CHAPTER 1 STORYTIME by Cupideros
Friday, October 6, 1871
Northside, Chicago, IL
Carriage Ride Downtown, Chicago
Morning
Stubborn, twenty-five-year-old Chicago socialite Starr Oakes hated being dishonest as she rode in her carriage to downtown Chicago from Superior Street where she lived in a mansion. It tore at her heart. She covered her lovely straight black, shoulder-length hair with a cute little peach and blue boater hat. The hat accentuated her beautiful flat forehead, her long nose and her cute oval face. Starr Oakes’ small mouth had thinned flattop lips; lips that kissed only one man, Kendric Jones, a man she loathed. Big, arrogant, a junior lawyer who desperately wanted her hand in marriage and he was willing to wait for Starr to give in to despair. He was the exact duplicate of her dad’s personality.
“Stop at the Hinna’s Fashion dress shop at the corner, Charles. I plan on visiting a friend and shopping for an hour. You can wait or go to the park and come back if you want.”
“Thank you, Ms. Oakes. I’ll go to the park and feed the pigeons.”
Starr smiled back at Charles. Then she struggled to climb out of her black carriage. To her surprise, she was actually getting the handle of the frumpier stylist bustle attachment of her blue and white dress. The peach ribbons on the skirt and bodice at the back of her bustle, she adored best, however.
Hinna’s dress shop, which had a big spacious interior and several entrances and exits, provided the perfect subterfuge. Starr spoke to the salesclerk for a second. Then she turned back to see if Charles had driven away. Starr thanked the salesclerk for her dress suggestions and told her to wrap it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Starr quickly walked to the South side, away from the Chicago Park and exited Hinna’s Fashions. She hailed another carriage.
“Take me to the Lake Chicago Bank please.”
“Yes, ma’am!” exclaimed the man as he took her fare.
Starr gave him a generous tip under the understanding that he’d keep his mouth shut. She’d seen her dad employ the move several times at business luncheons as a growing teenager. Under the best of conditions, she would tell her powerful lawyer dad, Derral Oakes, and her stay-at-home mom, Patrisha Oakes, why she planned to withdraw half her savings from the family bank, Lake Chicago Bank. It was her money. And she needed it soon to make the trip to Jada, California to be with her mail-order husband, Rex Hassa. His picture burned in her mind: triangular face, dark sandy brown hair, happy eyes and blonde mustache. He said he had to constantly shave to keep the stubble off his chin.
Her dad disapproved of the mail-order bride arrangement. An arrangement concluded over the past five months, suspense-filled months. Back and forth, she and Rex sent letters: love letters declaring their affection, sharing their likes and dislikes, revealing finally that Rex owned and ran a successful mining camp in the town of Jada, California.
Staring out the window, Starr was jostled from side to side, as the carriage ran over the cobblestones. Starr Oakes smiled a knowing smile to herself. Sophisticated Chicago, I’m going to miss you. This place where marriage prospects abounded, this big town, rightfully, any girl would love to visit and find her beau. But this is not the place for me. I love the country. I want to live on a farm.
Why her dad disapproved didn’t surprise her. He grew up near Sutter, California and the 1849 gold strike. Derral Oakes hated the place. He called the men lawless hooligans with no morals or intelligence, except in spending gold coins. Her dad went on tirades about Starr negotiating behind his back. “To think you’ve practically auctioned yourself off like a whore!” he vented.
Starr told him that mail-order brides were a common phenomenon; something lots of women did who wanted to get married; women who wanted to go West and live on open land and space. She had answered Rex Hassa’s mail-order bride advertisement right out of the Chicago Tribune. Rex Hassa ran the mining camp; he wasn’t one of the scoundrels mining and spending his brief gained nuggets of gold. If her dad had to weigh the two, mail-order bride section and the Stock information and business news section, he’d choose stocks and business every time. That is what the Chicago Tribune meant to her dad, Derral Oakes. He’d never seen the mail-order bride section. He didn’t care.
Starr’s mom sympathized and felt Starr’s lonely anguish. Patrisha Oakes knew what twenty-five years old felt like—old maid. Her mom at twenty-five gave birth to her only child, Starr. That’s what old maid felt like—one chance to have a child. Several miscarriages happened to her mom, but no one talked about that. And if Starr inherited her mom’s genes, like Darwin insisted in his Origin of the Species, time slowly slipped away. Starr, the old maid, probably forever forfeited her chance to have a child. So she determined to go after what she wanted most. Destiny was the watch in her left hand, and she often consulted it to guide her life. Fate, unfortunately in her right hand, came along as the twin Nemesis of Destiny.
The fateful five-year Civil War conflict burned up Starr’s best years for marriage, fifteen to nineteen. Dying, blown to bits, crippled or missing eligible men didn’t make good marriage prospects at all. Go West; get married there, Starr’s gut told her. And Starr determined to go out West and make a new life.
“Lake Chicago Bank, Miss.”
“Thank you. Will you please wait for the return trip? I’ll pay you generously for that as well.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
