American Progress Page 34

  “He and his grandmother have been spending long hours together talking in her drawing room,” Carrie told them. She recalled the glow in Violet’s eyes as her friend talked about it. Mrs. Simmons told the children that she would hide no longer—that they would all become a loving family. Violet and Nate were overjoyed.

  “Did the housekeeper know that Mrs. Simmons was Jewish?” Father asked.

  Carrie shook her head. “She didn’t. She was just as surprised as the rest of us.”

  “Well,” Mother said as she put slices of bread in the electric toaster, “I’m certainly glad you knew what those items were when the trunk was opened.”

  “And it was all because of Dvora that I did know,” Carrie said.

  “Didn’t you tell me the grandson—what’s his name? Sonny?—is interested in radios?” Father asked.

  Carrie nodded. “In his basement shop, he has a radio set and dozens of books about radios. Recently he started working at a radio shop downtown.”

  “I wonder if he’d be interested in a job at a real radio station.”

  “Father, do you mean it?” Carrie said. “You’d hire Sonny to work at the radio station? Even after what he’s done with the Klan and all?”

  “From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe he was ever a full-fledged follower. Besides, everything is changed in his life now.”

  “That’s true,” Carrie said.

  “We’ll be needing young men who have a talent for that sort of thing. Obviously, Sonny has the talent. Will you be going over there today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can tell Sonny that if he’s interested, he should come see me at my office at the Tribune.”

  Carrie jumped up from the table. “I sure will.”

  “Just a minute, young lady,” Mother said. “You need to finish your breakfast.”

  “But I’m too excited,” Carrie protested.

  As she grabbed her coat and hat and books, she heard Father say, “Oh, let her go, Ida. She has every right to be excited!”

  “Do you have everything?” Carrie asked Dvora. They looked around the small apartment. As usual, it was so clean you could eat off the floor.

  “I think so.” Dvora’s small bag sat by the door. “After all, I certainly didn’t have much when I arrived.”

  “But you have acquired a few things since then.”

  Dvora smiled. “I sure have.” She walked over to the corner and picked up Vanya. “More than you will ever know.”

  It was the last of February, and Dvora was leaving to go live with a Jewish family. Uncle Yerik felt that would be best for her.

  “There will be many other Jewish families in the area,” Dvora explained. “And Jewish children at my school. In this new neighborhood, I will attend Synagogue every Sabbath.”

  “I’m so happy for you,” Carrie said. “And your new family wants you to bring Vanya along?”

  Dvora nodded. “Yes. The cat, they said, is most welcome.”

  Dvora’s babushka was packed away in her travel bag. She no longer wore it every day. She had told Carrie that one day when she was betrothed, she would wear it once again. But not now.

  “Mrs. Simmons has been over to see me several times since the night of the Klan raid. She is such a fine lady.”

  “Dvora, did you know all along that Mrs. Simmons was Jewish?”

  Dvora nodded. “Certainly.”

  “How did you know?”

  “She came to me one day when I was at the garden gate playing with Vanya. She touched me and said, ‘Doosh-sheesh-ka.’”

  “She said it to you on the way to the vet’s, as well, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “A Yiddish term. A loving, endearing term. Something my own mama might have said to me. It means my little soul.”

  Carrie remembered the day when she saw Mrs. Simmons go out of the house to visit with her little Jewish neighbor. How that must have made the lady long to acknowledge her heritage.

  “I will miss you, Dvora,” Carrie said, swallowing over a growing lump in her throat.

  “And I will miss you, too, my friend. Tell Mrs. Harwell good-bye for me, and please take good care of the special bird feeder.”

  “Will I see you again, Dvora?”

  “Uncle Yerik tells me that I am such a good housekeeper, he may want me to return once a week to clean house for him.”

  “I will see you again then,” Carrie said.

  “I am sure of it.”

  Carrie heard a car drive up. “That must be your ride. I’ll help with your bag, and you carry Vanya.”

