Growing Up Political

Paul knew at an early age that his father was a politician.  At times when his mother was sick, his father would take him on the train from Jefferson City to other Missouri towns, where his father would visit local school superintendents to keep his constituency in a kindly mood.  Being the State Superintendent of Public Instruction was sociable work.

Only once that he remembered was it a misfortune to have a political father.  It was on their trip to the Saint Louis World’s Fair in 1904.  He was not yet ten.  They stayed in a hotel that had been constructed as a dormitory for Washington University.  First thing each morning, his parents would take him to examine one of the university buildings.  His mother was also a schoolteacher and she seemed to share his father’s fascination with the latest developments in blackboards and chalk and chairs with folding arms.

The Tourist

After examining a building or two, they would walk across the fair grounds.  First, they would walk by the zoo.  Always a fine zoo, the Saint Louis Zoo was in 1904 a zoo to end zoos.  Every zoo in the world had been invited to send an exotic animal for display and many of them had.  Because his parents were in haste, they allowed him time to see only one animal of his choice.

Then they passed the Igorote village.  This was an ethnic display of a tribe from an island in the Philippines that had recently been subdued by the United States Army.  They were said to be cannibals.  In fact, they did eat many dogs.  The hill near Forest Park became known for a time after 1904 as Dog Hill because people came in the night and stole all the dogs.  Paul wanted to watch them kill and eat some person, not a dog!  His parents did not want to watch and were in a hurry.

Then there was the Midway.  Paul had never seen a Ferris wheel and very much wanted to ride one.  There were other devices as well.  Even better there was a Wild West Show starring Wild Bill Hickok, the best rodeo performer in the history of the West.  There was a woman named Annie Oakley who was a deadeye and could shoot a nickel at fifty paces.  Outside the show, there was a guy named Will Rogers doing rope tricks to lure the crown inside.  But his parents did not have time for any of that frivolous stuff.

There was a new drink for sale called Canada Dry Ginger Ale.  No one had ever tasted it before.  There was a new kind of candy called a Hershey bar no one had tasted.  There was a new kind of sandwich called a Hot Dog.  No one had ever eaten one of those, either.  And then there was a new edible thing you could fill with ice cream.  It was called a cone.  No one had ever seen such a thing before.  But his parents did not have time for that and had brought along a little box lunch from the hotel.

Where were they going in such haste?  To a building known that summer as the Hall of State.  It was the place where things made in Missouri or about Missouri were on display.  Things like manufactured shoes.  And there was a space on the wall proudly describing public education in Missouri.  There on the wall was a picture of his father, William T. Carrington.  No one much came to that building except folks from Missouri.  But it was a marvelous venue for politics.  So the three Carringtons stood on the front steps all day greeting Missouri voters.

Paul was not much interested in Missouri voters.  From where he was standing, he could see at a distance the Ferris wheel and the Wild West Show and the zoo and the Igorote village. Finally, as the summer sun set, his parents had had enough.  They trudged back to the hotel to collapse and regain strength for the next day, which would be a repeat of the first.

On the fourth day, they caught the train to return to Jefferson City.  On the way, Paul flew into tears, complaining bitterly that all they had done was look at blackboards and greet Missouri voters.  He had seen only three animals and no Igorotes.  He had missed Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickok, and Will Rogers.  He had not had a hot dog or an ice cream cone or even a glass of ginger ale.  And worst of all, he had not ridden the Ferris wheel.

William Carrington was a just man.  He acknowledged the justice of Paul’s grievance.  And, to remedy the injustice, he said that if Paul could persuade him that he could manage the Fair alone that he would let Paul return on his own for three days.  That announcement sent his mother into a tearful rage.

However, the next morning, Paul brought his father the train schedule and announced that he would take the early morning train on Tuesday.  When he got to the Union Station, he would take the Lindell Boulevard streetcar to Forest Park.  He would register at the hotel with Mr. Hamilton whom he knew at the desk.  And he would return on the afternoon train on Friday.  His father approved this plan and wired Mr. Hamilton for a reservation.  He also wired Mr. Hamilton four dollars and fifty cents extra so that he could give Paul a dollar and a half on each of the three mornings. His mother, desperate with anxiety, packed his suitcase with a toothbrush and three changes of clothes.  She also pinned a piece of paper on his undershirt recording his name and address.

