Waiting and Worrying

The Nordyke farm lay between
Admiral and Cottonwood, south
and east of Baird. It's the beginning
of the Texas hill country.

I’ve abandoned Lewis’s story for the last several entries. Let’s get back to that tired young man who is standing on a Central/West Texas farm about 130 west of Ft. Worth, not quite to Abilene. He’s standing there wondering, not knowing whether to be hopeful or scared.

            He’s got a brand-new, less than a week old, degree in journalism from the University of Missouri; he’s exhausted because he’s hitchhiked across Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to get home; he’s in love with a girl hundreds of miles away; and, looming over all of this, he doesn’t have a job.

            Sounds like lots of new college graduates, except for the hitchhiking maybe, but wait, consider the times. It is hard times. Harder than 2010, harder than 2011, the heart of the hardest time this country has experienced. Franklin Roosevelt’s “First Hundred Days” are winding down, the country has hopes that the New Deal will mean a good deal, but meanwhile hungry people roam the streets, almost of quarter of the work force is unemployed, not just laborers and factory workers, but people across the spectrum, teachers, and doctors, business owners who have gone bust, sales clerks, college professors—and journalists.

            It’s been Lewis’s dream since childhood to write, that’s why he’s made the sacrifices, hard ones like a car and a good job, to get the journalism degree. And now? Where will he end up? Helping his dad on the farm, being a cowboy again, maybe teaching school like his sister Alda (who by the way gave up her studies at Texas Tech to help her younger brother pursue his dream) in Cross Plains or Baird? He could barely bear the thought, but the thought wouldn’t go away.

            A couple of rays of hope shine for him. One barely gleaming; he’s sent a novel to a New York publisher—maybe just maybe, but when will he know? The other gleams brighter. He’ll know tomorrow. When Lewis had worked in Stephenville after finishing John Tarleton’s two year program, he’d gone to work for the college, but he’d also done some work for the Empire-Tribune, the local weekly newspaper. Now he has a letter in his pocket from the publisher and editor, Rufus Higgs. Higgs is about to become president of the Texas Press Association. He’ll be travelling too much to get the paper out. He needs a man (always a man in 1933) to keep things going for a year. After that . . . who knows? And maybe, just maybe Lewis is that man. They need to talk.

          The next morning, Lewis will take his Dad’s car, head west to Stephenville, and see what happens.

            Lewis isn’t the only one worrying. He’s poured his fears and anxiety out in that first letter to Dottie:

“Dottie, I am anxious about the job in Stephenville . . . I’m going to Stephenville tomorrow. I’ll let you know what comes of the trip. I fell, tho, as if I’ve nearly got to get the job. I just don’t know what I’ll do if something knocks me out of getting that place. Guess I’ll make it somehow tho’.”  

One sleepless night ahead for Lewis, and a couple for Dottie who will have to wait for his Tuesday letter to know what happens to Lewis . . . and maybe to her.

An aside: A book that puts a human face on the Great Depression is "A Secret Gift" by Ted Gup. It tells of Canton, Ohio families hit hard by hard times. Their stories repeated across the country. I'll post a review here.