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Mama's Boarding House

by Sidney Bolick

172 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0182; ISBN 1-55212-517-3; US$18.00, C$23.00, EUR15.00, £10.40

The true story of a young man's experiences while growing up in a North Carolina cotton mill town during the Great Depression of the '30s.

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About the Book The heartwarming true story of a young man's journey from childhood on a South Carolina sharecropper's farm, through adolescence to manhood in a North Carolina cotton mill town during the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties. Although those were difficult years, this is not just a story of hard times and deprivation. Rather it is an account of how ordinary working people, people like the Author and his family, faced the hardships of the Depression, and not only survived, but managed to live nearly normal lives during one of the most challenging periods in our country's history. It was a time when a one-dollar Daisy Air Rifle from Santa Claus was a never- to-be-forgotten miracle to a ten year old boy; when everyone from the youngest to the oldest found ways to earn a little something to add to the family coffer; and a time when Mama took in boarders to help put food on the table for her family. But it was also a time that brought families closer together; when the annual Birthday Dinner for Grandpa was the big event of the year; and simple pleasures, like swimming in the old muddy South Fork River or playing baseball on a dirt field with a taped-up broken bat, were enjoyed to the fullest and became cherished memories in years to come. And some of the best of these memories were those of Mama's boarding house.

What reviewers are saying

Travel back in time to the Great Depression, and walk in the author's growing shoes as he, through sheer determination, becomes a pilot serving in WW II. Experience the hard times of this dirt poor American family in South Carolina, who typified the classic "grits" and "bare bones" strength and character of tenant farmers and mill workers of the times. Admire the quiet will of Mama who ran a boarding house to supplement the family income, and meet the collection of boarders, as well as Grandpa and Grandma who helped shape the character of the young boy. The narrative is simple and matter-of-fact, and reading it is like watching a black and white documentary, devoid of color and frills; but when the reader gets into the different personalities and situations, the story takes on its own unique picture and color.

TravelwriterMarketletter: March, 2001 issue

Reiko Matsumoto, Book Reviewer

Memories of pot-bellied stoves, cotton fields and RC Colas fill the warmhearted, true story of Sidney Bolick's journey of life in the South, in his recently-published book entitled "Mama's Boarding House".

Born in 1924, Bolick paints vivid pictures, describing his excitement of seeing his father's new Model T, bought with Mama's best milk cow and $100. Another memory details the horror of seeing a black man, an accused bootlegger, lying dead in a gas station parking lot after having been shot by the sheriff.

"Mama's Boarding House" is guaranteed to spark familiar memories of the old, inspire the young and young- at-heart, all while sharing a heartfelt, first-person account of one man's survival of the Great Depression - and ordinary life in the South.

The Gaston Gazette: March 18, 2001 issue Jennifer Kellar, Staff Reporter

About the Author Born on a farm in Georgia in 1924, moved to a cotton mill town in North Carolina in 1930. Grew up there and graduated from High School in June, 1941. Left three days later for Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Went through flight training and graduated as a Sergeant Pilot in March, 1942. Was sent overseas to England, where he was attached to the Royal Air Force. Spent two and a half years in Europe, first with the RAF and then with the U. S. Eighth Air Force. Was shot down on a bombing mission over Friedrichshaffen, Germany on March 18, 1944. Parachuted into Switzerland and was interned there. Escaped into France in October, 1944, made his way back to England and was returned home to the United States. When the war ended he was flying C-54 Transport planes from California to the Central Pacific in the Air Transport Command. Went on inactive duty in March, 1946, and began a forty-three-year civilian career in Sales and Sales Management. Retired in 1989 as Vice-President of a Cleveland, Ohio consumer products company. Now lives in Milan, Tennessee, with his wife, Anita. Is a member of Post 4780 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, on the Board of Trustees of the Mildred G. Fields Memorial Library, and President of The Friends of the Library. The rest of his time is spent writing, reading, walking, playing golf, and surfing the Internet. Click here to read about Mr. Bolick's second book, To Soar with The Eagles

Sample Excerpt

Foreword

By the middle of the year nineteen-thirty-one, when I was seven years old, the United States was beginning to feel the full effect of what history would call the "Great Depression of the Nineteen Thirties". As an aftermath of the stock market crash of October, 1929, banks failed, factories closed, farmers lost their farms, and unemployment was approaching an all time high. Breadlines and soup kitchens sprouted on street corners in the cities, and freight trains were festooned with hobos aimlessly traveling from one part of the country to the other to try to find work. But there was almost no work to be had.

Just about everybody blamed the depression on Republican President Herbert Hoover. And he was easy to blame. Unlike his eventual successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was not a charismatic individual, but projected an aloof and unsympathetic demeanor. Even his physical appearance was against him, with his squinted eyes and severe facial expression.

