The other day I was listening to an old Garth Brooks song and he was telling about how his Daddy drove a truck and how his Mama was cheating on his Daddy. Anyway, the song had a line where Daddy drove his truck into the local motel where his Mama was shacked up with a man. Garth sang: “Mama’s in the graveyard; Daddy’s in the pen.”
The song got me to thinking of when my Daddy was in the pen. Funny how songs invoke memories but this one caused a flood of memories to wash across my mind. It was a bad time in the Owen household because my Daddy, Fred Owen, had been caught with moonshine where the tax had not been paid on it. Now that I consider this, I don’t think I ever heard of moonshine where the tax was paid on it. The government controlled legal liquor sales and they did not like competition because for each bottle-in-bond they sold they collected tax from the buyer. So, they passed a law making it against the law to sell whiskey without a tax stamp. Some years back, the guv’mt tried the same trick and there was a Whiskey Rebellion similar to the English Tea Tax Rebellion. But, nowadays, they don’t have rebellions because even that is against the law. They just send their competitors to jail. Daddy always believed that if he grew his corn that he should be able to sell it in solid or liquid form. I agree with him. When you look at all the laws the Government has instituted, they fill many a law book. It seems it would be easier to print books outlining the things you could still do legally. That would save a lot of trees.
Well, back to the story. Daddy was sentenced to a year and a day in a Federal prison. If you got that type of sentence it meant you did not get out early on parole or probation. You served a year and then another day. Well, that is what my Daddy did. While he was in prison his whiskey customers drifted along to different suppliers and the family income went from passable to nothing. We became poorer.
Being poor is a great test of character and if nothing else my family has lots of character as well as lots of characters. My sister Thelma and her husband Henson packed us up and moved us to the West Coast to a little town called Westport, Oregon while Daddy went to Atlanta, Georgia to spend his year and a day in the Federal pen.
Westport, Oregon was a big change from Frozen Creek, North Carolina. Somehow we scrabbled a living there with Thelma’s generous help. The family felt like they had moved to a foreign country. I experienced my first encounter with store bought bread there. Gerald had his first girlfriend there and Edgar fell in love with two girls, Indian twins. Estelle had a boyfriend named George and I learned to roller skate. I could write a whole book on living in Oregon and I did write a story about our time there entitled: “STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER” See the Owen newsletter archives for that one.
I remember hearing a fellow say one time that his family was so poor that they didn’t have a boot to piss in. That never made sense to me. Even when we were approaching the bottom level of poor, we still had an outhouse. Anyway I think the proper expression is: We didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Although, that really doesn’t make much sense either. Why piss in a pot? But I diverge.
I guess it is time to explain the title to this story. I recall once that Mama was crying and I asked her why she was crying. Her black hair shined and her shoulders shook as she told me that school was starting soon and she had no money to buy the kids school shoes. I gave her a hug and told her that we would be just fine with the shoes that we had which were tattered and had holes in them. It is O.K. to have shoes with holes in them if you are careful and don’t step on sharp objects but in the wintertime when it rains and snows, your feet get mighty wet.
Anyway, Mama talked with Thelma and Thelma found out that if you were poor and out, you could get shoes for your kids by going to Astoria to the Welfare Office. Well, Mama swallowed her pride and I found myself sitting on a bus with her after much begging to go with her. We were on our way to Astoria and Mama had a paper bag with measured sticks of the kid’s feet. The sticks would not fit in her old black purse that she had had ever since I could remember. Mama wore old threadbare dresses and shoes that were falling to pieces. She never thought of herself. Her thoughts were always about her kids. Her heart was big enough to contain enormous love for her 13 kids. I always recall seeing her with her pretty black hair rolled up in a coif and pinned with bobby pins and wearing a threadbare dress with an apron made from a flour sack. As we made the long bus trip I could see the pain in her brown eyes and an occasional tear would trickle down the wrinkles in her face and drop onto her dress.
When we got to Astoria, we made our way to the Welfare office. It was situated in an old brick building that looked at least a hundred years old. We walked up the stairs and into a dingy room with a long wooden counter across the room separating the customers from the workers. Mama went to the counter and a woman took her name and gave her a card with the number 17 on it. We sat on hard wooden benches until they called our number. A woman opened a small gate in the counter and we went into a small room where this woman with an attitude grilled my Mama with questions. I still remember to this day how she was haughty and talked down to my Mama. I would have loved to have told her to show my Mama some respect but Mama saw me squirming and reached down and patted my knee with her weathered hand. We left the office with a coupon book and went to a shoe store down the street where we exchanged the coupons for shoes. We caught the bus back to Westport and I remember looking up at my Mama and still seeing the pain and shame and the tears still streaming down her face. I leaned against her and fell asleep with her patting my head.
Almost a year later, Gerald and I were playing at the foot of Nicoli Mountain and we saw a taxi cab winding up the curvy road to my Sister Thelma’s house where we were currently living. We ran down to turn-a-round where the taxi pulled to a stop and this tall man got out and was talking to the driver. As we came up to the taxi we saw it was Daddy. He was out of the pen. He called us over and told us: Go tell your Mama to come and pay for this cab. I ran up the hill toward the house and met my Mama running down the trail to the parking space, her apron flapping in the breeze. The pain and shame was gone from her pretty brown eyes. They were lit up glistening and shiny with happy tears as she grabbed my Daddy and gave him a big hug and then took some bills from her old black purse and paid the driver.
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