To the Fair he went, “to meet Louie in Saint Louie, to meet him at the Fair” as the song of the decade had it. Before he took his seat on the train, he removed the piece of paper his mother had pinned to his undershirt.  At Union Station in Saint Louis, he found the Lindell Boulevard streetcar and rode it to Washington University.  He met Mr. Hamilton as planned.  In three days in Forest Park, he examined every animal in the zoo and watched the Igorotes until he was bored out of his mind.  They never ate anybody.  He saw the Wild West Show twice and rode the Ferris Wheel twelve times.  He feasted on hot dogs and ice cream cones.  On Friday, he took the street car back up Lindell Boulevard to Union Station, caught the train for home, and arrived in Jefferson City right on schedule.  His mother met him at the station.  There he handed her the suitcase that he had never opened.

That his father was in politics helped him with his first job, which was to deliver the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch to the legislators at their desks in the capitol.  He got to know them all so that they would count on him to make the delivery, and he counted on their business.  It was a nice job because he could deliver a hundred papers in less than half an hour.

In 1910, the Democratic Party took a beating in Missouri.  William, out of the State Superintendent’s office, took the job of opening a new teachers’ college in Springfield.  That job was only marginally less political.  Indeed, when Woodrow Wilson left the presidency of Princeton about that time in order to run for Governor of New Jersey, he was asked why he would leave such a job.  “To get out of politics,” was his answer.

But William’s career as an elected politician served Paul again.  He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1914 and went to Harvard to law school.  The Harvard Law School of that day bore little resemblance to any institution existing in 2001, but there were six Missourians who stuck it out for three years to graduate in the Class of 1917.  To their grave disappointment, the Missouri Bar Examiners scheduled the annual bar licensing exam for the same week in which Harvard scheduled its third year examinations.  Knowing that he might be acquainted with some of the people in Jefferson City, his classmates assigned Paul to ask that the bar examination be rescheduled.  Sure enough, John Hyde, the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Missouri who was responsible for administering the exam, knew William Carrington and graciously agreed to reschedule the bar exam for a week later as an accommodation to his son and his son’s friends.

Alas, the United States declared war in April and all six Missourians at the Harvard Law School volunteered for infantry officer training camp to begin immediately.  The training camp was at Fort Riley, Kansas, so Paul could stop in Springfield and see his mother.  He also scheduled a change of trains in Jefferson City.  Having almost three hours in town, Paul called on Mr. Hyde to thank him for his courtesy and explain that none of the six Harvard students would actually sit for the exam at the newly scheduled time.

Mr. Hyde was destitute.  He thought it dreadful that these fine young men would go serve their country and then come home and have to take a bar exam after they had forgotten all they had learned about law.  He asked Paul if he did not want to take his exam that day.  Paul thanked him for the gesture, but said no, he had to go to Springfield to see his parents. 

Mr. Hyde said, “well, we could make it a shorter examination so that you could catch your train.” 

Now profuse with gratitude, Paul said no, he really couldn’t because he was not prepared and was too likely to fail.  He would not want that on his record.  

“Well,” Mr. Hyde said, “we could just not make any record if you were to fail.” 

Seeing no way out, Paul agreed.

“OK,” Mr. Hyde said, “do you want three questions or one?” 

“I’ll risk it all on one,” was the reply. 

“I was afraid you’d say that because I doubt you’ll know the answer to my first question on account of your having studied law up there in New England.  Out here in Missouri, we divide property into two kinds.  What are they?” 

“Real and personal, I guess.” 

‘That is absolutely right and I will certify that you are qualified to practice law in Missouri.”

And so it happened that a few weeks later at Fort Riley a cylinder arrived at mail call and it contained a license to practice law in Missouri.  His five classmates looked on in wonder.  He assured them that Mr. Hyde would do the same for them if they called on him in Jefferson City.  But he was never sure that this was so.