Chapter 10
Family Departure for Washington
In spite of
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts, Hard Times did not seem to get
any better in the spring of 1936.
Congress had declared the NRA to be unconstitutional and the WPA
faltered. The drought eased a bit, but
the price of eggs remained at ten cents a dozen. Unemployment had soup lines in the large
cities stretching around the block. I
recall seeing a sign in a cafĂ© window in Greenfield: “BREAKFAST—two eggs, three
strips of bacon, fried potatoes, toast, and coffee—25 cents”. The work on the road through Bona was over
and my father could not find a money job anywhere.
We continued to
wear our patched overalls and faded shirts but we never went hungry. There was always food on the table three
times a day. Breakfast might be only
biscuits and gravy but it was good and nourishing. We did not mind that often our syrup pail
lunch buckets held only a couple of biscuits and some hog meat—it was good.
One of our
favorite dinners was when Mother made macaroni and cheese and cooked a pot of
beans. We would stir the macaroni and
beans together on our plates. With a
hunk of cornbread and a glass of milk fresh from the cow, it was delicious. (It took me a few years to adjust to cold
refrigerated milk—I preferred it straight from the cow.)
There was one
thing that I really detested—turnips! I
do not know why it was, but besides the weeds, the one thing that seemed to
thrive during those drought years was turnips.
We ate turnips fixed every way known to mankind. Mother even cooked the turnips tops like
spinach so we would have some greens. To
this day, I am reluctant to face cooked turnips.
A momentous turning
point in our lives occurred in the spring of 1936 a few weeks after Sandra Dean
was born. One afternoon a shiny black
new car pulled up to the front of our little house. It turned out to be our cousin, Ray Dean Lee,
from Vancouver, Washington.
As I mentioned
before in the first chapter, Uncle Austin had a pretty good job with the city
water department in Vancouver and had some money in the bank. He was tight as the bark on a tree, however,
and would never pass up an opportunity to save a dollar.
Uncle Austin wanted
a new car. He had figured out that if he
bought a train ticket to Detroit for Ray Dean, Ray could go back there, buy a
new car at the factory, and drive in out to Vancouver for a hundred dollars
less than Uncle Austin could buy one there.
Ray Dean was on his way back to Vancouver with a brand new 1936 four-door
Plymouth sedan.
That new Plymouth
was the finest thing in the way of an automobile I had ever seen. After supper, while everyone else were taking
around the table, I sneaked out front to look the car over. I touched the shiny black paint reverently
and finally worked up the courage to slide into the driver’s seat under the
steering wheel.
The car had that
new smell compounded of newly baked enamel, leather, and fresh grease. I gripped the steering wheel and fantasized
that I was ahead of Barney Oldfield coming down the stretch at Indianapolis. They found me there later, sound asleep and
still clutching the steering wheel.
Ray Dean’s
unexpected visit changed our lives.
During that conversation after supper, Ray told Dad that there were jobs
to be had in the Pacific Northwest in the lumber business. We had been there, of course, ten years
before so it was not unknown territory to Dad.
Before the evening was over a big decision was made—my father would go
with Ray in the car back to Vancouver. If he got a good job, the rest of us would
come later.
We boys were
ecstatic when we were informed of the decision at breakfast the next morning. I reveled and thought gleefully, “Now I will
get away from these hot, dry, dusty old hills.!”
My father gave us
some sobering words of caution. “Now don’t
get your hopes too high, boys. First I
got to get out there and find a job—something that will pay enough that I can
rent a house and send for all of you.
That may not come easy or quick.
We will just have to hope that I don’t have to come crawling home with
my tail between my legs.”
He turned to
Richard and me. “Meantime, we got to
keep this little farm going. I am
depending on you two boys—especially you Richard, because you are the
oldest. We only are milking four cows so
that won’t be a problem.
“I planted twenty
acres of corn down in that bottom land I rented and you will have to take care
of that with the team. You know what to
do. When you get it laid by, if
everything has worked out and we are moving to Vancouver, we will hope that
your mother can sell it in the field to help pay expenses and you won’t have to
pick it.”
And so it was
arranged on very short notice. While we were
in school the next day, Dad put his affairs in order and packed his meager
belongings in a battered old cardboard suitcase. The morning after that, right after breakfast,
he got into the Plymouth with Ray Dean and they headed west.
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