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Mrs. Brown
(Georgia)
Tom's note:
Based on the condescending tone of the author of this life history to the
subject, I would guess that it was written by the same person who wrote
The Family of an Automobile Worker. Authorship for both is unattributed. This life history is particularly interesting because
the "Polygrove Housing Development" referred to at the beginning of the
article is actually
Techwood
Homes, the nation's first housing project.
Photos of the actual building where the interview took place are
available on the Internet at the Library of Congress'
Historic American
Buildings Survey site. Over the years, Techwood Homes, which had
originally replaced some of Atlanta's worst slums, became a stereotypical
urban housing project, and was demolished in the 1990s in advance of the
1996 Summer Olympics. A few of the historically significant
buildings were retained and incorporated into the new Centennial Place
development.
The apartment was next to the last in
the brick building, one of a series of duplex units which extended up the
hill like a huge set of children's playblocks, aligned closely together
but on varying levels. I rang the bell and, while waiting, looked back
over similar groups of buildings spread out in the hollow and up the far
hill. This was the Polygrove Housing Development, a government
slum-clearance project of twenty-two buildings constructed on the same
number of acres. They are severely plain in their square simplicity and
are separated by wide expanses of lawns and broad streets. There are but
few trees and little shrubbery, and the buildings rises with bare
abruptness from the ground, as though they had suddenly mushroomed into
growth and had not yet been gathered about them those elements of greenery
indicating a decision to stay.
Yet, viewed with a visionary eye, the potential beauty of the development
is evident. When the trees become larger, the shrubbery more luxurious,
the buildings will appear more settled and the area will assume an air of
more stability and charm.
Mrs. Brown opened the door and I explained the nature of my call,
apologizing for interfering with her early morning housekeeping. She was
most gracious. "Oh that's all right. You come on in. I haven't done much
cleanin' this mornin' anyway.... just doin' my curtains. You come on in.
The house is a mess."
And indeed the living room was. While getting settled and speaking of
generalities I looked around. All but the most stable pieces of furniture
seemed to have rushed away from the walls, collided in the middle of the
room and bounced halfway back, coming to a halt at the most inconvenient
and inartistic angles. This chaotic state of things we attributed largely
to two children she were wrestling on the floor. The left side of the room
was dominated by a stairway leading up to the second floor. The walls were
of rough-finished white plaster and bore only three pictures, one of a dog
baying dolefully over the body of another fallen in the snow, and the two
other small views of an identical scene showing respective summer and
winter landscapes. There was a nice studio couch in the far corner, one of
its pillows askew, the other two on the floor serving as temporary
wrestling mats for the children. There were two matching chairs and the
ensemble was covered with a rust-colored rap which appeared to be quite
new.
"I just re-covered them myself", said Mrs. Brown, "... that is, me and a
friend." A floor model radio stood just to the right of the door. On top
of it was a world globe, with dark blue oceans and dull gray continents,
mounted on a clock base. "Yes, it is nice, isn't it? Bill --- that's my
husband --- won it on a punchboard. The clock part works all right too,
but I never wind it 'cause it ticks so loud.
Now don't think Bill throws much money away on things like that, 'cause he
don't; but ever once in a while he'll take a chance on some fool thing.
When I think about them people who win all that money on the Sweep Stakes
like I saw in the news reel....."
Her voice trailed off speculatively, giving me a chance to raise my eyes
from my note-pad and really study her. She was not a pretty woman and I
was seeing her probably at her worst, but she was very pleasant and had a
warm smile. I realized that if she but had more time and money to devote
to personal grooming she could present a passably fair appearance. Now,
however, she merely slumped in a chair, somewhat worn from her morning
activities. Her red-gold hair, really of fine texture, was straight except
for the ends which held the frizzly remains of a narrow-wave permanent,
and straggled uncombed about her face. Her features were irregular, the
face quite broad, yet with high cheek bones and oval contours which
tapered to an almost pointed chin. A peculiar fullness of the eyelids
produced the illusion of a slant which made her appear just a bit oriental
despite her Nordic blondness. The fullness of her lips suggested a
voluptuousness which was further implied by the plumpness of her body.
