Times were hard
enough that in the spring of 1935 my father finally had to break down and
register for a WPA job. He was adamant
that he would not take any Relief handouts but he did get a job on the road
crew. He and Bill Simmons ran the rock
crusher for a while then he got a job with the contractor that was building a
new bridge over the Little Sac (pronounced “sock”) River between Bona and Fair
Play. After that he helped build a
smaller bridge over Maze Creek between Bona and Dadeville where there had been
a shallow ford.
That spring it
seemed almost like prosperity to us with some cash money coming in. Unfortunately, it sort of went to Dad’s head
and resulted in one of the rare times that I saw my mother sit down and cry.
Dad got paid one
week and went off to Greenfield or maybe Springfield with one of my
uncles. He took Richard along with
them. Prohibition had been repealed not
long before and I suspect that Dad had a few beers and his wages were burning a
hole in his pocket. We had not owned a
car for two or three years.
Late in the
afternoon I was fooling around in the yard with Rex and Mother was, as usual,
in the kitchen. We heard a car coming
and a 1927 Model T Ford touring car with Dad driving and Richard whooping in
the seat beside him came wheeling into the barnlot.
“It’s ours!”
Richard yelled as Dad wheeled the car around in a circle. “We got a car!”
Mother had come
out onto the south back porch facing the barn and Rex and I had raced around to
that side of the house. We boys were
dancing in glee but then I caught sight of my mother’s face. She was not happy. Her face sort of crumpled and she sank down
to sit on the edge of the porch. Then
she dropped her face into her apron over work-roughened hands—freshly red from
the scrub board in the galvanized wash tub—and quietly cried.
It was appalling. One thing I do not like to see is anyone cry,
especially a grown woman and especially if it happened to my mother. I went to her and put my arm around her
shaking shoulders. “What’s the matter,
Mama? Ain’t you happy about the car?”
Even in her grief,
she answered automatically, “Don’t say ain’t!”
Then she sobbed, “Oh, Connie, there are so many things that we
need. We don’t need a car! We need some decent clothes. I was even hoping that your father would get
me one of those washing machines.”
There was a big
lump in my throat. My instinct had been
to run and see the car up close and Rex was already on the way to the barn lot,
but the joy had gone out of it. I
thought of all the long hours I had seen my mother bent over a scrub board and
laundry tub every week, then wringing out the wet clothes by hand and hanging
them on the line to dry. I also thought
about all the long hours she spent in that kitchen every day without running
water and with only the wood-burning stove to cook on.
Dad did not
neglect Mother—he did everything he could for her. He had installed a sink in the kitchen
counter with a drain pipe that went outside so she would not have to carry
waste water and throw it out the door.
He had built cupboards for her and a little clothes closet in the corner
of the one bedroom. He had always worked
his fingers to the bone for us.
At the age of 39,
Dad’s hands were already rough and beginning to be gnarled from hard labor and
shucking corn. He took great pride in an
honest day’s work and got great satisfaction from what he accomplished whether
there was money in it or not. He was
just an honest old country boy that did not have much in the way of business
sense—especially after he had a couple of beers.
I wanted desperately
to comfort my mother but I was at a loss what to say or do. I just patted her shoulder clumsily and, I
think, said something like “Don’t cry, Mama—please. Things will get better, you’ll see!”
She looked up at
me gratefully, smiled through her tears and squeezed my hand. “I know, Con’rd,” she said softly. “He means well—really he does, and his heart
is pure gold. He takes good care of us. I should not be selfish.”
She dried her eyes
with her apron then quickly got up and went into the house while I trotted down
to the barnlot to inspect the Model T. In
a very few days both Richard and I had learned to drive that old car.
I do not know what
conversation transpired between my mother and father but she accepted the
car. I do know that after a couple more
months of working on the bridge job, Dad came back from Springfield on day with
a brand new Maytag gasoline-powered washing machine in the back seat for Mother. She used it until we left the Ozarks and her
hands were not so red and chapped after that, nor did she complain of
backaches. It would be a real museum
antique today, but it was pure luxury for my mother.
