42 pages • 1 hour read
Richard PeckFair Weather
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Worst Day in Aunt Euterpe’s Life, Part 1”
The next morning the girls awake at 5:30 am, shocked at how they have overslept. Rosie puts on her “everyday” clothes: a faded calico shirt and skirt made from a feed sack. She and Lottie go to work in the kitchen, first scrubbing away its cobwebs and grease and then making a breakfast of pancakes. The girls sing, and Rosie says she took her cue from Lottie but wondered if she was “beginning to know [she] couldn’t always take [her] cues from her” (76).
The cook, Mrs. O’Shay, appears and complains loudly to Aunt Euterpe. Lottie retorts that they have cleaned the filthy kitchen. Mrs. O’Shay says she will leave and insults Aunt Euterpe, saying she was hired by Mr. Fleischacker and will never know how Aunt Euterpe “nabbed him” by marriage. When she reaches into her pocket to give her housekey back to Euterpe, she is bitten by a snapping turtle in her apron that Buster has hidden in there. She runs out of the back door, followed by the maid. Buster wonders aloud where his turtle has gone.
Euterpe worries that good help is hard to find and wonders if she should move into a hotel. Because she was formerly Mr. Fleischacker’s secretary, people gossiped about their marriage. Friends of his first wife cut her off socially, and she still receives no callers, even though she is now a widow. Rosie realizes that her aunt has invited the family to Chicago because she is lonely. Both girls feel sorry for their aunt. Granddad insists they all go to the fair and says he will deal with Euterpe’s carriage driver, Flanagan, who she is afraid to manage.
Aunt Euterpe once again points out the great home of Mrs. Potter Palmer, the “queen of Chicago society” (82). She knows who lives in every mansion on Prairie Avenue and admires all of them. Grandad is riding on the box with Flanagan and has made friends with the driver. They burst into a bawdy Irish song, causing Euterpe to huddle inside her black veils.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Worst Day in Aunt Euterpe’s Life, Part 2”
Rosie, Lottie, and Aunt Euterpe leave Granddad and Buster at the Hall of Electricity and proceed to the Woman’s Building, the “beating heart of the fair” (86) for Euterpe because it is presided over by Mrs. Potter Palmer. It features paintings and exhibits showing advancements by and for women, including a washing machine that causes Rosie and Lottie to laugh out loud. In the auditorium, Susan B. Anthony is lecturing on women’s suffrage. This fires up Aunt Euterpe who exclaims that, if women could vote, they would “throw the rascals out” (88).
At teatime they go to the Turkish Pavilion, where Rosie and Lottie hear the newest songs. Aunt Euterpe advises that the girls study how the elegant patrons sit and hold their teacups. She clasps her bosom as she sees Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Charles Henrotin, and Mrs. William Borden. Rosie can’t resist jumping up as Mrs. Palmer passes her, telling her what a grand city she has. Mrs. Palmer nods, and Rosie points to her aunt, saying she would like to make Mrs. Potter acquainted with her.
Just then, Granddad appears and roars, “Helaca-toot, Terpie, I’ve lost Buster!” (92) As they go looking for him, Aunt Euterpe is so embarrassed that she moves as if she’s in a trance. Rosie considers offering to have herself arrested and put away somewhere, for having drawn Mrs. Palmer’s attention to them. Granddad had left Buster to have a camel ride and Buster hadn’t met Granddad afterward as promised. The family finds him in the Zoopraxographical Hall, listening to a professor lecture on filmmaking with early moving pictures. They locate Flanagan in a beer garden and head for home.
In the carriage, Lottie asks what Rosie was thinking. Rosie says she thought if Mrs. Palmer and Aunt Euterpe were introduced, they might visit each other. Euterpe pats her hand but says “all is now lost” (93) and she will have to go live in a hotel in another city out of embarrassment. Rosie’s postcard home shows a photo of the Women’s Building with the closing words “Tea followed.”
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Greatest Day in Granddad’s Life, Part 1”
Lottie and Rosie prepare breakfast the next morning, as they have taken over the kitchen. Euterpe says that she is going to take the girls clothes shopping, and Lottie offers her a deal: They will accept the new clothes if Aunt Euterpe buys some for herself that are not black. Granddad and Buster, who are all dressed up, say they are all going to see Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show afterward, along with the dog, Tip.
The girls and Aunt Euterpe wear their new outfits. Buster asks how Buffalo Bill got his nickname and Granddad says that Colonel Cody used to shoot buffalo to feed the workers on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. They see various acts, including sharpshooter Annie Oakley, cowboys roping wild ponies, and a tableau of the Sioux people. The last act is to be the Deadwood Mail Coach, in which Indigenous Americans attack the coach until Buffalo Bill rescues them.