When she laughed, which she often did through embarrassment rather than
humor, she instinctively covered her mouth with her hand, a pathetic
gesture which unfailingly attracted one's attention to the broken tooth
she was trying to hide.
She was wearing a cheap yellow cotton print, much too tight and badly
torn. The neck and sleeves were trimmed with narrow lace, so frayed as to
appear cobwebby. A white cotton slip hung several inches below her dress
and she was continually pulling both garments down in an effort to cover
as much as possible of her bare legs. Her feet were thrust into shapeless
blue slippers, the upper part of which had torn away form the soles,
revealing her stubby toes.
The children had kept up a constant din. For some time they had been
trying violently to beat one another's brains out with folded magazines.
These had been sent slithering across the floor and they were now engaged
in a desperate tug of war with a remnant of an old sheet serving as a
rope. Their mother had made several ineffectual attempts to quiet them,
but they ignored her completely and their continued yells and squalls made
any serious attempt toward interviewing extremely difficult. This being
so, I decided to discuss the children, as they were the only possible
subject under the circumstances. The result was magical. As soon as their
names were mentioned they declared a truce. They set there gasping and
sniffling and regarding me with great solemn eyes. The little boy achieved
an added not of preoccupied solemnity by the simple process of picking his
nose, just as an old scholar seems more profoundly involved in his studies
when unconsciously scratching his head. "They both been sick, Mrs. Brown
was saying. "They vomited all all over the house this morning. I don't
know what was the matter with 'em." Then she added naively, "Unless it was
them rotten apples I gave 'em.
"That's Cecilia", said Mrs. Brown, indicating the little girl. She's two
years old." Cecilia took this as her cue to climb upon her mother's lap
whereupon Mrs. Brown redoubled her efforts to keep her skirts down. "And
that's John. He's four." John was no less prompt to act, climbing up with
all the assurance of masculine superiority and sitting squarely upon his
sister, from which perch he evidenced every intention of continuing his
calm study of me. But it was not to be. Cecilia emitted an immediate
shrill and piercing shriek of displeasure, and the two engaged in a
violent struggle for supremacy. Mrs. Brown was seemingly unconcerned at
the struggle taking place in her lap. True, she attempted to calm the
children, but her commands were almost apologetic, as though she feared to
offend them. Her only action was to free herself of John's legs, which he
had locked about her neck. Thus anchored he had swung in lavalier-fashion
down his mother's bosom and, with wildly flailing arms, was pummeling his
sister who had managed to sit upon his face. Ducking a flying fist or
foot, Mrs. Brown went on talking, easily enough.
"They fight all the time. Just all the
time." Her voice rose to a sustained falsetto on the last word and she
held it, not in exasperation, but as though she had made a singularly
amazing discovery. "I don't believe all children do this way but they do.
Now Theresa's just as different. She's as quiet. Sometimes I tell Bill
she's like an old lady. She's six years old and goes to parochial school.
I wish you could see her.
"No, I'm not Catholic, but Bill is. I'm a Baptist, but we don't have no
trouble about that. We was married by a priest, you know.
A Catholic won't marry unless a priest does it. Bill's very devout. We
been married seven years and he's never missed church yet. He gives
somethin' ever Sunday; maybe jest twenty-five or fifty cents ... but he
always puts somethin' in. It don't sound like a lot, but twenty-five cents
it to us what a hundred dollars would be to some rich people. Theresa
never missed church neither. She goes ever Sunday. You know, she puts a
penny in the box ever day at school and they give her a gold star. She's
that proud of 'em too. I try to get the others to Sunday School as often
as I can, but I can't always make it. I had to sign a paper when I married
Bill saying if there was any children they'd be raised Catholic.
"Absolutely not. I don't want no more children. I love 'em all right, but
we jest can't afford no more of 'em. I been married seven years and had
three children and never had a maid. Done all my washin' and everything. I
think I done my share. And we had a hard enough time as it is.