But the depression wasn't Hoover's fault. It was a worldwide phenomenon, brought about by a combination of economic and political conditions after World War I. He just had the misfortune of coming into office at the wrong time.

Looking back on those years, I might be expected to say that they were the worst years of my life. But that was not true. Certainly, times were hard, and we had to scratch for everything we got. But I never once went hungry, and always had a warm bed to sleep in and enough clothes to wear. If the clothes were hand-me-downs from an older brother, they were always clean and pressed and neatly mended. And I was a part of a large, close-knit family, where everyone pulled his weight and contributed his share to the common kitty. Two of my older brothers managed to find part-time jobs even during the worst of the depression, and Daddy worked a day or two a week on the WPA. And when I was ten years old, Mama took in boarders to supplement the family income.

In spite of the hard times, and the need to earn extra money to help out the family, I still managed to have a pretty normal childhood and do most of the things that young boys do as they are growing up. I had crushes on the little girls in grade school, and fell madly in love several times in my early teens. I learned to swim in the old muddy South Fork River before I was ten years old, played baseball on a red clay field with a taped-up broken bat and a friction-tape-covered ball, and tennis on a rundown court with a string tied across between two posts to serve as a net. When I was twelve I joined the Boys Scouts and worked up to the rank of Life Scout before quitting to work in the mill when I reached sixteen.

I shot marbles for keeps in a circle drawn in the dirt, made slingshots out of strips from old rubber inner tubes and prongs from the forked branches of a dogwood tree, with which I terrorized the stray dogs and cats in the neighborhood. I also learned to spin a top and play mumbly peg with a two bladed jack knife without losing a finger. And on the more useful side, I sawed and split firewood for Mama's woodburning cookstove, fed the chickens and collected the eggs, and helped Daddy in the big kitchen garden that he planted every year.

So the stories in this book are not just about hard times and deprivation, but are real-life memories of the people I knew, and things I experienced, while growing up in the South during a time unlike any other in this country's history. And some of the best of these are the memories of Mama's Boarding House.

Earliest Memories

One of my earliest memories is of playing in the yard with my nephew, Bob. His name was actually Willie Robert, but his Mama was the only one who called him that. He was my Mama's oldest grandchild, and my sister Ella Mae's firstborn. I was about three and a half and Bob was a year younger. I remember it because he hit me on one of my bare toes with a rock and the nail came off.

The yard we were playing in was in front of the house we lived in that year. It was on land that my Daddy farmed on shares for the owner, Judge Owens, near the little town of Fountain Inn, South Carolina. Judge Owens probably wasn't a real judge, but had acquired the title as a mark of respect since he was one of the biggest landowners in the county. Just like a lot of well-to-do Southerners were called, "Cap'n", even though they had never been in the army. In addition to my Daddy and Ella Mae's husband, Woody Lankford, the Judge had two other families of tenant farmers, another white family and one colored family, sharecropping on farmland that he owned. He supplied the land, some sort of rudimentary dwelling, a barn, plows, and other farming equipment, as well as the seed for planting the cotton and corn, and the fertilizer for growing it. The tenants supplied mules and human labor.

The landowner also advanced money to his tenants during the winter months for food, fuel and clothing, and deducted it from their share of the proceeds when the crops were harvested. Since these advances usually equaled or exceeded the tenant's share of the crop, they ended up in debt to him at the end of the year, and were bound by contract to farm his land again the next year. This would go on for two or three years until a bumper crop or high cotton prices allowed the tenant to pay off his debt. At which time he would usually move on in search of greener pastures and another landlord. Counting the place where I was born, near Oglethorpe, Georgia, we lived on three different farms by the time I was six years old.

This house was better than some we had lived in. It was a rectangular box with roughsawed siding that had been painted white at sometime in the past, but most of the paint had flaked off, leaving it a sort of dirty gray color. It had a planked roof covered with shingles, and stood about two feet off the ground on blocks cut from tree trunks, providing a dim cool place for animals to hide or little boys to play, and for Mama to store the glass jars of fruits and vegetables that she canned in the summer. Three wooden steps led up to a much-patched screen door that fought a losing battle against the flies and mosquitoes.

About half the inside of the house was taken up by one big room. The wooden planked floors were covered with cheap linoleum rugs that cracked and broke where the planks didn't quite fit together, and had been scrubbed so many times that the original floral pattern had faded to an indistinct blur. A big potbellied cast iron stove stood on its square tin floor mat at one end of the room, its stovepipe chimney reaching up to a flue in the ceiling. It burned wood and provided all the heat and most of the light for the whole house during the winter.

