During that Depression time, we got three years behind in our rent. Mr. Marsden, who collects the rents, let us stay on in the house because there was nobody with any money to move in if we left. If a house is left empty in our neighborhood, all the windows get broken and even the front-porch railings get stolen for firewood. Some people move out in the night without paying the back rent.
When somebody moves, everybody helps. They’ll have an old truck or a bunch of cars and they’ll move away all the furniture in the dark. A lot of people have their electricity and gas cut off because they can’t pay those either, so they can’t live in the house any more.
My dad helped people like the O’Haras across the street and the Sullivans move. Even if anybody knew where these people moved to, they wouldn’t say, so Mr. Marsden wouldn’t find out. I don’t know what the police could do to those people if they did catch them. Nobody has much money except rich people, and you can’t throw everybody in jail.
It was a couple years ago when my dad got the idea of building a new porch on our place. Mom was scared to go out on our old little rotten wooden porch to hang our clothes. Dad got the Reynolds next door to pay for the wood, by promising he’d do the work himself. Mr. Reynolds works in a drugstore. We call him a pharmacist because it’s a nice idea to think you live next door to a real pharmacist, but he only works in a store in Media selling things like lipstick and corn plasters. But he has a job.
Dad built one straight porch across our two places, without any steps. It was a regular deck like the deck of a ship. He put down new posts to hold it up further out than the old posts but it still didn’t go as far out into the alley as the old steps did. This new porch is ten times bigger than the old one. It’s almost’s big as the front porch and has sun on it in the morning. On our side of the street there’s never any sun on our front porch, even in summer.
Now, with our big porch, Mom isn’t afraid when she hangs out clothes; and we go downstairs through the cellar.
She and Mrs. Reynolds made Dad put wire on the railing so nobody could fall off. Little Jimmy Reynolds is only three and Mrs. Reynolds can have him out there in the sun and watch him from the kitchen while she’s cooking and washing dishes.
Of course, Dad had to get Mr. Marsden’s permission so he could build this porch, but since the old one was falling apart anyway he said O.K.
When Mr. Marsden saw it finished, he asked Dad how much it would cost to have porches like that one built on other houses. I was right there. I’d never seen Mr. Marsden before. He was driving a new Dodge car, and wore a suit with a tie. I think it might be the first time I ever saw anybody dressed like that in the daytime, except in the movies.
Dad looked up at the porch, then at me. He said to Mr. Marsden, “I can build a porch like this, materials included, for sixteen dollars.”
Mr. Marsden looked at the porch again.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Kettleson. I’ll knock twenty dollars off your back rent for every porch you build me.”
The materials cost less than seven dollars, so Dad could make thirteen dollars’ profit for every porch he built. Our rent is twenty-eight dollars a month so he could pay off our back rent pretty fast building porches on Saturdays. Only, somehow, we had to save that seven dollars for the wood, nails, and paint.
Dad explained all this to me afterward because he wanted me to help him. I’d watched him build the first porch but I didn’t help.
This is the way we’d do it. First, we’d buy our wood at the big lumber yard on Marshall Road. Dad’d buy enough at one time to build three porches. Mom wasn’t too happy because he was using the emergency money they’d saved for doctor bills, but Dad wanted to get that back rent paid; it really bothered him, owing money.
Then, we’d go down in the cellar. Dad had all the measurements for everything, even the railings. I’d mark the wood from his measurements and hold the long ends while he cut the lumber to length. We could do all the cutting for a porch at once; usually on Friday nights. At first I used to worry I’d mark something wrong and ruin valuable wood but then I got good at it.
Somehow, Dad found out about gray paint for battleships on sale, cheap, at the Navy yard. He went down there and bought four barrels of that gray paint. They were big as ashcans and we stored them in the cellar on the other side from the furnaces, at the bottom of the steps under our dart board. All the porches we built we painted with this gray paint. Then, early Saturday mornings, unless it was raining hard or too cold, we’d go out.
First we’d tear down the old porch. We have crowbars for this and Dad showed me how to start at the top so nothing fell down on us. The last thing to go would be the rickety old steps; there were sixteen of them. Then we’d chop and saw the old steps and posts into pieces and stack them in back of our car, where we’d carried the new wood for the new porch. The new lumber we’d have laid in the alley in a certain way so I can hand each piece to Dad as he needs it. He has it all worked out.
He has his tools lined up in a wooden box with a place for each tool. My dad has good tools from the days when he was a carpenter with his dad. There are two saws, one rip and one cross; two hammers, both Stanley, one carpenter, one mason; a level, chisels, everything you need to build. He has another wooden box he built for nails. Eight sections for different-sized nails, from four- to sixteen-penny with and without heads.
The old wood we’d take home at the end of the day and store in our cellar. We’d burn this in the furnace to save on coal during winter.
Next, Dad would bolt the wooden beam called a plate onto the wall. He’d stand on our ladder while I’d hold the bottom and hand things up to him. After that, we’d set in the cut-off-pyramid-shaped concrete foundation blocks to hold the posts for the new porch. These had bolts sticking straight up from the top where they were cut off. We’d set the posts up and Dad would stand up high on the ladder, with me holding it, so he could pound in the framing for the deck.
