Maude (19 page)

There were three dogs on the place when I came, all
male. Over the years, when one died, George would
grieve for a while but be comforted by the presence of
the other two. The lost pet would sooner or later be
somehow replaced by a puppy that someone gave
George. I liked the dogs, and once in a while, gave one
a pat on the head, but they were George’s dogs, the
same way that Bud was his boy.

After Pawnee died, George didn’t bring home any
more puppies. I think he’d been hurt too much by
losing Pawnee and didn’t want to feel that way ever
again.

The cats were a necessity and kept the varmints
from over-running the barn and house. They were
mostly wild. I’d become attached to only one or two
over the years. They didn’t have to be fed, providing
for themselves with mice and snakes. The cats were
really George’s property, too.

I had the children, but I was lonely. Clara spent
more of her time at the store. Except for Mondays,
when she stayed home and both of us did our wash and
had the afternoon to work together and talk. I was
alone all day with the two small children. I had plenty
of work to fill my time, but I longed for the
companionship of another adult, and George didn’t
help any. We were like two strangers sharing a house
in the daytime. Once in a while, there were a few
minutes relations’ at night that still didn’t mean
anything to me.

My talks with George were always about
practical matters. I didn’t talk to him about the things
I could talk about with Clara, things like what I read in
the paper, my dreams for our lives, and about ‘woman’
things.

In 1928, I voted for Herbert Hoover. I read about
his work as an engineer and how good he’d been
working for the government after the war. Partly, I
voted for him because I admired his wife’s dignity. He
turned to be a sad disappointment to me.

In 1929, I planted my gardens in late April like I
always did. I’d kept my flower beds in the original spot
I planted the first year I came to Missouri. After
George’s mother died, I kept the vegetables in the plot
of ground that the old woman used. It didn’t rain that
spring and summer, at least, not enough to water the
gardens. For weeks, I carried water from the well to
the vegetables, trying to keep the young plants alive.

Some of the neighbors had their wells run dry and
had to carry buckets of water from nearby springs to
use in their homes. I thanked God we were better off
than that. I let the flower beds go dry, even though it
grieved me, but kept on drawing enough water for the
vegetables.

We had to eat, and as the summer went on, and
the rains still didn’t come, prices for food in town went
higher and higher. We ate mostly chicken. It was the
wrong time of the year for fresh pork. The only thing
still left out in the smokehouse were several hams and
the slabs of bacon that George loved so much. I
wondered if they would last until October, when the
hogs would be butchered.

George didn’t raise his own hogs, but would buy
the meat from the freshly killed and cleaned animals,
bring it home, and smoke it himself. He’d never
impressed me with any ambitious work, but he seemed
to enjoy curing the meat and did a good job of it. He
would come home with several dead hogs that had
been split down the middle and hang them up on a rack
in the back yard, where he cut them into the portions
that suited him.

When he butchered the meat, he kept several
tubs placed in a circle around him, tossing one kind of
bits in one tub, another kind of parts into the next.
When he was finished, he would take the large cuts of
meat, wrap them in muslin, and carry them into the
smokehouse, where he hung them on hooks from the
ceiling. He lit the fire in the center of the room and let
the smoke do its job.

Outside, the bones were scraped and the rest of
the meat ground up in a machine George fastened to
the porch rail and cranked by hand. Then, that meat
was seasoned with sage and stuffed into the cleaned
intestine casings for sausage. He was very particular
that it be done just the way he liked, and it was cheaper
than buying the meat already smoked.

I’d almost come to appreciate his being frugal. It
wasn’t overmuch, and I liked the aroma of hickory that
filled the air when the meat was being cured. The
bones were boiled, and I used them and the fat to make
soap.

The lack of rain went on into the fall. I’d always
changed my tub of wash water for the laundry with
each load, but I began using the same water over again,
washing the whites and light colors first, then the
darks. It didn’t sit well with my ideas of cleanliness,
but I felt it necessary to save as much water as I could.

Each time I drew from the well, I listened for the
sound of the bucket hitting the surface of the water as
I released the rope. I could tell that it was taking longer
than before. I told George about it. He’d always been
proud of the sweet, clear water from his well. Now, we
both were afraid of what would happen if it went dry.
George began taking the little wagon full of buckets
and the washtubs down to the spring at the back of his
property and drawing water for the animals, the
garden, and the wash.

Every Sunday, the preacher would lead the
congregation in a prayer for rain that didn’t come. I
began adding the request to my own daily prayers. It
had been a lifelong habit of mine to pray each morning
before I began my day, and each evening before I went
to bed. Of course, there were what I thought of as
emergency prayers in between. I’d been taught that I
shouldn’t pray for things for myself, so I asked for rain
for the town and never mentioned to God the plot of
land behind my house, but I still thought about it as I
gave thanks for my blessings and recited my requests.
I felt guilty that I couldn’t keep it out of my mind.
When the rain failed to come week after week, I felt
that it was somehow my fault.

