Tag Archives: The Great Depression

When You’re Hit Between the Eyes

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I grabbed my little sister’s button nose and held out my hand to show her my thumb tucked between my two fingers.

“Cono, I’ve done told ya I was too big fer that!” Delma yelled and stomped her little feet in the dirt.

Instead of kicking me in the shins as usual, she picked up a stave from the ground and hit me right square between the eyes. She could tell by the look on my red face that I was madder than a hornet.

“Ya better start runnin’, Delma Jean, ’cause I’m comin’ after ya, and I’m gonna whoop ya!”

She ran those deer legs of hers right straight to the outhouse and got there just in time to lock herself in.

“I’m gonna push this outhouse right over on ya, Delma Jean!” I said, banging on the old cedar door.

I stood outside that smelly outhouse, listening for what she was gonna say next. Then I listened some more. When I didn’t hear anything, I said, “OK. Well, when ya come out, I’ll be right here waitin’. Then ya can see this knot between my eyes that’s growin’ into a real-life unicorn horn.”

I thought for sure she’d come out right then to see for herself. But she didn’t. I tiptoed away and went on about my business. I pretended that my new horn was a badge of courage, which I guess it was if you had yourself a little sister like Delma.

I can’t say for sure how long she stayed in there, but she knew that I wouldn’t spank her. And, of course, I’d never push a stinky old outhouse over with her in it.

Delma showed up for our quiet suppertime more clammed up than usual. I put an elbow on the table and used my left hand to hide the goose egg on my forehead. I didn’t want Delma to see it any more than I wanted Mother and Dad to. Then with my righthand, I ate my supper in silence like everybody else. Several times I caught Delma staring between my fingers trying to get a peek at my bump.

Later that night, Delma told me she didn’t mean to put a horn between my eyes. I told her it didn’t matter, that it didn’t really hurt anyhow.

By the next morning, my badge of courage was almost completely sucked back into my skull. Even though nobody else could see it, I reckoned it was still in there somewhere. And that’s where I decided I’d keep it from then on, next to the other ones I got elsewhere.

— Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, a novel about my father growing up in west Texas during the Great Depression.

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Toothless in a Fur Coat

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Hardly Saddler’s rolled up his wagon, pitched a tent and started up his Medicine Show. He told us about his elixirs and about how, if we bought them, they could treat most of our ailments. If he had an elixir for meanness, I would have bought a bottle right then and there, mixed it into a Pearl beer and taken it straight home to Dad.

Hardley Saddler had all kinds of shows to see and games to play. One of them was a contest to see who could hammer their one big nail the fastest into the wooden board. This contest was only open to girls, since there were other contests open for boys.

“Hey, look who’s enterin’ the contest,” Dorothy says , spitting a watermelon seed at my face. I spit one back and see Aunt Nolie and Genevieve, Dorothy’s sister, step up to the boards.

Besides Aunt Nolie and Genevieve, there were five other ladies lined up at the board. The whistle blew and there they were, those gals pounding their nails in such a hurry you would have thought they were putting up a church roof to keep Jesus dry before a storm. We were all cheering and a hollering for our favorite girl and wouldn’t you know it? I was still picturing Freezer’s eyeballs twitching and Aunt Nolie hammering something else.

Aunt Nolie got real close to winning, her face just dripping with girl sweat. But Genevieve slammed that nail in quicker than a racehorse coming out the gate.

After Genevieve was declared the winner, I couldn’t believe what the first prize was. Genevieve had won herself a brand new, over-the-knee fur coat. Even the folks who had rooted for someone else to win were hooting and clapping that at least one person in Rotan owned a new fur coat.

The next morning  peeked out the window and saw Lottie, Genevieve’s mother, standing outside her cabin, a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip, her bare feet in the snow. She looked over and waved to me like she does every morning. But on this particular day, she waved like she was the Queen of England except she was wearing nothing but a toothless grin and a brand new over-the-knee fur coat.

