The old lady looked up when she saw him. “Well, hey . . .”
“Ma’am, I knocked on your front door but you must not have heard me.”
The old lady said, “Hold on, let me go and get my hearing aid.” She came back in a moment. “What can I do for you? Are you selling something?”
“No, ma’am. I’m from—”
Before he could finish, she had opened the door. “Well, then, come on in. You’re not a mass murderer, are you? I can’t have any of those in my kitchen. I promised my niece, Norma, I wouldn’t let any men in the house.”
He stepped inside. “No ma’am, I’m conducting a—”
“Have a seat.”
“Thank you. I am conducting a—”
“Do you want a piece of pound cake?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Are you sure? I just made it.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you mind if I have a piece?” she asked, knife in hand. He stared at it.
“Oh no, ma’am, you go right ahead.” He sat down and opened his large brown leather satchel.
The old lady went over and cut herself a slice and put it on a plate, opened a drawer, and took out a fork. “You sure? It looks pretty good this time. The last one I made was a mess. . . .” She looked at the papers he was putting out on the table. “Are you a schoolboy?”
“No, ma’am. I’m out of school. I’m conducting a survey for the Missouri Consumers Bureau for the Missouri Power and Light Company . . . and I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may?”
Suddenly she perked up. “Is there a prize involved if I get the right answer?”
“No, ma’am, this is just an information survey. It’s just for our records.”
Somewhat disappointed, she sat down with her pound cake. “Oh well, go ahead. Fire away.”
“Name?”
“First name Elner, middle name Jane, last name Shimfissle.”
“Date of birth?”
“Well, I’d say sometime between 1850 and 1890, give or take a few years.”
He put down unknown. “Miss, or Mrs.?”
“Mrs. Will Shimfissle, widowed in fifty-three.”
“How many living in residence?”
She thought for a minute. “Five . . . a cat, me, and three mice.”
He forced a small smile, erased the number 5 in front of occupants and wrote a 1.
“Occupation?”
She looked puzzled, as if she had not heard him. In a louder voice he leaned forward and said, “Mrs. Shimfissle, what is it that you do?”
After mulling it over for a long moment, Elner answered, “I just live, I guess, what else is there to do? Isn’t that about what everybody does?”
“No, ma’am, I meant do you work outside of the home?”
“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. . . . Well, I garden a little and take care of my laying hen out back. I used to do a lot more yardwork but my niece’s husband, Macky, comes over every Saturday and cuts my grass and trims my hedges. Norma said she didn’t want me to be fooling with anything sharp. Norma says a rubber hose is safe, so I do water the lawn when it needs it.”
He wrote unemployed. “Do you own your home or rent?”
“I own it, bought and paid for. My husband, Will, said, ‘Elner, don’t let anybody stick you with a mortgage after I’m gone,’ so when I sold the farm, I just paid for it in cash and never had to fool with monthly payments. All I pay is my taxes.”
“How many electrical appliances do you have in your home?”
The old woman brightened up. “Now, that’s a good question. A good many of them. Let’s see . . . all my lights, of course. My stove. My icebox. My toaster. My percolator. My radio, that’s another. My—wait a minute, I have two iceboxes . . . the other one’s on the back porch but it’s not plugged in . . . does that count?”
“Not if you don’t use it.”
“But it works, at least it used to. I told Norma I don’t really need it. I do a lot of canning and I have plenty of room in my new icebox, so I just keep my birdseed and things like that out there. I’m kind of thinking about giving it to some poor person down the line; that’s probably what I should do. They’d be pretty happy to have it, don’t you think?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The young man, trying to move on, said, “All right now—”
“Wait a minute, I’m not through,” she said. “My front-porch light, my vacuum cleaner, my fan, my air cooler. I put that on once in a while when I get—”
“Fine . . . what about gas?”
“What?”
“Gas appliances, do you have anything that uses gas?”
“Should I?”
“No . . . not really. So can we say that you prefer electric to gas?”
“I don’t think we can say that. I don’t rightly know. I don’t have any gas things, only electric.”
He wrote yes. “Mrs. Shimfissle, would you say that the amount of your monthly electric bill is, in your opinion, high, medium, or low?”
“That’s a good one. Hmmm, I would say . . . just about right. To tell the truth, for what all you get for your money, it’s a bargain. Now, don’t hold me to it, but I would pay a lot more if they asked me to but don’t put that down. I don’t want them to raise my bill. That’s just between you and me.”
He checked off low. “So would you say you use your electrical appliances more than the average person?”
“As a matter of fact, I think electricity is just about the best value you can get for your money, other than having a baby or a heart operation. Did I say I had an electric heater in my bathroom?”
“No, ma’am, but—”
“Put that down. You know, sometimes I get to thinking about value . . . and you just wonder how people figure it, don’t you?”
“Ma’am?”
“How people figure the value of things. What things are worth, for instance. Do you know that an automobile costs more than it does to go to the hospital to have a baby? Now, who figured out that a car is worth more than a baby is what I want to know. My neighbor’s husband, Merle, went all the way to Texas and had a doctor put him in a new heart valve so he wouldn’t die, and it cost less than it does to buy a good house trailer. Now, have you ever heard of a house trailer saving a man’s life?”
“No, ma’am but—”
“That’s right, you haven’t. I said, Verbena, what would you rather have, a new house trailer or your husband? You wouldn’t even enjoy that trailer if your husband was dead, would you? And she had to admit I was right. I’d take a heart valve over a house trailer any day, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. I just have a few more questions.”
“But you’re young yet, so you won’t be needing a heart valve for a long time but when you do, think about this one. Think about how much money that heart valve, something that is no bigger than my thumb, costs and how big that house trailer is. No matter how you slice it . . . you may get something bigger but it won’t keep your heart going. . . . So that brings me back to my point.”
“Ma’am?”
“Electricity is the best value we have going and we can’t even see it!”
He saw an opening and he took it. “So would you say in regards to your electric service that you are very satisfied, moderately satisfied, or not satisfied?”
“I would say that I’m extremely satisfied, satisfied-beyond-my-wildest-dreams satisfied. Back in 1928 my sister Gerta said, Just wait until you get electricity out there on the farm, and I remember the first time they ran it up to the house and I’ve loved it ever since. I don’t know how we ever got along without it. You tell them down at the electric company that I think electricity is perfectly wonderful. Why, just think how much we depend on it and I’ll tell you something else. After Jesus, I think that Thomas Edison is the second most important man that ever lived on this earth . . . bar none. And to think we don’t even have a holiday named after him. They gave Saint Patrick his own day and what did he do but run out a bunch of snakes. Why, Thomas Edison lit up the world. If it hadn’t been for him we’d all still be sitting here in the dark, with nothing but a candle, and we don’t even celebrate his birthday. The Wizard of Menlo Park doesn’t even get a holiday.”