The Female of the Species

Robert C. Lockwood, a 41-year-old Miami insurance adjuster, had tax troubles. The Internal Revenue Service claimed he owed $415.69 in back taxes. Lockwood insisted he owed nothing. The collectors put on the pressure, and Lockwood, like many another before him, buckled. He signed a waiver permitting the Government to attach his paycheck. Said he: "I just gave up. I'm a little guy. I didn't figure I could fight the Government."

No sooner had Robert Lockwood signed that waiver than he had more than tax troubles. He had wife troubles. Pretty Margaret Ann Lockwood, 28, gathered up her children--Rene, 2, and ten-month-old Robbie--and marched into the Miami tax collector's office to demand return of her husband's paycheck. Says she: "I told them Robbie had just got out of the hospital, where he was treated for acute anemia, and we needed the money for medicine. They wouldn't listen. They're rather coldhearted and impersonal down there." But Margaret Lockwood had a plan of action: she planted herself in a chair and announced she would stay right there until the paycheck was returned.

The children did the rest. Daughter Rene, dipping into a box of raisins, managed to spill about half of them on the tax office floor, happily trampled them into a gooey mess. Son Robbie wet his diapers, and Margaret Lockwood calmly changed them, draping the reeking castoffs over a chair.

When lunchtime came, Mrs. Lockwood opened jars of baby food, arranged them on a clerk's desk. The children dug in greedily, splattered strained apricots and sweet potatoes generously over a stack of tax reports. Robbie started to cough on his food, and a nerve-shredded clerk told Mrs. Lockwood not to let him choke. "Mind your own business," she snapped. "It's my baby, not yours."

Next, Rene found a wastebasket and enthusiastically overturned it. A clerk spoke sharply to her and she started to scream. Baby Robbie thereupon joined in lustily. At last, after 4 1/2 hours, the harried tax collector surrendered. Margaret Lockwood was told that her husband's check had been released, and she could pick it up at his office. Bob Lockwood would have another chance to talk over the claims against him; even if back taxes were actually due, they could be paid in small installments. And across the U.S., tax collectors braced themselves for a tide of determined wives--with children.

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