Torch Time Tales by Joni L Whitmore

Author:Joni L Whitmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BEE PI Media
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Tail Events

One by one, the stars appeared overhead as the last reflections of sunlight disappeared. It was time to light the torch.

“How much do you know about the Great Depression?” Joni asked.

“Some,” I offered sheepishly. “I studied it in school – those were really hard times, weren’t they?”

“Your grandfather William and his brother, Paul, grew up in really hard times, yes. Untold numbers lost their homes. Unemployment, poverty, and malnutrition affected broad swaths of the country – like diseases left unchecked to fester. It took years for the country to work toward any form of economic recovery. My cousin Helen remembered looking out the window of her house as a child to the sight of droves of men with nothing better to do, walking the streets of Little Rock during the Great Depression.”

“Wow! That would be a sight for a young person to see and attempt to understand.”

“Yep. It makes me think of the homeless men in Salem, Oregon, I couldn’t help but notice as a kid, lined up around the block and down the street as far as I could see, all waiting for the soup kitchen to open.”

“What a sight to have to take in as a child!”

“Survival became the order of those Depression-era years. Things can change quickly when people are living on the edge of life and death. In the spring of 1929, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the thirtieth president of the United States. Wall Street crashed on September 3, just a few short weeks before my father William’s tenth birthday. His grandmother Susan had reached sixty years old and then died later that year of chronic nephritis, the day before the winter solstice. William’s world was forever altered. I can only imagine what all of these events must have looked like through his eyes as a child.”

“What’s nephritis?”

“She had chronic kidney disease. We’ll talk more about that in volume three.”

“Okay, and I have to say this is giving me a very different picture of my grandpa Bill,” I offered. “It explains a lot!”

“It sure does. I do know my father survived those traumatic times, and I know the scars he bore affected his every waking day, along with his words and actions, for the remainder of his life. He held many of the secrets from those years close, and I suspect he would have taken them all to the grave if he hadn’t been induced to reveal them.”

“Wow. It’s incredible to me that he managed to bury the truth throughout his lifetime!”

“To this day, I’m not clear whether my mother knew what really happened to the man she’d married. My father had long held a ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ outlook on life. Plain and simple, he didn’t see the point of dredging up pain from the past and avoided it whenever possible. It didn’t always work out so well for him, I’m afraid.”

“What could have been so terrible?” I finally asked.

“It bothered me as a child to hear my grandpa John and

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