The harvest from the garden that fall wasn’t
nearly as much as usual. George said we couldn’t
expect a better crop to grow from water that had been
brought to it instead of real rain. I canned the tomatoes,
carrots, beans, okra and corn, but there wasn’t enough
harvest to fill the shelves of the pantry the way it had
in other years.

The peaches, pears and plums from the grove of
fruit trees were small, dry-looking little things, but I
did the best I could with them. I knew come January,
they would still be a treat for my family. I made jams
from the little blueberries and strawberries that had
survived. As soon as the berries started showing color
I’d covered the berry plants and bushes with netting to
keep the birds away. It seemed to me that the birds
were hungrier this year, their normal abundance of
wild fruit having dried up by mid-summer. Once, I
watched a bird pluck at the netting over the
strawberries until he had it torn away. He pulled at one
of the fruits until the plant came right out of the
ground. He flew away with the berry in his beak and
the whole plant still attached to it.

Rain was still scarce in 1930. When I said my
prayers, I gave thanks that the well was still sufficient
for our needs. The garden survived with the same
efforts as the year before, but there was a smaller crop
than the bad year before.

There was even less rain in 1931 and 1932. I read
in the paper that wells were drying up all over the state,
and I was thankful that ours was still holding out. I
made even more changes to our routine to save water.
My family wore their clothes longer, took fewer baths,
and used the bath and laundry water to water the
garden

The farmers that came to town for supplies were
desperate. Their crops had been thirsty for four years
in a row. Most of them had borrowed money from the
bank to get by, and now the bank was foreclosing on
their property. I didn’t see the sense in it. If they took
the farms away from the people who worked them, and
no one else had the money to buy the land from the
bank, what good did it do the bank?

There wasn’t rain, so there was dust. Great
clouds of it would get kicked up by the least little wind,
and there were times you couldn’t see across the road.
I kept the windows shut tight most of the time but it
was impossible to keep it out of the house.

Our home was on the outskirts Kennett, and from
time to time, families I knew from church would stop
to say goodbye on their way out of town. Some were
moving west, as far as California, where the land was
still growing good crops. Some headed north to
Chicago or Detroit or other cities in hopes of getting
manufacturing jobs in the factories.

Things are really bad here. Almost
everyone in town has left to look for work
somewhere else. I don’t know if Helen wrote
you about it, but the general store had to close
down because hardly anyone could pay their
bill and Tommy and Helen couldn’t buy more
merchandise to sell. They kept the doors open
until everything was gone and then just
locked up and went home. Helen says they
have enough money saved to tide them over,
but we never saved much ourselves.

I just wanted to let you know that we’re
moving to Detroit. John has a brother there
who can get him a job at the Buick factory,
and we can stay with them until we get a place
of our own. I don’t know yet what our address
will be, but I will send it to you as soon as
possible.

Take care of yourselves and write me.
We love you. Kiss those babies for me. I wish
I’d had a chance to know them. We always
intended to come visit. If things there don’t
get better, you know you will always be
welcome anywhere we have a roof over our
heads.

I was grief-stricken over the thought of Bessie
and her family moving to Detroit. Even though I
hadn’t seen them for years, it comforted me to know
we had family only a few days away and doing well
enough. Now Bessie would be a distance from us I
couldn’t even imagine.

I worried about Helen and Tommy and Faith.
What would they do if things didn’t pick up before
their money ran out? I was angry that Helen hadn’t
even written me about their problems, but I realized
that neither one of us was much of a letter-writer, and
Helen certainly wasn’t one to share bad news.

I wondered how Clara was doing. Clara wasn’t
one to share bad news either. I knew that things at the
store had grown worse, but Clara managed to keep the
doors open with just one helper to do the heavy lifting.
How much longer could the business survive?

I didn’t buy the newspaper any more, but when I
went into town I’d stand in front of the counter and
look over the main articles. They were calling this
The
Great Depression
and saying things were just as bad
in the cities as they were in the farm areas. I thought
about Bessie and John. I hoped they weren’t going
from the frying pan into the fire by moving to Detroit.
It was only a few days later that George came home
upset about something. I waited for him to tell me, but
when he hadn’t said a word by suppertime, I finally
asked him, “What is it, George? You’ve been unhappy
ever since you got home.”

George shook his head. “The mayor told me that
I’d have to let Doug Graham go. There isn’t any real
crime in town anyway, and the council can’t see its
way clear to keep on paying two salaries. I don’t know
how I’m going to tell him. They’ve got three
youngsters to feed. Where’s he going to get work?”

“That’s terrible, George. Poor Sarah, I just don’t
know where it’s going to end. The drought has to be
over soon. If they can just hang on, maybe next year
things will be better. I’ll pray for them.”

George looked at me. “You do that. If things
don’t get better, you might want to say a prayer for us
too.”

