The CTR Anthology Page 18

  Farm wife: We had a little house, three kids. My husband’s health wasn’t so good. He’d gone underground, the coal mines at Sydney when he was 14. He signed his death warrant right there. He was, well he couldn’t breathe properly and was kept from getting decent work. We managed in a way. There was never a time I felt I can’t go on, it’s all too much. The mine finally did its work – my husband died. Really there was nothing unusual about us.

  Quiet man: I went underground, to the face, at 13. When I was 17 I could lick any man on my shift. That’s why the foreman we had was such a big guy. He had to lick them all. I never tackled him although he would have been no match for me, but you see, he was a dictator. You worked if he said so. We were little white mice, happy to be in our little cage.

  Strong woman: He would be strong at the start of winter. But you could just see him running down. How many’s the time, oh hundreds, he’s just lain down on the kitchen floor and I’d be taking off his wool jacket and pants and one of the kids would be working away on his boots. The dinner would be steaming on the table and the dear man would say, “Eat, it’ll get cold.” Some times he’d have a bowl of vegetable soup and some bread and then go to bed and sleep right through, not a movement, not a whisper until morning. How could there be a man-wife relationship that way? The man never saw his children. He slept all day Sunday, or just stared out the window. He never cursed. By God, I did though. I used to go to church and I’d curse Mr Bennett, the Prime Minister, and then when he was out, I’d curse King, the new one.

  Quiet man: Everything got real bad so I said to my mother, make me a lunch, I’m going up to Montreal and I’ll be on the train 24 hours. So, I went over to Halifax and got in that train, the first I’d been on, and somewhere down the line the conductor came along and said everybody should shift their watches back one hour. Well right then and there, I said to myself that even if I should make a fortune, I wasn’t going to pleasure myself in a place where a man had to live a different time than the next fellow. I stayed one night in Montreal and came right back home. Been here ever since, working on the face until that pit prop split.

  Strong woman: In 1939 my man fell and with this load of coal on his back something snapped. They had a name that long – (She holds her arms out wide) – for what he had. But that was it. He died the next year. That’s how the hard times destroyed my man. And me.

  Song: / Believe

  I believe I saw a ghost with my inner eye,

  Passing through the hallway, I felt I heard him cry.

  SCENE SEVEN: JUMPING THE FREIGHTS

  Hobo: Jesus, boys, I’m here to tell you I think I still hold the world title for hitchhikin’ across this land of ours. Vancouver to Halifax in seven and a half days and I even beat the railroad I think. And I had my own gimmick, boys. You see I got this three-gallon gasoline can and I took out the shears and cut a hole in the side and then I tacked her all back together again with leather hinges. And there, you see, I had my own suitcase; and I stuffed in my precious belongings and I’d walk out to the highway, stand there and people thought I was out of gas and needed a ride to get to my car down the road. You see how it worked, boys. Nothing wrong, people just stopped, naturally, friendly. I wasn’t a bum or a hobo, I was a fellow motorist in distress. “How far you goin,” they’d say, and I’d say, “Halifax.” You see, the joke’d be on them. Rides, rides and more rides, right across the country. Oh, people used to invite me into dinner knowing me only an hour. “Stay the night with us,” they’d say, and they didn’t know me from Adam. Some’d even offer me money. Oh, things was more free and easy then. Now people are more skeptical – always suspicious of the next fellow. You know, somethings’ happened to us all. And I don’t like it.

  Farmer: It was only when I started thinking it all over after so many years that I realized just how terrible things were in the 30s and how it was criminal to be alone and poor and on the roads, when, for most of us, that was the only place we could be.

  Salesman: Every morning, I’d cycle down to my land and I had two dogs with me and I’d send them into the barn first thing to rout out any hoboes. You see, the track ran nearly alongside the farm. Well, the dogs would flush out the men, often a dozen or more of them. They were good fellows, just looking for a warm place to sleep in the hay and there wasn’t much damage. A broken padlock or something. Only a few, and very few at that, caused any trouble. I remember one fellow was going to come at me with a pitchfork once, but he soon dropped the idea. I couldn’t offer them anything but they were welcome to sleep in my barn if they wanted. What never ceased to amaze me were these men, going nowhere up and down the country, riding back and forth. Freight trains, covered with men, going absolutely nowhere.

  Song: I believe I saw a ghost, with my inner eye,

  Passin’ through the hallway, I felt I heard him cry,

  Could it be the dear old farmer, who lived here 40 years ago,

  So confused about the changes of the present, he can’t let his spirit flow?

  Please take another look, what history has done,

  People in a restless space, and what about our sons;

  Good kind people, gentle lovers of the earth,

  The truth has long been sold, and greed has taken away our mirth.

  Quiet woman: I’ve seen a train passing through Headingly going west and it would be black with men, hundreds of them, all heading west … looking for work. Just heading west looking for a dollar a day. And that train would pass another … going east, you understand, and it would be black with men and guess what they were doing? Heading east – looking for work – a dollar a day.

  Farmer: She’s a sunny morning and we’ve got our shirts off, sitting on top of a boxcar just east of Calgary and this other freight from Vancouver comes along to go by us and there’s my kid brother Billy sitting large as life and twice as ugly not six feet from me. Hi, Billy, how’s the folks?

