The Great Depression

As we struggle through difficult times with the Covid-19 virus and racial unrest I remember another difficult time.

Like the rest of the country the Depression hit Murfreesboro Tennessee (my home town) in the 30s. But it had little effect on me or my family. These were my pre-school and early elementary years, Daddy had a good job at the Post Office and we had a large vegetable garden as well as a cow and chickens.

One memory is clear in my mind from that period however and that is of the hobos. The train track was not too far from our house and a steady stream of hobos found their way to our back door. I remember these men as young, polite, relatively clean and hungry. They asked if they could do some work in exchange for food.

Daddy enjoyed working in his yard so there was little physical work for them to do but Mother always gave them a plate of fresh vegetables and fried chicken and corn bread or whatever we had on hand that day. They ate on our back steps. Then they thanked her and were off to hop on the next train. Sometimes I would sit on the steps with the men and watch them eat. Sometimes they would talk to me about a little girl or little sister they had left behind.

There was a Viaduct over Stones River just a little ways down from our house. Sometimes a group of hobos gathered under the Viaduct, built a fire, slept and waited until the next day’s train. My sister and I were never allowed to go to the Viaduct at night but sometimes we could hear singing and the sad wail of a harmonica coming from there.

There was one particular hobo I remember, a gentle looking man carrying a sachet. He asked me about myself and my sister and said he was an artist. Then he noticed the bicycle my sister and I shared. It was leaning near the back steps. Knocking on our back door he proposed a barter to my Mother. In exchange for food he would write in calligraphy my name and my sister’s name on our bicycle. Since we shared one bicycle one name was on each side. Mother agreed.

We watched as he opened his case and took out an assortments of colored pens. We loved the flourishes and curlicues with which he embellished our names and how proud we were of our bicycle when he finished.

I never remember my sister and I fussing over having to share a bicycle. We took turns riding it or pumping each other. I thought this was much more fun than riding alone. I suppose we had few toys at that time but without TV commercials and Toy stores we were happily unaware.

Then one day the hobos just stopped coming. I wonder what happened to that artist hobo—where he went—what he did. Somehow I feel that he did alright with his talent, his gentle manner and his entrepreneurial spirit.