These stories are examples of why I shouldn't write children's books. This is only significant because last year my teacher told us to write a children's book with stories based in the Great Depression. These are what I came up with:
Daddy’s Job
Daddy smiled down at me as he lifted me into his right arm and placed me on his shoulders. I swung my shoes and wondered vaguely what was wrong with his other arm and why Mommy was hiding her tears. Daddy’s right arm hung limply by his side, but I didn’t quite understand what that meant. At least, not until later.
Daddy came back to the house and slumped into a chair. I could smell the alcohol on his breath from my seat. I was going to tell him that our teacher said the government said people weren’t allowed to drink, but Mommy shooed me off to my room. I doubled back and crept towards the open door. “You didn’t get the job, did you?” Mommy asked, quietly.
Daddy shook his head slowly. “They just don’t need farm hands like they used to. Especially workers with, well…” He paused, gesturing at his limp arm. Mommy nodded quietly, turning to drop carrots in the stew she was cooking.
“Maybe if I…I mean, I could always get a typing job,” she said quietly. Daddy said nothing. “I saw an advertisement for a secretary. Just until, you know, you can get back on your feet.”
“No…No, I’ll find a job. I hear they’re gonna need a few strike breakers. Quite a few, if I read the papers right. Maybe I could just get a job there. It’ll be different from working on a farm, I’d imagine. But, I’ll manage.”
Mommy was quiet. I think she was crying. I didn’t know why at the time; it wasn’t until later that I found out how mean people were to Irishmen, even Irish descendants.
It was a few days later. I had almost completely forgotten about the discussion between my parents and happily went to a small public school a few miles down the road. Mr. Johnson, our teacher, began teaching us about science.
He began with an odd subject. He called it “evolution”. It was a strange, different teaching from what the Pope and the Bible said. He also said it was wrong. He told us about a man named John Scopes in Tennessee who taught the idea to his students. The man had been tried by a judge and jury—which Mr. Johnson said was a group of people who got together and listened to two people argue about whether someone did something bad. Then they told the judge—the guy in the white wig and flowing black robes—if he did do something bad, or if he didn’t.
After school let out, we played trial. I was Mr. Scopes’ lawyer. I told the jury why he was innocent, and a boy in my class named Roger told them why he wasn’t. My friend Marissa was playing Mr. Scopes. It was a lot of fun. We all found her guilty and fined her $100, just like Mr. Scopes had been.
Afterwards, it began to get dark. We ran home, giggling all the way. I ran into the house breathlessly, bursting with news for my parents. But when I got there, strange men were in our house. They were wearing white sheets over their faces and tearing our Bible to pieces. I screamed and ran out of the house as Daddy came home. He was walking funny, but I didn’t notice all that much through my panic. I told him what the scary men were doing. He turned to a few of his friends, who were laughing and talking about “how nice those speakeasies are”. They all ran into the house.
Mommy cried hard during the funeral. She blamed everything from her Irish heritage to the Catholic Church to the labor unrest to the Ku Klux Klan, or the scary men in white. She said if only Daddy hadn’t gone to the speakeasy to drink, he might not have attacked those men. If Daddy hadn’t been an Irishmen, he wouldn’t have been attacked. If he hadn’t been a Catholic, he wouldn’t have died. That night we had to pack everything up. We went on the road, so Mommy could find work as a farm hand. I didn’t know how long it would be until I ate again, but I knew it was going to be a long time.
Jenny’s Radio
“You’ve been listening to—” James leaned forward and turned off the talking box he called a radio.
“See, twerp. I told you it’d be fun,” he said, tugging on my blond pig-tails. He grinned, running a hand through his own red hair.
The radio had just finished a broadcast about the “Model T Ford” cars, the new cars that people “like us”, as James said, could buy. I turned the radio back on and began twisting one of the knobs. “Today on…The newest…And it’s a home run!” As I reached toward the radio turn the knob again after the “home run” announcement, James rushed forward.
