I don't remember what I said as Brian arrived about then, Betty Lou having telephoned him. She greeted him at the door with, ‘Come meet Woodrow Wilson Smith, President of , the United States in 1952.'

Sounds good.' Brian marched into our bedroom, imitating a brass band. The name stuck; we registered it with the Foundation and with the County.

When I thought it over, the name pleased me. I wrote a note to Dr Wilson, telling him of his namesake and saying that I was praying for the success of his administration. I received back, first, a note from Mr Patrick Tumulty, acknowledging my letter and saying that it was being brought to the attention of the President Elect ‘but you will understand, Madam, that recent events have flooded him with mail. It will be several weeks before all of it can be answered personally.'

Shortly after Christmas I did receive a letter from Dr Wilson, thanking me for having honoured him in the naming of my son. I framed it and had it for years. I wonder if it is still in existence somewhere on time line two?

The 1912 Presidential campaign had been fought on the issue of the high cost of living. The Smith family was not suffering but prices, food prices especially, were indeed rising - while as usual the farmers were complaining that they were not receiving even cost-of-production prices for what they grew. This may well have been so - I recall that wheat was less than a dollar a bushel.

But I did not buy wheat by the bushel; I bought food at a local grocery store and from my huckster and milkman and so forth. Again Brian asked me if I needed a raise in household allowance.

‘Possibly,' I answered. ‘We are getting by, but prices are going up. A dozen freshly-gathered eggs cost five cents now, and so does a quart of grade A. The Holsum Bread Company is talking about changing from two sizes at a nickel and a dime to two sizes at ten cents and fifteen cents. Want to bet that this does not mean a raise in price by the pound - I repeat, by the pound, not by the loaf - of at least twenty per cent?'

‘Find yourself another sucker, sister; I already bet on the election. I was thinking about meat prices.'

‘Up. Oh, just a penny or two a pound, but it goes on. But I've noticed something else. Mr Schontz used to include a soup bone without being asked. And some liver for Random. Suet for birds in the winter. Now those things happen only if I ask for them and, when I do, he doesn't smile. Just this week he said that he was going to have to start charging for liver as people were beginning to eat it, not just cats. I don't know how I'm going to explain this to Random.'

‘Let's keep first things first, my love; my wedding present must be fed. How you behave towards cats here below determines your status in Heaven.'

‘Really?'

‘That's straight out of the Bible; you can look it up. Have you talked to Nelson about cat food?'

‘It would not occur to me to do so. Betty Lou, yes; Nelson, no.'

‘Just remember that he is a professional economist concerning the growing and marketing of foodstuffs and he has a handsome sheepskin to prove it. Nel tells me that, starting any time now, cats and dogs are going to have their own food industry - fresh food, packaged food, canned food, special stores or special departments in stores, and national advertising. Big business. Millions of dollars. Even hundreds of millions:

‘Are you sure he wasn't joking? Nelson will joke about anything.'

‘I don't think he was. He was quite serious and he had figures to back his remarks. You have seen how gasoline powered machinery has been displacing horses, not just here in the city, but on farms - slowly but more each year. So we have out-of-work horses. Nelson says not to worry about those horses; the cats will eat them.'

‘What a horrid thought!'

At Brian's urging I worked up a chart that told me how grocery prices were rising. Fortunately I had thirteen years of exact records of what I had spent on food, what items, how much per pack, or pound, or dozen, etc. Briney had never required me to do it but it matched what my mother had done and it truly was a great help to me during those years of pinching every penny to know just what return I had received in food for each cent I had spent.

So I worked up this big chart, then figured out what a year's ration was, per person, as if I were feeding an army - so many ounces of flour, so many ounces of butter, sugar, meat, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits - not much for canned goods as I had learned, early on, that the only economical way to get canned goods was by canning stuff myself.

Eventually I produced a curve, the cost of a ration for one adult, 1899-1913.

It was a fairly smooth curve, trending steadily up, and with inflexure upwards. There were minor discontinuities but, on the whole, it was a smooth first-order curve.

I looked at that curve and it tempted me. I got down my old text for analytical geometry, from Thebes High School, measured some ordinates, abscissas, and slopes - plugged in the figures and wrote down the equation.

And stared at it. Had I actually derived a formula by which food prices could be predicted? Something the big brains with Ph.D.s and endowed chairs could not agree on?

No, no, Maureen! There is not a crop failure on there, not a war, not any major disaster. Not enough facts. Figures don't lie, but liars figure. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Don't make too much stew from one oyster.

I put my analytical work away where no one would find it. But I kept that chart. I did not use it for prediction but I did keep plotting that curve because it let me go to Briney and show him exactly why I needed a larger allowance, whenever I did - instead of waiting until it reached the fried mush situation. I did not hesitate to ask because Brian Smith Associates were prosperous.

I was no longer secretary-bookkeeper of our family firm; I had relinquished that status when Nelson, Betty Lou, and our business office had all moved out of the house together, two years earlier. No friction between us, not at all, and I had urged them to stay. But they wanted to be on their own and I understood that. Brian Smith Associates took an office near 31 st and Paseo, second floor, over a haberdashery, a location near the Troost Avenue Bank and the PO substation. It was a good neighbourhood for an office outside the downtown financial district. The Nelson Johnsons had their first home of their own about a hundred yards south on a side street, South Paseo Place.

This meant that Betty Lou could handle the records and go to the bank and pick up the mail, while still taking care of her two children, i.e., the back room of the company's ‘palatial suite' was converted into a day nursery.

Yet I was only twenty minutes away and could relieve her if she needed me, straight down 3ist by trolley car, good neighbourhoods st both ends, where I need not feel timid even after dark.

We continued this way until 1915, when Brian and Nelson hired a downy duckling fresh out of Spaulding's Commercial College, Anita Boles. Betty Lou and I continued to keep an eye on the books and one of us would be in the office if both men were out of town, as this child still believed in Santa Claus. But her typing was fast and accurate. (We had a new Remington now. I kept my old Oliver at home - a loyal friend, grown feeble.)

So I continued to know our financial position. It was good and got steadily better. Brian accepted points in lieu of full fee several times in the years 1906-1913; five of these enterprises had made money and three had paid quite well: a reopened zinc mine near Joplin, a silver mine near Denver, and a gold mine in Montana... and Briney was just cynical enough that he paid freely under the table to keep a close check on both the silver mine and the gold mine. He told me once, ‘You can't stop high-grading. Even your dear old grandmother can be tempted when gold ore gets so heavy that you can simply pick it up and know that it is loaded. But you can making stealing difficult if you are willing to pay for service.'