Irma: A Chicago Woman's Story, 1871-1966

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Saturday, April 26, 1958. 2. Sunday, May 9, 1948, Mother’s Day. 3. Thursday, December 17, 1931. This entry was followed by a short poem. cookies Cookies are the poetry of baking — A big cake is too pretentious It comes mostly at the end of a meal Cookies are just little extras Existing for themselves — Festive a little — not necessary — You have to be in a mood to bake cookies. Thinking of children And how life is with children If you put frosting on them It’s like the music of children Filled with glee, glad that there are homes And comfortable people in them Who bake cookies with spices and sugar. On Saturday, April 12, 1958, Irma wrote, “I like my poetry simple, the way Carl Sandburg, who is a friend of mine and once made me happy by saying that I’m a poet, [wrote].” She most likely was introduced to Sandburg (1878–1967) in 1925 through her son, Alfred, a musician and music critic. How Alfred met Sandburg is recounted in William A. Sutton’s Carl Sandburg Remembered (New Jersey and London : Scarecrow Press, 1979), 146–149: One night Keith Preston, a columnist on the Chicago Daily News, met Alfred . . . at a concert and told him, “Carl Sandburg wants to see you. He’s given me a message that he wants you to get in touch with him.” (This was a typical Sandburg procedure. Instead of using letters or telephone calls, he would depend on an oral message and an accidental meeting.) Sandburg wanted Alfred to write the music for the American folk songs he had collected with an intent to publish. During most of the winter of 1925, the two met at least once monthly while Alfred struggled to notate the songs as Sandburg sang them. However, because “salesmen had decided the book would sell better with piano accompaniment,” the songs were reworked and Alfred’s name was left out when American Songbag finally appeared. Although Alfred said he had little Notes contact with Sandburg after this fiasco, Irma apparently continued her friendship with him. She commented, “I might try his [Sandburg’s] advice to write 2000 poems and maybe I’d have one out of the 2000.” That Irma was good friends with Sandburg is without doubt. The family retains a number of inscribed presentation copies of his works that were given to her. Her comment on Saturday, January 27, 1951, that “Carl has a copy of some book of Emerson in every room” suggests she had visited his home on at least one occasion. Also, on January 27, 1951, Irma wrote a letter to a friend stating that “Carl told Alfred [I had written] ‘Songs of the Kitchen Sink.’” In his comments to Alfred, Sandburg made reference to his own book American Songbag, as well as to Irma’s short story called “Chicken Salad for Breakfast.” chicken salad for breakfast There was a day that flew by, Alfred had flown in from New York the night before and he was to fly out to San Francisco that same evening. And so there was only one day. The old house had been waiting for that one day for six years—And now it was swiftly running through its hours. There had been baking and cooking and salad making as though Alfred had ten tummys instead of one. Every favorite of his growing days was in the new refridgerator and he had only one digestive apparatus with which to serve his country. Breakfast, the coffee brewed in the familiar electric percolator in the breakfast end of the dining room under the window looking out into the garden — toast on the funny toaster with dangling ear drops the only one of its kind in existence — for when the man who produced that ugly toaster had finished it, he must have gone to his deserved reward to be toasted forever for producing the ugliest thing in the world — but it made good toast when it worked. Real cream in the hot coffee and butter and honey on the toast. When along came Nelson [a friend] with his illuminable diction, greeting Alfred and the breakfast in words of ten syllables. Some way or other Nelson heard that there was a gallon of chicken salad in the refridgerator and some one offered him some, and he accepted. “My word! Chicken salad for breakfast! I’ve heard of heights — the height of luxury and the heights of enjoyment and...