“Jenny! Leave it on, it’s the baseball game!” He pushed me over slightly and sat next to me.
The door closed behind us as Mom came in from her job. She made a few dollars to buy new things, like my shiny, black shoes, and James’ baseball bat. “I’m gonna be just like Babe Ruth!” James exclaimed, swinging the bat around.
“Outside!” Mom told him as he raced outdoors. I turned back to the radio. It was playing some odd music.
“Mom, what’s that music?”
“Oh, dear that’s called jazz music. You don’t want to listen to that,” she said, briskly walking over and turning it off.
“Why not?”
“Because, it’s played by blacks,” she replied. “I hear they’re based in a town called Harlem in New York. Ugh, what a disgusting bunch.” She began bustling around the kitchen, preparing dinner for all of us. “They think they can write and sing just as well as us pure-bred whites, but they know they’ll never measure up.” I shrugged and went back to the radio.
Dad came in soon after, followed by James, who was all dirty. “Go wash up,” she snapped at us, shooing us from the kitchen. “Dinner will be ready in five minutes, you three!”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, honey!” Dad called, flicking a bit of water on my new dress. I giggled and splashed some back, getting both Dad and James wet.
Soon we had a water fight and were all drenched. Mom made us go back and change before we came to dinner. She was mad at Dad for encouraging us to play with water and ever madder because I got my new dress all wet.
“I just bought it for her yesterday,” she snapped, glaring at him. Dad grinned helplessly at us.
“Sorry, honey,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek. James and I made a face.
“Well, I’m going to go out tonight with the other ladies,” Mom replied, seemingly pacified by the kiss. “We’re going in Mrs. Johnson’s Model-T car her husband just bought.” She gave Dad a strange look across the table.
“I wanna go!” I shouted.
“Yeah, me too!” James added.
“Why don’t we all go? It’ll be a nice family night out.”
“But it was going to be just me and the girls,” Mom protested.
“Ok…How about next week we all go to the movie. Tonight, we can listen to the radio while your mom is out.”
“Ok,” James and I said in unison.
Mom and Dad kissed good-night, and Mom left to go see her movie, something, Dad said that would never have happened if that dumb Mr. Ford hadn’t made the new Model-T cars.
James told me once that Dad said the same thing before he got into that terrible accident. He ran his car into another car while on his way to bring the car home for Mom. It sometimes makes me think that maybe we shouldn’t have even had cars. Sure, it would have kept everyone closer together, but it would have cut down on the deaths that were caused and will probably still be caused because of careless people who “can’t drive worth a flip”, as James once put it.
Robert’s Papers
Robert Peterson sat at his desk, with papers scattered about. He looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days. “It can’t be…” he muttered to himself, picking up another piece of paper. “At this rate…No! I…I have to tell someone, anyone!” He ran out of the house and nearly ran into the paper boy.
“Would you like to buy a paper, sir?” The boy asked, holding up the paper. In big letters, it read: STOCK MARKET CRASHES!
Robert sat down on the ground, snatching the paper from the boy and staring at it. “I was too late. It happened. It finally happened.” He began to shake all over, his hands sweating and causing some of the ink to bleed onto his palms.
He knew what would happen next. He had always known. He tried to tell his boss that they were making too many items. There just weren’t enough people with the money to buy the stuff they sold, and those with enough money spent them on more luxurious items. They had fired him yesterday for it.
There was no way for the company to make any money, but they went on to sell stocks to those people who believed it would last forever. He felt sorry for those poor people, whose only hope of future income was the stock market.
Over the course of the next few days the banks failed. People began pulling what little money they had left out of the banks, while the few rich horded a major part of the money at home.
The businesses began failing because they had bought so much from the company, but no one was buying the items. Soon luxurious items were worthless. Businesses went under.
Factories, which had been making the products for the businesses, began to feel the strain also. The businesses weren’t buying products from them, so they had a huge amount still in crates, waiting to be shipped out to the companies. The factories had no need for their workers, and many were fired from jobs and forced onto the streets.