Celebrities are invited to ride in the Deadwood coach. They include the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago, who race around the arena inside the coach with the war party in pursuit. Buffalo Bill rides out, his Rough Riders behind him. Tip never can stand being left behind. He springs from the bleachers and chases the coach, to the applause of the crowd. The Rough Riders disperse the war party as Buffalo Bill halts the coach. Somehow Tip ends up inside the coach with the governor and the mayor, and the crowd roars.
Granddad gets up to fetch his dog, and Buffalo Bill turns around to greet him by name: “Blame my skeets if it isn’t Silas Fuller!” (108). Granddad replies with a hello and “How’s business?” to which Buffalo Bill tips his hat. Euterpe explains that her father was in the Civil War with Buffalo Bill.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The title of Chapter 7, “The Worst Day in Aunt Euterpe’s Life, Part 1,” prefigures the title of Chapter 8, “The Worst Day in Aunt Euterpe’s Life, Part 2,” inevitable. Each chapter in the novel reads like a fully developed short story with a beginning, middle, and end. The fact that these chapters, like the two chapters that follow (“The Greatest Day in Granddad’s Life,” Parts 1 and 2), can take place on the same day is an indication of the novel’s fast pacing.
Aunt Euterpe’s “worst day” is really a blessing in disguise, part of the novel’s ironic humor and subversive meaning. As the novel will reveal, Euterpe will be happier living in a hotel and, thanks to Lottie, will eventually find her own social group through the family’s interactions at the fair, albeit in a less-grand echelon than Mrs. Palmer’s social group. These hints are largely embedded in the novel’s structural patterning of expectations: Peck offers only one direct clue in this section about these coming revelations. This is Rosie’s question to herself about whether she was learning that she couldn’t always take her cues from Lottie. This, like Mama’s Chapter 4 comment about not knowing everything about her daughters, also foreshadows the forthcoming surprise about the identity of Lottie’s boyfriend, Everett. All of these female-centric experience and considerations explore the tensions presented in the theme of Female Power and Social Structures in the 1890s, especially as the present Rose learning about the extents and limits to adult female agency and freedoms within late 19th-century society.
This section also expands on the theme of Country Ways Versus City Ways. Rosie’s disastrous encounter with Mrs. Palmer takes place after tea at the Turkish pavilion, a meal that receives the same detailed description of all the food in the novel: “sandwiches tangled in parsley, little cakes like crescent moons” (89). Used to hearty meals, Rosie is puzzled by food that is meant only to look pretty, much like the elegant ladies whose day she is about to ruin with her “countrified” voice. Despite Rosie’s social missteps, by this stage in the novel, the fair has begun to provide a positive education for her. In Chapter 8, she has overcome her fear of the displays and can appreciate the beauty of the buildings, glittering “like a city carved from crystal” (85). Inside the Woman’s Building, she appreciates seeing the achievements of women, including painting and exploration. After her embarrassing gaffe, she thinks she “wasn’t ready for the world” and doesn’t understand how it works, but the narrative in fact shows that she is starting to figure it out.
Peck foreshadows Buster’s future career in filmmaking in Chapters 8 and 9, something that the narrator knows but the reader does not. Narrator Rosie uses the word “quicksilver” to describe Buster several times in the novel. Quicksilver is archaic diction for the metal mercury, a key element in both the development of photography and early film lighting, known for its property of forming quickly rolling spheres. This becomes an extended simile, representative of Buster’s character. In Chapter 1, Buster is “there and gone again before you knew” (5) when it comes to helping out with chores. He is again “quicksilver” and “there and gone before you knew” when he disappears in Chapter 8. In Chapter 11, the word and phrase will again be repeated as Buster disappears from the Evanses’ party. The person Buster is found listening to in Chapter 8, Eadweard Muybridge, has invented a way to animate photographs of animals to make them seem to move. Buster is naturally drawn to flickering, here-and-gone-again images with his “quicksilver” nature. In addition, having seen the glorious Buffalo Bill in action, he is specifically drawn to Westerns.
The last chapter of this section focuses on the excitement of the Wild West show, underpinned by the rich detail of the novel’s description. This is based in historical fact: Peck has described his research process as “endless,” and, like everything connected to the World’s Columbian Exposition, Peck meticulously studied Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show. Cody’s expression upon seeing Si Fuller, “Blame my skeets,” is attributed to him in an afterword to his 1917 autobiography.
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