The New York Times recently entertained us with an inviting review of what it called “A Square Meal, a culinary history of the Great Depression,” featuring the post-election days of Herbert Hoover and his dreams that led he and his family to preside over “multicourse” banquets at which dinner jackets were required. Dinner jackets soon began to disappear.
In 1928, the New York Times reminded us the other day, Republican Herbert Hoover, about to become president, told U.S. citizens that the nation was “nearer the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land!”
For those of us with a thin grasp of history, Wall Street’s now infamous “black days” were about to begin with “Black Thursday” – October 24, 1929. Five days later, world-crushing “Black Tuesday,” October 29, occurred as 16 million shares of stock were traded in a blind rush of panic selling. An omen of the future, a “bread line,” sprung up in Detroit, Michigan, November 2, 1929. Non-stop, it began serving 1,500-3,000 people a day.
Like most thinly well-to-do U.S. citizens, my parents were immediately gauzed in oblivion. They were returning from the west coast where they’d taken in Tijuana bullfights and selling highly-valued pure-bred “chow” dogs to wealthy Californians. Unfortunately, my father came from a family of male alcoholics: his father, grandfather, great grandfather and he were all boozers. But his older male relatives were also successful businessmen who now-and-then disappeared to wrestle with their demons. He embraced it. As the depression took savage hold of society, he was a wrecked victim, locked in an often conquering assault.
My mother, along with thousands of other young women – many from the countryside – sought employment in thriving large cities, especially the latest breed of emporiums featuring “large, ostentatious retail shops offering wide varieties of elegant merchandise.” As her marriage shattered, she sought hard work. But what to do with an infant child during working hours. A young country girl lunching with my mother mentioned a farm family who could take care of me for a (barely) reasonable sum. The family needed money.
Their farm meant fresh air, fresh milk and vegetables, freshly slaughtered beef, chicken, turkey. And wild pheasant, squirrel, rabbit. The rural educational realities of country life – caring for calves, cattle, horses, pigs, fowl – the ready use of life’s maintenance: the tools of hired hands, the gradual usefulness of a rural child’s exercise. I was told early on of the dangers ahead — animals, wild life and heavy machinery. Poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, barbed wire, spirited ornery horses, touchy bulls, hunting dogs and predatory felines. The fierce leaders of the farm’s combative flock of turkeys. The sky’s preserve. Yet one rural family that briefly took me on babied me so lavishly that a flock of turkeys easily intimidated me. I swiftly learned keen uses of a broken tree limb.
Most important: The world-changing tail of an easy-going pony, the one adults lifted me onto when they wanted me to ride with them. I examined the usefulness of solitude. When alone, I climbed the pony’s hocks, grabbed the rear saddle straps. A good grip on those brought me up, on the pony’s rump, then onto the saddle. That pony was patient. He was interested in what I was doing. We both seemed to think it was a fine accomplishment. He got free of the corral, I learned quickly to ride. More importantly, to bounce quietly when falling. No bawling, no whining that would make my horse freedom disappear. I sensed that.
From the way grown people talked, I guessed I was maybe four, four-and-a-half years, old. And suddenly had a world of freedom. Despite the tough way things were, my mother found what ranch/farm folks saw as an elegant job. Luckily, people said, she was pretty, slim and tall. And could be marvelously polite. She became a greeter at an elegant Women’s Emporium – at the sparkling, hushed entry to its dining room. I went there only once.
She wore an elegant long black dress that emphasized its white trim. I didn’t recognize her because to my eyes she seemed to shimmer as she greeted the sleek diners she escorted to their tables, directing waitresses to the special service each guest required. She amazingly seemed to know all that. She existed in a gracefully, quiet, smilingly different world far from farms and ranches. A single visit to her domain, the hushed gracefulness of her day. It seemed awesome after the rough power of ranch and farm work, the rearing mounts, the intricate heavy machinery of planting/harvesting. It was surprising, sensing her subdued challenges. The graceful, successful performances — almost unrecognizable to rural onlookers — made me smile even as a child. The accomplishments of her dexterous suggestions, attentive facial and physical gestures certified her, astonishingly, as a complete stranger to her rural visitors, though they had come there believing they knew this sleekly dressed “waitress” well.
It was an emphatically subduing visit. For me, never to be repeated. Some rural folks, uncomfortable in that spot murmured she was showing off in a “snooty” way. Then, and later, as I grew spottily and got to know her I realized she had merely been demonstrating to all patrons that she treated her clients, including raw country visitors, with as much grace as she did the governor’s wife. But would time change that?
(The first of a series.)