The few rich people gathered their money like a dragon hoards its treasure. They feared what might happen if they lost all their money, as the poor people had done.
Robert walked slowly home, knowing what would happen. He would head back to his small apartment and tell the owner of the apartment building he had lost his job. Robert would lie and say he would be able to find another job in a few more days. However, the owner would be unsympathetic. He would be forced to leave the building and live on the streets.
Perhaps, Robert thought as he walked through the streets and looked at the families huddled on the sidewalks, if the government had regulated the stock market, or even the banks, we would not be in this difficulty. Maybe if the bank managers had not loaned so much money out for people to buy stocks, the market’s crash would not have hit us so hard. Perhaps if this idea of commercialism and consumerism—which encouraged people to buy for the health of the economy— had not happened, we would not be in this depression. Perhaps if the few rich that there were had not hoarded the money so the poor could earn very little to even survive, we would not be facing the problems we are facing.
Soon he found a small, unused piece of sidewalk. He lay down, breathing in the cool night air, wrapping himself in a small, tattered blanket.
He lay, looking up at the stars and awaited the long, cold night.
Ruby’s Apples
“Apples! Apples! Buy one, buy two! Apples!” Ruby Sanderson stood at the street corner selling apples. She watched with sad eyes as people passed her by, not bothering to even look at her apples. They were a bit rotten by now, as she had been standing at that very same street corner for the past three days, with that same basket of fruit.
She was trying desperately to gain the attention of one man, who passed by her without even looking at her.
One man stopped and rounded on her. “Don’t you get it?! None of us can purchase any of your apples because none of us have any money!” She burst into tears and ran back to her “home” crying.
Her mother lifted herself from the ground as her daughter came running up, crying. “What is it?” Mrs. Sanderson questioned, stroking her daughter’s red hair lovingly. “What’s wrong?”
“Why do we live here?” Ruby asked, turning her reddened eyes to her mother and waving her hand around to motion at the small tent they had made.
“Because, dear, we have no other place to go. Your father is too ill to even try and find a job, and even if he were well, there are so few jobs anyway, he probably would be turned down, just like the last job and the job before that. We live on the streets because we can’t afford to go anywhere else.”
Ruby nodded, showing wisdom beyond her years. After a moment of staring at the rotting apples, she ventured, “What is a ‘Hooverville’?”
Her mother laughed bitterly. “That, my dear, is where we are. It is an area where people who have no other place to go can live on the streets, at least until the cops come and burn us out.”
Ruby nodded again, and sat close to her mother. “I didn’t sell any apples for you and dad,” she murmured.
Her mother pulled her in close and sobbed, hugging her daughter tightly. “It’s ok, baby. You did your best.” They sat together, staring at the rotting apples and watching the sun set. They both knew the unsold, mostly rotten apples meant no money, for quite a while.
Ruby lay in the tent, groaning and clutching her stomach. It jutted out from her body, as her skin clung to every bone. Hair had sprouted up around her body in an attempt to protect her from the cold. Her mother poured soup made of boiled water, leaves, and grass found near and around the camp.
She lay there in agony for days, eating the “soup” and showing no signs of getting better. She wasn’t sleeping, and her mother feared the worst. Her mother begged the neighbors for some food to spare.
An old woman came back into the tent with her mother. The woman placed a dark hand on Ruby’s forehead and tipped it back, pouring something into her throat. It was soup, rich, meaty soup.
For the next few days, the old woman came back, laden with small gifts of food for the little girl. She was fed mashed apples and potatoes, soup, and bread.
Her mother would sometimes also disappear and reappear with food from something called a soup kitchen, and Ruby ate all of it.
Slowly she began to feel better and was soon running around with the other children from the camp.
Her mother was so happy that she cried all day afterwards. She hugged her child close and wished that the president had been smart enough to see this coming. She wished President Hoover would try something, anything to bring them out of the Depression. Maybe if he had tried something, she wouldn’t be forced to send her only child out onto the street corner to sell apples no one would buy. Maybe the Depression would have ended sooner. Maybe her husband would be working in a factory, instead of having to rely on his daughter and neighbors for survival.
