Fence-Post Carvings

Doing some work in exchange for their meal left them some diginity.

In the 1940s in South Texas where I grew up, the Great Depression was still touching people's lives. Our town was too small to be helped by those jobs in defense plants keeping the war effort supplied. Danbury was basically a farming community, and its residents struggled to survive.

Daddy always had a large garden to put vegetables on our table. During these years, others joined in, and victory gardens popped up all over our little town. But, as Mama showed me, there were always some folks less fortunate than we were.

I began to learn this when a man knocked on our back screen door at noon one day. His skin was weathered, his clothes were torn and not very clean, and he carried a small duffel bag over his shoulder. But he was respectful with his request: "Ma'am, do you have a little work I might do for some food?"

Until now, I hadn't heard of these men -- "hoboes," they were called -- who climbed into boxcars and rode across the country. Most of them were looking for work, but some of them were just running away from their inability to provide for their families.

Mama told the man he could weed her front flower bed while she fixed him a plate of vegetables and corn bread -- the same lunch we would have.

He wasn't the last such visitor to appear at our door in those tough years. Mama always had a chore and a plate of food for them.

And I was surprised by what those men could do. They could weed flowers and vegetables, of course, but one trimmed the persimmon tree, and another repaired a squeaky gate.

Big Red, the family rooster that always chased me, didn't once make a move against these men when they gathered eggs for Mama.

The men never asked for a handout; doing some work in exchange for their meal left them some dignity in spite of their lack of a regular job.

A neighborhood playmate told me his daddy said they were all lazy and dangerous. We never found that to be true. But I did wonder why they always seemed to find their way to our door.

One day, Daddy took me to the back gate and showed me why they chose our home. On a fence post was carved a smiling cat.

I don't know if it was that first man or one who followed him who carved this symbol all hoboes recognized. It meant that the men could find kindness and nourishment from a compassionate soul in this household.

Times did get better for us, and hoboes eventually stopped coming to our back door. But Mama's generous spirit lived on through her five children. In spite of our ups and downs, we have tried to remember how much Mama did with a compassionate smile, a chore to be done, and a share of the little she had in order to sustain another.