Ain’t that a pisser?

 

A true story from No Hill for a Stepper.

 

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via Particular

The violence in apple pie

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We finish our meal and Mother takes all the empty plates off the table and replaces them with the little ones made especially for slices of apple pie.

I take my first bite. The crust is the perfect cover for the apples that melt like butter in my mouth. I eat every single bit of my piece. I even lick my pointer finger and use it like a fork just so I can pick up any stray crumbs.

Ike’s pie is still sitting there, untouched of course. Everybody knows Ike would just as soon be chewing on a piece of mesquite bark than to eat pie. He says he prefers to get his sugar from a whiskey bottle.

I stare at his piece and see that it’s bigger than mine was. The sweet apples ooze out the sides between the top and bottom crust. It’s calling me forward, challenging me to come and get it.

I slowly reach over and pull Ike’s pie in front of me. I stare down at it and wonder if Ike’s piece is gonna taste as good as my first.

Dad says nary a word when he reaches across the table and slowly pulls that slice of pie back over to Ike like we’re playing a game of checkers. I concentrate thinking that the next move is mine. I smile and slowly pull that pie towards me thinking I should be kinged.

The hard slap across my face surprises me and drives me halfway out of my chair.

What the hell just happened?

I stand up knocking my chair over, grab a knife off the table, and swing it under Dad’s chin, wanting to cut his head plumb off.

I’ve made a big mistake. I missed.

Dad runs around to my side of the table holding a craze of fire where his eyes used to be. He grabs me by my shirt collar, and kicks a table leg that snaps off. Dishes crash to the floor. He drags me to the door. I hear it slam shut. We’re outside. He’s not finished.

Although I feel the fast blows to my head and face, they seem to come at me in slow motion. I curl up into a ball on the ground.

“Protect yourself at all times!”

Who’s saying that? Who’s saying that? There’s no one else out here!

“Put your arms around your head! Protect yourself!”

I do as the voice tells me. I wrap my elbows over my ears, my hands on top of my head. Okay, that’s better. It doesn’t hurt as much. My eyes are stinging from the sandstorm. No, it’s a hail storm. I can feel big clumps of ice hammering my body.

My ears ring. Somewhere close to me Pooch is barking his head off. There’s so much noise in my ears, I can’t tell where he is. Then I scream really loud, “The first chance I get, I’m gonna kill you!”, the words that only I can hear.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham, my father’s story

Author’s note: After this event in my father’s life, he later became a boxer in the Army.

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Daily word prompt: Crumb

A Power Punch of Memories

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Some say it’s peculiar that I remember so much of my first few years of life. But things like the burning of a hand, or the birth of a little sister, stay with you forever. I remember helping to pin Delma’s cloth diapers around her butt, and, later, pulling her toes to make them pop. I’d smile and say, “They ain’t long enough yet, Sis. I’m gonna he’p ’em grow.”

I remember putting a pot on my head to make Delma laugh when I thought she was dying.

And that pocket knife Ike gave me when I was two?  It came in real handy in first grade.

This train has its rhythm going now and the passengers have settled in. Most are trying to sleep just to make the time pass. I lay my head up against the hard window and watch as San Antone starts to slowly slip by. I close my eyes to see if I can nod off like everybody else, but it’s only an idea. Sleep is knocked out by that presence in the seat next to me. More memories keep nudging me, crowding me up against the ropes, where none of my boxing defense skills seem to work. No, these are stronger opponents. They jab my chin, then power punch me in the gut. It’s more painful than a broken nose. They make me remember.

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Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham

 

Daily word prompt: Peculiar

Anticipating a baby brother or sister

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I worry that Mother’s not in the hospital. A few days ago I heard Aunt Nolie tell Mother, “Elnora, it’d be a whole hellova lot safer if ye had that baby in the hospital like ye did Cono.” They talked about the Great Depression that sat on our shoulders and wouldn’t get off. They said it makes us hungrier than usual and poorer than we’ve ever been.

