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SARAH JONES
(Florida)
In a shack on Cocoanut Palm Drive,
Princeton, Florida lives the "Jones" family. I have chosen this family for
my work on the new project and will try to present them to you as they
really are.
The house has been condemned and is in very poor condition. The main
advantage in these people living here is that the owner can charge them no
rent. The house leans slightly to one side and has been patched with box
tops and various scraps of lumber where the original siding has rotted
through. The front porch has been added recently by some member of the
family and can hardly be said to add anything to the appearance of the
house. It is about four feet wide and six feet long, covered with old
pieces of tin and floored with various sized and shaped pieces of scrap
lumber which are unnailed and overlapping.
The front screen has been patched and hangs a little crooked. To one side,
under a sort of shed, is a large rustic swing which one of the boys has
made. Blankets and clothing hang on the small porch and one must step over
fish nets as he enters.
Behind the house are some guava, orange and other fruit trees as well as
high weeds and pines. In front are various kinds of shrubs and flowers
planted rather like an old fashioned flower garden. Scattered around
between the flowers are vegetables, mostly tomatoes.
When I called "Hello" to Mrs. Jones, who was not in, her daughter
Virginia, let me in and told me that she had been washing clothes and
scrubbing floors. She was bare footed and looked as though she had been
sleeping. She wore a faded pink silk dress without a belt and combed her
hair, which had just been waved, with a soiled and broken comb. She put a
belt around her waist and made herself more presentable with the exception
of shoes, which she never bothered to put on.
Virginia is a tall, slender girl with muddy complexion. She is about
twenty-five years old, has been married and has had a child who was killed
by an automobile as it played on a sand pile in front of this same house.
For months after the child's death, she attended spiritual meetings and
declared that she had talked with the baby. Sometimes she works at
barbecue stands but that is infrequent and is the only work that she ever
does.
I told her that I had come to see her mother to get her diet for high
blood pressure as a friend of mine thought that he had the same trouble
that Mrs. Jones suffered with. Virginia took me into the kitchen and
allowed me to read the diet from a faded magazine article which was nailed
to the wall. "Mama doesn't stick to it though, it's too expensive to get
the foods it calls for."
We talked about various things and Virginia showed me a quilt that she was
making from faded scraps of old dresses. She asked me what I thought about
a lining of flour sacks which she had washed white. I showed her some
crocheting that I was working on and was lucky enough to interest her in
learning to make a chain. I persuaded her to let me leave my needle and
crochet thread with her, promising to come back later and teach her to
make a pattern. She accepted the offer very gratefully.
When Mrs. Jones returned, Virginia told her why I had come. She very
kindly explained her diet to me and told me of some medicine that she
orders from Tampa. She explained that her doctor did not know that she
takes this preparation. In fact, he has forbidden her to do so but she
thinks that she could not live without it. She goes to her doctor each
week and takes "shots" as well as some medicine which he prescribes. Mrs.
Jones is a stoop-shouldered woman of average height and build. Her face is
pink and her lips are naturally red.
She was very much concerned about a
neighbor's dog which had been hit by a car and had a broken leg. She sent
one of her boys, John, to help put a splint on the dog's limb, telling him
to be careful as the dog was so big it would be hard to hold down and work
on without being bitten. Virginia was very angry and said that if anyone
should hit her dog she would surely "cuss them out." Her mother said, "Now
Virginia, you know you wouldn't do no such a thing," to which Virginia
replied, "I would too, I think so much of him I couldn't help it."
Virginia also told her mother and me about some woman who passed and stuck
her tongue out at her. She said "I should have gone on down to her house
and beat the Hell out of her." This amused her mother very much.
There are six children in this family, two of whom are married. One
daughter lives in the direst poverty and has had her arm shot off by a
twelve gauge shot gun which was loaded with buck shot. The other girl is
married to an illiterate merchant who owns several grocery stores and
filling stations. She drives a new Buick automobile and takes her child to
Miami to dancing school. It is said that this daughter loves her mother
very much but that her husband will not allow her to help her in any way.
The boys are John, Columbus, and Edmund. All of them are of school age but
the two older ones, who are fifteen and eighteen years of age, do not
attend school. Edmund, who is the baby, is eleven years old and is in the
fifth grade. The two older boys hang around the stores in Princeton most
of the time and at present they do not work.
The father of this family is in the Dade County Hospital and has been
there for many months. The nature of the illness that keeps him there was
not mentioned but the mother does not expect that he will ever be able to
return home.
Meanwhile, this family of five live crowded together. The house consists
of four unceiled rooms and a hall. The inside walls are also patched with
pieces of box tops and scraps of lumber. No paint is to be seen inside or
out. Sleazy cloth draperies hang at all of the narrow windows but there
are no shades at any of them. There are no rugs on the floor, which was
scrubbed very clean.
In the hall were two rocking chairs and a small square table which was
covered with a huck towel. A pickle jar holding milky water and a sluggish
gold fish, an ash tray and a couple of new magazines were on this table.
As I sat in the hall I could see into the kitchen, and two bed rooms. In
the kitchen stood an immense wood range and a home made table with no
covering. Packing boxes were nailed to the walls and used in lieu of
cabinets. These boxes were also used in the place of chairs. No sink or
water tap were visible.
On one side of the hall was a bed room. Two dirty iron beds had sagging
springs which made the mattresses sag in the center but these beds were
neatly made and covered with sheets. Two suitcases under each bed were
arranged so that the handles were even with the edges of the beds.
Virginia said that she keeps part of her clothing in one of the
suit-cases. There was a dresser with no mirror and was piled high boxes,
clothing, magazines and various other articles.
Across the hall opposite this room was another bed room. Here, the
furnishings were quite different. An expensive looking, lovely, bed-room
suite of modern design was here. The bed was neatly made with a blue
crinkled spread and the dressers were orderly and well arranged.
FEDERAL WRITER'S PROJECT
Miami, Florida
Gladys Buck
1,365 Words
6 Pages
Folk Lore
Nov. 28, 1938
Mabel B. Francis
Editor
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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