Authors: Donna Mabry
Settled in my bed at night, I gave thanks to God
for each day’s safety, each day’s progress, and each
day’s food.
We slept in the car the next night, a few miles
south of Toledo. I saw George spread out what money
he had left and count it. It didn’t look like very much.
“Are we going to have enough, George?”
“We’ll be all right, Maude, as long as nothing
else happens to the car, and we don’t take a liking to
steak dinners.”
I could see the worry making furrows on his
forehead. “How much longer is it going to take us to
get there, George?”
“Maybe tomorrow night, maybe another day
after that. Bessie lives on the east side of the city, so
we have to go all the way across it.”
In the morning, George filled the car with
gasoline, and we set out on what I hoped would be the
last day of this terrible trip.
We passed open fields of corn just north of Toledo. The
car made a loud grinding noise and lurched to a stop.
George got out and pushed it off to the side of the road,
knelt down on one knee and looked under. I waited,
wondering how bad it was. When George straightened
up, I could tell by the look on his face it was worse
than I imagined. He opened the door and sat beside
me. “The transmission’s dropped right off, Maude.”
“Too expensive for us, even if we were close to
a garage that had the parts.”
“What are we going to do, George?”
He looked down the road in the direction of
Detroit. “Whatever it is we
have
to do, Maude.”
I told Betty Sue and Paul to sit still, and we got
out of the car.
“It’s a good thing Paul cried after that wagon,”
George said, untying it. He loaded on what he could
and tied it down with the tarp over it. Then he pushed
the car further off the road and stood looking at it for
a minute. He welled up and choked, “Pawnee would
never have let us down like that.”
We began what I hoped would be the last day of
our trip, me carrying my sewing basket over one arm
Betty Sue and I walked in front. George came behind
us, pulling the wagon, and Paul walked beside him.
From time to time, an open truck would pass, and
George would stick out his thumb, but no one stopped.
We walked until dark, stopping by clumps of bushes
to relieve ourselves. We paid a farmer a dollar to let us
sleep in his barn. When I said my prayer that night, I
thanked God for the barn and asked Him to watch over
Gene, wherever he was, and keep him safe from harm.
I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t pray often for Bud. Maybe
I felt he had the U.S. Army to take care of him.
I hoped the farmer would offer us breakfast, but
he woke us early when he came to milk the cows, and
except for a gruff, “Good morning,” said nothing. We
gathered our things and started out again, our stomachs
already growling.
We walked some more, then from behind me,
George called, “Wait a minute, Maude.” Betty Sue and
I waited for him and Paul to catch up to us. He said,
“Paul’s crying for something to eat, and there’s no
telling when we’ll find a store.”
I wondered why he wanted to stop. He said, “I
never stole anything in my life, but I’m going to now.”
He looked around to see if there was anyone in
sight, then jumped across a ditch to the edge of a field
of corn. He plucked two small ears off a stalk and
hurried back to us. “Keep walking,” he told us. We set
out again and he stripped the husks and silk from the
corn as he walked and gave one to Paul and one to
Betty Sue. They gnawed them down to the bare cobs.
I asked, “What about us?”
“If anyone saw us, I figure they’d have mercy on
us if we only fed the children. You and I can wait.”
After a while, we came to a service station.
George bought a bag of peanuts so we could use the
restrooms. I filled our water bottles from the tap. We
walked what I figured was a few miles longer and then
sat under the shade of an oak tree and ate the peanuts.
Detroit didn’t seem any closer than it had in the
morning. We had to go at a pace the children could
keep up. Sometimes, people would pass us, usually a
man walking alone, but a few times, a man and
woman, once a family with children. We would nod at
one another and keep going without talking, like we
had to save our strength for the trip.
About eight hours into the day’s trip, we could
see a small cluster of buildings that looked like it might
be a town. I heard a soft clucking just off the side of
the road. I knew what it was. I handed my sewing
basket to Betty Sue and followed the sound. In a clump
of high grass I found a stray hen sitting on a nest full
of eggs. I almost shouted. I made a fold in my skirt and
gathered the eggs into it. I went to George and showed
him the treasure.
