In three days I will be eleven years old. When I turned six, we went to the Plaza Hotel. Mommy and Daddy saved up for a long time to do that. Then we went on a carriage ride through the park, and I got a pair of beautiful ballet slippers.
I outgrew the slippers almost right away. We haven’t been able to buy anything since. This year, all I want is a cake big enough so everyone in the family can have a big slice. And Gracie can come over and have one too.
(That’s not true. Here is what I really want:

There’s no money for new toys right now. Mommy says maybe soon, when President Roosevelt finishes his New Deal and the Banks have been back from their vacation for longer. I don’t know why if our Bank takes a trip it helps me get a Little Orphan Annie doll, but now that’s what I’m praying for.)

There was a commotion on the front lawn of the White House this morning. To celebrate prohibition’s repeal, a factory brought a large truck with cases of beer just after midnight. “President Roosevelt, the first real beer is yours!”
I must say, I always thought of beer merely as a vice. Where I grew up, unrestricted alcohol made men and their families suffer terribly. I worked to repair the damage that drinking did to some families. After all, as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union said, “no nation drank itself out of a Depression.”
However, what are our priorities? I work in the Labor department, and have been constantly seeking the ear of the President to argue for more job-creating measures. Congressman Thomas H. Cullen appealed to our offices personally, promising that the bill would eventually create up to 1 million jobs – how could I disapprove of that?
There are other realities that are accompanying this Economy Act that worry me more than beer. It cuts federal budgets, rewriting veterans’ pensions rules, and even forbids women to work for the government if their husbands are already federally employed. That both the House and the Senate have passed it shows how eager they are to try everything they can to stop the hemorrhaging of the Depression. I only wish the President had listened to more of the members of Congress that spoke up on behalf of the needy that will lose pensions, access to federal aid, and more.

Drink up, everyone.

The news around town is that our President is trying to get a bill through Congress that would establish a project in Muscle Shoals, AL to fix up the land, plant trees, absorb marginal land, and provide flood control—essentially fix what we have destroyed through mining and deforestation (I guess I’m guilty of that last one.) They’re calling it the “Tennessee Valley Authority” a pretty fancy name for such a small project. Is this going to mean more projects throughout the Tennessee Valley? I sure hope it does. They are going to need local workers to get all that done and while I may be blind in one eye and have a few less fingers, I can still swing an ax or wield a shovel. I need to find some work, I’m going a little crazy being stuck at home with a farm that won’t grow anything. My wife and daughters have taken up making these mock handicrafts that are sold around the country as “authentic mountain crafts.” It’s their work that is putting food on our table, but they shouldn’t be doing that, it’s my job.

This is an aerial view of the Muscle Shoals area

After a long day of toiling in the fields and keeping up with the chores I like to relax by sitting out on the porch and whittle little figurines for the kids. I’ve become pretty adept at it even without a few of my fingers. My wife is always busy knitting or quilting in the evening. It is funny that she works all day making these fake “authentic mountain crafts” then we both spend our evenings making real “mountain crafts”! Well, I guess we need to do what we can if we are going to make it through this depression!

I’m feeling a little calmer today. I guess I have a little of what you would call, perspective. Susan brought home last night’s edition of the Defender that she was reading on the El. The courts may not be able to protect a group of boys in Scottsboro, Alabama. They might be lynched for looking the wrong way at a white girl.

That is what I left behind in the South. Like my father and his father before him, we were tired of being rural country boys sharecropping other people’s land for next to nothing and bringing home even less to show for it. And on top of it all, having to fear robes and burning crosses when night would come.
We moved to Chicago when Susan and I married. Jeaneatte and Anne-Marie never saw Mississippi. Things may not be great, but they will never have to see what I have seen. But I tell them stories of their grandfather, freed at the end of the War, who lived the toughest life of anyone I know. Yes, it’s true that Binga State Bank has been closed for three years, so that’s how long it’s been since we’ve seen our savings. We’ve traded one set of worries for another, but I look at the children in these pictures of the South and think, there but for the grace of God…

It has been quite a while since I last wrote, but things are just now getting back to normal since the earthquake. It’s almost Easter, and I’ve been hard at work trying to cut every corner possible to save money so that we can enjoy a nice Easter dinner. I’ve been feeding Al and the kids with an assortment of casseroles, mostly consisting of rice, hot dogs and canned vegetables. I’m getting by eating creamed peas on toast mostly, saving the “good” food for the rest of the family. I can tell that they are getting pretty tired of the same food day after day, but it will make the feast we can have on Easter even more special! I even have plans to make a chocolate cake using a recipe my mother developed during the Great War to deal with food shortages. It is so moist and delicious that I just have to share it with you:

•    3 cups all-purpose flour
•    2 cups white sugar
•    6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
•    2 teaspoons baking soda
•    2 teaspoons baking powder
•    2/3 cup vegetable oil
•    2 cups water
•    2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
•    2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients together, then combine all the wet ingredients together in another bowl. Pour all the mixed wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Pour the batter into a greased 9 x 11 pan. Bake in a hot oven (I’d say 350 degrees F) for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

I’ve also been quite occupied making or altering everyone’s Sunday clothing. I found a few of my old flapper-style dresses at my parent’s house a few months ago that I’ve made into new dresses for my daughters and I dyed an old silk slip of mine to line my husbands suit jacket. These will be welcome changes from the increasingly thread-bear dresses the girls are wearing and patched up jacket of Al’s. Still I’m desperately trying to figure out how to get new shoes for my son, Paul. He has gone almost two full years without a new pair and they are so worn out and tight on him that now the entire sole is cardboard.

My Easter dress is yellow. Mommy looked at it and seemed sad when she said I need a new one that isn’t so short, but I told her I like my yellow dress. Daddy looks so handsome. I haven’t seen him wear his suit in such a long time. He has been Selling Apples on the street, and sometimes Peter and Eric help him. I didn’t even feel strange about going back to St. Mark’s after the incident in the bread line (Mommy hasn’t even tried to take us back there since).
I liked going to Church for Easter, but it meant I couldn’t invite Gracie over, because almost all the dinner guests belong to the Bund, and Gracie’s Jewish. Aunt Wendla was very cross with me when I told her that Gracie marched in an anti-Nazi parade last month. And then Uncle Rolf told everyone at the table “The New Deal is a Jew Deal”. I don’t know what that means.
Uncle Rolf said that Mayor LaGuardia was revoking the permit for the German Day march that was supposed to happen soon. I love parades, so I was upset about that. Why is his parade different than Gracie’s parade? Why is the New Deal only for the Jews? Is it as Uncle Rolf says, and lots of Jews are working for the President and only helping the Jews? The banks closed and reopened for everybody, right? Is President Roosevelt Jewish? I’m not sure.
They let all the cousins leave the table to go play. We made paper airplanes out of these:
They made good airplanes – mine flew into the dumpster on the street corner!

Reading the local newspaper is just depressing these days. You read about deaths, foreclosures, bank failures, the dismal state of agriculture and the economy. Every so often, though, there is a juicy story about shoot-outs between the police and gangsters or bank robberies. I know what they are doing is wrong, but it seems like such an exciting lifestyle—wearing expensive three-piece suits, driving shiny new cars, eating at fancy restaurants and living outside the law. I was sure excited when John Dillinger was holding up banks all over the Plains, before he got caught. For a while, every few days there was a picture of him in the paper with yet another exciting story of he and his gang robbing a bank and making a daring escape! He seems like a very charismatic guy—they say he has never shot anyone, just goes in with is gun, takes the money, and walks out.

That’s why I was excited to read about a big shoot out in Joplin, MO between this new guy, Clyde Barrow and his gang, which includes the beautiful Bonnie Parker. I guess they’ve become infamous in Northern Texas for holding up all types of joints, from gas stations to roadside cafes. While I don’t approve of stealing from legitimate businesses like that, their story was mighty entertaining.

The account in the Omaha World-Herald said, Bonnie and Clyde, as well as a few others, rented this apartment in Joplin on April 1st and stayed until the shoot out on the 13th. The police ambushed them and a big firefight ensued, but they were able to escape, leaving all their belongings behind and killing two officers. Now that they have become big-time celebrities, with pictures of the two lovers all over the papers, I wonder where they are. I bet they are planning their next big heist! I told my wife we should skip town and start robbing banks and living lavishly, but she said we’re too old and besides, if we did that she’d miss her daily radio soaps. I guess I just have to keep living vicariously through the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Dillinger and the other bank robbers out there.

