On Growing Up Tough: An Irreverent Memoir

  There were “outlanders” all through the region, with their poisonous cigarettes, city men from Louisville and Richmond and all over, drilling for oil. The mountain folk were uneasy. But they gave permission for drilling on their land. When the money rolled in—sometimes over a thousand dollars a week—the mountain folk were indifferent. The money piled up in the “settlement” banks, and stayed there, untouched. Money was unimportant to the men of the land, who had their herds and their fields, and their snug cabins and their religion.

  Life and birth and death were accepted with no cries, no complaints. It was all a part of living, and who quarrelled with God and the earth?

  I won’t say it was a glorious life for me, out there on the naked mountains in a fragile tent, and all alone twelve hours of the day with a toddler. I won’t say I enjoyed going far down the mountainside with my pails to the artesian well for water, and then climbing up again with the sloshing buckets. It wasn’t delightful for me, loaded down with a baby and carrying a basket, to dodge roaring bulls and wild horses in the pasture over which I had to walk “down to Benton” for necessities. Riding a mule—when we could catch him—or an ox—when we could catch him—isn’t the most comfortable way to travel. But I did learn something of invaluable worth.

  I learned how to build a cabin and to roof it. I learned how to plow the ground and to plant. I learned how to shoot for meat. I learned how to make all our clothing and what herbs to gather to make medicine. I learned to weave wool rugs and blankets. I knew the berries which were poisonous and those which I could can. In short, I knew how to survive in the wilderness, even to delivering a baby, even to grinding grain for bread. I knew how to make a dwelling place immune to weather, and how to build fires and bleach cotton. I still know, and it is all a cherished part of my knowledge.

  After we had lived two years in Benton, we moved to Bowling Green. My husband never discovered the oil for which he was drilling in Appalachia. He worked for a Liberal who lived grandly, and who promised wonders for the young exploited who labored for him in his fields. He would “invest” their wages, he said, in “my growing oil empire. Nothing too good for my boys.” Finally he owed my husband a thousand dollars, and thousands more to other innocents working for him. So he promptly filed for bankruptcy, claiming no assets. He had everything in his wife’s name.

  So, we found ourselves with no money at all except fifty dollars I had made, myself, as a public stenographer. I walked from the farmhouse, where we boarded, six miles into town, worked all day, then walked the six miles back. I had had this job for only six months, and with constant work I could average about eighteen dollars a week which paid our board and left a little over for savings. I was twenty-two. I had a four-year-old daughter. There was no future for us in Bowling Green. But in my home city, in the North, I could get a regular job as a secretary and make, I hoped, twice as much. There wasn’t enough money for the three of us to travel on, so I left my husband in Kentucky trying to find enough work to raise his fare, and took my child home.

  It was no fun traveling two nights and one day in a gritty coach with a little girl. I had my trunk with me, something like a foot-locker of small dimensions, and in it I had all my worldly goods, including clothing for myself and my child for all seasons, fifty or so books, two old blankets, and two iron skillets.

  The fare had been twenty-nine dollars, and then there was the expense of food on the train and some cough-mixture for my child, who had developed a bad cold on the journey and was quite sick. I arrived in Buffalo in a particularly savage February blizzard—and with no place to go and with only about fifteen dollars in my purse. It was 6:30 A.M., black and below zero. We emerged into the station and I spent fifty cents for our breakfast. Then I bought a newspaper and sat down to study the ads. First of all, I had to find a place to live.

  My hopes were high, and so were my spirits, and so I bought my child a sucker to keep her quiet on the bench in the waiting-room of the station while I studied the morning newspaper. It never occurred to me that I was in a desperate plight. Therefore, I was in no such plight. I was soon enlightened, and I have never forgotten the shame, the embarrassment, and the mysterious if momentary terror and loathing.

  A middle-aged gaunt woman suddenly sat down next to me, curiously smelling of camphor and an unwashed body and hair that needed laundering. She was dressed in thick, dark-brown wool and a drab hat. My little girl took the sucker out of her mouth and, with the instinct of childhood, moved closer to me for protection. I stared at the woman and shifted a little away from her, but she followed me, and, to my outrage, began to stroke my arm.