  Hobo: I don’t know … haven’t seen ’em for some time. Where you headed?

  Farmer: Okanagan Valley.

  Hobo: I gust came from the coast. It’s pretty country through there so I’ll go along back with you.

  Farmer: You’re kidding!

  Hobo: Somebody’s got to look after you.

  (Hobo leaps across to join the Farmer.)

  Farmer: Tunnel!

  Song: I believe

  Please stop this hurtful madness called progress by mistake,

  Identity of forefathers their wisdom lies in the wake;

  Oh I’ll drink to the people who tried so very hard that they might live,

  Who grew the rippled fields of golden grain that they might give,

  Yes I’ll drink to the people who tried so very hard that they might live.

  Farmer: I was poor. I had not yet learned the ropes. The ways of the road, how to sustain oneself in hard times, how to persevere and how to succeed. At 14, I rode into Montreal, a fortress commanded by a couple of hundred Englishmen and Scotsmen, to keep about two million Frenchmen in line. I’m half and half, English and Scots. But my sympathies were for Jean Baptiste. They still are.

  SCENE EIGHT: MONTREAL FACTORY

  Quiet woman: My mother operated a sewing machine in a factory in the east-end of Montreal. They made pants, other things … and her salary for 5 days a week, 9 hours a day was $3 a week. Oh, and there was a bonus system if you could go over the quota … There were 120 or so women in that factory and my mother said no woman ever made a bonus. Never, ever. If you went to the bathroom more than twice in a shift you were docked … and there were just two toilets for those hundred women. They ate lunch at their machines because there was no washroom … no lunchroom … no fire-escapes … no sprinkler … no ladders … windows sealed up tight. There was no union. If you even thought union … it was out … out … out. Ask for a raise? Out. Take two days off, sick? Out. Think? Out. The supervisor and the foreman, they were paid to keep those workers down. They were on some sort of bonus to run that place as a sweat shop. Those women d
idn’t speak English, and they didn’t understand what was going on … just those heavy machines going hours on end. Not even looking up from their work, making sailor suits for the navy and uniforms for the army and other things for war. It was slave, slave, slave … taking dirt and eating dirt and if anyone had given them a kind word, those women would have fallen over dead from shock. I know that … bodies lying all over the factory floor. Somewhere along during the war, the man who owned that factory and his son were given a commendation from the Canadian Government because of their valuable contribution to the nation’s war effort.

  SCENE NINE: THE PRINCE OF WALES

  Strong woman: I only remember one thing: the Prince of Wales when he became King and that Mrs Simpson. What he ever saw in her I’ll never know. We all loved the King, and I had pictures from magazines in my room of the young prince, you know, so handsome, riding a horse on his ranch in Alberta, inspecting a regiment, playing polo, and I guess you could say he was the darling of the world. Anyway, the principal, I can’t remember his name, announced there would be a special assembly this particular morning in the auditorium, and it was the first time I remember when all the classes were there, from the little ones up to the Grade Nines.

  Young man: Good morning, boys and girls.

  All: Good morning, Mr McPhee.

  Young man: Please be seated. I know your parents have been reading about That Woman from Baltimore. I want to say this: the King is the King and England is England, and thank God for that in these perilous times. We are gathered here to listen to an important transatlantic radio broadcast. Our King whom we all love dearly is today to make an important decision. A decision that will affect us all very deeply.

  Salesman (radio): This is the BBC London. Please stay tuned for a frightfully important message from Buckingham Palace.

  Strong woman: His voice came over, quite clear. I mean we could hear the words clearly and the way he put it I don’t think most of us realized just what he had said.

  Salesman (radio): My loyal subjects … (static) … an important decision which I must … (static) … the woman I love … (static) ….

  Strong woman: I remember the part about the woman I love, or the woman I must have beside me to help bear the burdens, you know.

  Salesman (radio): (static) … THANK YOU!

  Strong woman: Then the principal stood up again, explained that we would soon have a new King, that he would be the old King’s brother, the younger one. And then he asked us to stand and sing “God Save The King,” and we did and I remember crying. Maybe it was because my own class teacher over by the wall, a lovely woman we all loved, she was crying and then about three-quarters of the way through, the teacher who was playing the piano … she put her head down on the keys and began to cry. I think it was the most dramatic thing that I have ever seen. Looking back on it, I think what a great movie those days would have made.

  (Everybody is crying by now.)

  Young man: Class dismissed!

  SCENE TEN: SATURDAY MATINEE

  (Some actors mime a scene from a romantic movie.)

  All: We want Mr Beasley.

  Farmer: Robert! Turn off that projector! (The “romance” freezes.) If you kids don’t stop firing off these cap guns, throwing popcorn up here at the screen, and rolling those pop bottles down the aisles, and stop flushing those damn toilets, I’ll turn off the picture and send you all home!

  (One actor stomps off amid cheers and “picture” begins again, this time with one actress dancing to the tune of “The Good Ship Lollipop”.)

