***The
Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And
World War II…
…Yeah, we know his hard luck story, ten thousand returning guys’ hard luck stories, know he was privately beside himself with the turn of events once he got off that god-awful troop transport in New York, and headed hopefully north (after a three day drunk just to even things out, although don’t tell her that) and so we pick him up after he got to that north he was headed for. He had not been back a year, most of that year spent sullenly, quietly in a rage, in a rage that having served, served well, had done his duty, had done his job from what his discharge papers said, he was unable to find work, real work, found that in heading north he had avoided no traps, there was no need for coal-miners or a cold-miner’s son in the Olde Saco labor market.
Damn, and those recurring nightmares, that feeling that he would always be unclean after what he did overseas, didn’t help either. But he stayed silent (and would like many in his generation remain silent, silent unto the grave, keep his hurts to himself, about went on over there), took the first low-rent job that came along, floor-sweeper in the MacAdams Mills just down the street from their house. Well not really their house, their home such as it was, in the quickly built Olde Saco Veterans Housing Project, built to ease the housing crunch with all the boys coming back home from overseas and hungry to get started on their dreams. Took that job, well, because with the baby, and another on the way, he could not do otherwise. And he thought just at that moment, that moment as he swept up the leavings from the mill floor that things had to get better, hadn’t they.
…Yeah, we know his hard luck story, ten thousand returning guys’ hard luck stories, know he was privately beside himself with the turn of events once he got off that god-awful troop transport in New York, and headed hopefully north (after a three day drunk just to even things out, although don’t tell her that) and so we pick him up after he got to that north he was headed for. He had not been back a year, most of that year spent sullenly, quietly in a rage, in a rage that having served, served well, had done his duty, had done his job from what his discharge papers said, he was unable to find work, real work, found that in heading north he had avoided no traps, there was no need for coal-miners or a cold-miner’s son in the Olde Saco labor market.
Damn, and those recurring nightmares, that feeling that he would always be unclean after what he did overseas, didn’t help either. But he stayed silent (and would like many in his generation remain silent, silent unto the grave, keep his hurts to himself, about went on over there), took the first low-rent job that came along, floor-sweeper in the MacAdams Mills just down the street from their house. Well not really their house, their home such as it was, in the quickly built Olde Saco Veterans Housing Project, built to ease the housing crunch with all the boys coming back home from overseas and hungry to get started on their dreams. Took that job, well, because with the baby, and another on the way, he could not do otherwise. And he thought just at that moment, that moment as he swept up the leavings from the mill floor that things had to get better, hadn’t they.
Jesus
he knew he was no hell on wheels, no big wheel guy, never expected to be, had
expected to dig coal like a couple or three generations of forbears down in
those Harlan hills when the war freed him up from all that. Freed him up to see
outside the hills and hollows of home, liked what he saw and never looked back.
Liked what he saw of a black-haired gal too. He knew he had no skills, no
skills except as a crackerjack marksman but what was that worth in civilian
life, no skills for the northern market and what with his seventh grade
education (all that was necessary to dig coal, hell, his father never went to
school at all and his grandfather was illiterate signing his name with a simple
X) he didn’t expect to be President. (Ha, that was a joke, he wouldn’t want
to.) But didn’t his hunger to learn some skill (join the ten thousand other
guys, buddy), didn’t his small dream, a little house of his own, a house not a
tumbled down shack like back home in the hollows, a few kids and her growing
old together figuring out things as they went along count. And he still stuck
sweeping somebody else’s leavings, stalling his small dream, it wasn’t fair,
not fair at all.
Yeah
it wasn’t fair at all that he drew a wrong number, came out of those lung-choke
coal hills and hollows only to be dropped, dropped quickly once the MacAdams
Textile Mills went south, south to cheap labor North Carolina (not far from his
home Kentuck border) to seek the same poor whites hungry for dough that he had
left behind, thought he had left behind. But no way, no way on god’s good green
earth, was he going back the way he came. No way, if anybody was asking. And so
he, his black-haired gal, and his now brood of four, four growing hungry
(regular food hungry as befits kids not that gnawing hunger that ate at him,
and her) struggled to get from one week to the next, paying off one bill one
week, another the next, never getting even, not close. Living in that so-called
temporary veterans housing well after the first crowd that they had come in
with had moved to their single family dream cottages on the other side of town.
Stuck, stuck bad, stuck to take a man’s pride away. So, no, please do not speak
to him of streets of dreams, his small dreams, a little house of his own, a
house not a tumbled down shack like back home in the hollows, a few kids and
her growing old together figuring out things as they went along. Just
don’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment