\u201cBrother, Can You Spare a Dime?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lyrics by Yip Harburg, 1932<\/em><\/p>\n At the time of the crash, my grandparents were living on the second floor of an aging two-story wooden tenement on Portland\u2019s lower east side. It was located down around the docks, near the old Hawthorne Bridge.<\/p>\n My grandfather hadn\u2019t held a steady, full-time job in almost, a year. Their tight-fisted savings were dwindling. Nevertheless, after my mother\u2019s breakup with Neff, they took us in without question.<\/p>\n It was a small, low-rent apartment. My mother slept on a pullout couch, or daybed, in the front room. I slept on a folding cot they put up in my grandparents\u2019 bedroom. It was close quarters\u2014but we had no choice. We all shared the one small bathroom.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My mother immediately started job hunting. Day after day and week after week, she followed every lead, every rumor, every idea\u2014to a dead end. I think she did work one three-or-four-day stretch as a part-time waitress in a Southeast 12th street coffee shop. Then nothing. No job. Nothing. It was an agonizing time for her. I felt it. And I remember how I wished that I could do something to help. I was in my third school at the time\u2014finishing up third grade.<\/p>\n Then the irrepressible Agnes Peterson stepped in. She helped my mother to get a job in Battuzi\u2019s speakeasy as a hat check girl. It paid nothing. But Battuzi let the girls keep their tips. Agnes also invited my mother to come share her west side apartment. And my mother gratefully accepted the offer. However, with Agnes and my mother both working late into the night, I remained with my grandparents.<\/p>\n That was the start of a new way of life for me, It went on for several years. Sometimes I lived with my grandparents. Sometimes I lived with my mother. Sometimes I lived with my mother and friends.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In 1930, my grandfather, Jim Dewey, was approaching sixty. He was tough, stocky, hard-muscled, with a full head of shaggy white hair and bristling black eyebrows. His hands were rough and calloused. These were the hands of a laboring man.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Over the years, Jim Dewey proudly remained a loyal, long-time, dues-paying, card-carrying member of the Laborers International Union of North America, AFL (American Federation of Labor), Local 296.<\/p>\n I remember one bleak day in \u201831 or \u201832, when he took me with him to the Portland AFL Labor Temple in search of a job. He’d heard the City was hiring four additional laborers for a short-term pipeline replacement project.<\/p>\n That morning, when we walked into the smoky hiring hall, the place was already jammed with what must have been two-hundred men, maybe more, lined up to get their names in the job draw. Yet the entire hall was strangely quiet\u2014eerily quiet. A strong feeling of anxiety hung in the air.<\/p>\n My grandfather observed the scene. Then, grabbing my hand, he led me to a far back corner of the hall, where he opened the door into some kind of bustling business office. There, he told an elderly secretary he wanted to see his old friend, Andy Hawkins, for just a moment\u2014to introduce him to the Dewey grandson.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how I first met Andy Hawkins, famed business manager of Local 296 and a big shot in Oregon labor circles. He must have weighed a ton. As he stood there in the doorway to his office, face flushed and breathing laboriously, he cheerfully greeted my grandfather like he was a long lost buddy from the picket lines. We were invited into the inner office. Hawkins seated his bulk behind a giant wooden desk.<\/p>\n My grandfather and Hawkins proceeded to talk on and on about the old days, the labor front, hard times, Democratic politics, the four city job openings, and Andy Hawkins\u2019 aching back.<\/p>\n When it was time for us to leave, Hawkins took both myhands in his big paws, looked me in the eyes, smiled a big, fat genial smile, and said, \u201cOkay now, young fella, I want you to be sure and grow up to be a good, solid labor union man. Ya hear?\u201d And he deftly slipped me a folded dollar bill.<\/p>\n Afterwards, my grandfather took me into the Labor Temple cafeteria, where I bought us sandwiches for lunch, with two-bits left over\u2014thanks to our favorite labor boss, Andy Hawkins.