"Yes, we married here. I was born in Cobb County, but Bill comes from
Dakota ... South Dakota. He's been in Atlanta --- Oh, I don't know exactly
how many years ... eight or nine I guess. He went through high school in
Dakota and then took one correspondence course in law. And then a friend
taught him law too ... jest taught him free. And then he and this man went
into practicing. That was here in Atlanta jest before I married him. He
come to Atlanta because Georgia is the easiest state in the Union to pass
the bar. Well they practiced about eighteen months.
Didn't make much money. Worked mostly for niggers. Sometimes they paid him
in chickens; that was all they had. Then he went to work on Wholesale Lane
... you know, down there at the produce houses. His job was truckin'. He'd
go all over Georgia. No, never out of the State. It was hard on him. He'd
have to go out in the winter time and he'd have to sleep in the woods
along 'side the road sometimes. It's be so cold he'd have to hang blankets
around to keep off the wind, y'know. After that... oh no, I forgot to tell
you. It didn't exactly fall through. You see, Bill had put up the money,
and him and a partner was runnin' the business. Well one night when he was
at home here -- I don't mean here in this place, but here in Atlanta ---
the man stole the truck and all the money and ran off. It was the meanest
trick I ever heard of.
"Well after that he got himself jest a wholesale stand down there, no
truckin' or nothin'. We bottled sorghum syrup; I helped him. And one funny
thing -- would you believe it? -- in the winter time that old house we
lived in got so cold the syrup wouldn't run. Jest wouldn't run at all --
froze stiff -- and I had to heat it over the stove to make it pour. Yes it
did. Naw, he didn't make any money. Jest made a livin', if you could call
it that. Well then he got a job sellin' correspondence courses, y'know. Oh
I forgot what the company was, 'I.C.' or somethin' like that. But that was
in 1930, you know, and nobody had any money for that kind of thing then.
When the company closed the office he tried to get on the WPA. Well he got
some kind of a job on it, I don't know jest what now, but it only paid
eight dollars a week. But we saved two dollars of it ever week. I don't
know how we did it, but we did. John was on the way then and we had to
save somethin'. After a little while he was raised to fifteen dollars a
week. And then he got on the Writers' Project. I think he made
seventy-five dollars a month there -- somethin' like that. And then after
workin' there all day he'd go back to the library at night and work for
three more hours. They paid him nineteen dollars a month for that. Lord,
we thought we as settin' pretty then, after all we'd been through. Well
the people at the library took a interest in him and they got him a full
time job makin' ninety dollars a month. That's the way people are with
Bill. They always want to help him. He's got a nice personality, lots more
so than I have. Well, as I say, he went to work full time for them, but
pretty soon the the city started cuttin' salaries. They kept cuttin' and
cuttin' and finally he wasn't gettin' but sixty-five dollars. Then he went
to work for the oil company. Yes, that's where he's workin' now -- the
Paramount Oil Company. One of the librarians got him that job too.
"Well, I can't say exactly how much he makes 'cause he works on a
commission, y'know. You might say he's a travellin' salesman. And he has
to pay his own expenses -- hotels, meals, gas and oil, and the upkeep on
the car. No, he has to furnish his own car. He's got a brand new '38 Ford.
We did have a brand new '37 Ford, but he wrecked it. It wasn't his fault.
We finished payin' for it out of the insurance money, y'know, and what was
left over we put on the new car. No, it ain't ours yet, we're still payin'
for it. It was sure bad. He'd almost paid up for the '37 one and would of
been free now. It was so hopeful. We don't like to be in debt, and then
somethin' like that has to go and happen. He could tell you more about all
this than I could, but he only gets in town for the weekends. He sells to
the farmers and those little fillin' stations along the road. Yes, and he
also sells grease and oil to the furniture companies for their machinery
and stuff. The county buys grease from him too, for their tractors.
"But let me see -- you ast me about how much he made, didn't you? Well, as
I say, it's different ever week. He never knows what it's gonna be till he
gets his pay. But he gives me nineteen dollars regular ever week and then
he gives me fifteen dollars extra ever month. I shore do have to stretch
that nineteen dollars, I tell you I do. The children always need new
shoes, jest one pair after another. Yes sir, it takes it all. Our rent's
thirty-four fifty-five a month. Well, it includes lights and water and
heat. That is, it's supposed to; but I have to pay a dollar-and-a-half
extra on the lights ever month. They say it's somethin' about us using'
more kilowatts then we're allowed to, I don't know exactly what.
