Dads book: Family Struggle to Survive The only work Dad was able to find in Huntsville was with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This was a program established to create jobs for the unemployed. I remember Dad coming home tired and muddy from swinging a pick and shoveling dirt all day, working on WPA road building projects for a dollar a day. These were hard times for the industrial North, but much worse for the agricultural South. Our situation did not improve and Dad continued to swing a pick and shovel dirt, day after day, with no promise of a better tomorrow. Even so, I remember receiving an allowance of 5 cents each week. I would immediately race three blocks to a neighborhood grocery store, and promptly spend the five cents for candy. Choosing a single candy bar from among the many mouth-watering candies in the display case was an agony I looked forward to each week. As a small boy, I had no conception of rich and poor. I was generally unaware of the Great Depression and the impact it was having on my everyday life. Thus, I didnt realize I was suffering poverty and deprivation. Blissfully ignorant, I lived the only life I had ever known--and enjoyed my childhood in the Huntsville suburbs. How We Lived The first house that I remember was small and of wood frame construction. It was on a street in the Dallas Mill Village that paralleled a large drainage ditch. The ditch was dry most of the time, waiting for the next gulley washer rainfall. The house had running water (cold only) inside to the kitchen sink. There was no bathroom, bathtub or inside toilet. The only toilet was a small Out-house at the back of the lot. Most families kept a chamber pot or bucket, with a couple inches of water in it, for children to use at night. Pages from old Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogs were used for toilet paper. After I was about 5 or 6-years old, I was tasked to empty the bucket in the outhouse each morning. All three of us kids got a bath every Saturday night - whether we needed it or not! Our bathtub was the same big galvanized washtub Mom used to rinse clothes in after they were boiled in a big cast iron pot in the yard. Bath time came after supper dishes were washed and the kitchen was cleaned after the dinner meal. The big galvanized tub was positioned near the wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen. Water was brought to the tub from the faucet in the kitchen sink, with warm water added from the stoves warm water reservoir. A big amber-colored bar of homemade soap and a flour sack washcloth were used to scrub away the past weeks accumulation of dirt. Though Mom and Dad had little money, I dont recall anyone in our family ever suffering from hunger; we always had enough to eat. We had biscuits and gravy, eggs, milk, and once in awhile we had salt pork bacon for breakfast; cornbread, pinto beans, potatoes, and milk for lunch; and more cornbread, beans, potatoes, turnip or mustard greens, green onions, buttermilk, and occasionally a piece of meat for dinner. Gourmet food, no - super good and nourishing, you betcha! Before ice boxes and refrigerators became common in homes, a small army of tradesmen and merchants made deliveries and sales trips through local neighborhoods. The milkman delivered milk to the front door, the tea man delivered tealeaves. And the vegetable man or fruit man came in a wagon in the street, calling out: Fresh fruit--fresh vegetables! Housewives went out to look over the produce. Wood and coal also were delivered. And so was ice--cut in blocks to the size (number of pounds) you wanted. In those days - before anybody had heard of antibiotics, antihistamines and vitamins - each family had its own homemade remedies for every ailment. The standard remedy for a hacking cough at our house was a teaspoon of sugar with a few drops of turpentine in it (*please dont try this*). When I started coughing in the middle of the night, Mom would soon show up with the turpentine and sugar mixture (prepared earlier) ready for instant use during the cold and coughing season.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 02:41:34 +0000
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