Growing Up

Baker is born four years before the stock market crash that ushers in the Depression and cripples the nation financially. Jobs are scarce, insecure, and underpaid. The Depression changes the mood of the country. For many, America transforms from a place of hope and possibility to the site of crushed dreams and despair. Oluf’s story, told in Chapter Six, represents the dark side of the Depression, while Allen represents those who hold onto hope and manage to survive, even if by their fingertips.

Baker begins working at eight and holds jobs throughout his childhood, from selling the Saturday Evening Post, to delivery newspapers, to working in a grocery. Baker says he developed a habit for work by beginning so young. When his prospects for attending college look bleak, he harbors no apprehensions about accepting blue-collar work. Though he strives for more, the harsh realities of his Depression childhood teach him also to be content his life.

Where the Depression diminished the national mood, World War II restored the idea of America as a powerhouse. Baker sees serving in the war as his chance for glory. Though he never sees action, he achieves one of his fantasies by learning to fly planes. The end of the war heralds the end of innocence. The U.S. drops the atomic bomb, causing unprecedented destruction and suffering, and heralds the arms race to come.

Baker’s mother believes women serve as a civilizing force in society. Their role is to support men so they can “make something of themselves” while women take care of the household and raise the children. Lucy was born at the end of the Victorian era, which spans the reign of England’s Queen Victoria (1837-1901), and Lucy’s beliefs about gender roles are Victorian. Both male and female roles are considered important, but they are clearly delineated, with women serving a subordinate capacity.

Lucy tackles child rearing with the seriousness the Victorians accorded to it. She begins teaching Baker to read when he is very young, helps him with his schoolwork, finds him jobs, and exhorts him to have “gumption,” work hard, and not lose faith in his dreams. She christens him the “man of the family” and employs corporal punishment to cure him of his laziness. She looks for how to play to his strengths, accepting his unsuitability to sales and replacing that career objective with one to which he is better suited, writing. Her repeated refrain is “make something of yourself,” and she does everything in her power to ensure Baker succeeds.

Baker’s younger sister Dora serves a model of gumption. As a girl, her education consists of learning to dance and take care of the household, but she has “enough gumption for a dozen people” (18). She is a model for Baker of how to speak up and how to get things done. Though he does not apply those lessons to sales, he does learn to speak up when he needs to.

Where Lucy cajoles and badgers Baker to gain his compliance, Mimi steps away to get what she wants. Tired of Baker’s indecision about marriage and insistence that it is “not in the cards” for them, she moves, gets a new job, and asks him not to call her. When he gets his first newspaper job and misses having her in his life, he reconciles with her but persists in thinking of their relationship as temporary. It’s not until Mimi leaves town and fails to answer his phone calls that Baker finally to ask her to marry him. Mimi is a modern woman who supports herself. She loves Baker, but she is not dependent on him. She guides him obliquely through omission rather than by making demands.