<\/p>\n The following Monday, Jim Dewey was one of four \u201clucky\u201d union laborers who reported to the City for work, digging ditches with pick and shovel, ten hours a day, six days a week. That back-breaking job lasted three, maybe four months.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In our neighborhood, all the younger kids seemed tohave apple box scooters. My grandfather helped me to make mine. We started with a hunk of 2×4′ about three or four feet long. On the bottom, we attached old roller skate wheels, well-oiled. We screwed two in front, two in back. On the top, we nailed upright a solid, wooden apple box, which our friendly neighborhood grocer gave to me. We screwed a pair of whittled wooden handles on the top\u00a0of the box. And that was all there was to it. Voila<\/em>. I had myself a hand-crafted Hood River apple box scooter.<\/p>\n The kids raced these scooters. Mine turned out to be a slow racer. But I did get to a level where I could boldly roll for almost half a block, balanced on the 2×4′<\/em>, without using the apple box handles. \u201cLook, Ma, no hands!\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n There was no letup. As the 1930s wore on, the Depression worsened. \u201830, \u201831, \u201832 were the cruelest years. Almost one-third of the nation’s workforce was out of a job. Another 25% or more worked part time. Those lucky enough to have some kind of job found that wages were about half of what they were during the \u201cRoaring Twenties. More corporations, large and small, were going under. All over the US, banks were collapsing, closing their doors, taking people\u2019s savings accounts down with them. It was an epidemic. People were bewildered. A sick feeling of fear swept across the land.<\/em><\/p>\n Thousands of homeless families lived in Hooverville \u201cshanty towns\u201d\u2014vast clusters of wooden crates, tar paper, tin and cardboard, jammed under bridges, in dry creek beds, culverts or wherever they could huddle. Long<\/em>lines of men, numbering in the hundreds, could be seen constantly crowding employment offices and factory gates or applying for relief, or lined up at the soup kitchens or in the bread lines\u2014long double lines that went all the way around the block. Bands of hungry teens roamed the country like scavengers, begging or stealing food. Crowds of men and women rode the freights and rails, searching for jobs, food, or any small semblance of a settled life. There were hunger riots in several cities. A growing class struggle. Widespread disillusionment. Unrest. Even talk of revolution.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I knew it was hard times for us, too. But as a kid, I didn’t question it. In no way did I consider us poor. In fact, if anyone had told me we were poor, I would have been astounded. There were so many desperate people much worse off than we were. Besides, everybody around us seemed to be in the same boat.<\/p>\n We got along.<\/p>\n My grandmother made every scrap of food go a long way. We seldom had leftovers. Although I do think she sometimes made a little extra just to pass along to an elderly Jewish couple who lived next door. No complaining was called for, however, in our family. During those troubled times, there always seemed to be a bowl of oatmeal or cereal on the table for breakfast. For supper, I remember that we ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, biscuits and gravy, and such things as soups and thinned out stews, fish on Friday, all kinds of vegetables, baked potatoes\u2014lots of baked potatoes\u2014beans and rice. For a special Sunday dinner once in awhile, we\u2019d even have fried chicken, or a pot roast, and one of my grandmother\u2019s fresh-baked apple pies.<\/p>\n Our local grocers, a pair of Armenian brothers, helped out their regular customers in the neighborhood. They\u2019d let us have overripe bananas, and other fruit, too, just before it turned rotten. That\u2019s the moment when the flavor is intense and at its best, anyway. In that same vein, I would often get to bring home wilted, unsold vegetables to go in my grandmother\u2019s pot of \u201cMulligan Stew,” simmering away on the wood-burning stove. We had no gas or electricity for cooking.<\/p>\n We got along.