  Carrie opened the door and allowed Dvora to go first. There, at the bottom of the stairs, stood Violet, Nate, Sonny, Garvey, and Mrs. Simmons. Behind them stood Opal, dimples showing in her round face. When Dvora appeared, they all gave a rousing cheer. Vi and Nate held a big sign that said, “We Love You, Dvora. We’ll Miss You.”

  Dvora stopped and stared. She looked back up at Carrie standing behind her. Tears shone in her eyes. “This is too much for me, Carrie. My heart cannot hold all this love.”

  On down she went, clutching her cat and hugging each person in turn, even Garvey and Nate and Sonny. She walked to the car and crawled inside. Carrie put the bag in with her.

  As the car drove away, they all waved and cheered until it vanished from their sight.

  CHAPTER 19

  Tune In Again Tomorrow

  Be quiet, everyone,” Garvey ordered. “If you keep talking, we’re going to miss it.”

  Vi and Nate were with Garvey and Carrie at Garvey’s house. They were gathered on the floor in front of the radio console.

  Carrie’s heart was pounding like a bass drum. She could hardly breathe. A children’s program was just over, and now it was time for the commercial.

  The check from the purchase of her jingle had arrived a week ago, and Father agreed that she could split it with Garvey and give some to Dvora, as well.

  “Shh, shh,” Vi said, even though no one was talking.

  Lively bouncy music sounded over the speaker. Then high female voices chimed in at just the right moment:

  Popsicles, Popsicles—my best pick,

  Flavored ice stuck on a stick.

  It cools me off in the summer heat;

  The yummy flavor is nice and sweet.

  Oh, the joy of a Popsicle’s hard to beat.

  Suddenly Carrie began to laugh. She could hardly believe it was her words they were singing. She was rolling on the floor in a fit of giggles. Vi caught the giggles, and she began to laugh along with Carrie.

  Garvey jumped up and began to dance a jig, singing, “Popsicles, Popsicles—my best pick, flavored ice stuck on a stick.”

  Now Nate was giggling, too. He and Garvey danced wildly about the room singing, “It cools me off in the summer heat; the yummy flavor is nice and sweet.”

  Carrie and Vi, in the midst of their giggles, chimed in on the last line, “Oh, the joy of a Popsicle’s hard to beat.”

  Now the four of them were laughing so hard they could barely get the words out.

  Aunt Frances came to the door and watched them for a minute. She shook her head and muttered, “Is this what radio’s doing to this younger generation?”

  “Tune in tomorrow: same time, same station,” Carrie said.

  Garvey answered, “Righto, Jake!”

  Aunt Frances went back down the hall, leaving a chorus of giggles behind her.

  Anna’s Fight for Hope

  JoAnne A. Grote

  A NOTE TO READERS

  While Fred and Anna’s families are fictional, events in this book are based on historical fact. During the Great Depression, many families could no longer feed all their children. Parents had to ask their oldest children to leave home and provide for themselves. Thousands of teenagers became hobos who rode on trains across the country, looking for work. Some of them were injured and killed trying to get on and off moving trains.

&nb
sp; The Bonus Marchers, as they were called, actually marched into Washington, DC, asking that they receive their promised bonus for fighting in the Great War. They wanted to get the bonus a few years early so that they could provide for their families. Against direct orders from President Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur ordered troops to attack the veterans. Some veterans were injured and killed.

  And the Organized Unemployed Company actually existed. A minister in Minneapolis came up with the idea as a way to help men who were without jobs provide for their families.

  To Bruce and Becky Durost Fish, editors

  CONTENTS

  1. The Lost Penny

  2. Caught!

  3. A Surprise Encounter

  4. Attack on the Marchers

  5. An Exciting Plan

  6. A Surprise Visitor

  7. Trouble on the Farm

  8. Chet’s Story

  9. The Closed Bank

  10. What Happened to Miss Atkins?

  11. An Important Letter

  12. Christmas Plans

  13. Champion Bakers

  14. A New President

  15. A New Start

  16. The Search for Chet

  17. A Rude Awakening

  18. A New Life for Chet

  19. A Terrible Mistake

  20. Blue Eagles

  21. Surprise Answers

  CHAPTER 1

  The Lost Penny

  Oh, no! It’s gone!”