"My mother lives here with us too. She works in a laundry. She's a sorter
-- sorts the clothes, y'know. She boards -- pays four dollars a week. It
sounds like a lot when I name it all separate that-away, but it ain't much
when I come to spend it. We jest make out, I'd say.
We don't have nothin' nice, but we have what things we have to have. I
jest do the best I can. I tell you, I've learned to stretch a penny if
anybody has. Grocery bill? Well I try to hold it down to a dollar a day,
but I can't always. You're always runnin' out of lard or sugar or somethin'
that ain't separate eatin' food. We may not have good food, but we have
lots of it as they say. I do try to give the children a well-balanced diet
... lots of vegetables. I can't get 'em all the milk they need though."
All during the interview the children, back on the floor, had constantly
interrupted with cries of "Mama, I want a egg." It had begun as a plea
from the little girl, but it was quickly taken up by the boy and converted
into a command. At first they had made their demands in alternate turn,
but they had now evolved a sort of game out of it whereby they chanted in
unison, each trying to outshout the other. The boy in particular was
achieving some spectacular vocal effects, not unlike variations on a
theme. First he would start high on the "Mama" and slide his voice down
skillfully, but in undiminishing volume, to a low note on the "egg". Then
he would reverse the process, starting with a low "Mama" and rising with
the shrill shriek of a siren to a high "egg". His sister, never lessening
her own efforts, regarded him with frank admiration. "Mama" dismissed the
situation with an occasional and indulgent "Now, now, John" or "Be nice,
Cecilia." Not until John, finally spurred to desperate action, socked her
on the legs several times with a determined fist did she bestir herself.
I asked if we might go along to the kitchen with her and thereby see more
of the apartment. We went into the dining room. The furniture was
inexpensive, but fairly nice. [?] one corner was a large white kitchen
cabinet which reflected the sunlight streaming in the two windows and
brightened the entire room with its glare. In the opposite corner was a
sewing machine. "Nobody uses it", said Mrs. Brown. "Bill bought it and
wanted me to learn to sew, but I'm too nervous. I jest nearly go to pieces
when I sit down and try to sew somethin' I don't even sew up holes in my
dresses; jest let 'em rip until ..." She dismissed the subject with a
shrug of her shoulders, leaving us to carry the inference as far as we
liked. We thought to remind her of the couch and chair covers she'd made.
"Oh well", she said, "that was big stuff and it didn't make me nervous. I
can do big things like that."
The children had preceded us into the kitchen and, perhaps feeling that
the desired eggs were in the offing, had ceased to plague us.
Through the doorway I could see John amusing himself by attempting to
squirt water, thumb-stop fashion from the sink faucet, over his sister.
From her almost hysterical laughter I judged that because of some
perverseness this displeased her not at all. Mrs. Brown sat on one corner
of the drop-leaf breakfast table and went on talking. "I tell everbody I
made one thing, though, but I really didn't. That's a tailored suit I got.
I got a man's suit from a friend of Bill's - he jest gave it to me - and
me and a friend of mind made me a suit out of it. She really did most of
the work, but I'm so proud of it. I jest feel like 'Mrs. Astorbilt' when I
wear it."
Her face brightened almost pathetically and I realized how big an event
this new made-over garment was in her life. For a moment she became the
personification of all the lower economic classes, leading obscure
destinies and being pitifully grateful for small things. She had seen
abject poverty and would probably see other equally troublous times, but I
felt that she would never admit defeat, would always manage to fight her
way back up to a measure of security. She gave me, however, little time
for such heroic visualizings. Now on a subject dear to every woman's
heart, she talked on rapidly, her voice alternately maddening with just a
trace of understandable self-pity and rising enthusiastically on more
hopeful themes.