Once Ruby was completely better, she stood at the same street corner on the same street, calling, “Apples! Apples! Buy one, buy two! Apples!”
The Time Traveler’s Watch
“Extra, extra! Read all about it!”
I bought a newspaper and walked down the street, reading it. My watch beeped, as someone road past me on a bike of all things. I just stared in amazement for a few moments, and then looked at it, frowning. I was somewhere in the mid-nineteen-thirties. It was a bit of an undershot, especially since I was hoping to show up somewhere in the mid-two-thousands. But I was curious, especially about this Franklin D. Roosevelt person. I remembered from my ancient history classes about him and about Earth’s first “Great Depression”. First, though, I needed to change my clothes.
Using my watch (a time traveler’s best tool), I put myself in a dirty jacket that looked like it was falling apart and a pair of ripped up pants (quite different from my silver jumpsuit) appropriate for the era and strolled the streets, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happened. At least not until the second President Roosevelt was sworn into office.
I spent most of that time reading the newspapers, waiting for that time. When it finally did happen, Mr. Roosevelt was quick to spring into action. His first move was to close all the banks in the country. Then he proceeded to open the banks a few days later under the supervision of the government’s Treasury under what was called the Emergency Banking Act. Most of the banks under the Federal Reserve System responded a few days later, and the currency flowed back into them, thus stabilizing the bank system.
This was not the only thing going on during what future historians would call the “First Hundred Days”. Congress began passing law after law, following Roosevelt’s plan of relief, recovery, and reform. These agencies developed during the time fell under the term “alphabet soup”, as all were abbreviated to the first letter of each name.
Some of these went to help with relief, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which paid farmers to reduce the amount of land they grew crops on, because they had grown too many crops, just like the factories had made too many items. Also it created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which hired men to work on local projects.
Others went to provide reform in industry. The National Industries Recovery Act (NIRA) forced industries to come up with codes that established rules of operation for the industries, in hopes that the act would end major competition. Unfortunately, it was ruled un-Constitutional, which meant it couldn’t be a law anymore.
Yet Roosevelt didn’t give up on his plan. He went on to create acts which dealt with the part of his plan dedicated to recovery. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) built dams and power stations. It also controlled floods, modernized agriculture, and modernized the home life of the people in the Tennessee Valley.
Many people were overjoyed at the reforms the president was creating, but some people didn’t like it.
The American Liberty League was made up of a group of Democrats who thought Roosevelt was doing more harm than good. They thought he was creating a dictatorship, where one person rules an entire country. They decided to try and overthrow Roosevelt in a plan the papers called “The Business Plot”.
It involved a bunch of businessmen who wanted to remove Roosevelt from office and take office themselves. The plot was uncovered, and the men were tried. However, the Senate committee in charge of the investigation had their term expired before the businessmen could be punished.
Admittedly, I laughed when I read that. It was funny to think of those men trying to take on the thirty-second president of the United States. Even though he was disabled, this didn’t stop him from making speeches, supported only by his arms. It also didn’t kill his spirit. He was a formidable man. He was one of the better presidents, in my opinion too.
Without him as president, America’s Depression would have been much greater and much longer. Even though some of his ideas failed, he was the best thing that could have happened to the nation during this time.
I realized that during my trip, and found myself very thankful of it. Without him, I might not have been able to make this journey. I might have been forced to stay home and live selling apples or something. But, I had a mission, and I needed to get to the correct time. So I set my watch for 2008 and disappeared, leaving only a newspaper behind.
t3: Feeling depressed, yet? Here's the fun bit. I wasn't even depressed, sad, or angry when I wrote these. I was just fine. It's everyone else (aka my mom) who find themselves depressed.
If you ask nicely, maybe I'll post some of my death poetry.
I don't care where you leave comments, if you leave comments. This place is just as easy, if not easier, than the actual review board.
