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A FLORIDA SQUATTER FAMILY
(Florida)
JASON AND LILY IBY
Jason's slumber beneath the huge old oak tree which sheltered his desolate
two room house was disturbed. Finally he emerged completely from sleep,
arose, and lumbered toward the broken gate swinging in the rickety fence
surrounding his clearing in the hammock.
"Come right in, Ma'am. I haint had time to fix this here gate since I been
a-livin here, seems like. Don't pay no mind to them pigs a-sleepin on the
steps, they'll run away soon's they see a stranger. Kinder nice havin pigs
in the yard, for they sho do clean up the scraps.
Sure enough, the pigs did run with loud squeals and grunts as I approached
the door, and this so frightened several scrawny chickens that they flew
out the front door with terrified squeaks.
As Jason [?] led me around the piles of old tin cans, rags, bones, corn
cobs, and other debris he spoke again. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, you find so much
trash here. This yard been jus like this most ever sincet we come here but
I jus haint had time to clean hit up."
We reached the door and Jason yelled for his wife Lily. Receiving no
response, he reached nimbly around the corner of the shack and extracted
his twelve year old son Willy from his hiding place, shook him gently and
admonished him to "find yore ma and tell her we got a visitor."
Three little girls, Rosy, Betty, and Telly, age eleven, nine, and eight,
respectively, quietly [?] around the corner of the house and sidled into
the front room shortly after I entered. Jason was voluble in praising
them, but they seemed too shy to speak a word. Then in came Lily from the
adjoining room with a babe in her arms and another tugging at her skirts.
She smiled as she extended a limp hand in greeting. As there were no
chairs in the room she indicated that I was to be seated upon one of the
beds while she sat upon the other with the two babies. Jason took the
place of the pigs upon the step, and the older children ranged themselves
upright and rigid against the wall.
The floor was greasy and grimed with dirt. There were two rickety,
lopsided beds with dirty covers. Three girls sleep cross-wise on one bed,
Willy sleeps on a pallet on the floor, and Jason, Lily, and the two
youngest children sleep in the other bed. At the window openings were
starched white curtains made of bleached [?]. A broken washstand held an
assortment of patent medicine and odds and ends. A rough shelf leaning
against the rear of the house supported a tin pan and rusty bucket. There
was no toilet of any kind.
Jason was wearing a patched, faded, and dirty pair of blue denim overalls,
and a faded and soiled blue shirt. Like Lily and all the children, he was
barefoot. Lily's loose dress of feed-sacking, from which most of the
lettering had been bleached, was soiled too. Her hair was disordered and a
dirty rag closely bound her head. Thin streams of snuff ran down from the
corners of her mouth. She had a cold and frequently wiped her nose with a
rag or the back of her hand. The baby began to cry and she gave it her
breast to nurse.
"I allus have to talk for Lily as she is so deaf," Jason said. "We don't
often have visitors. When strangers come while I'm gone Lily shuts the
doors and winders and won't let em come in." He seemed proud of his
family. "Me and Lily was both borned in Pasco County bout forty year ago.
I don't rightly know how old Lily is, but I guess she's nigh as old as me.
We got married some thirteen year ago and set out to find a likely spot to
farm. Then we seen this place already built here in the hammock we jus lit
and moved right in and been here over since-t. The roof leaks right smart
but hit's easy to put tin cans under the leaky places ifen hit rains hard.
"We don't need a larger house than this, hit suits us all right. One room
for sleepin and another for cookin and eatin in. Some folks I know haint
got but one room and they cooks out in the yard, but we got a fine stove
which a man give me for haulin hit away. An see them stiff curtains at the
winders? A lady give them to Lily when the last baby was borned. She give
Lily and the baby and the girls each a nice dress too and me and Willy a
shirt. Lily takes right good care o em washes and irons em when we go to
Church and sech like.