  Anna Harrington looked in surprise at her redheaded friend, Dot Lane. Dot was staring at the pennies in her hand. “What’s gone, Dot?”

  “One of my pennies. Mother gave me nine, just enough for the loaf of bread, and now there are only eight!”

  The tears glistening in Dot’s green eyes upset Anna. “Maybe you counted wrong. Let me try.”

  Dot slid the pennies into one of Anna’s hands. Anna’s short, curly blond hair slipped against her cheek as she counted the copper coins herself. Then she looked back at Dot. “Eight,” she agreed. “Try your pockets again. The other penny must be there.”

  Anna watched Dot slip her hands into the pockets of her faded green-and-white-checked gingham dress. “Oh, no! There’s a hole in one pocket corner. The penny must have fallen out of the hole on our way.”

  “Maybe it fell out here in the store,” Anna said. “Let’s check the floor.”

  The two girls walked slowly toward the door on the other side of the room. They studied the wooden floor carefully. They knew it would be easy for an old penny to blend in with the dark wood or fall through the cracks of the wooden planks or slip beneath one of the many wooden bushel baskets that covered the floor.

  The smells of the fresh fruits and vegetables in the baskets made Anna hungry. Each basket overflowed with something different: green beans, cucumbers, potatoes, celery, lettuce, onions, sweet potatoes, apples, peaches, wild plums. She ignored her growling stomach and kept looking for the penny.

  Anna scrunched her face into a scowl. She waved a hand in front of her face, trying to chase away a pesty, noisy fly. Sticky yellow strips hung from the ceiling to trap the flies that liked the fruits and vegetables, but the strips hadn’t trapped this one yet. The strips swung in the breeze made by the large ceiling fan that kept the warm July air moving.

  The girls had almost reached the front of the store when a tall, skinny young man with a white jacket over his shirt and tie asked, “Are you girls looking for something? Can I help you?”

  Anna knew he was a clerk in the store. She’d seen him putting groceries into a wooden box, filling a grocery order for a customer. Hope made her smile. Maybe he found Dot’s penny while he worked, she thought. “My friend lost a penny. Did you find one?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. Maybe one of the other clerks found it.”

  Anna glanced at the three men in white jackets who stood behind the tall wooden counter at the back of the store. All three were holding a telephone receiver to their ear with one hand; with the other hand they were making notes in pencil on tablets.

  “I don’t think so,” she told the helpful man. “Those clerks have all been on the telephone taking orders for groceries since we came into the store.”

  “Too bad. Hope you find it.” The man smiled and went back to work.

  “We must find it,” Dot told Anna. “When Mother gave me the pennies, she said they were all the money she had. And it takes nine pennies to buy a loaf of bread.”

  All the money she had? Anna tried to hide her horror at Dot’s words. “If we don’t find the penny, maybe your mother can bake some bread.”

  Dot shook her head. “We don’t have enough flour or sugar left. It’s cheaper to buy the loaf of bread than to buy the flour and sugar.”

  Anna saw unhappily that there were tears in Dot’s eyes again.

  Together they explored the rest of the floor all the way to the door. Anna knelt down so she could check whether the penny had rolled beneath the barrel of pickled cucumbers. “Nothing there,” she said when she stood up. “I guess we better walk back to your house. Maybe we’ll find it yet.”

  They went through the screen door that let fresh air into the one-room store and stepped out on the sidewalk.

  Anna couldn’t keep her gaze on the sidewalk looking for Dot’s penny all the time. There were other brick stores and business buildings along this street. The street wasn’t busy with cheerful shoppers the way it had been a couple years ago, when she and Dot had been ten years old. The depression had changed everything.