  SCENE ELEVEN: SHIRLEY TEMPLE

  Quiet woman: Shirley Temple … that’s what I remember about the 30s … Shirley Temple dolls. One year, they were all the rage … everything; everybody was talking about Shirley Temple, going to see her movies, reading stories about her in the newspapers and in the fan magazines. Shirley Temple, Shirley Temple, Shirley Temple. Eaton’s used to turn a big part of their store into a toyland at Christmas and that year, the Shirley Temple year, they had these dolls along one end of toyland. There must have been hundreds of these dolls and they weren’t cheap. They moved girls from all over the store down to toyland for about six weeks before Christmas, and I was one that year. I never knew a girl who wasn’t glad to leave that place. Girls used to marry fellows they didn’t even care for, to be free of Eaton’s. Oh, yes … these dolls. I’d stand there and watch the faces of those little girls. Little faces, they needed food. You could see a lot who needed a pint of milk a thousand times more than they needed a Shirley doll. They’d stare for hours. We tried to shush them away but it didn’t do any good. One day, I had this crazy notion that I would give Shirley dolls away to those kids – “Here little girl, this one’s for you … and here’s one for you and this big one is for you, darling” – that sort of thing. I thought I’d do it until I was caught and then I’d plead insanity. I never did, of course. Those six weeks with those goddamn dolls were the worst I ever put in. I wonder if Shirley Temple ever realized the misery those dolls must have caused children all over the world … I suppose she never even thought of it.

  SCENE TWELVE: EATON’S

  Balladeer (Commissioner): Miss Nolan, you were employed by the T. Eaton Company Limited of Toronto?

  Farm wife (Nolan): Yes, I was.

  Balladeer (Commissioner): And when you first went there, what was the nature of your work?

  Farm wife (Nolan): You see, this dress was cotton crepe, and we had to make the blouse with double fronts and a frill in between on the one side and a raglan sleeve; and we had to make that skirt and we had to join it to the blouse, and we had to sew that bow that is on the shoulder but sewn in such a position that the bow could be threaded through a button-hole: and then we had to make the belt loops; and you got a $1.15 a dozen.

  Commissioner: How much?

  Nolan: $1.15 for that amount of work.

  Commissioner: That is about nine and a half cents per dress?

  Nolan: For that amount of work.

  Commissioner: What does the dress sell for?

  Nolan: $1.59 each. It took an ordinary woman five to six hours to make a dozen. So maybe in a day you could make maybe two dollars, but all the time Eaton’s said it was paying 12.50 a week, and it was but you’d have to be an octopus to make it. So I went to the Supervisor.

  Quiet man (supervisor): Did you make your minimum for the previous week?

  Nolan: Of course not.

  Supervisor: You go home. Go home and don’t come back until I send for you, and we will send for you when we are ready.

  Nolan: So I went to the Manager.

  Hobo (Manager): That is the new system we are bringing in. Every time a girl falls down on her work, she will get a week’s holiday.

  Nolan: Now am I going to live that week?

  Manager: You can report to our welfare office. We have a generous welfare office, we are known for that. Eaton’s takes care of our sick and destitute as any family would.

  Balladeer (Announcer): John David Eaton remembers the Depression as a time when his company spent millions to shield its employees from the desperation of unemployment. That was a good time for John David Eaton, and he remembers it with affection.

  Salesman (John Eaton): Nobody thought about money in those days, because they never saw any. You could take your girl to a supper dance at the hotel for $10, and that included the bottle and a room for you and your friends to drink it in. I’m glad I grew up then. It was a good time for everybody. People learned what it means to work.

  Song: The Outhouse

  Balladeer:

  We only stopped work for an outhouse call,

  To sit all alone with some reading,

  Then reach for the catalogue hanging on the wall

  All: And rip off a page for Eaton’s.

  Song: Fred Blake

  Young Fred Blake’s father refused the dole,

  Hammered on his bible to save his soul,

  Come on down and get some relief,

&nbs
p; It’s the devil’s plan to make you feel like a thief.

  SCENE THIRTEEN: CITY RELIEF OFFICE

  Quiet woman: I worked in the city relief office in Edmonton for a time.

  Farmer: If that woman was back in the kitchen then maybe there’d be more jobs for us men.

  Quiet woman: It was just part-time. In the 30s, Canadians had their pride. My God, how they had their pride. Men would say that never in the history of their family, never had they had to go on relief. These men … a few told me … they had to walk around the block eight or a dozen times before they had the nerve to come in and apply for relief… as though they were signing away their manhood … their right to be a husband and sit at the head of the table. It was a very emotional time, that first time, when a man came in and went up to the counter in that awful yellow and green welfare office.

  Quiet man (Clerk): Frank Davis. Haven’t seen you out curling lately.

  Hobo (Frank): No, been busy going belly up. I’ve tried and I’ve lost.

  Clerk: So you expect the government to look after you.

  Frank: Well, I figure some of that tax money I’ve been paying should start working for me.

  Clerk: All right, I’ll put you on the relief list. For you, your wife and how many kids have you still got around?

  Frank: Just the two at home. Two boys on the road and the daughter’s married off.

  Clerk: Right, that’ll give you $19 a month.