  “In trouble, dear?” she murmured.

  I had been taught by my mother never to speak to strangers. Still I was polite, so I told the woman as briefly as possible that I was searching the newspaper for a boarding house for me and my child, and a possible job. She cocked her head as she listened. Her eyes moistened. She kept stroking my arm, and now her hand began to linger on my neck which she kept gently mauling and pinching. It gave me the shudders. Then abruptly she took my purse off my lap and opened it. I snatched at it, sure I had encountered a thief, but she was only counting my money. “Fifteen dollars,” she mused, “and no home, nowhere to go. Poor children.” She returned my purse, and returned to fondling my neck. Now I was frightened, and she saw it.

  “Oh, I represent the County Welfare,” she reassured me. “Tell me, dear, are you married?” When I angrily told her that I was indeed married, she looked disappointed. “Take your hand off my neck,” I told her. She gave me a final loving pinch, and withdrew her hand. “Such a pretty girl, too,” she murmured. “Under your circumstances, dear,” she said, “would you be willing to put your child up for adoption? We have so many calls …”

  My mouth fell open in amazement. “What do you mean, my circumstances?” I demanded.

  “Your poverty, dear, your terrible poverty.”

  “I’m not poor!” I shouted. Had she accused me of the grossest immorality I could not have felt more disgraced, more ashamed, more degraded.

  “But fifteen dollars, and no place to go!”

  “Get out of here!” I cried, trying to keep from bursting into horrified tears.

  “But, I want to help,” she cooed. “We have shelters. We will place your child in a home, and give you counselling, and a warm place to sleep. While you consider putting up your child for adoption—such a pretty little baby, too. …”

  Someone halted before me, and I looked up to see a Salvation Army lady standing beside me, a woman with a rosy maternal face and the kindest eyes. (I saw the kindness later, for at that time she was staring at the Welfare lady coldly and sternly.) Then she said to me, “Is there anything the matter, child?”

  The bonnet and the cloak and the air of cleanliness and kindness and the blue sweet eyes were reprieve and haven to me. I began to talk, but the Welfare lady interrupted and said, “Captain, I don’t think this is one of your cases, so please don’t interfere. I am trying to persuade this girl to give up her child and accept Welfare …”

  The Captain ignored her. “I don’t want to be impolite,” she said to me, “but perhaps I can give you advice, at least.” She sat down on my other side and smiled at me and then in a motherly fashion she wiped my baby’s nose. Then she said to the Welfare lady, “Please leave us.”

  The creature stood up. “I am going to call the police and have this girl arrested as a vagrant, for her own good!” she said. “She has no home, no means of support, no money to speak of, and no place to go!”

  “Yes, she has,” said the Salvation Army Captain. “She has us, and I’m in charge here. Run along,” her face suddenly severe. “If you don’t leave, Miss, I’ll have a few words with the police, myself, and I don’t think you’ll like what I have to say.”

  The woman left, to my overwhelming relief. The Captain settled beside me, and she smelled of soap and freshness and that cleanliness of heart and soul which has its own special fragrance.
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  “Well,” she said briskly, “the first thing is to find some nice boarding house where you can stay until you get a job.” She brought out a black notebook from her big bag and went through it. “Just the people!” she said. “Mr. H—is sixty-five and he has quite a good job, selling shoes, but his wife is an invalid. A very refined lady. They have an unmarried daughter, about my age, who cares for her mother. They do need extra money, and they are very proud. They have a nice bedroom for rent, for two, and three meals a day. Fifteen dollars a week.”

  I considered. I had nothing to sell that would bring me a couple of dollars. I told the Captain that I couldn’t pay board in advance, until I had a job, for I needed the fifteen dollars I had. She nodded. “Oh, I’m sure it can all be arranged. Let me make a telephone call or two.”

  She was back in minutes, beaming. “It’s all right,” she said, “I talked with Miss H—, the daughter, and she accepts my recommendation. She and her parents are part of our Army. They are waiting for you and your child. Now, just give me your baggage ticket, and we’ll be on our way.”

