1. The Hitter


    Date: 8/23/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: gilrenard, Rating: , Source: LushStories

    The farmland that had fed two generations before me was barren. We were in the middle of The Dust Bowl, or, The Dirty Thirties, that’s what they had named the dust storms and drought that blew away the top soil of the land and made it impossible to grow crops. As if that wasn’t enough, the global economy had collapsed. 'The Great Depression' as President Hoover referred to it. The hard and desperate times that began on that fateful Black Tuesday, weren't going away anytime soon. And, would change the world forever. I found work on the Mesabi iron range, to make ends meet. I was sending my hard earned pay back to my wife, in Nebraska. Most of my wages went to paying off the loan I had taken from the bank, to keep from losing my farm. All I could do was wait till the land could grow my wheat crop again. A neighbor sent me a letter, telling me that my wife, and the banker that she had run off with, had declared me presumed dead in a mining disaster. The bank had repossessed my farm and put it up for sale. Citing, nonpayment of the loan to steal my farm. My journey from Minnesota to Nebraska, to get my farm back, started with just the clothes I was wearing, a bedroll, and fifty dollars in my pocket. I made it back to my farm in the fall of 32. The faded, weather beaten for sale sign swayed lazily in the chilly, dry wind. An all too common sign of the times everywhere you turned. I pulled the wooden stakes out of the ground and tore the sign to shreds. Nothing was going to stop ...
    me from getting my farm back. ~ I passed through many shanty towns, or, Hoovervilles, as they were becoming popularly known across the country, on my way to Lincoln, Nebraska. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President when the economy crashed and was being blamed for not taking action sooner to avoid the economic disaster. Each one was the same as the last. Hungry kids still played and ran around, laughing and screaming. Broken old men and women sitting on rickety chairs, secretly wishing they were dead, instead of being a burden to their families. Men and women trying to hold on to fast, fading hope. Worried and wondering where the next meal would come from. Everyone was talking about the New Deal, that Franklin D. Roosevelt, the newly elected President promised us in the fall of 1932. All the country could do was sit and wait for better days. ~ When I reached the city, I passed a crowded, dirty alley. The noisy crowd had formed a circle around two men engaged in a bare knuckle fight. I walked towards the crowd to size up the competition. My dad and grandfather had been prize fighters. If a year’s harvest didn’t yield enough to cover the cost of staying in business, they made good money in the ring to cover the expenses. I had been trained in the art of fisticuffs by both of them, much to the disapproval of my mom and grandmother. I lost count of how many times my dad and grandfather caught shit for training me to fight, from mom and grandma at the dinner table. ...
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