Zora followed Mrs. Blomquist's instructions, rushing about with clean rags and clean, boiled water. While Mrs. Blomquist bathed her patient, she explained in her teacherly voice some details of the procedure to her young pupil. She explained that goldenrod can help to stop the bleeding.
With care and reverence, the midwife washed a tiny body and lowered her eyes. "May you be with the angels," she prayed and swaddled him in a clean scrap of fabric figured with white and blue forget-me-nots. “It would have been your brother,” she said.
Zora dug down as deeply as she could in the garden until the spade hit hard pan. When Mrs. Blomquist placed the swaddled bundle in the tiny grave, Zora filled it quickly, remorselessly. She felt no kinship, no sense of loss. What she did feel was anger and resentment at a creature that had nearly sapped the life from her mother; who had caused such suffering.
-And now, here she was, in the middle of another even more dire bloody business.
Grandfather’s
Like turning a page, Zora saw herself in her Grandfather’s peaceful bedroom. A candle blessed by the priest sent wavering ghostly shadows across the faded wallpaper roses. A bright smell of clean white sheets dispelled the chamber’s torpor like a trace of violet scent in a crowded streetcar. She was there with her father’s family, waiting quietly, sadly, the kind of waiting defined by kindness, deep affection, grace, a perception of holiness.
Grandfather’s death was a beautiful thing in a way; she was grateful that she had been there with him. However, if when they walked through the front door, he had greeted them with one of his silly jokes, fed them scones and buttermilk and regaled them with tales of fairies and banshees, she would not be in the dreadful situation she now found herself in.
Zora thought about how his green front door that usually swung open with effusive greetings before a visitor could lift her hand to knock, remained closed, unresponsive until she had tapped the brass knocker a half dozen times. The sadness on the other side was palpable, slipping through the keyhole and spreading along the mat.
“Oh my,” Christine sighed to the taller resolute woman at her side, “It must be Samuel. Our errand, I’m afraid is badly timed.”
Their errand was leaving Zora, Hughberta and DeVern at their Grandfather’s home, presumably until she was well. Christine’s sister Mary was a nurse, and she was placing herself under her care. Mary lived in Bloomington, a small town twenty miles south of Minneapolis.
When the door finally opened, Papa’s sister Luella acknowledged them with distracted greetings. With deep sighs and a frequent shake of her graying head, she led them into the parlor, and seated the three youngsters on carved spindly-legged chairs. The two women were ushered to a rose colored velvet settee. The parlor was an oddly appointed room for a house occupied mostly by men. Obviously, seldom used, it had an air of a slightly dusty museum piece, roped off and pretty much ignored. At first it seemed that they had come to a nearly empty house. However, Zora could hear a desultory murmur, the click of coffee cups on a bare table top and a chair leg scraping on the wood floor. She got up from her chair and pushed aside the wide sliding doors closing off the parlor just enough to observe that the dining room was full of people. A collection of her male relatives was assembled around the long oak table, a potpourri of sizes and ages and professions and apparel: Uncle Jim, most notable with his long going-to-gray beard and rusty black jacket looking somber, a grave clergyman anticipating the worst; Uncle Sam, his red hair and mustache also threaded with gray, the creases on his face imprinted by years of smiles and hearty laughs; Uncle Jessie, in white shirt-sleeves, his eyes hard and bright in his pale face, a man passionately dedicated to a cause. Observing her uncles sitting there, Zora was glad that her father was not there. Jim and Jessie disapproved of him and berated him. Samuel would always come to his defense, but the interactions could became unpleasant. It was best that this solemn family gathering was convening without him.
Three younger men also sat at the table. Cousin Lloyd looked like a businessman in a high collared shirt, bow tie and light wool jacket, tan with narrow brown stripes. His hair was cut short, tapered cleanly at the back; sideburns trim with a sharp edge; Lloyd worked for his father, her Uncle Samuel, selling houses out by Glenwood Park. Aunt Luella’s son Ralph wore broad leather suspenders criss-crossing a brown muslin shirt. His sandy hair was full and wavy. The long legs that stretched out under the table were planted in stout lace-up ankle-high boots. He was working in the new field of auto mechanics. Zora remembered Papa saying that Ralph would make more money than all the rest of them put together.
She was most pleased to notice the slight, gentle looking fellow among his taller, ruddier relatives neatly dressed in a plain brown suit, starched white shirt and unassuming tie. Clair’s soft hazel colored eyes lit up when he saw his half-sister peering through the partially opened doorway.
“Zora, little sister, come, let us see you.”
She slipped into the room, nodded at the rest of the crew and knelt beside Clair. He took her hands in his, smiling affectionately.
“Oh Clair, we didn’t know about Grandfather, but we needed to come. My mother is ill and Papa, you know, our Papa is in Central America or somewhere. Is Grandfather-?”
“The priest has been here. Everyone has paid their respects. We just wait.”
“I want to see him. Is Myrtle here?”
“She is working, but she will be with us soon. The other women are in the kitchen or out in back if you to be with them.”
“No, I must go back to the parlor with Mother. Hughberta and Devern are in there becoming uneasy. I am so happy to see you. The three of us must stay in the city, someplace; we probably can’t stay here right now. Myrtle will know what to do.”
“Yes, Myrtle usually knows what to do.”
Unobtrusively, she backed away through the sliders and gently closed them. Hughberta and Devern had been served cake and glasses full of milk so they were complacent, less fidgety, at least for the moment. She crossed the room and stood beside her mother, her hand solicitously resting on a thin shoulder.
"What a blessing it would be, ”Luella sighed, “if Orrie should walk through that door right now. We are all here except for him, the eldest.”
