getting frantic to be home." Home, for the Parkers, was always where we
happened to be then. Castle Crags was as much "home" as any place had
ever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years: of the eleven
Christmases we had had together, only two had been in the same place.
There were times when "home" was a Pullman car. It made no difference.
One of the strange new feelings I have to get used to is the way I now
look at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing the
littlest bit of a hovel, would say, "We could be perfectly happy in a
place like that, couldn't we? Nothing makes any difference if we are
together." But certain kinds of what we called "cuddly" houses used to
make us catch our breaths, to think of the extra joy it would be living
together tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks like
that, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain, and not
think at all until I get well by it.

Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, and
finally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. "I am
so home-sick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literally
feel terribly. But with all this feeling I don't see how I can. Not only
have I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growing
steadily worse. Last night my proposal (eight-hour day, non-partisan
complaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state)
was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and I
fought for six hours but it went down. The whole situation is drifting
into a state of incipient sympathetic strikes." Later: "This is the most
bull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere." Still
later: "Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employers
demanding everything and men granting much but not that." Again: "Each
day brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful . . . and gee, the
pigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per cent