  We were, in five minutes, followed by my little trunk. When we reached the outside it was just getting light and the blizzard was blinding. The Welfare lady was talking to two policemen, and as we emerged from the station the three of them swung to me. “There are the waifs!” she cried.

  The policemen came towards us. I was overcome with terror and a feeling of nightmare. I wanted to lift my child and run. But the Captain took my arm firmly. She smiled at the policemen. “No,” she said, “these are not waifs. Everything is arranged, gentlemen.” She looked up at them with her clear blue eyes, and they touched their caps.

  “Private charity!” spat the Welfare woman.

  “Not charity,” said the Captain. “Just temporary assistance.”

  “This girl and her child aren’t vagrants then?” asked one of the policemen.

  “Of course not! She just needed a boarding house for herself and her child, and there’s plenty of work in her line—secretarial. I helped her find the boarding house, and everything’s fine, officer.”

  The Captain nodded and smiled and led me to the curb to a taxi. “I can’t afford it,” I said. I was still trembling. I clutched my child to my side.

  “Oh, but you have a trunk. Just return the fare, when you have a job.”

  So we rode in style through the howling blizzard to my new home. It was a big old wooden house, warm and clean, and the mother and the daughter greeted us as though we were dearly-beloved young relatives returning from a long journey. They were poor. I know now how dreadfully poor they were. But they were proud and filled with the true sense of brotherhood; respect for others’ privacy and pride and self-respect. I was no vagrant to them, no poor soul who needed help. I was a husky young woman, a wife and a mother, in temporary difficulties which she could solve herself.

  “You need more than fifteen dollars a week,” said the Captain, helping me to unpack what little I had in the warm room with its double bed. “You need fifteen for board for you and Mary, and then there’s carfare and lunches for yourself, and money for clothing, a little later. So, you need about twenty-five dollars a week. Report to Mr. Lester Schweitzer tomorrow morning. He is in the insurance and real-estate business; not very successful, I’m afraid, but he’s willing to pay twenty-five dollars for a good secretary. There’s a depression on, you know, and I just don’t understand what all the newspapers are roaring about—saying we are so prosperous and everyone has so much money.”

  That was in 1923. There certainly was prosperity, but it was a gangster prosperity, a gunmoll prosperity, a thieves’ prosperity. I found out later that twenty-five dollars a week was the average income of individuals and families—that is, for the honest and hard-working. But it was indeed the Roaring Twenties for the criminal of all classes and occupations, the suspect businessmen, the call girls, the stock salesmen and such.

  I reported to Mr. Schweitzer the next morning. Mr. Schweitzer had a tiny dank office with two desks in it, one window, and a smell of dust. It was obvious to me that things were not booming. He told me that he averaged about fifty dollars a week, and sometimes when he was lucky, seventy-five. But he needed a secretary, and the Captain had told him I needed twenty-five dollars a week, and we were in business.

  Secure in my job, and with my child well cared for by the H—family, I was happy and busy. A few months later Mr. Schweitzer called my attention to state examinations for court reporter, and he let me take his typewriter to the place of the examinations, and I passed. Eighteen hundred dollars a year! Riches! Magnificent! Mr. Schweitzer and I were in tears when we parted.

  “Trust in God, child,” he said, holding my hand. “Work hard. Owe no man. Accept nothing you can’t repay. Keep your head high. And you’ll succeed.” I had often discussed my ambitions to be a novelist with him.

  He gave me a five-dollar gold piece, which I tried to refuse. But he wanted me to have it, “as a talisman.” I never saw him again. He died three months later.

  Within a few months I could send my husband money for his train fare. I had started a bank account. I had some new clothes for myself and the child. Moreover, Mr. Schweitzer had informed me what to do about the robber who had gone into bankruptcy in Bowling Green, and so deprived my husband of his thousand dollars. I found a lawyer who went to work on the case. He collected nine hundred dollars for us, and took one hundred for his fee. We were millionaires! I passed the college board entrance exams and started night college. And paid for every penny of it, myself.

