Month: December 2016

Two Roads Part 8

img_1681They anticipated a bumper crop that August.  Eddie’s forty acres were white with the swelling cotton bolls.  An experienced farmer, he’d been at it long enough to know what his crop would bring.  Even though he’d only be paid for two-thirds of the yield, this should be one of his better years.  After settling up with Mr. Hathaway and the grocer, he ought to be able to put away enough to start renting the next fall.  He had his eye on a farm close to Neely’s mama.  The house wasn’t much better than this one, but at least he wouldn’t be sharecropping.

The whole family picked from daylight to dark for days, only breaking to eat buttered sugar biscuits and rest a few minutes at noon.  Their hands bled from the sharp points on the dried bolls.  Neeley had the oldest two girls trade out watching the baby while she picked. The weather held till they got the drop in.  Mr. Hathaway was there to weigh every bag they emptied before having it hauled to the gin.

After the last wagon load of cotton rolled out, they waited anxiously for Mr. Hathaway to get back to pay them their share.  They knew he was coming early that Saturday,  so they already had the wagon hitched up and the kids ready to go so they could settle their grocery bill and get the kids some shoes.  The little guys had gone barefoot all summer, but with school ready to start and winter coming, they’d need shoes.

Mr. Hathaway and his foreman got out of his truck and walked over to where they waited.  “I got bad news for you folks.  The price of cotton fell and seed cost way more than I thought it would.  Y’all didn’t clear but about fifty dollars on this crop.”

Eddie was stunned, taking long to speak.  “That don’t hardly seem right.  Cotton’s been selling for fourteen cents a pound.  We had a fine crop.  The way I figure it, we got just over three-hundred dollars clear.  You was s’posed to pay for the seed, not me.  We got to talk about this.”

“That’s all they is to it.  You just got a tough break on the seed.” Mr. Hathaway dismissed him and turned to go, encountering Neeley standing between him and his truck.  She had a bull whip in her hand. At six feet and near two-hundred pounds, the enraged woman was an imposing figure, especially to a small, wiry older man.  He and his foreman were trapped between the house and the wagon.

“No, that ain’t how it’s gonna go.”  She looked him in the eye.  “You owe us at least three-hundred twenty-seven dollars and that’s what you gonna pay us.  I’ll whip you if I have to, but you ain’t starvin’ my younguns.”

Mr. Hathaway dropped his eyes in the face of the furious woman with the whip.  Reaching in his pocket, he dug out a thick roll of bills.  He counted out three-hundred fifty-three dollars and handed it to Eddie.  “I forgot you have your own mule and equipment. This will make us square.”  He and the foreman edged their way around Neeley and scurried to the truck.  He called back to Eddie once he was in the truck, “I want you and that woman off the place.  I got somebody else in mind.”

Eddie was still shocked at what his wife had done, so Neeley answered for him.  “Don’t you worry none about that.  We already got somethin’ lined up.”

 

 

 

 

Christmas Revelations

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

We’d put away all the Christmas decorations weeks before.   We’d finally gotten our eighteen month old, John, to bed after several unsuccessful attempts and had collapsed, totally whipped.  Meanwhile, he’d  been entertaining himself rummaging quietly through a dresser drawer we’d thought inaccessible.  After a few minutes, he toddled into the living room victorious dragging garland, an ornament in each hand, announcing, “Santa Claus is coming to town.  I’ll be damned!”

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Goodwill Toward Kids At Christmas!

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

I was dying for a bicycle.  What I really wanted was a Spitfire, dark blue!  That had to be the most beautiful bike in the world.  However, I was a realist. I had heard my mother worrying over Christmas enough to know there would never be enough money for a new Spitfire.  That would have cost more than she had to spend for the whole family.   I would have been happy with anything of a reasonable size without training wheels.  It didn’t have to be new.  It didn’t have to have a horn.  It didn’t have to be blue.  I just wanted a bike.

My mother did make a mysterious trip to Goodwill in Shreveport before Christmas.  There is no way I could have missed knowing this.  She was a timid driver. “Driving in town” was a frequent topic of discussion among her group of friends.  The bolder ones proudly bragged, “I drive…

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Two Roads Part 7

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Image from photos of The Great Depression

Sharecropping was a big come-down after losing the farm.  Neeley felt it every time she saw family or bumped into a neighbor in the store.  They’d been extended credit again since the boss-man vouched for them, but it was humiliating when the owner’s wife, Mrs. Hathaway saw Neeley admiring fabric and snidely remarked, “Now don’t you go runnin’ up the bill with fancy stuff like that. You gonna have to be savin’ since we vouchin’ fer you.”

“I ain’t gonna cost you nothin’,”  Neeley assured her.  “I got enough sense to know what I owe, but it don’t cost nothin’ for me to look.”  With that, she asked the storekeeper for two yards of unbleached muslin, the cheap stuff women used for their monthly needs.  She turned to the storekeeper.  “Please take this out of my egg and butter money, an’ got each of the young’uns gits a peppermint stick.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” the storekeeper said.  He was amused at Neeley’s spunk, having seen plenty of Mrs. Hathaway’s hateful attitude toward her husband’s workers.  He cut Neeley an extra yard and grinned.

“I didn’t mean no harm.  I just didn’t want you running up no big bill for us to got stuck with. ” Mrs. Hathaway tried to turn the awkward situation around.

“You don’t never have to worry about me.”  Neeley looked her dead in the eye.  “Save your worry for somebody else.”