"I don't hardly never go nowhere. Its not because I don't want to, but I
jest never have anything to wear. You may not believe it, but I don't go
out but two times a week. On Sunday afternoon I go the show with Bill and
on Monday night me and a friend go to the bowling alley.
We don't play none, me and her, we jest sit and watch 'em. It don't cost
nothin'. I like to dance, but Bill don't. That's always been a bone of
contention between us. But even if he did I couldn't agone, because like I
said I never had nothin' to wear. And then I can't get away from the
children. No, my mother jest won't keep 'em. She likes 'em all right, but
jest as soon as she's left alone with 'em she gets awful nervous. No
matter if I jest go across the street she starts callin' up and I have to
come back. She's with the children like I am about sewin' -- jest goes all
to pieces.
"If we could save some money I could get to goin' out more. But we ain't
savin' a thing now. But we don't owe nothin' neither, except on the car
like I told you. Our furniture's all paid for. I got a perfect horror
about owing money. I jest can't stand to owe somebody somethin'. That's
the way it was about the doctor. I'd been goin' to the doctor but I
stopped. We didn't have the money to spare and I told Bill I'd jest as
well be dead as to be starvin' to death, and like I said I wasn't gonna
owe him nothin'. If I need any treatin' now I go to the Mercy clinic. Yes,
all three of the children were born at Hardy. That's one thing I certainly
do believe in."
She sat for a few minutes with a far away meditative look in her eyes and
then abruptly changed the subject. "Look here at my new
curtain-stretchers. I'm so thrilled over 'em." It had indeed been
impossible not to look at the contraption, for, leaning against the door
jamb between the living and dining room, it projected about five feet of
its length into each. Two pairs of dotted marquisette curtains were
stretched taut over the frame. "My curtains would get all out of shape
ever time I washed 'em and ironed 'em, but they come out jest perfect
now."
We went on into the kitchen. It was small, but bright and clean. Even the
water which John had sprayed over the floor seemed but to have lent added
freshness. All the fixture and furnishings were a glistening white: the
four-doored groceries cabinets above the sink, the floor cabinets for pots
and pans, and the smart electric stove. The walls were a smooth dead
white, making the room seem larger than it actually was.
"I wash 'em myself", said Mrs. Brown. "They say you can do the other walls
that way, but you can't."
There was only one touch of color in the kitchen, but it was a brilliant
one: the gay red-checkered curtains at the small windows. Mrs. Brown
grabbed my arm enthusiastically. "Oh! I did make these. That's one thing I
made by myself." She drew back suddenly as if embarrassed at the
unintentional familiarity, but went on talking. "I sat up one night till
one o'clock finishin' 'em. I jest couldn't wait, I wanted to see so bad
what they'd look like."
While she shelled the children's eggs which had been boiled earlier in the
morning I stepped out the back door into the tiny yard. It was an
attractive little fenced-in plot, still thickly carpeted in grass although
it was late November. A gravel walk-way led to the gate opening on an
alley from which, along the left edge of the yard, a row of late-blooming
ageratums and pinks run back to the building. On each side and across the
alley were other yards, equally attractive and varying only slightly in
size.
Back in the apartment, Mrs. Brown took me upstairs. Three doors opened
here off the tiny hallway. At the back was a compact little bathroom. The
tub looked ridiculously small. "But you can spread out in it", said Mrs.
Brown. The walls were of a tile wainscot, the upper part being smooth
white plaster similar to that in the kitchen. At a right angle to, and
immediately adjoining, the bathroom was the mother's room which was also
shared by Theresa. It, too, was small, and the few furnishings, bed,
wardrobe, bureau and chair, left but little room for movement. "I have to
pull the bed away from the wall to make it up", Mrs. Brown explained. The
sun shone brightly in the two windows and everything was scrupulously
clean. There were no pictures or other ornaments on the white walls, a
happy circumstance which gave the room an illusion of spaciousness where
space was lacking.
But what the room lacked generally in color and ornament of small detail
was more than offset by an amazing floor-lamp standing by the back window.