After that, we’d be up there, working from above, nailing down deckboards and putting on railings. About then, I’d start painting. Dad would nail along fast and we’d usually end up at about the same time. From start to finish we could put up a porch in under five hours.
At first, I hated losing my Saturdays, especially when it was school time. We worked Saturdays almost as long as a school day, and the only free day I’d have left would be Sunday. Sunday mornings are ruined by getting dressed, going to church, then having a big breakfast afterward. It’s eleven o’clock before I can even change into play clothes.
But I didn’t say anything. Then, gradually, I learned to like working with my dad. Not many kids have time alone with their dads.
He’d try to tell me the little important things about building, how to hold the hammer and swing from my wrist. You let the head of the hammer do the work. He showed me how to bear down with the saw only on the down stroke and just pull it back, letting the saw glide. He taught me how to load a brush with paint, how to hold it in my hands so I wouldn’t get blisters, and how to tip the handle in the direction I pulled the brush, stroking with the grain of the boards.
We’d talk about other things, too. He’s always asking about school, what I’m learning, if I like it. I don’t lie to him; I tell him how I hate school and don’t think I’m learning much, how I’m bored all the time.
Dad only went to eighth grade and keeps telling me over and over how there’s no chance if you don’t have a college education. As far as I’m concerned, eighth grade seems about right, only four more years not counting this one. By then, I could probably make enough money just building porches.
Dad put up a chart in the cellar and marked on it every month’s rent we were behind. When we started, there were thirty-five squares, seven across and five down. When we’d come in from work he’d cross one off. Once a month he didn’t; that was for the month we were living in.
Mr. Marsden was the one who told us which porches to build. It was always the porches of people who were paid up
with their rent. It wasn’t very fair; most of the worst porches were people who didn’t have any money. When some of those’d start to sag or fall down, we’d stop on the way to or back from a job and Dad would put a brace here, or a few nails there, to help hold them up. He did this for nothing. Lots of times people didn’t even know who’d fixed their porch.
After a while, you could walk down those alleys and tell from the new gray porches without stairs, the ones we built, just who were the people with jobs. Anybody selling things from door to door would be smart to walk down the alleys first and look to see who had any money.
During two years, from the time I was eight till now, we built more than seventy porches. Sometimes in the summer we’d do two porches in one Saturday. Those days we wouldn’t get finished until it was almost dark. We’d take our lunch and only come home for supper. Mom didn’t like us to do two but we were proud of ourselves.
We got all that back rent paid up. I remember the day we came back and Dad crossed the last box off. He gave me his paper chart, which was brown and marked with paint now. One of the thumbtacks was always falling out so there were a hundred thumbtack holes across the top of the paper. It was a used piece of butcher paper he pulled out of the trashcan and it had meat marks on the other side.
“Here, Dickie, throw this in the furnace; we’re finished. From now on we’ll be getting ahead of the game.”
He stood there, wiping paint off his hands with some turpentine while I pulled open the furnace door and threw the paper in. It went up with a quick puff of light. That was just before this summer.
We kept working, building porches over the summer till we were a whole year ahead in rent. We finished just before school started. That last night when we came in, Dad stored his tools under his bench instead of setting them on top where he usually did.
“This whole year is like money in the bank, Dickie. In a certain way, for a whole year this house is really ours. But we aren’t going to work any more Saturdays while school’s on; you can have your Saturdays for yourself, now. Maybe next summer we’ll go back to work if we have to.”
He stopped, smiled, pulled the straps of his white carpenter’s overalls down over his shoulders. He had regular clothes on under his overalls. It was summer but it was cold and wet that day. It wasn’t raining but it was wet enough so it was hard to make the paint stick. He was wearing his old sweater with the holes in the elbows and all raveled at the cuffs.
“You remember this, Dickie. No matter how much you earn in your life you haven’t made one dime if you haven’t put some little bit aside. If you only earn it and spend it right off, you get nothing for your days, you’re just a working machine, working for somebody else. The money you save is work you did for yourself, and the only thing really worth buying is your own time. You remember that.”
By this time, Dad had gotten the letter from J.I. saying they were opening again and there was a job for him. They were going to pay him $37.50 a week. That’s more than twice as much as he got with the WPA. Waxing floors in banks all night he made $22, at the most.
I was there when he opened that letter. It’d come in the morning but Dad had already gone to sleep after coming home from the waxing job. He’d get up when we came home from school for lunch and we’d all eat together, then he’d go back to work after we had dinner.
Lunch in our house is usually just tomato soup, pepper pot, or Scotch broth and sandwiches but it was fun having Dad there. He’d always have some funny story to tell about waxing the bank floors. His favorite was how he’d push the machine, waxing away, and keeping his eyes open in case somebody had dropped a little bit of all that money on the floor during the day. He’d tell the story going along as if he’d really found some money, but it would always turn out to be a Wrigley gum wrapper, or somebody’s handkerchief, or, one time, it was an empty pencil box. I know if Dad did find money he’d give it back to the bank, but it was fun listening to those stories; it was the way he told them.