  Though it was the Roaring Twenties then and a Big Ball—for a few—my husband was not able to find steady work in his line. When he did, the pay was miserable, though again we had no complaint. Then our child became seriously ill. The doctor we called ordered her to the hospital, into a private room with nurses around the clock. She was there for over two months, and the costs were high. Our savings vanished. I was the only one working. Eventually, we were nearly a thousand dollars in debt to the hospital and the doctor.

  I went to the Reverend Mother in charge of the Sisters’ Hospital. I told her frankly of our position. “I can’t pay you all, right away,” I said. “But I have a good job, one-hundred-fifty a month, and will pay it off in stages.” I went to the doctor and told him the same thing. It took me three years to pay it off, and I never congratulated myself. I was only doing my duty. No one was responsible for my predicament; it was all my own. To have offered charity and free medical and hospital care would have been received, by me, as the supreme insult. To help pay the debt off sooner, I took a job in a florist’s shop on Sundays.

  We stayed with the H—s for several years, working and saving. I was able to contribute to the Salvation Army, that blessed organization of good and holy people, who promoted pride and self-respect among those they helped and who believed, and still believe, in the power of the individual to solve his own problems, with the help of God.

  “Owe no man,” old Mr. Schweitzer had told me. Once he added “He who eats the bread of charity has bartered away his own soul, for only an animal accepts what he has not earned.” But alas, the Schweitzers are nearly a lost breed in America now, where millions of the inferior are not only urged to take charity but are encouraged to do so, to the loss of their stature as men.

  “Poverty is a state of mind.” But it is not the state of the soul that refuses to consider itself poor, and has the fortitude to work for what it eats and what it drinks. The really poor are those without ambition and pride and determination. We can’t let them starve. However, they should be made to understand that charity is only temporary—and meager—and that it is up to them to get off their knees and walk as men. At least, that is what charity should tell them, and charity is evil if it does not, whether it is private or public.

  I “owe not any man,” not money, not education, not opportunity. I was a young girl, and I understood even from earlier childhood that we must stand alone—or lose our souls. It is a joy to
people of my generation to know that we fought the world with the help of God, and were triumphant. How dare we deny this joy to our grandchildren? The rules whereby we lived are still the rules of life. Those who abrogate them are dooming our country. Cowardly soft nations invite the attentions of the barbarian—and the barbarian is looking over the oceans at us now and estimating how weak we are, how dependent, how feeble of heart and courage. They, at least, know how to work and how to live austerely, and they depend only on themselves. The history of Rome will be our history—unless we call our children to strength, selfdenial, and responsibility again.

  10 What Happened to American Men?

  This is a tough world and a violent one and always was and always will be.

  But I do believe in love. (Not “luv” you will notice.) I have been in love more times than I can remember, and invariably at first sight, and wildly and devotedly. Whether or not this was always requited slips my mind, but I sure was in love early and always from the age of eight on. I dearly love masculine persuasion, though now my head is bloody if unbowed, and there is a hint or two of gray hairs. I loved one relative—not in my immediate family—and I love my children. And I love my God and my country above all else.

  Well, that is love, not “luv.”

  When God suggested, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” I hope I am not being irreverent for suspecting that this was an example of Divine Humor. I believe that the Source of so much laughter and innocent gaiety, and the frolicking of blameless animals in dewy fields, and the multitude of endless paradoxes in the world, must be deeply fond of a good joke. That admonition to “love thy neighbor” is very subtle and humorous, for what intelligent man—aware of himself, his sins and his limitations, and his miserable status in life, his secret nastinesses and unspeakable private little crimes, and his tendency to malice—can “love himself?” It takes an egotistic clod, with a poverty of experience, to look with either kindness or affection on his own person. If one is to credit the headshrinkers and the philosophers and theologians of the past, the source of much human misery is a deep and hidden self-loathing and rejection, though frankly I consider such emotions salutary and suspect they keep a man in a proper frame of mind and with a sense of proportion. That’s why I appreciate the Lord’s wit and careful language when He suggested, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” If there is any good in this world it comes not only from a candid self-appraisal and even self-rejection, but from a rejection of those traits in our brothers which make us all a little less than appetizing.