“Hospitals cost money, Nolie. We don’t have no money fer a hospital.”

Mother’s folks, Ma and Pa, say it’s because of President Hoover that we don’t have no money. Others say it’s because we ain’t had rain in a coon’s age. That all the crops; cotton, corn and maize have turned into a dust that you could just as easy blow away like a fly acrost the lonely couple of peas sitting on your plate. A farmer and his family, like Ma and Pa, can’t live on dust and since there’s no money around to gamble with, a man like my father can’t collect none.

I hear another scream from the bedroom. Dad shifts his weight from one foot to the other. It’s hot out, so he keeps rolling up his sleeves even though there’s nowhere else for them to go. He won’t take his shirt off though. Even though we’re not in town, he says that taking your shirt off in public is “uncouth,” no matter how hot it is. Whatever “uncouth” means. He lights another Camel. I stir a little faster.

I start thinking that unless they figure out how to catch up with me, I’ll always be older than the baby coming out of my mother. I like that. I like the idea of being older than somebody. It makes me feel bigger and more important than what I am. Also, I don’t need nobody else telling me what to do.

Just before I start feeling too big for my britches, I hear the huff and whirl of an engine pulling in. I must have dozed off for a while. I open my eyes and squint into the headlamps of the familiar flatbed grain truck. The engine stops. The headlamps turn off. Aunt Nolie jumps out of the driver’s side and walks over to us. She’s still wearing the red dress she left in a few hours ago. I look for Uncle Joe. I hear him before I see him. He’s stretched out in the back of the truck; sucking in hard air and trying to force it back out again.

“Any word yet, Wayne?” Aunt Nolie asks Dad, tussling my towhead at the same time.

“Nah.”

“I’ll jes’t go on in and check,” she calls over her shoulder, as she wiggles and waggles her rear end off to Mother’s bedroom.

Aunt Nolie is a tough booger and it’s good to have her on my side. She can kick anybody’s ass from now into tomorrow. She said one time that she’d rather fight than talk, but she does plenty of both. She’s not quite as skinny as Mother, her hair’s not as black and she’s not nearly as pretty. But she speaks her mind so you don’t have to guess what’s on it.

I stir the dirt some more. Dad’s still staring at something in the dark, something far away that I can’t see. I’m only two and a half years old, so I’d much rather be stirring at something I can see, than staring at something I can’t. “Doodle bug, doodle bug please come out…..”

I keep twirling my stick, the one that’s magic and will make doodle bugs come out; the stick that will show me a magic place and will grow me a baby brother or sister.

Before I have time to get comfortable again, Aunt Nolie comes outside and kneels down beside me. She stares her watery eyes into my tired ones saying real quiet-like, “Cono, ye got yerself a baby sister.”

I feel my eyes pop out and my chin drop down. I’m not real sure what to do next, seeing as how I’ve never had a baby sister before. Stuff is stuck in my throat, way in the back, where I can’t get to without choking.

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Cono and his baby sister, Delma

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham

Daily word prompt: Anticipate

Too much spur

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Dad says that Mr. Posey “is richer’n four feet up a bull’s butt.” But he doesn’t act anything like Uncle Will McCleskey. He’d never pull me off a horse with a walking stick, even if he had one.

Most of the time, we even get to have supper with them and since Mr. Posey talks almost as slow as Hoover, supper conversations take a long time. At least Dad isn’t doing us any harm while we’re here. Mr. Posey doesn’t go off half-cocked like Dad does. He doesn’t hit his wife or Hoover, so I guess Dad doesn’t want to be the only one who clobbers two outta three of his family members.

Hoover asked me to ride out with him on a couple of their horses. I was supposed to be chopping wood, but the idea of riding sounded like chocolate cake. We had a good time riding around their property. It made me think of riding with Ike, the sound of hooves, the click of his left cheek. I sure do miss him.