His other stories were about the waxing machine breaking down. These machines were old and I think only my father could really keep them going. He worked with three other men but they didn’t know anything about machines, not even the boss, Roy Kerlin.
But this day, at lunch, Mom gave Dad the letter that came in the mail. She was all excited. Dad sat down and broke pieces of bread into his tomato soup; he put the letter on the table beside him and just looked at it, breaking bread into his soup. Mother couldn’t sit down and was leaning over his shoulder. It was one of those envelopes with a little cellophane window in it so you could see my father’s name and our address, 7066 Clover Lane, Upper Darby. It didn’t say anything about Stonehurst Hills.
“Come on, Dick. Open it, I’ve been waiting on pins and needles all morning for you to wake up. Come on, open it. Don’t just stare at it like that.”
Dad looked up at Mom, put his hand over her hand on his shoulder. “I can’t think of anything J.I. could have to say to me I’m really ready to hear, Laura. Even if they say they’re sorry they shut down the place just because they weren’t making enough profit, laying everybody off, even somebody like me, with nine years’ seniority. I don’t really think I’d be interested even in that.”
But he used his knife to slit open the envelope; there was still some margarine on it. Then he read it out. He leaned back in his chair, speaking slowly like a priest reading the Gospel. He read how there was work and a position was open for him at the same bench and the salary was thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents a week. There was a lot of other stuff, too, about when and where he was to report and everything, but that was the main part.
Mom squeezed Dad around the neck from behind while he still held on to the letter. His bread was sinking into his soup. I looked over at Laurel; she wasn’t paying much attention. I couldn’t look at Mom or Dad, maybe she couldn’t either.
“Thirty-seven dollars a week! But, Dick, that’s wonderful. You could stop working nights and wouldn’t have to spend all your Saturdays building porches any more. Aren’t you excited?”
Dad stared at the letter. He glanced up at me, then back at the letter.
“I don’t mind building porches, Laura. We have a good time out there in the alleys, don’t we, Dickie?”
I nodded my head but I couldn’t smile. I was hoping he wouldn’t take the job. Going back to J.I. would be like saying “uncle” in a fight.
It was a Wednesday when Dad got that letter. He was supposed to report at the main plant on Monday. It was all Mom and Dad talked about for the rest of that week. I tried to listen whenever I could, but a lot of the talking they did in their bedroom, and Laurel and I aren’t allowed in there unless we’re invited. Mom wanted Dad to take the job because it was such good money and it was hard to get jobs. Dad didn’t want to work there because of the way they fired him. One time coming down the stairs on Friday, he said, “But I hate that place, Laura. I hate everything about it. I don’t like the people I work with and I don’t like the work; it’s dirty, hard, and dangerous. The whole building is dark and damp; they even have the windows painted blue so we can’t see out. It’s like a jail. I’ll bet they get Sanderson back as foreman, too. I can’t stand that guy.”
Saturday night at dinner he said he was going to take the job. He said he had a responsibility to all of us. He said we’d have enough money for things we needed and Mom wouldn’t have to worry so much. He promised us we’d go to Wildwood in the summer when he had two weeks’ vacation. It’d been four years since we’d been to the shore. I hardly even remembered it.
I still didn’t want him to work for J.I. and I was ashamed, but I couldn’t get myself to say anything.
“But I told your mother, and I’m telling you kids right now; I’m going back there to start a union if there isn’t one, or join one if there is. A union is the only tool the working man has to fight back with.”
I know this doesn’t mean anything to Laurel, but I can tell it scares Mom. I don’t know why he has t
o tell us. Then, and right now, there are big fights between the companies and the unions. I guess the Depression made a lot of the men like Dad mad. It makes me feel better knowing Dad is going to fight J.I. even if he is going back, so I guess that’s why he told us, he was really telling me.
But I’d rather be building porches. We could build porches for other people than Mr. Marsden. Then Dad’d be his own boss and I could work for him. Maybe I could even get out of going to school.
There was a workers’ union at J.I. The United Electrical Workers, called the UEW. Dad joined it right away and before long he was elected shop steward. This means he represents all the men on his floor to the bosses. He’s a kind of boss against bosses.
One night about a month after that, Dad came home late. The dinner was in the oven and Mom wouldn’t let us eat even though it was past seven o’clock, and usually we eat at five-thirty. Dad came in and one whole side of his face was swollen, with his lip cut and his shirt ripped. Mom almost went crazy.
Dad climbed upstairs to the bathroom and Mom ran right up behind him. When he came down he had some Mercurochrome and bandages on his face and a bandage on one finger that was bent back. He’d been beaten up just outside the gates of J.I. by some men the company hired to beat up union men, especially shop stewards like Dad. Dad ate his dinner quietly, grunting once in a while when he forgot and chewed on the wrong side; Mom kept crying.
After that, Dad starts meeting with other men and they go to work and come home together. Dad begins carrying a monkey wrench in his pocket, both to work and home again. He calls the people who beat him up “company goons.” In Popeye comics, there’s a character called Alice the Goon. She has a tiny head with no hair, a big body with thick arms and huge hairy feet. I keep thinking the company goons are something like Alice. Maybe Mom’s right; I’m probably too young to be afraid enough.