"I don't have to pay no rent neither. Once-t a man did come here and say
he owned this land and wanted [?] cabbages for rent. Now I believe that if
a man haint usin his land, he hadn't orter charge nobody else what wants
to use hit. But I give him the cabbages to git rid of him and haint seen
him since-t."
"What was the man's name?" I asked.
Jason looked surprised. "What's the use to bother bout that?"
As a boy Jason helped his father with what farming he did, and both he and
his father worked at any odd jobs that came to hand. They never had steady
work. Jason attended school for three or four years and learned to read
and write a little. Lily can neither read nor write; she did not go to
school because of her ear and eye conditions.
The family arise with the sun because they have always done so. They
follow no daily routine even as to meals, and can see no reason why anyone
should. Jason works when the impulse moves him. If any of them become
tired or sleepy during the day they take a nap. Usually they retire at
sundown.
When I asked Jason about his farm he seemed rather embarrassed. He
hesitantly pointed out the window to a small cabbage patch and explained
that he hadn't had much time for farming lately and his family wouldn't
eat much vegetables anyway. "There haint no sale for em, neither," he
added. "Most everybody round here raises plenty."
He insisted that he was a farmer, and
spoke of the time about two years ago when he sharecropped for a "widder-woman"
in town. He received five gallons of cane syrup as his share of the
proceeds. Since that time he has been unable to find time to engage in
sharecropping, he said. He was proud of the fact that he was one of these
to whom the "Relief" had given seeds to plant several years ago.
"I didn't make much with that there garden," said Jason. "They jus
wouldn't give me the kinda seeds I wanted. They jus warnt my kind of
vegetables."
Jason owns a dilapidated old automobile which he keeps under a thatched
shed. When he needs a little cash, and no public work is available, he
sometimes gathers or cuts wood which he piles into the back of his car,
and sells in the towns. Sometimes he can not even do this because he
doesn't have gas for the car. "I don't work steady all the time. What's
the use? When I gits enough to buy what we needs I don't want no more work
noway for a time. I don't have time to work steady on the road; it hurts
my arms, too. My wife bein so deaf I have to stay to home and look after
things."
He maintains that he does not allow his family to go hungry very often. He
fishes, catches rabbits and gophers, and gathers the buds of the cabbage
palm which his whole family likes. They are very fond of "flour dough
fried bread," which is made with flour and hog grease stirred up with
water and dropped by spoonful into hot grease. If the flour is
self-rising, or if there is baking powder in the house, so much the
better, for then the fried bread is crisp.
"One time whilst I was workin on the Relief a lady come to tell us what to
buy and how to cook hit. Now that made me and Lily mighty mad! How did
that woman know what we wanted to eat? Jus give us plenty grease, salt
pork, a little cabbage, stewed apples, and flour dough fried bread and we
is satisfied. Our chillerns likes sech too. Even that there Little Ally
jus bout a year old, she sure likes the bread. When she starts a-cryin,
Lily, she will take a piece of salt pork rind and tie hit to Ally's hand
and she starts suckin on hit and right off quits her fuss."
All of Jason's and Lily's children were born in their shack in the hammock
without medical aid. Jason is proud that a doctor has never had to come to
his home. Jason said that after the death at birth of three babies in
rapid succession following the birth of Telly who is eight years old,
there was a wait of several years before another came. "We done thought
the Lord was not sendin us no more children, but he shore did. And here
come Ally bout thirteen month ago and then this baby now two months old
for another little pet. Ifen any more comes we want boys. Just as soon not
have no more now but I guess it kaint be helped and the Lord knows best.
"Poor Lily, she do suffer sumpun terrible with them headaches all her
life. Don't nothing do her no good cept headache pills and lots of em. But
Ma says hit's caused by too much blood remain in her head so we tie it up
tight to stop the blood. When I worked on the Relief they sent Lily to a
doctor and he said she had tubes in her ears what was stopped up. That
bothers her eyes too. The doctor give her some green medicine to put on
cotton and stick down in her ears but she said it burned so she didn't use
it.