We were trotting along just fine until my horse swallowed his head and threw me off into a prickly pear cactus. I landed on my right hand and it smarted something awful.

“Cono,” said Hoover, “ I…think….you… gave…him…just…a little….too much…spur.” And right then, my laughter took over my pain.

Since then, I’ve been trying to hide my bad hand from Dad so he won’t catch on that I’d played hooky from my wood chopping. For the last couple of days I’ve even been chopping wood with my left hand until my right one starts to feel better. It’s safer that way.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham

Prickle- daily word prompt

Ashes to Ashes

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It was Mother who told me about Gene dying. Dad had found out when he was in town but gave Mother the job of breaking the news to me.

“Cono,” she said, “I got some bad news fer ye.”

I thought that maybe we’d have to move away again, away from Ike. Or that Delma was sick again.

“Yer little friend Gene has died, gone to heaven.”

I remember staring at her for the longest time. I remember going to Uncle Joe’s funeral and hearing about Wort Reynolds going to heaven without a head. But this was different. This was MY friend. This was Gene Davis who was only a year older than me.

“He went to Roby to the hospital ‘cause he had a pain in his side.”

I saw Gene and me playing checkers, riding on his mare, making up stories.

“It was a bad appendix, burst before the doctors could git to it.”

I thought Dad was right about one thing. Doctors were good for nothing’s. Couldn’t fix Dad, couldn’t fix Gene.

“Mother?”

“Yeah?”

“When Uncle Joe died, why’d they say ‘ashes to ashes’?”

“I ain’t real sure, Cono. I think it has te do with the fact that we were born nothin’ and go right on back te bein’ nothin’.”

“So now Gene’s jes’t nothin?” I asked, getting upset that the world was going to pretend he never existed.

“Nah, he’s somethin’ alright. He’s jes’t back to being part of the Texas Soil ’sall.”

“That ain’t so bad, is it?”

“Nothin’ wrong with that.”

“But I don’t get te see him again?”

“Afraid not, Cono. I’m sorry,” she said.

And I still am.

I go into my room and pull out my box of specials. There’s the old lace from a boxing glove, the time when Gene put together that fight for me; my first fight with real gloves.

At school and in front of everybody Mr. Green says, “Cono found out that he’s lost a good friend. His name was Gene Davis and he lived in Rotan. Cono, I just want to tell you how sorry we are.”

I nod my head and look down at my desk.

I don’t quite understand it, doesn’t make no sense whatsoever that Gene is dead. I want to see him again. I want to laugh with him. I want him to pull me behind his mare in the red wagon. I want to beat him at checkers.

Mr. Green has told me I can do anything I want. He says I can. He says he knows I can. So I decide to write Gene a letter, send it up to God Jesus to give to him.

 

daily prompt: Soil

Ain’t no room for belly achin’

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Cono’s Ma and Pa

The windows are open and the summer breeze floats across my bed like a puff of air that puckers and ends up whistling out a happy tune. Anything bad that might have happened during the day has been blown on through. I hear the sound of the train chugging by ever so often. The kaPluck, kaplunk of the oil wells pump like they’re helping to push the blood through my veins. That’s when I start to get sleepy.

And when I hear that nicker that Polo makes?  I know I’m almost out like Lottie’s eye.    Tomorrow, I’ll ride him like a wild Indian.

The morning shows up and knocks on my window like a redbird pecking at his own reflection and I know that Pa has already put in a half of days of work. Pa’s a real good man and a real good farmer. Gallasses help to hold up his pants, since he got ruptured on a bucking horse early on. Pa said, “That horse swallered his head n’all. I must’a had the reins too tight.” Pa keeps going like nothing ever happened. He doesn’t believe in “bellyaching.” He says, “Thar ain’t no room fer it.” The sound of no bellyaching is music to my ears. That’s one thing I’m glad there ain’t no room for.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

 

Pluck- daily word prompt

My kidnapped baby sister

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Cono, age four

My insides feel shaky. I know all this nose blowing is my fault. I run to my room and get Tiger Stick and run back outside to sit in the dirt. Tiger and me dig around and around in that dry soil, hoping we’ll dig deep enough to find Delma. Then I fill the hole with the water from my own eyes.