“Do we have enough money in the bank to last
us for a while if they let you go, too?”
George shook his head. “Depends on how long
this mess lasts, Maude.”
When time came around for the next election, in
1936, for the first time in years, George didn’t run
unopposed. Doug Graham registered to run against
him. Doug visited the jail and apologized to George
but explained that he had to think about his family
first, and he couldn’t make it anymore. He’d taken out
a mortgage on his home when he was laid off, and now
that money was almost gone, and he had payments to
make. He could only get day-labor jobs, and those
were scarce. He had to do something, and being a
deputy was the only other work he’d ever done.
George didn’t think he had to worry about
losing. Everyone liked him. He thought he would win
this time, just as he’d always done.
When the results came in, George lost the
election. He explained it to me. “Things have been so
bad that people just want a change, want to see if
there’s something else that can be done. The mayor
lost, and every one of the council members too.”
I was suddenly scared in a way I’d never been
before. “How much money do we have in the bank,
George?”
“A little,” he said.
I wasn’t satisfied with that for an answer. “Do we
have enough money in the bank to get by for very long,
George?”
“For a while.”
It made me want to wring his neck, but I let it go.
It was his job to provide for us, and he always had.
He must have had quite a bit saved up. Even with
him out of work except for a day at labor now and then,
the money lasted for another year. There was still no
rain and no steady work to be had. It was true that
everyone liked George, but the men who might have
hired him were well aware of his fondness for resting
up. They smiled at him and clapped him on the back.
For the most part, they told him, “Nothing today,
George.”
George took out a loan on the house. He couldn’t
get as much money as he’d hoped, but things were bad
for the bank, too. He planned that the money would
make the payments on the loan, pay our expenses, and
last us until things picked up.
I scrimped on things as best I could. None of us
had new clothes for a long time. Gene wore Bud’s
hand-me-downs, Paul wore Gene’s, and I made over
some of Lulu’s and my own things and used flour
sacks to make clothes for Betty Sue.
Shoes were different. The children could go
barefoot in the summer, but they had to have shoes for
the winter. A box was set by the wall in the front of the
church, and people put their children’s outgrown shoes
in it. If a family was lucky, they might find a pair in
the box that would fit one of their children. Most of
them had holes in the bottom, but I became an expert
at stitching on scraps of leather to cover the soles. I
used an upholstery needle and a pair of pliers to poke
the heavy needle in and out of the leather.
To save on oil, the lamps weren’t lit unless we
had to have the light. I’d always been proud of the
quality of my meals and the abundance on the table,
but now the children didn’t dare put more on their plate
than they could eat. I gave thanks to God my children
had never been hungry. I knew well that others in the
town had not been so blessed.
One morning that fall, Clara and I were hanging
our laundry on the line the way we always did. Clara
was unusually quiet, and I let it go without saying
anything until we were finished with the work. Then I
poured some cold tea and we sat on the porch and
rocked. When Clara didn’t explain her mood, I asked,
“Well?”
“I’m getting married, Maude.”
I couldn’t believe it. Clara hadn’t said a single
word that she was even interested in anyone. I just sat
there with my mouth wide open.
After a moment, Clara went on, “I borrowed
money against the store to keep it going, and when that
ran out, I borrowed money against the house, and now
I can’t pay that either. I’m going to lose both of them.”
She started sobbing. “I’ve made a terrible mess of
things. I should have closed the store before all this
happened. I tried to sell it, but there aren’t any buyers
anywhere. Everyone in town is in the same boat.”
I finally found my voice. “Who are you going to
marry, Clara?”
“Brother Humphreys has been coming around to
the store for quite some time. He’s been asking me and
asking me, and up to now I’ve been pretending I
wasn’t interested, but now there’s nothing else I can
do. I can’t get work. How can we live without money?
I don’t have any family of my own to fall back on.
Maggie’s going to St. Louis to live with her daddy’s
sister and go to the secretarial school there.”
I jumped up and stamped my foot. “You can’t do
it, Clara. I won’t let you. Brother Humphreys is nice
enough but he’s thirty years older than you are and
ugly as a moose. You deserve someone you can love.
You’ve already been married to someone like him.”
“I appreciate your concern, Maude, really, but
what else can I do? He’s well off compared to most of
us, and he can keep Maggie in school and pay her
keep. Her aunt has a spare room, but she’s not in a
position to support her.”
When it came time for Maggie to leave, I helped
Clara and Maggie pack her things and went to the train
station with Clara to see Maggie off for St. Louis.
School was starting, and Maggie couldn’t stay for her
mother’s wedding. She had to be in St. Louis for the
start of the semester. I got the feeling that Maggie was
glad she would miss the ceremony.
Both of us sobbing, we watched the train grow
small in the distance. I wished that Lulu could have
been on that train with her best friend.
One week later Clara and Brother Humphreys
were married after the Sunday service. There was
punch and cake after the ceremony, but no one seemed
to be celebrating except the bridegroom. Everyone
looked at Clara with sympathy in their eyes.