eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490710174 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 40 |
| Sales rank: | 738,075 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Ella Mae and the Great Depression
By B. J. Taylor
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2013 B. J. TaylorAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-1016-7
CHAPTER 1
Ella Mae was born the middle child of Frank J. Magness and Pearl Glenn Magness just prior to the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover would become president five years later and change the outlook of the economy. But it was too late. The stock market crash would bring panic, with the public rushing to banks to withdraw their money and a wave of bankruptcies. Many old people and children would die from hunger, cold, and sickness. Almost everyone was starting to feel the upcoming catastrophe long before it began. But for the Magnesses, the Depression had already begun.
The Magnesses immigrated to America in the 1700s from England, where Peregrine Magness had been a blacksmith. The family settled in Maryland and traveled across America looking for the perfect home. From South Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee to New Mexico, and back to Texas. They finally settled in Frankston, Texas, in the early 1900s.
World War I started on July 28, 1914. Frank served in World War I from 1918 until 1919. Afterward, he met and married Pearl. They soon had three children. Ella Mae was a dark-haired, hazel-eyed beauty, with plump, dimpled cheeks and a strong, healthy frame. She had a very pretty sister, Dorothy, three years older, who mothered her and protected her as if she were her own. Three years after that, she would have a cute and precocious younger sister named Faye.
Pearl was a very religious person, and she brought the girls up to be honest, God-fearing, and hardworking, just as she had always been. Frank, on the other hand, was not as religious; but he believed in honesty and had a strong work ethic like Pearl. So he expected the children to be just as Pearl required them to be and allowed her to discipline them.
One morning, when Ella Mae was between five and six years old, she woke up to find her father was not at home. When she asked her mother where he was, she told her that he was sick and in the hospital.
Her mother seemed angry and told her to go get the eggs so she could cook breakfast. She had been told to get them the evening before, and she had forgotten. When she went into the chicken coop to get the eggs, she noticed a squiggly black tail slithering quickly out from under the edge of the chicken coop, and she realized it was a chicken snake. She checked the nests and saw that there was not a single egg in any of them. She ran to the house crying and explained that a snake had gotten the eggs.
She knew there would be no eggs for breakfast that morning. But that knowledge served her well because she never forgot to bring in the eggs after that.
At this time, they lived in an unpainted, very small, very uncomfortable, very airy two-room house on the Blackwell Farm in Frankston, Texas. It was said to have been slave quarters from the 1800s. With Frank gone now, it was up to Pearl to make a living and take care of three young children. Pearl was a very thin woman with small stature. However, she never failed to go about her work from dawn to dusk, every day, no matter how tired she appeared to be. Pearl plowed the fields with a mule to grow enough food to trade for flour and sugar.
Dorothy and Ella Mae helped their mother pick peas, corn, and cotton as best they could. Pearl pulled long cotton sacks behind her through the cotton rows with Faye, who always seemed to have an earache, riding along at the end of the sack. Sometimes, if she was asleep, she would lie on a blanket at the end of the rows.
Later, the owner of the cotton field would sell the cotton to the people at the cotton gin for processing. There were no black people living in white communities in those days. Black people had their own communities, but they came over to the white communities to work in the crops and the cotton fields.
Pearl became friendly with the black women as they worked together, but they were not allowed to eat together. It was kind of an unwritten law. One just knew that black people and white people did not eat together. Pearl said she guessed it was like the Bible. The Jews would not eat with the Samaritans, but Jesus taught them better. Regardless, the children played together in and among the cotton rows, and it was acceptable.
Often, Pearl would send Dorothy and Ella Mae to the barn to bring in corn and shell it to make hominy. They would take some of the corn to the grist mill to grind into cornmeal. After tomato season was over, the farmers in the area would allow them to glean the fields for leftover tomatoes. They would preserve these or can them in jars or cans for the winter.
Red beans were inexpensive and a good food source during those times. Their only presents at Christmastime were apples, oranges, and nuts. Pearl taught the girls how to milk the cow and churn milk for butter. The four of them walked three or four miles to pick dewberries to preserve jelly in jars to eat during winter months. Ella Mae remembered how her dad used to pick up snakes among the berry vines by the tail and sling them to the ground to kill them.
Of course, there was no running water. They drew their water from the well for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes. They washed their clothes by scrubbing them back and forth on a rubboard if they needed them in a hurry or if they needed special care.