  Many of the stores were empty now. Their windows were empty. The buildings looked dark and unfriendly. Even the buildings of stores and businesses that hadn’t closed weren’t very busy. There weren’t many people who were shopping. In some of the windows, signs read No Help Needed. I guess the owners of those stores are tired of men without jobs asking for work, Anna thought.

  They turned a corner and soon came on a bread line. The men were waiting for some bread and maybe soup at a mission. It was a long line, for the mission was two blocks away.

  Most of the men who were on the sidewalks were leaning against walls or sitting on the curb. Some of them talked to each other, but most of them just watched the world go by with sad eyes in narrow faces. Some had a bedroll wrapped in canvas sitting beside them. Some had dirty flour sacks. Anna’s mother had told her these homeless, unemployed men probably carried everything they owned in those sacks. Anna felt sorry for them. Some of the men didn’t even have flour sacks.

  “If I lost the penny near here,” Dot whispered to her, “one of these men probably found it and kept it.”

  Anna nodded. No one would pass up a penny lying on the sidewalk.

  Dot’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t think we’re going to find it. Mother will be so upset.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. She’ll know that.” Anna tried to make her feel better. “Maybe you should ask your father for the penny.”

  “He went to Washington.”

  Anna stopped and stared at her. “Washington! What is he doing there?”

  “He wants to join the Bonus Marchers. The Bonus Marchers are men who fought in the Great World War. Back then, the government told them that part of their pay for fighting would be a bonus of one thousand dollars, but they wouldn’t get the bonus until 1945. So many of the men who fought in the war are out of work that they want to ask the president and Congress to give them the money now. Bonus Marchers from all over the country are going to Washington.”

  “I know.” Anna nodded. “I heard my parents talk about them. My father fought in the war, too. He was wounded and sent to the hospital at Fort Snelling in St. Paul to heal. That’s where he met my mother. She was a nurse there.”

  Dot smiled. Her green eyes, which had looked so sad just moments before, sparkled. “That sounds romantic.”

  Anna smiled back. “I think so, too. Anyway, I hope your father gets his bonus.”

  Dot’s smile faded. “Me, too.”

  Anna tried to think of someth
ing to cheer her up again. “Just think, he’ll see the Capitol and the Washington Monument. I wish I could see them.”

  Dot nodded, but she didn’t smile again. “The Foshay Tower was built because Mr. Foshay liked the Washington Monument.”

  I forgot! Now I made her feel worse! Anna thought. The Foshay Tower was the highest building west of Chicago. When it opened in 1929, Dot’s father had worked in it. He’d had a very important job and made lots of money. Then Mr. Foshay lost all his money, and many of his employees lost their jobs. Dot’s father had been one of them. He hadn’t found another job during the more than two years since then, not a real job. Sometimes he found work for a few days at odd jobs or even for only one day or a few hours.

  Dot cleared her throat. “Father is afraid if he doesn’t get the veterans’ bonus that he won’t be able to keep feeding everyone. I heard him tell Mother. They were in the kitchen, and I was in the living room. He didn’t know I heard him. He told her that it was hard enough to feed everyone when it was only him and Mother and me.”

  Anna didn’t know what to say. She felt sad for her friend but didn’t know how to help her.

  Dot’s family had moved from their beautiful big house to a little old house two years ago. Now Dot’s grandmother and Dot’s widowed aunt and three small cousins were living with them. The house was crowded, but Dot told Anna often how much she liked having her little cousins in the house. Dot liked little kids, and they liked her.

  Anna looked again at the line of men that went for blocks. The words of a popular song by Yip Harburg went through her head:

  Once I built a tower, to the sun.

  Brick and rivet and lime,

  Once I built a tower,

  Now it’s done—

  Brother, can you spare a dime?

  Buddy, can you spare a dime?

  It’s men like these who have gone to Washington, Anna thought. Men who risked their lives to fight for the country and now don’t have money to buy food for themselves or their families.