| Maggie's Favorites
Yes, yes, we know: Maggie isn’t real. She’s a fictional character from a book. But if she were a real 16-year-old who lived in 1926 Cobblers Eddy, Indiana, here’s how you might expect her to see the world:
Maggie’s favorite music:
Being a sociable country girl, Maggie loved square dance music. But her hands-down favorite song would have been “Bye Bye Blackbird”, which hit the charts in 1926 and possessed all energy, fun, rhythm and playfulness Maggie herself had.
Favorite movies:
By the time she was 16, Maggie likely would have seen about three movies in her lifetime – all three with her parents and most of the residents of Cobblers Eddy in the crowded basement of the Grange Hall. The screen would be a bed sheet tacked to the wall. Most of the audience would sit on hard wooden benches. The rest would stand.
Typically, movies of the day were The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks, when Maggie was 11 years old; The Battleship Potemkin, a very disturbing film for its time, when she was 15; and The Lost World with Lewis Stone and Wallace Beery, shortly before leaving for New York. All three were silent films. The year after she moved to New York, Maggie and her father might conceivably have attended the premiere of the first talkie, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson.
Favorite books:
Maggie wasn’t much of a reader. There were no libraries or bookstores in or near Cobblers Eddy. She read a copy of Bob Knight’s Diary at Poplar Hill School by Charlotte Curtis Smith, which was lying about at home. And she read school books, but neither she nor anyone else in Cobblers Eddy had access to – or great interest in – reading books. Of course, when she moved to New York, all that was likely to change.
Favorite pastime:
Maggie was a tomboy who lived happily on a farm and expected to spend the rest of her life there. She had no hobbies, per se, but enthusiastically learned how to do everything expected of a farm wife, including cooking, sewing, churning butter, candling eggs, milking cows, slopping pigs, working the fields and cleaning out stalls.
Favorite person:
Tom, a fellow teen from an adjoining farm.
Heroes:
WWI Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Alvin York, and her dad.
Favorite animal:
Her lethargic hound dog, Topsy.
Favorite expression:
“Hey you goofer!”
Favorite food:
Her mother’s meatloaf.
Favorite drink:
Cold birch beer from Guy Cragle's general store. (Hates buttermilk.)
Bragging point:
Could do 40 chin-ups.
Myers-Briggs score:
If the test had been devised in 1926, she'd have been an ENFJ – which means, briefly, she (E) derived energy from interaction with others, (N) didn't automatically follow the rules, (F) made decisions primarily based on her emotions, and (J) found loose ends unsettling.
Secret aspiration:
To marry Tom, help him run their combined farms, and raise more children that both their parents combined.
"Bye Bye Blackbird" Lyrics
Chorus:
Pack up all my care and woe,
Here I go singing low
Bye bye blackbird
Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar's sweet so is he
Bye bye blackbird
No one here can love and understand me
Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me
Make my bed and light the light,
I'll arrive late tonight
Blackbird bye bye.
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