“How are we going to cook them, Maude? We
left the pans back in Missouri.”
“We aren’t going to cook them, George. We’re
going to trade them.”
We walked the rest of the distance to the town,
and at the service station with a store, I traded my eggs
for a loaf of bread. George counted out his coins for a
can of Vienna sausages. It would do. Unless my
children were hungry, and George had spent his last
cent, I had no intention of letting him know I had
money hidden away.
“How much farther is it to Detroit?” George
asked the man behind the counter.
He shrugged. “It’s about forty miles to
downtown.”
I wondered how long it would take us to walk that
far. I had no idea. We used the restrooms and then sat
on a bench outside the store while we ate. When we
finished, George picked up the handle of the wagon
and we set out again. We walked until dark. We only
had a few dollars left, so there was no money for a
cabin, even if there had been one nearby. We settled
down for the night under a big tree. George took the
tarp off the wagon and spread it out for a blanket, and
we huddled together. In my prayer that night, I gave
thanks that it wasn’t raining and that our shoes didn’t
have holes in them. I asked God to provide food for
the children and George.
In the morning, we set out again, hoping it would
be the last day. I was disgusted by how long it had been
since we had a bath. I’d always been clean about
myself and the children, and grateful that George had
always been clean about himself. It was awful to me
that I hadn’t had a bath or changed my clothes for such
a long time, especially since we were walking in the
dust and the dirt of the roadside.
We stopped by a little stream to relieve ourselves,
and I pulled the big hairpins out of my hair. It fell loose
and unrolled down to my knees. It had never been cut,
and I brushed it one hundred strokes each morning.
Like all of the married women of my church, I would
wind it into a bun at the back of my neck and fasten it
with the big U-shaped pins. I took my brush out of a
box and tried to smooth out the snarls. It was awful. It
made me half wild.
I hated this trip. I hated the Depression. I hated
George for letting this happen. I hated the Detroit I
hadn’t even seen yet, and now, I hated my hair. I took
the scissors out of my sewing basket, gathered my hair
into my fist, and cut it off right at the back of my neck.
Betty Sue screamed, and Paul started crying.
I threw the hank in the stream, turned, and gave
George a glare. His jaw dropped open, but he didn’t
say a word. I guess I had a look on my face that he’d
seen on his mother, and I was standing there with the
scissors still in my hand.
We started back walking north. As we plodded
along, I mourned my spurt of temper. My neck felt
naked and somehow exposed to the point of indecency.
We stopped by a stream to eat the last of the
bread. The Vienna sausages were long gone. George
took a string and a hook from the wagon, tied it
together, and stuck a piece of the bread crust on the
line. He threw it into the stream and stood there
watching it.
Another couple came along, saw us, and stopped
for a minute. The women looked like she was craving
to talk to another woman. She told me her name was
Imogene Rich and her husband was Wesley. She said,
“We left Oklahoma two weeks ago and took the bus as
far as Toledo. We didn’t have enough money to go all
the way to Detroit. When we looked at it on the map,
it didn’t seem like it was so far away.”
I asked her, “Do you have family in Detroit?”
“No. Everyone we knew was going to California,
so we thought we might do better if we went
somewhere else. Now, we’re broke. I don’t know what
we’re going to do when we get there.”
“How long is it since you ate?”
“Yesterday.”
I looked around me. The roadside was dotted
with yellow flowers. I said, “I used to hear my mom
talk about eating dandelion greens for a salad. She
never made it at home, so I don’t know how they taste,
but they don’t cost anything.”
About that time, George let out a whoop and
pulled in a fish. It wasn’t very big, about the size of
my hand. He told Wesley, “See if you can get a fire
started.”
He put another little piece of bread on the line and
dropped it back in the water. Wesley gathered up some
twigs and dried grass and got a little fire going. While
George angled for another fish, Wesley cleaned the
one we had.
