Mama Bess and her Garden

Mama Bess said “Everyone and their brother too,” often enough to make me wonder what it actually meant until I realized how crowded this old planet seems. The job market is slim pickings now a days. My state alone is over 10% unemployed and I happen to be one of them. I spend a good 16 hours a day doing whatever odd jobs I can to bring food into this house. My grandmother Mama Bess had to do the same thing during the Great Depression. After Daddy Tank sold the bus company, (see article below, Daddy Tank and his Busline, dated August 19), he found a job lasting a year, with one of his brothers in Winfield, Louisiana pumping gas at a filling station. It wasn’t much, but the job was more than what most people had during that time.  He would send his earnings by Western Union back to his wife, Mama Bess. They had moved out of their home and rented a smaller house on 3 acres, two miles out of Monroe with a white picket fence around the front and a barn with pasture in the back. Rent was a good $5. a month back then. About the time of the worst part of the Depression, the landlord increased it to $10. which sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to now. But comparing now to back then, that was probably equal to $1000. a month.  

Mama Bess, was best known for growing anything under the Sun. She could make a desert bloom and had so many flowers in her garden, that there were stepping stones placed as paths to get through it to the front gate. Word got around and she started making money by selling straight out of her garden to seven different florists; two in Monroe and five others in Charlotte. She even set up a small shop in the front parlor of her house and sold Gladiolus, Poppies (legal back then), Dahlias, Snapdragons, and others. Her yard also produced a massive amount of vegetables and I even had heard that if the vegetables or flowers were not in season, she still would have plenty of healthy plants producing what she needed. To this day, I feel she is helping me out, in spirit with my garden. Here it is, early September and 90 degrees out, I have tomatoes and squash completely out of season. I plant seeds and even though the package says it takes 10 days to germinate, my seeds are an inch tall in less than 2 days. I don’t have magic soil or fertilizer, just my Mama Bess’s hand from heaven.

Back in the Great Depression, there were a lot of hobos getting off the freight trains and passing through town. Mama Bess, raising 4 young children alone, would invite one or two in to shower, shave and stay for supper, if they would do some work for her around the house. Sometimes they would patch the roof, mend the fence or barn out back or paint the house, and repair the plumbing. After the repairs were done, and they ended their stays, they would move on. Word had gotten around about her generosity and one of the receivers of her goodwill, etched a triangle in the left post by her gate. This was a sign to other hobos passing through that a good Christian woman lived there offering shelter and food for a good, honest days work. The funny part about this story is that there was one man who arrived at her house and helped with the heaviest of chores, very polite and well educated. It wasn’t long after he had left, that she found out he was an escape convict from a prison from out of state. No one ever did her any harm, but nowadays, no one would think of inviting strangers into their homes.

With memories of that, I try to raise my kids to be helpful to others less fortunate then themselves. I never thought this would be so embedded into them as when my oldest son at the age of 17 bought an old Caravan with a bad transmission for $300. He purchased a transmission from an auto recycling place, fixed the van and then drove it over to a house of someone he met a few months earlier. The man he had met, was without a job and had an old two passenger car. His family of five consisting of his wife, who had a job, and three small children under the age of 8. My son drove the van over to their house, handed the title and keys to this man and walked away. 

On the receiving side, my youngest son ran out of gas 20 miles from home and found out he had lost his wallet. A stranger drove up and asked if he was okay. When my son told him about being out of gas, no wallet or way to get home, the stranger handed him $10 for gas. Of course my son thanked him, but the man said no thanks needed, just pass the goodwill along to others who need it.

Will we ever get back to the days of helping each other through tough times as well as good times, or are we always going to be ‘every man for themselves’? I don’t know. I like to think so. In today’s economy, I hope we can all group together and offer help to those less fortunate than ourselves. If you have good news about sharing and receiving help from others, please add a comment below. Would love to hear from you.