Have you ever been truly hungry?

I have a memory box that I have kept notes and cards in over the years. Things were stuffed in there and forgotten. This week, my husband was looking for something in the box. He found a story my dad had written on his computer and printed on two sheets of notebook paper. (Always frugal). I don't know how many years ago he wrote it, but he passed away in the summer of 2006. When I read it, I admit I shed a few tears; but mostly my heart was filled with love and pride, not only for the man my father was, but also for the boy he was. 

My dad was born in 1918 in Cherokee County, North Carolina. During his childhood, his family literally moved dozens of times, just trying to survive. Dad's formal education was seven, maybe eight years, but he was a life-long learner..mostly self-taught. Full grown, my dad was about five feet, eight inches..but he was tough as nails. The memoir he recounts below would have been around 1930, when he was twelve years old. Dad had an older sister, who may have already been married, and his younger brothers would have been around 10, 8, and 5. 

Here is Daddy's story in his own words:

"During the presidential term of President Herbert Hoover, the United States suffered a severe depression when banks failed and people lost their savings and jobs. Factories had to close down. People were hungry. Soup kitchens were set up. President Hoover was blamed for the hard times, but I don't think the depression could have been avoided in any way except by having a sound economy.

At the height of the depression, when I was 12 years old, our family moved to Lincoln County to help a farmer harvest his cotton crop. We were paid about seventy-five cents per hundred pounds for picking it. Cotton weighs light on the weighing scale, but weighs very heavy when stooping all day long, dragging a sack loaded with cotton. Sharp burrs holding the lint cotton cause pain to the fingers, and as the weather got cold, the frost on the cotton bolls intensified the pain.

After helping Mr. Mott Sain pick his cotton crop, we went to the farm of John P. Beam and picked the scrap cotton left in his fields. Scrap cotton is exactly what the name implies. Frost and cold has prevented the bolls from maturing and they had barely cracked open enough to see the lint cotton inside. The bolls had to be pried open to get the scrap cotton out of the boll. This was a slow process, and the time it consumed cut down the total weight of the cotton picked that day. That made our earnings too meager to buy enough food for our basic needs.

My dad’s physical condition prevented him from doing jobs that most men were able to do. Dad had osteomyelitis when I was about 5 years old and had to have his right leg amputated four inches below the right knee. He also had a double inguinal hernia. Without money or insurance, he could not have his hernia repaired. My dad worked as much as he could, but his condition prevented employers from hiring him. Even if work had been available, no one would hire a one legged man when thousands of able-bodied men were looking for the same job.

My mother’s brother, Fred Davis, who was employed by Cannon Mills Company in Kannapolis, North Carolina, wanted to help our predicament, and told us if we could move to Kannapolis, he would be planting a garden and he could furnish us with milk since he had a cow. We took him up on his offer and moved in early spring.

I could not enroll in school that year because I was needed to assist my mother and dad in earning money to feed the family. We obtained weekly commitments with the Harmon family, the Robinette family, and the Perry family to do their weekly laundry. For me, that meant keeping the fire going under the wash pot, drawing water from a deep well to fill the pot and the tubs, and to help my mother scrub the clothes on a washboard and rinsing them through three tubs of water. We then had to hand-wring them, and hang them on a clothesline to dry. We got our lunch free and fifty cents a day for our work. This amounted to twenty-five cents for each of us, which was all used for the benefit of the family.

Mr. Perry was a truck farmer who raised vegetables for the market. When my mother and I were not doing washing, we shelled green peas for him to sell wholesale at curb markets. The going rate for pea shelling was two cents a quart. Pea shelling made your fingers sore, but at lunch time the Perry's always fed us from a table full of delicious farm-raised food.

Dad found a pair of buggy wheels somewhere and made a two-wheeled cart that was pretty easily pushed or pulled, because it’s body was well-balanced over the axle. We used it to haul rustic tables and chairs that Dad made from green branch willow saplings. We found the willows on the banks of Buffalo Creek between Pethel Town and Enochville. Dad made beautiful rustic furniture from the willow saplings that my brothers and I hauled home to him. On Saturdays we peddled them door-to-door. We received fifty cents for each flower stand and seventy-five cents each for a child's rustic chair, but it helped keep body and soul together."

You know, I don't ever remember being truly hungry. I have been fortunate, as I know this is not true of many throughout our world..past and present. I understand better, knowing my father's past, why he almost panicked when the cabinets or refrigerator were near empty. He wanted to know there was always food in the house for another day. 

His story also helps me understand why our recently adopted granddaughter from China (who has experienced hunger) has some issues with food, and likes to hold crackers in her little fingers. I pray she never has to experience hunger again!

Daddy, you would have loved to meet Grace! She is a survivor, just like you.

"Though she be but little; she is fierce". ~ William Shakespeare

Charlotte Laney

Copyright 2018