I remember the day when Mom went to apply for Relief, but I can’t recall the date. It
wasn’t called welfare in those days. I remember Mom dressing my brother Billy in shabby clothes...almost as if he were wearing a hobo outfit for Halloween. He was seven or eight years old. There was no need to dress him like that. Everybody knew people were out of work and hurting. The plan was that Dad would go to Knoxville and ask his brother Samuel for a job. Maybe a watchman in the closed mill or something. But he couldn’t go until he could spare the bus fare. He would stay with his brother Bill and wife Ella. So off Mom went with Billy. When she returned, she had applied as a deserted wife, mother of three children and with an elderly parent. She told my father she had a “pull”. So, for a while, Dad wasn’t to be home when the case workers came. Actually, he never was home. He was at the Union Hall, looking for work and in due time was in Knoxville, TN, still looking for employment.
The case workers varied. One lady who called on us was the sister of a Chicago judge. Some were school teachers, waiting for assignment. If they substituted in school for a day, they were paid $5.00 in script, a money voucher. Some stores accepted scrip at face value. The Marshall Field’s store did so. Some stores offered 10% less. Teachers were unhappy. Many people were. Veterans were selling apples in the loop and were asking for the balance of their World War I bonus. When the Vets marched to Washington, DC, President Hoover had the army hold them back. I believe they were fired upon. But it was a long time ago now.
My mom entertained the case workers with stories. Yes, mom had worked in the past. She had a music publishing business in Chicago’s loop. No, she didn’t! Her brother, John, long since deceased, had the business. I remembered that after my aunt died, we had her piano and sheet music. One day, when Grandma was gone for the day, Mom proceeded to burn the sheet music. She called me over and showed one sheet to me. It had a lovely lady on the cover and the word “Mae”. Mom showed me the name of the publisher, “Driscoll Publishing, Chicago, Illinois”. I was eight years old and recognized the name “Driscoll”. In my senior years when out looking for antiques, I always looked through old copies of sheet music...always looking for Driscoll Publishing.
I never understood why my mother did the things she did. One time when we lived on Congress Street and my brothers had made friends with boys their age, she told them and me a story during lunch. She told us that she drove an ambulance in France in World War I. I knew that was impossible. I was twelve years old and was born in Texas in 1917. I didn’t interrupt her. Several hours later the father of one of Danny’s friends came to the door. He wanted her to know the she was entitled to compensation for her service in the war. Mom said, “Oh, yes, she was aware of it”. I don’t know what else she added, then thanked him and shut the door. She turned to me and said, “Now why did Danny tell that story”? I guess that was my chance to tell her why, but I didn’t say anything. I doubted everything she said.
In spite of my being aware, I too was foolish and repeated one of her stories. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I had a really great Latin teacher in high school, and had been in her class for two years. She had given a talk to the girls in our small club, invited us to her home and I was very fond of her. On a summer day, we met in the neighborhood by chance and stood on 26th Street and talked. Hitler was on the march in Europe and Miss Rhode was German. We began to discuss the discrimination against Germans and I repeated one of my mother’s stories. Mom, her mother and sister had borrowed sugar (which was rationed during World War I) to bake a birthday cake. When Mom
