“The relief man brought a turkey for Thanksgiving and Daddy shooed him off. Mama just sat in the kitchen and cried.”
“Why’d he shoo him off?”
“He said we don’t need relief.”
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This exchange with my mother happened several times during my childhood. It popped out of a back pocket of memories when cleaning out my mother’s sewing room.
During the great depression, the federal government and communities instituted “Relief” and “Reconstruction” programs to feed the starving and provide employment.
This relief man was delivering turkeys for Thanksgiving Day to needy families in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
My mother would tell this story with a combination of pride and rage. Her father was a blacksmith, and he followed jobs from Vicksburg to Paducah, Kentucky and back. She loved his pride and fierce independence in refusing the turkey. She was enraged he denied her mother a turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
Recently, when cleaning out a brown wicker chest of sewing remnants, I grabbed a handful of cloth and a small white cloth case fell to a floor. The wicker chest, stuffed with sewing remnants, was two feet tall and one foot wide, the case was no bigger than 4 inches by 4 inches. Unfastening two safety bins, inside I found... $2,100.
Was all that money stashed away for an emergency?
I'll never know and we are all children of our experiences. My mother grew up in a world where 1 in 4 were unemployed, where banks closed their doors one day and did not reopen the next, and the sheriff showed up at your door and evicted you that same day. And, a world without turkey at Thanksgiving.
When my mother passed, she lived in the richest county of the richest state of the richest country… but she never forgot. Just in case…
Oh, and what was my grandfather’s name? Mark.
My mother, also fiercely independent, passed 5 years ago on July 20, 2013. How about you? Share a story.
