Pat commented on the effect of this in Spread Eagle during the Depression. “The mobsters always brought money into the area,” he said. “Sure! The mobsters from Chicago were always good to people here. They would bring up tires, which were hard to buy, and give those away. They gave away food and clothing for the kids up here.”Finally, I asked Pat if he thought it was a good deal to come up here in the Depression in the 1930s to run this business. He said, “Yes—clean, fresh air, nice countryside, steady money, no trouble.” On the other hand, he said in the same breath, “Whoever was the toughest survived in this business.”

Well, it probably was a good deal. Mae toughed it out in a rough business. Yet no one I talked to remembered her in a tiny town where she had lived for twelve years. Her husband, her business, yes, but not her. I sensed a certain wistfulness in the Hollywood’s ironic motto printed on its letterhead, “A Fine Place - Just Like Home.” A good deal, yes, but was it good enough?
Mom, who knew Mae in her fifties, characterized her as “a drunk” with a “cold personality.”A few months before her death in 1948, she came to Milwaukee for the July christening of her first grandchild, my older brother. Mom says Mae was so drunk that she was afraid to let her hold her baby. Mae’s death certificate reports her death in October, at age fifty-six, from “heart failure, due to alcohol over indulgent.”

Two decades later, the story of her life was still fresh in her sister Lily’s mind, when she wrote the following in a letter to Dad, marked “Personal and Confidential.” I had already read the letter several times over the years. But I didn’t understand what she was getting at until now.

She had a lovely—generous nature—very sentimental was a beautiful girl. A girl like that is prey for a weak, selfish person [i.e., the lover who abandoned her to single motherhood]. ... the affair ruined a nice person’s life. ... After...she grabbed at the first straw—which was all wrong—that was the greatest tragedy. By nature your mother was not born for that life—one saw what it done to her. It completely changed her expression. That picture I have of her sitting on the grass is excellent—the dress was pink. ... She was not a mercenary person. Only dreamed of love, home and family.

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