Excerpts from Betty MacDonald's memoirs

Betty MacDonald was a very funny writer — but she wasn't just a wisecracker. In the four excerpts from her memoirs below, I've leaned toward the quieter, more unexpected moments.

— Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times book critic

From "The Egg and I" (1945)

Setting: Port Townsend, late 1920s.

"Town" was the local Saturday Mecca. A barren old maid of a place, aged and weathered by all the prevailing winds and shunned by prosperity. Years ago the Town with her rich dot of timber and her beautiful harbor was voted Miss Pacific Northwest of 1892 and became betrothed to a large railroad. Her happy founders immediately got busy and whipped up a trousseau of three- and four-story brick buildings, a huge and elaborate red stone courthouse, and sites and plans for enough industries to start her on a brilliant career.

Meanwhile all her inhabitants were industriously tatting themselves up large, befurbelowed Victorian houses in honor of the approaching wedding. Unfortunately almost on the eve of the ceremony the Town in one of her frequent fits of temper lashed her harbor to a froth, tossed a passing freighter up onto her main thorofare and planted seeds of doubt in the mind of her fiancé. Further investigation revealed that, in addition to her treacherous temper, she was raked by winds day and night, year in and year out, and had little available water. In the ensuing panic of 1893, her railroad lover dropped her like a hot potato and within a year was paying serious court to several more promising coast towns.

Poor little Town never recovered from the blow. She pulled down her blinds, pulled up her welcome mat and gave herself over to sorrow. Her main street became a dreary thing of empty buildings, pocked by falling bricks and tenanted only by rats and the wind. ... She wore her massive courthouse like an enormous brooch on a delicate bosom and the faded and peeling wedding houses grew clumsy and heavy with shrubbery and disappointment.

From "Anybody Can Do Anything" (1950)

Setting: Pioneer Square, early 1930s.

The farther downtown I went the more congested the streets were with aimless, unemployed people. It had been raining all morning, it seemed to me it always rained when I was out of work, and the sky between the buildings was heavy and gray, the sidewalks were wet and everything and everybody looked cold and miserable. ...

On one corner a seedy little man with small shifty eyes and a runny nose had collected a small crowd and was begging them to repent, while a tall sandy-haired man, with a high-domed head and large ascetic eyes, was shouting to the same apathetic crowd to do something about the dirty capitalists.

An old woman pushing a baby buggy full of newspapers and rags turned into an alley and began poking in the garbage cans. A drunken bum grabbed my arm and asked me for a quarter. Two Filipinos in huge belted camel's-hair overcoats, long sharply-pointed mahogany-colored shoes and hats with little feathers in them, picked their way along the street amid the jeers and rude comments of the loggers and bums.

There seemed to be a pawnshop on every corner, huge screaming banners announcing FIRE SALES, CLOSE OUT SALE, FORCED OUT OF BUSINESS SALES, every other doorway. The musty choky smells of unwashed clothes, rancid grease, fish, doughnuts and stale coffee mingled with and overpowered the delicious seaweedy salty smell of the Sound that was carried up every cross street by the wind.

"Complete meal — 15¢" advertised restaurant after restaurant in their fly-specked windows, while unappetizing smells oozed out their doorways. I was curious to know what they served for fifteen cents and finally by walking slowly without appearing to loiter, I was able to read a menu pasted outside a window. "Stew, bread and butter and all the coffee you can drink," it said. "Soup and pie 5¢ extra." "You could live a long time on five dollars down here," I was thinking when a soft voice behind me said, "Whatsa matter, sister, are you hungry?" I turned and fled.

From "The Plague and I" (1948)

Setting: Firland Tuberculosis Sanatorium, 1938.

I like people but not all people. I'm neither Christian enough nor charitable enough to like anybody just because he is alive and breathing. I want people to interest or amuse me. I want them fascinating and witty or so dull as to be different. I want them either intellectually stimulating or wonderfully corny; perfectly charming or hundred per cent stinker. I like my chosen companions to be distinguishable from the undulating masses and I don't care how....

From my stay at The Pines I learned that a stiff test for friendship is: "Would she be pleasant to have t.b. with?" Unfortunately, too many people, when you try separating them from their material possessions and any and all activity, turn out to be like cheap golf balls. You unwind and unwind and unwind but you never get to the pure rubber core because there isn't any. When I started unwinding Kimi I found that under her beautiful covering she was mostly core.

... Once during my first week, I asked Kimi how she could lie in her bed so entirely immobile hour after hour. She said in her gentle way, "It is not difficult. In my mind, I am torturing the nurses."

From "Onions in the Stew" (1955)

Setting: Vashon Island, early 1950s.

The town of Vashon, quite a typical western, crossroads settlement, is small, flourishing, friendly, adequate and tacky. It has a bank, library, bakery (that bakes the most delicious bread in the world), two restaurants, shoestore, movie theatre, ice cream store, television shop, radio shop, state liquor store, bowling alley, drugstore, two hardware stores, two grocery stores, beauty parlor, variety shop (combination dry-goods and ten-cent store) two dress shops, two doctors, two dentists, an optician, a community club, several real estate offices, a funeral parlor, three gas stations and car repair shops, a post office, print shop and newspaper office, a bull-dozing and heavy-equipment contractor (whose huge machines scoop out dams, cut logs, build roads down cliffs, push back the Sound with sea walls, and clear land), a furniture store, cleaner, barbershop, taxi, beer parlor, florist and of course its generous complement of churches. All the buildings are different. Most of them have high fronts like caps with the visors turned up — some are low and squashed like railway express packages — some have glass bricks set into the wall like clinics — one or two are made of banana-colored stucco — a couple are red brick. Vashon reminds me of a nice girl who doesn't know how to dress. Her pink hat, green dress, brown coat, black shoes, gray stockings, yellow scarf, orange belt and purple gloves will keep out the rain but they'll never get her elected Peach Festival Queen.