I go back in and see Aunt Nolie loading up her coffee with more sugar. She clinks her spoon round and round the coffee cup just like I did with Tiger in the front yard. Her eyes stare inside the cup like they’re waiting for an answer to jump out and into the saucer.

“Let’s call up Cleave Barnes,” says Aunt Nolie. “If anybody can help, it’ll be Cleave.”

“Why Cleave?” asks Mother, lighting another cigarette.

“Cleave’s earned his money robbin’ banks.” She turns to me and says, “Cono, he doesn’t do it all the time and never around Ranger.” She back to talking to me again.

Then back to Mother she says, “Remember, he’s the one who taught Wayne how to use a gun.”

Aunt Nolie turns to me again and says, “He hardly ever took it with him on a robbery ‘cause he never wanted to hurt nobody. He jes’t needed the money s’all.” She keeps on.

“But he learned how to be real smart in his scoutin’ and escapin’ from the law. So, if someone’s gonna Commit a crime, all Cleave has te do is think like a criminal.”

Mother goes straight to the phone and calls Cleave. A few more cups of coffee later there’s a knock on the door, a sound more like a present than the banging of knuckles on a wooden door.

Mother opens the door fast, like she’s trying to shoo out a family of rats before they run back into the walls. Cleave walks in and gives her a little pat on the back. He didn’t look at all like the wild animal with scary eyes and holding on to scars fitting for a robber’s badge. He’s shorter than my Dad’s five foot eleven inches. His arms are skinny of muscle too. I can’t see how he’s gonna help at all. Dad could whup him faster than a heart beats at the first sign of trouble.

Cleave gives a hat’s off greeting and sits at the table taking the cup of coffee that Aunt Nolie gives him. He offers Mother another cigarette before lighting his own.

After listening to the kidnapping story, he makes one short click on the left side of his cheek like Ike does when he’s pondering something. I like that. I like that a lot. He might be good at finding my baby sister after all.

Finally, he says, “Don’t you worry none, Elnora. If he’s anywhere nearby, we’ll find him, and we’ll get yer baby back.”

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

Daily word prompt: Commit

Robbers in my kitchen

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Cono and his sister, Delma

Dad clenched his fist and his jaw at the same time. “Show me a woman with long nails and I’ll show ya a lazy woman.” Mother ignores his comment but finishes up, putting the lid back on.

“Damn that shit stinks,” he says, staring at the polish Bottle. “Ya’ll go on to bed now,” he tells Delma and me.

“But it ain’t…”

“I said git to bed!”

“It’s early Wayne…”

“I’m havin’ company, Elnora. You need to go on too. I’m havin’ a business meetin’.”

Delma and I go to our room and she has no trouble falling asleep. For me it’s just too early and my body and head want more things to do.

After a little while, I hear men’s voices come in through our door. I hear Dad tell them to sit down at the table. I hear the sound of coffee brewing on the stove.

“I don’t want any part of it, Earl,” says Dad.

“But Marshal Dry will be in on it and he’ll make sure we get in and out of there without a hitch, ain’t that right J.D.?”

Then I knew who was sitting at my dinner table, the very table I’d sat under just the night before. It was Mr. J.D. Eckles himself, the outlaw from Ranger and Joe and Earl Adams, the outlaws from Rotan. I peek out of the little hole in my door and get to see pieces of their faces.

J.D. says, “Williams Drug Store is across from the bank. When we’re done with that, I can back up my truck and load up the narcotics.”

Now I know what they’re planning to do. They’re planning to rob our town’s bank, the bank where H. works. I picture H. just doing his job, cleaning and sweeping, when men come in with guns ready to shoot. I don’t like it. Not one iota.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story

Daily word prompt: Bottle