Free The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies by Susan Wittig Albert Page A

his usual passionate defense of President Hoover’s conservative “leave-it-alone” approach: the notion that the federal government should stand back and let individual communities deal with their own individual problems. It was Jed’s belief that the Darling volunteers—its fine churches, the Ladies’ Club, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the Merchants’ Association—could handle anything that came up, and it was ridiculous to think that the bureaucrats in Washington would have any better idea of what needed to be done than the folks right here at home. He wasn’t in favor of the new committee for unemployment relief and thought that Mr. Hoover had gotten pushed into creating it because some in the Republican party were afraid that they would lose more Congressional seats in the upcoming midterm elections if the president wasn’t seen as doing something .
    Mr. Dickens, on the other hand, took a more liberal (but equally passionate) approach, arguing that Washington needed to do more to help out. The British government, for instance, had for some time funded an old-age pension, so its elderly citizens didn’t have to go to the poorhouse when they could no longer work. And with unemployment growing every day, he argued, the federal government ought to provide some kind of relief. There were lots of jobs that needed doing. Government ought to be organizing the effort to pair jobless men to work. Between the drought of the last few years and the old sharecropping system that turned so many—black and white—into de facto slaves, Southern farmers were in dire need of help. Huey P. Long, governor of Louisiana, could clearly see the scope of the problem and was offering a whole bushel of solutions. Why couldn’t President Hoover?
    Lizzy generally agreed with Mr. Dickens, although she wasn’t so sure about Governor Long, who had just been charged with kidnapping a pair of witnesses in a fraud investigation. People called him “the Dictator of Louisiana,” and with good reason. But as she passed the table, she caught Ophelia’s eye and gave her a sympathetic smile. Ophelia and Edna Fay were trying to have their own conversation, on the subject of Edna Fay’s efforts to organize the Darling Quilting Club, of which she was the president, to produce quilts for needy families. But they had to do it under the menfolks’ loud discussion, which had already gotten to the table-pounding stage.
    So Lizzy just said hello and headed for the table in the corner, which was covered with a red-checked cotton cloth. Verna Tidwell was already seated there, wearing a pretty brown and gold two-piece silk shantung dress and a brown felt hat. Lizzy’s hat was blue (the one her mother had refurbished) and her blue crepe dress had a separate sleeveless jacket, a jabot tie and a belt, and a pleated and flared skirt. Women in Darling liked to dress up when they went out to supper and the movies, even if they weren’t going on a “date.”
    As Lizzy pulled out a chair to sit down, Verna leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “I talked to Miss LaMotte after you went home,” she said, without preamble. “I swear, Liz. Something about this situation is really fishy. She denies being who she is.”
    Lizzy blinked. “You mean, she isn’t Nona Jean—”
    “No, no, no, the other way around. She denies being Lorelei LaMotte. She swore up and down that she’d never been on Broadway, doesn’t know Mr. Ziegfeld, and has never been a dancer.”
    “When did you talk to her?” Lizzy pulled off her blue gloves and folded them into her lap. “Where?”
    “This afternoon, just outside the drugstore. She was trying to get a prescription for Veronal filled but Mr. Lima wouldn’t do it because the prescription was out of date. She was really upset—said it was a matter of life and death. He sold her some Dr. Miles instead.”
    “That old snake oil medicine.” Lizzy rolled her eyes. “My mother takes it. But how did you happen