Imogene and I gathered some of the dandelions
and washed them downstream. After a while, George
caught two more and cleaned them. He stuck the
pieces on a green stick of wood and held them over the
fire for a few minutes. When they were about to fall
apart, he took them out of the flame and we all shared
what we had.
Back on the road, the Riches said goodbye. I
thought about them not having any family and told her,
“If things get bad, I heard you could always get help at
a Salvation Army.”
She hugged me, and they went on ahead. They
could walk faster than we could. I hadn’t seen anyone
walking south. I said to George, “It looks as if whoever
came this far must have found work. There isn’t
anyone walking south.”
He looked at a car driving past and said, “Some
of them may still have their cars. We’ll see.”
After a while, the children stopped complaining.
We were too tired to do anything but put one foot in
front of the other and keep going. We spent another
night sleeping in a field. In the morning, I was so
hungry, I would have spent my hidden money for a
meal for my children, but no store came in sight. After
a while, I saw scrub apples hanging on a tree a ways
off the road. George went and picked a dozen or so.
“These are the best of them,” he said. I could see they
were wormy. I wiped them off as best I could, and
George cut them into pieces with his pocket knife. We
ate what we could without bothering the worms and
kept walking. We came to a service station, and
George bought a candy bar, broke it in half, and gave
it to the children. We drank water from the tap in the
rest room and filled the bottles we kept with us.
Finally, we could see Detroit in the distance. The
buildings were closer together now. The children
complained that they wanted to stop, and I felt as if I
couldn’t go on myself. I wanted to just sit down in the
middle of the road and wait until someone ran over me,
but George prodded us on, and shortly before we
reached the Detroit area, a truck stopped and picked us
up. George sat in front next to the driver, and the
children and I piled in the open back, next to some
wooden crates.
Through the window, I could see George talking
to the man. In only a minute, he had the driver
laughing in the same way he always did the men back
in Kennett. Then George took a paper out of his shirt
pocket and held it out in front of the driver, who
nodded his head. George folded the paper and put it
back in his pocket.
We reached the city, and drove, and drove, and
drove. It was amazing how large it was. We passed
factories on the west side. Huge columns of gray
smoke billowed up to the sky, joined one another, and
flattened out in an overhead blanket so thick and wide
it blocked out the sun. Black pieces of soot, too large
to be dust, fell like snow and settled on me and the
children. As soon as we brushed them off, more took
their place. It seemed as if we crossed a railroad track
every few feet. I could see the skyscrapers, and I
pointed out the one I thought was the Penobscot
Building to Betty Sue and Paul. Then the tallest
buildings were behind us, and we still kept driving.
After a while, we were on a wide street called Jefferson
Avenue.
Up front, I could see George talking and waving
his hands, and the driver throwing his head back and
laughing. It was the first time I’d ever been grateful for
George being so social. The longer he could charm the
driver, I thought, the closer he would take us to where
we needed to go.
As it turned out, he took us all the way to
Bessie’s house.
It was late afternoon when the truck pulled up in front
of a large, square, two-story house. George helped me
and the children down from the back and unloaded our
things. He and the driver shook hands and slapped
each other on the back. George shook his head and
smiled. “You sure were kind to bring us all the way
here, Dave. I don’t know how to thank you.”
The driver grinned at him. “My pleasure. It was
the best trip I had all year, George.” He climbed back
in his seat and waved out the window at George until
he’d driven out of sight.
We were gathering up our things when Bessie
and John came running out of the house, followed by
a tall blonde girl that I thought must be Maxine. John
pumped George’s hand while Bessie grabbed me and
hugged me, then Betty Sue, then Paul, and finally, her
brother. She took Betty Sue by the shoulders. “Lord,
Almighty, just look at you. It’s like looking back into
my childhood.”
It was true. With the same build, height, black
hair, dimples, and round faces, Bessie and Betty Sue
were mirror images of one another with only the years
to separate them.