It was of the worst possible taste and appeared to have been won -- in
parts -- from several county fairs. The shade was quite startling, a huge
canopy of pale green silk stretched tightly in three tiers over a wire
frame, and ornamented with several large roses and as inexplicable cottage
executed in thick slabs of a peculiar opaque paint. Added horror was
applied in the form of a five-inch fringe of red, yellow, and green beads
which rose and dipped in conformity with the scalloped edges of the shade.
All this burst like an appalling bloom from a disporportionately thin
nickel-plated stand which, about a foot from the top, developed ambitions
of its own and bulged to accommodate a whirring electric clock inset in
the stand. For another foot or so it shrunk to its normal size, but here a
final splurge was made in an effort to balance the over-bearing top by the
attachment of an 18-inch metal shelf, completely outfitted to accommodate
the contented smoker with two depressed ashtrays, a pipe-holder, a
cigarette box, and a chunky black-enameled lighter. After this the flare
of the base was but an anticlimax. The effect of the whole was a monstrous
combination of the worst in oriental and surrealistic art. "That's Mama's
prize possession", said Mrs. Brown in tones which implied she shared the
sentiment. "...she wouldn't part with it for anything."
We went to the front bedroom. "This is Bill's and mine's room ... when
he's in town. The suite of furniture was quite nice, consisting of a large
double bed, a highboy, and a bureau with small drawers superimposed on its
top. It was all finished in a rich burnished walnut. There was a cedar
chest flush against the foot of the bed and to the right of its head stood
a second floor-model radio. "It looks like we got all sorts of money to
spend", said Mrs. Brown, "but that radio was a payment from a boy who owed
Bill some money. He couldn't pay it and so he asked Bill if he'd take the
radio, and he said he would. It's like when the niggers would pay him in
chickens." In two corners of the room were white-enameled baby beds.
Obviously the four of them slept in the one room, and yet there was no
element of squalor, for it was a large room and bright, and its neatness
attested to the thoroughness of Mrs. Brown's housekeeping. "This
furniture's mine", she was saying. "My father bought it for me before I
was married. Daddy used to have plenty of money before natural gas came
in. He was a foreman, you know, down at the gas plant and he made good
money until they started piping in the natural gas from somewhere. He was
my real father I'm talkin' about. Yes see, my mother's been married again.
Her name ain't the same as mine was before I married. She's divorced now,
though. But I want twin beds', she went on, with no appreciable lapse
between unrelated subjects. "I tell Bill I hope we can get 'em sometime
soon. It's all right sleepin' together in the winter time, but in the
summer --- oof! --- it's too hot!"
I felt I had taken enough of Mrs. Brown's time, so, back in the living
room, I plied her hurriedly with a few last-minute questions.
"I'm jest twenty-five. Bill's only thirty. We've had a whole life time of
trouble though. Mama's forty-one, but she looks almost as young as I do.
No, I didn't go so far through school as Bill did, I only went as far as
junior high. Bill hopes to take some sort of college training some day;
he's got a keen mind. Ye-e-s, sir --- I want the children to have all the
education they can get; jest as far as they can go, 'cause I didn't. No, I
don't know anything about my people, except my grandfather, and he was the
meanest old man that ever lived. After all, I'm daddy's child, I always
say, and since Mama left him and everthing we jest don't talk about 'em
any. And I can't tell you a thing about Bill's people. Nothin' that would
matter anyhow.
"Naw, I don't care nothin' about politics, not a thing. "Course I think
Mr. Roosevelt is a good president and all that, but I don't care none
about it. Bill jest agrees with whoever he's with. You know he sells to
the farmers, and if a farmer says he's a Republican, why Bill says he's a
Republican too. But Bill'll jest have to tell you about himself. You come
back some Saturday or Sunday when he's here. You'll like him and he'll
talk.
"Well, goodbye. But you back, hear? You come back when I can dress up and
have the house all clean and everthing. Goodbye, goodbye."
She was most gracious. Even when I looked back from the sidewalk she was
standing in the doorway and still saying, "Goodbye. You come back."
Mrs. Joe P. [(Arrie?)]
Stroh,
114 Parker Street, NW
Atlanta, Georgia.
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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