Eddie was loading feed as she came out of the store.  “Now don’t you go crossing Miz Hathaway.  We don’t need them throwin’ us out.”

“Huh, they need us worse than we need them.  You ain’t seen nobody lined up at their door looking for a place, have you?”   she queried.

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All spring Neeley worked alongside Eddie, helping him get the cotton crop in.  A few weeks later, she helped him chop the weeds out.  Because Eddie furnished his own mule and plow, Mr. Hathaway allowed him an acre for a vegetable garden and let Neeley’s cow graze in with his cows.  Eddie built Neeley a chicken house out of scrap lumber to shut her chickens up at night.  They ran free all day.  Once the cash crop was in, they got their own patch planted.  Many landowners didn’t allow their croppers room for a garden, so this was a boon.  The landowner was to get one-third of the cotton crop, Eddie two-thirds.

The crop was thriving.  They were hopeful they’d clear enough to get far enough ahead to rent a farm with their share.  Eddie still had his mule, equipment, and wagon.  By now, Cassie was back in Neeley’s life.  She and her third husband had settled a few miles away with their twin boys and little girl.  The two older boys were    out of the house and working.  It was a comfort to have Cassie nearby.  She had settled down some as she aged, though she and her husband still managed some pretty good fights.  It probably helped that men didn’t pay much attention to her as she “lost her looks.”  Neeley had even started calling her “Mama” after Ma died.

Things were going a lot better than Neeley expected until her milk dried up and she realized she was pregnant again.  Damn, Eddie!  Why couldn’t he leave her in peace. The baby was only eight months old!  She wouldn’t need that unbleached muslin for a while, anyway.  Counting Clara Bea, this would be her sixth child and she wasn’t even twenty-five.  She didn’t think she could stand it.

 

 

 

 

Monday Funnies…

Reblog from TSRA

Can you help me out? (Joke)

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

One Christmas Eve a panhandler approached a man passing on the street.  “Excuse me, sir.  Can you give me enough money for a meal?”

“If I give you twenty dollars, will you spend it on alcohol?”

“Oh no.  I used to drink, but I gave it up years ago!”

“Well, would you spend it on guns and hunting equipment? ”

“No!  I’ve never been hunting in my life.”

“What about fishing?  Would you blow this money on fishing?”

“No!  I’ve never cared a thing about fishing, either.”

He handed the panhandler the twenty, then said, “Okay, come on home with me.  I’m going feed you a fine meal, get you a bath and some clean clothes and put you up for a few days.  My wife needs to see what happens to a man who doesn’t drink, hunt, or fish!”

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Christmas Spirit (Joke)

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

The benevolence committee was collecting for Christmas and approached the richest man in town.  “Can we count on you for a contribution for this year’s Christmas campaign?”

He headed them off, “You probably don’t know my mother is in a nursing home, totally penniless, dependent on handouts for all except necessities, do you?  My brother and his wife both have catastrophic illnesses and neither has worked in over a year.  That’s not all, my sister’s husband ran off and left her with six kids.  Her house burned and she has no where to go.  If someone doesn’t do something for them, they will be on the street.  Now if I’m not going to help any of them, what makes you think I’m going to help you?”

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Two Roads Part 6

Posted out of sequence

Over the next six years, Neeley gave birth to three more children.  She was an indulgent mother to them and to Clara Bea.  For the rest of her life she said, “When your children are little they step on your toes. When they get older, they step on your heart.”  After three consecutive drought years with no cash crop, Eddie was way behind on his banknote and at the grocery store.  When he couldn’t even pay the interest on his loan, the bank refused him further credit.  The grocer had to cut him off, too.  Sadly, he lost the farm and had to become a sharecropper, a situation few could escape.  It was like falling into a vortex.  The only advantage of share-cropping was that the owner furnished seed, land, and lodging, a deal with the devil since the landowner charged seed and supplies against the sharecropper’s pay at the end of the season.  Even worse, some landowners paid in script which could only be used in trade at their own store.  Sharecroppers were unlikely to be privy to the crop price, so were easily cheated.  They just got deeper and more hopelessly in debt to the landowner every year, essentially becoming enslaved.  Should they try to abscond on the debt, they could be charged with theft.  Many had to steal away in the night, leaving the majority of their belongings behind.

The typical sharecropper’s cabin was unpainted and often had shutters instead of windows.  Likely, wire was nailed over the windows to keep varmints out.  A four-room shack with a porch would have been generous.  It was very common for shacks to sit in cotton fields with tiny yards and no shade trees.  It was common for several to be clustered together around one well. They depended on fireplaces and wood stoves for cooking and heat. Toilets served for sanitation.  Both blacks and whites worked as sharecroppers.  It was common for children to work alongside their parents at planting and harvest time.  “Them that don’t work don’t eat,” was a common saying.  Society looked down on sharecroppers, inferring that a man with drive wouldn’t find himself in that position.  Prejudice is always with us.

When the sheriff came out with the eviction notice, the banker sent Eddie word that his brother-in-law, Mr. Hathaway, needed a fellow.  One of his workers had moved on last week.  In desperation, Eddie said he’d take it. Neeley was mad.  “We can do better than that.  Ever’body knows what a crook he is.  Mary Jones said he ain’t paid ’em nothin’ for their crop last fall.  That’s why he’s got a spot now.  We can find something better.”

Eddie refused ro look further saying, “We got nowhere else to go. I ain’t  turning this spot down.”

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Cast Iron

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