But on a usual washday, they placed their clothes in an iron washpot with wood and fire underneath to boil them. Then they drew water to fill three washtubs to rinse them. They would transfer the boiling clothes with a stick from the washpot to the rinse tubs. They rinsed and wrung them out between each tub. After the final rinsing and wringing, they hung the clothes out to dry with clothespins on a wire clothesline. If there was no clothesline, they laid them over a barbed-wire fence for drying. Of course, during wintertime, the clothes would often freeze on the line. Or sometimes a strong wind would blow them into the dirt, and they would have to be washed again. The rinse water was allowed to sit in the sun to warm so it could be used for bathing later in the day. Mattresses were put out in the sun at least twice a month, to air out and fluff up the cotton.
Of course, very few had restrooms during those times. Most had outdoor toilets. Usually, a hole was dug into the ground, and the toilet was placed over the hole. When the hole was full, the toilet was moved to another hole, and the first hole was covered with dirt. These were very cold during winter.
Cold wind blew under the wooden seats in the little houses. There was little money for toilet tissue, and many people used sheets from the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog. The Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog was very popular in those days, since you could order from the catalog things you could not find in stores. It was common for people to have the catalogs in their homes and in their toilets. However, people used chamber pots or slop jars at night, rather than to go out in the dark. Pearl collected syrup buckets for use at night rather than to spend money on chamber pots.
It was hard to get enough wood to keep the house warm. Pearl, Dorothy, and Ella Mae placed cardboard boxes around the walls to keep out the wind. But they could just look through the cracks in the floors and see the chickens running around under the house. Wind blew right through the floors at times.
Having very little money, the kids wore shoes during wintertime. But during summertime, it was bare feet only. Flour came in printed fabric sacks in those days. The cotton fabric was usually of good quality. Pearl saved the cotton sacks to make dresses for the girls. The girls each had two dresses and one pair of shoes for school. But they had to take them right off after they got home from school so the clothes would last out the year and, hopefully, more.
Ella Mae remembered having one doll in her lifetime. She protected it and kept it for years and years. Times were hard.
School was not a good experience. For lunch, the girls carried biscuits and salt jowl (salt pork). They did not realize how poor they were until they saw the lunches of some of the other students. Then they began to notice the inferiority of their clothes. In fact, some children were cruel and made unkind remarks about them so they could hear. Many were poor during those times, and it continued to get worse as the Great Depression was just beginning, and people were losing jobs. But still it was obvious that they were poorer than most.
Ella Mae went home crying pretty often, and her mother would console her by saying that someday it would get better. She told them to learn all they could, and maybe with an education, they could rise out of their circumstances. Then she told them about how some people stole things, and others drank alcohol and let their children go hungry. She continued to assure them that the Lord would see that they were cared for.
Ella Mae had a cousin she loved to visit. Sometimes her mother would allow her to go home with Ruth after school and spend the night. Ruth lived on a farm. There was lots of room to run and play. Ruth was a tomboy and was rough, and she liked to fight with boys.
One day, a neighborhood boy came over to shoot marbles with her little brother. His name was Kenneth. Ruth noticed that he was cheating her little brother out of his marbles. She threatened to beat him up and chased him almost all the way to his house.
Ella Mae met a friend at school whom she liked, and she wanted to spend the night at her house. But every time she asked, her mother said no and said it was because she did not know the family. Ella Mae just could not understand why her mother would be so against her spending the night at the little girl's house. So she decided on her own to pretend to go to Ruth's house, but instead, she went to Ida's house. They had a grand time and played until dark. They were bedded down for the night on a pallet made from a quilt on the floor. The next morning, there was blood all over her gown. Ella Mae did not know that Ida's house was infested with bedbugs, and she had scratched all night in her sleep.
The next day, after school, her mother noticed her scratching and saw the bloody spots on her skin. After questioning her relentlessly, it was decided that Ruth's mother, Aunt Eva, had bedbugs in her house.
The next morning at church, Pearl confronted Eva about the bedbugs and offered to come over and help her take out the beds. Eva was a little indignant and assured Pearl that there were no bedbugs in her house and that, in fact, Ella Mae had not spent the night at her house in over two weeks. Boy, was Ella Mae in trouble! It was a very long time before she was allowed to visit anyone again, not to mention the baths and the head washings that she had to endure.
Ella Mae's father, Frank, as it turned out, was in the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. One day, a friend with a car offered to take the family to visit him. When they saw him, he had two black eyes and several bruises on his arms. They were told that the war had done something to his mind. Not long after that, his time was up and they released him to come home. Things seemed to get a little better after that. He was big and strong and could help Pearl in the fields and with the plowing. In fact, the VA gave him a pension of $30 per month.