"Lily been might sick at times but we doctors her at home. Once-t she had
such a headache. I had to see a doctor about hit. The Relief paid for that
too so hit didn't cost me nothin. I give her six headache pills and she
got worse, then I give her some blue mass pills and she got still worser,
then I made her drink most a cup o castor oil, then take salts, but she
didn't git no better and I had to git the Relief to let me ask a doctor
bout her. I didn't hardly have time to go to town about hit neither."
Two of the girls and Willy had been fitted with glasses by the Relief,
Jason said, but they didn't like to wear the glasses and he didn't make
them. He took the glasses out of a box and put them on the children to
show me how they looked. The children were also given some treatment for
hookworm but Jason believes that they are just as well-off without it.
After living in this house all the years of his married life, Jason said
that last year he grew tired of it and decided to move to the "city," a
small town of some two thousand population nearby. He made all plans for
moving, and even rented a house -- without paying rent. When he suddenly
became apprehensive about his prospects in the city and so decided to
remain where he was. Jason is now glad that he gave up the idea of moving,
as he might not have found work in the city, not knowing any trade. And he
doubts if rabbits and gophers are to be had right in town. "The chillern
don't have nobody to fight with here, and we don't have to worry bout how
our clothes look, as them city-folks allus seem to."
I asked if he and Lily were interested in politics and if they voted.
"I allus votes," he replied, "but Lily don't know nothin bout them
politics and is fraid to leave home on lection days."
Further questioning brought out the fact that Jason was only vaguely
familiar with even local political matters, and always voted for his
friends. He has no idea of national affairs, and the "Government" seems a
distant and benevolent personality. He is not a member of any political
party.
"Politics are all one and the same to me," he said, "and what's the use to
worry over em? Besides I haint got time to find out much about em." When
election day comes he goes to vote with anyone who comes for him or buys
him a gallon of gas so he can drive his car to town.
Jason wants his children to "larn readin and writin," but has no further
educational ambitions for them. When I asked what work his children would
be educated for, he expressed great surprises at the idea, and said, "I
thought education meant readin and writin!" Jason is certain that that is
all that is taught at the school his children attend. He complained that
"the teachers there kaint hardly larn Willy nothin atall." Willy is twelve
years old and still in the first grade. Jason has never thought of
education as a means of making a living, and doesn't believe that
education helps people much in any way. His children have to go to school
at least part of the time or the truant officer will arrest him. He wishes
that his children had better clothes to wear to school.
When there is gas for the car, Jason and Lily sometimes take the children
to church services, particularly when the service includes a picnic. If
there is no gas, and if no one comes by for them, they walk to the graded
road and catch rides. When walking Lily and Jason carry their shoes in
their hands with the two babies. All of the children go barefoot. The
children sometimes want to give money to the church, but Jason thinks that
is foolish. He believes that churches should manage their affairs without
donations. "Now ifen I had plenty of money," he says, "I guess I'd give
some to the church, and ifen I had a fine car I sure would drive roun and
take folks to the church-house."
Jason and Lily would like to be able to attend the motion pictures
regularly. Jason does not like newspapers, and only occasionally does he
read a colored picture magazine.
Although only forty years old, Jason looks forward to the time when he
will be eligible for an old-age pension. He does not know exactly where
the pensions come from, but he does know several persons "who are now
gittin sixteen dollars a month, regular ever month, without doin no work
atall. All they need is to be sixty-five year old and without no money
aforehand, and they sure gits all that money."
Jason would like to have a fine automobile, and enough money to buy food,
clothing, snuff, and tobacco, and candy for the children. Lily does not
express what she thinks about life, but she has a placid expression, and
smiles lovingly at her children as they cluster about her in the bare
little room.
As I left, the entire family escorted me to the gate, the children still
tongue-tied, Lily smiling, and Jason insisting that I accept a cabbage
from his garden.
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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