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Depression
was depressing,
except brother's paddling by
W. T. Block | |
NEDERLAND - I'll never
forget the Great Depression, notwithstanding that many others probably fared much
worse than we did. In 1933, my mother was widowed with three children under 12,
and the living we earned, such as it was came from five milk cows and a big flock
of chickens.
I remember in 1934 when the WPA dug a large drainage ditch
across our land, and 500 unemployed men - teachers, engineers and others - earned
$1 daily, manning a shovel. I remember the day in 1932 when Dad and I hauled 30
sacks of potatoes to Beaumont
and there was no selling them, even at 25 cents per hundred pounds. There was
also no welfare, unemployment compensation, food stamps, or anything else during
the 1930s.
But one incident that I remember with fondness, though, was
the date that my brother Broomtail got a paddling at school, and it stopped the
entire learning process in its tracks.
In 1935, we moved to Nederland
but we continued to rise at 5 a.m. to milk the cows. After milking, we bottled
it in one-quart bottles and delivered milk on bicycles all over town. And after
delivery, we went on to school at 8 a.m. wearing the same overalls we had worn
in the cow pen.
One of Broomtail's chores twice weekly was to mix the
sacks of cow feed. That included mixing sacks of cottonseed meal with sacks of
rice bran and other ingredients. And cottonseed meal, which is ground finer than
flour, has an unbelievable tendency to creep into every pocket.
One day
Broomtail was in music class when Miss P. caught him throwing spitballs. Miss
P. was quite small, a little less than five feet tall and weighed perhaps 90 pounds
soaking wet, but she whipped students with a paddle that resembled a boat oar.
I remember that the boy who made the paddle in shop class was the first one to
get whipped with it.
Miss P. called Broomtail up to her desk to get a
paddling. And as he spread his hands out over her desk, she hammered his caboose
with that boat oar with all the stamina her 90 pounds could muster. And just as
quickly, the cottonseed meal began to rise in a cloud from Broomtail's back pockets.
At first Miss P. began to cough then she began to choke, and finally she
sat down at her desk and began to bawl like a baby. In the mean time, the bell
rang, and Broomtail and the other students left for the hallway.
So far
as I can recollect, Broomtail never did get the rest of that paddling.
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©
W. T. Block, Jr.
"Cannonball's
Tales" >
August 21, 2006 column
Reprinted from the Beaumont Enterprise, October 17,
1998 | | |