Ella Mae had always dreamed of having a nice home without holes in the floors, and one that was warm in wintertime. Not long after that, her dad had been able to save $500, and he bought a three-room house in town near the school. What a blessing! For a treat once a month, when her dad got paid, they had bologna, crackers, and onions from the garden.
Things were looking up. Everyone said that some of their relatives were envious because they had a home and a pension. In fact, they were the first out of six families of relations to have a bank account at First National Bank in Frankston. Ella Mae knew they were still considered among the lower class. But she also knew that they had a good, clean house; they did not say bad words; and they did not lie, cheat, or steal. Plus, her family never bought anything on credit.
One day, Frank told Pearl a story about his experiences in World War I. He told her that he was in the 359th Infantry of the army. They shipped out and landed in Lancaster, England, on July 4, 1918, and headed for the battle. A bad storm came up and stormed all day long on August 15. When they finally got to the front, shelling was going on all around them. They fought until they could fight no more. They lay for days in trenches filled with water and blood. He said it was hard to breathe because of the gases. He said his buddies, boys and men, were lying dead on both sides of him. The trenches were about eight to nine feet deep. These were their only protection from gunfire and the enemy.
He said body lice (or "cooties" as they were called by the men) were so bad that they never stopped scratching. Body lice occurs when a certain type of lice invades the body and clothing. Lice are parasitic insects that feed on human blood and can infest the head, body, and pubic area. He said there was no way one could stay clean.
Many soldiers used rats for entertainment. They would place a piece of food on the ground, and when the rats came, they would hit them with their spades. He said rats would urinate in the trench water and the soldiers got footsores called trench foot or foot rot (also called Weil's disease). Some got trench mouth, which meant ulcers in the mouth, swollen gums, and bleeding.
He said they had no food for days because their kitchen was bombed. When they did get food, it was cold and soggy. Once in a while, they were given bully beef—a kind of corned, boiled, or pickled beef in tins. Sometimes it was only blackberries. Sometimes they would give them a little rum to start the day-maybe to dull their senses and pain. Most of the time, they only had rice.
Eventually, the shelling got him too. Some died from the gases. The Germans, British, and French used disabling chemicals, tear gas, and mustard gas. Phosgene and chlorine were more lethal. You could see it clouding up on the ground. It burned the throat and lungs. It was impossible to avoid it.
They lay there for a long time before they were carried to the hospital. He lived, but he had chest problems and pain because of it, and his mind was confused. He received a Purple Heart medal because of being wounded with shrapnel and gas, but his life was permanently altered.
His discharge came on April 26, 1919. It was not a long stint, but time enough to damage body and soul. Again, his mind snapped, and he threatened to throw Ella Mae in the well. He stood over the well and stared at it for hours at a time. So before long, he had to go to another hospital for treatment.
When they went to visit him in the hospital, he had black and blue bruises all over him again, and they were told that sometimes he had to be tied to the bars. Eventually, he returned home and seemed relatively stable. He held a few jobs and seemed to be a good employee.
Ella Mae's teenage years were pretty uneventful, as far as having pleasures or entertainment. What could one do? Visits from relatives or cousins supplied most of the childhood fun and some entertainment for the family. These visits usually took place on weekends. Some of Ella Mae's cousins liked to play tricks on the younger ones for entertainment. These were usually fun for the perpetrators but were not very humorous for the recipients.
Lots of people sniffed or dipped snuff in those days. A couple of older children plotted to trick some of the younger ones to dip snuff. They decided that Ella Mae would be the victim. They told Ella Mae that they had mixed cocoa and sugar to look like snuff and assured her that it really tasted great. They enticed her and helped her to put a large dip inside her lip as one would do in dipping snuff. Well, the trick backfired when Ella Mae discovered that it really was snuff. She started spitting and throwing up. She was nauseated for the rest of the day. The day was spoiled for all when the perpetrators got a lickin' and spent the rest of the day in solitude.
Ella Mae turned fourteen in August of that summer. Dorothy was three years older and was dating a young man named Jack. Jack and Dorothy agreed to allow Ella Mae to go with them the next time they were invited to a party. Well, that time finally came. There she met a young man who was five years older than she was. They called him HD. He was very handsome, and Ella Mae was immediately attracted to him. After that, when Jack visited Dorothy, HD came with him to visit Ella Mae. Before long, cupid struck, and HD started talking about marriage. He told her to talk to her parents about it. She did not think for a moment that they would allow it because she was so young (even though it was a common practice to marry young in those days). But, unexpectedly, her dad seemed to think it was a good idea.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ella Mae and the Great Depression by B. J. Taylor. Copyright © 2013 B. J. Taylor. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.