The rest of the room was dominated by a long table covered with white oilcloth. It had a bench along the length of either side, a straight-backed chair at each end, and a cut-glass kerosene lamp in the center. It served not only as a dining table, but as the center of activity for the whole family. The older kids did their homework on it, while Daddy laboriously read the weekly newspaper and Mama wrote her infrequent letters to her Mama in North Carolina. Two more kerosene lamps stood on their shelves on either side of the room, and a few assorted chairs and stools completed the austere furnishings.

Part of the ceiling was floored over to make a sleeping loft that was reached by a ladder against the wall at one side of the room. This was where the older boys - Hays, 16; Fred, 14; and Jake, 9, slept. The loft had no ceiling, just the bare rafters and roofing. Cracks in the wood and shingle roof let the boys lie on their backs and look up at the stars on clear nights, but also let the water drip on them when it rained. Mama and my sister Belle pasted pages torn from Spiegels and Sears, Roebuck catalogs on the walls to provide a rudimentary insulation. It was stifling hot under the roof in the summer, and cold in the winter, but from the time I was able to walk I looked forward to the day when I would be old enough to climb the ladder and sleep with the big boys.

A sort of lean-to ran the length of the back of the house, and was divided into the kitchen and two small bedrooms. My Mama and Daddy slept in one of the bedrooms, and Belle and me in the other. These rooms were separated from each other by a kind of wallboard made of pressed paper, which provided only an illusion of privacy, since any noise above a whisper could be heard throughout the house.

The kitchen was primitive by today's standards. Since we had no electricity, there was no pump to provide running water from the well in the back yard. Water for cooking had to be carried from the well up the steps and through the back door, then poured into the big reservoir on one end of the woodburning cook stove where it was heated for washing dishes and for our weekly baths.

Another, smaller, wooden table occupied the middle of the kitchen. It was covered by the same white oilcloth, and surrounded by walls that were lined with wooden shelves for dishes, and hooks for pots and pans. Mama had made curtains out of sugar sacks and flour sacks dyed with Rit Dye, and had put them on drawstrings over the shelves that held her dishes, to protect them from dust. An ancient handmade two-drawer chest sat at one end of the kitchen next to the galvanized tin sink, and held cooking utensils and table cutlery. Like all Mama's houses, the kitchen and all the rest of the house was spotlessly clean.

The house sat on the red clay soil indigenous to that part of the South, among a few scrub pine trees that provided scant shade from the hot summer sun, but gave off an aroma of pine needles and pinetar and rosin that helped to disguise the odors from the nearby barn and pigsty, and the outdoor privy at the end of a well worn path behind the house. The barn itself was a ramshackle affair that had been thrown together out of whatever spare material that was available, including tin signs for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco and Lydia Pinkham's Nerve Tonic. It gave shelter to our two old mules, our milk cow and Mama's chickens, as well as storage for the plows and other farm equipment. It had a hayloft of sorts, and when we were old enough to climb the ladder, Bob and I spent many happy hours tunneling through the hay that was stored there to feed the mules.

Ella Mae and Woody's house was down the hill near the creek, and was a smaller carbon copy of ours, except that it had a corrugated tin roof, instead of one made of boards and shingles. It also had a sleeping loft, and I will always remember the sound of the rain on that tin roof. It was a peaceful, rhythmic sound that was almost hypnotic, and it quickly lulled us to sleep in spite of an occasional drop of water that fell on us through a rusty nail hole.

The creek that ran by the house was clean enough for swimming, in those pre-pollution days of the nineteen-twenties, although its water had a reddish brown color from the soil of its banks and bottom. It was one of the few sources of fun and relaxation for my older brothers, who had little enough time for fun, between going to school and working on the farm with Daddy.

They had built a partial dam across it at a narrow point, using old logs and brush, creating a pool that was perfect for swimming and cooling the watermelons that we "swiped" from Woody's patch. No watermelon since has ever tasted as good as those did when we took them cold from the creek and dropped them on the bank and ate the sweet red centers with our bare hands. Of course, Woody knew we were taking them, but he never let on, as that would have spoiled the fun of it.

Bob and I weren't old enough to swim in the pool, but after covering ourselves with watermelon juice we splashed in the creek to wash ourselves off.

Looking back now I can see that those were good years for me, those warm summers among the South Carolina pines and the cozy winters around the big stove, with Mama reading to us from the Bible Story Book that was illustrated with all the pretty, if sometimes scary, pictures. We were very poor, and any toys that we had were handmade, not store bought, and it was a rare occasion when Daddy had a spare penny to buy me a stick of hard candy at the General Store on one of his trips to town. But it's true that you don't miss what you've never had, and I was a happy little boy in those days before we left the farm and moved to town.

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