I’m trying to stay optimistic. You know that phrase, “The Grass is always greener on the other side?” I caught a glimpse of some very green grass today. Some organizers were trying in vain to start a union at Southworks. It won’t succeed, not the way U.S. Steel does business, but I’ve heard that the President is trying to change the way businesses work. Still, the idea of all of us in the factory helping eachother just seems so great. Well, great for some people. The union isn’t open to colored men. I suppose I understand it – the community takes care of its own. It’s the same in the Black Belt, when I can turn to my neighbors for help. Nonetheless, it’s just another upward move waving in front of my face that I can’t reach.
My daughters came home in a similar mood. They went to an art class at a high school in Elgin, where there are very few blacks. They went on and on at dinner about how well-kept, how nicely dressed the other kids are, how small the classes are. Jeanette has a whole new list of books she wishes she could read. They were very unhappy at the thought of going back to their squalid, overcrowded school on the South Side. I told them some stories of my one-room rural school house to cheer them up.
But I know better than anyone how hard it is to see opportunities and be unable to grab them for myself.

Tonight the kids, Al and I went to Bank Night at the local theater in town to see King Kong. What is Bank Night you ask? Well, when you buy your ticket, you write your name in a big book and the number next to your name is your number for the drawing after the movie to win $150. It is all very exciting. The theater was packed, I think it was standing room only. You would have thought it was the Rose Bowl from the excitement of the crowd. You see, when the number is drawn, the winner has only three minutes to get to the stage. If they do not show up then the pot increases for the drawing the next week and last week’s winner, Gertrude Smith, was apparently busy necking with a fella and didn’t hear her number called.

What a thrilling movie! It is the exciting and tragic story of a film crew’s expedition to the secret Skull Island where the beautiful Ann Darrows is captured by island natives and offered as a sacrifice to Kong, a gigantic ape. Kong falls in love with Ann and tries to take her, but is ultimately captured by the film crew to be in an exhibition in New York City as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” In New York he escapes to find and rescue Ann, climbing the Empire State Building with her! I won’t give away the ending, but boy was it an amazing movie. I was astounded all the scenes looked so realistic, especially when King Kong was battling a dinosaur on Skull Island.

Well, after the movie, the big drawing for a double pot of $300 occurred. Since it was such a large pot, the theater got one of the Rose Princesses, a local girl who reigns over the Rose Bowl, to choose the winning number. When the winning number was called out screams erupted from the corner of the theater as a woman ran down to secure her prize—it was my good friend Ann!! She was so excited she treated both our families to ice cream cones on our way home. I think she felt like a queen with all that cash in hand.

Frightening news coming out of western Iowa: yesterday in Le Mar a judge was dragged out of his courtroom and nearly hanged by farmers. While it is shocking, I think this only reinforces our level of desperation out here on the Plains. We keep thinking it can’t get any worse when we’re slaughtering our animals, just to take them out of their misery, when we see our meager crops withering under the hot sun after months of almost no rain, or when we’re kept up all night with the fear that we cannot pay our mortgage for another month. The action of these farmers may seem extreme, but isn’t it a warning sign to our government that if they do not do something to help the agricultural industry out, there will be dangerous consequences? This judge, Charles C. Bradley, was hearing farm mortgage foreclosure cases, but the outcome of these cases was much more significant than if the farmers were able to keep their farms or not. The decisions made by Judge Bradley would be setting the precedence as to whether farmers would be able to hold onto their homes and farms when the larger economic situation had made in almost impossible for them to make payments on their debts.

From reports, the tension was high between the farmers and the judge from the beginning and although it is unclear what exactly caused the attack, the farmers stormed the bench and dragged Judge Bradley out of the courthouse. A few miles out of town they threw a rope over a telephone pole and after taunting and abusing him, they threatened to hang Bradley if he didn’t cease issuing foreclosures. He stated he would do the most fair thing according to his knowledge and requested to pray before he faced impending death, then fainted. At that point a reporter stepped in and convinced the men to disperse, leaving Bradley.

It is devastating that the situation around here would become so dire that farmers would actually turn to lynching, but I think that this really speaks to the desperation, hopelessness and anger we are all feeling throughout the Plains. It also begs the question: When in the world is the government going to get the agricultural bill they are promising passed? The planting season has already started, this is ridiculous.