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Frostkist Dairy and Ice Cream Company was located a few blocks away from where we lived The Frostkist\u00a0folks helped out people in the neighborhood, too, by selling us run-off skim milk at five cents a gallon. Limit: one gallon to a family per week. So once a week after school, my grandparents gave me the job of wheeling my old red wagon over to Frostkist, with a lidded gallon bucket, to pick up our allotment.The guys at Frostkist would joke around with me on the loading dock, and fill my bucket with milk. But the exciting thing was\u2014every week they\u2019d give me one of their Popsicle or ice cream bar seconds. These were badly formed bars they couldn\u2019t sell.Once, they gave me an entire box of a dozen deformed frozen Popsicles. Great! I licked away at one fruit Popsicle on the way home with the gallon of milk. However, by the time I got home, the remaining Popsicles were softly melting. I handed them out to other kids who were hanging around. I heard no complaints.<\/p>\n It was also my job to pick up stale bread, two-or-three- day\u2019s-old, at the baker\u2019s. Sometimes the baker would give me a cookie or a bear claw<\/em>, to eat on the way home. That kind of friendly gesture was typical.<\/p>\n There seemed to be a sense of communal spirit during the Depression. People shared the troubles. I think people went out of their way in those gritty times to show others a little touch of kindness along the way.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My grandfather taught me how to make an instant \u201cpoor man\u2019s dessert\u201d using that stale bread. Here\u2019s how you do it: Take a piece of white bread. Wet it under the water faucet.Sprinkle sugar lightly over the bread. Sprinkle cinnamon on top of that. And there you have it. Delicious!<\/p>\n On those special mornings when my grandmother was willing to go along with the fun, my grandfather would also make huge obscene pancakes for breakfast, one at a time. These were doughy giants, believe me. Each pancake covered the entire bottom of our biggest frying pan. He\u2019d make ’em about one-half inch thick. When he figured they were ready, golden brown on top, he\u2019d slide one on my plate and pour Log Cabin<\/em> syrup all over the top. And in his best, bawdy style, he\u2019d sing out, \u201cGo ahead, eat your way through this one, Billy. It\u2019ll put lead in your pencil.\u201d Then he\u2019d chuckle to himself and pour out the batter for another one, coming right up.<\/p>\n After one of those giant pancake mornings, I\u2019d plod down the stairs with a full belly, indeed.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Christmas during this time in my life was on the lean side. Those fancy holiday packages usually contained necessities\u2014like socks, underwear and handkerchiefs.<\/p>\n However, on my ninth birthday I did receive an exciting Chandu the Magician<\/em> set with all kinds of sleight-of-hand paraphernalia. I took to this magical array like a young Houdini.<\/p>\n Once, when the Martells came over for Sunday dinner, I set up a card table with a sheet over it and put on a show that totally mystified them\u2014I think. Anyway, they applauded wildly. Magic became a hobby I thoroughly enjoyed. Later on, it got me started delving into strange and obscure books on early magic and mysticism.<\/p>\n When I made objects disappear, such as coins, handkerchiefs, cards, that sort of thing, I spoke in what I called a magical cabalian chant. It was simply a bit of Indian-French-Canadian doggeral taught me by my grandfather. Phonetically, these were the \u201cmagical words\u201d: Bo-Knee-Bo-Nah . . . Ch-Plee-Ch-Plah . . . Koo- Row-Shmah . . . Bow-Yer-Kiv-Yah.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I owned two pair of shoes at the time. One was a pair of leather oxfords and one was a pair of Keds<\/em>. When I wore holes through the soles of the oxfords, my grandfather would carefully cut out cardboard insoles for me to stuff inside. It\u2019s surprising how well that worked\u2014 for awhile.<\/p>\n I also owned a pair of rubbers for walking in the rain.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Geography was an early favorite of mine in grammar school. I even learned how to spell the name of the capital city of Turkey by singing the silly lyrics of a song that went like this: \u201cCon-stan-ti-nople . . . C-O-N-S-T-A- N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E.\u201d In 1930, this had been a popular ditty.<\/p>\n Then in 1931, the wily Turks turned around and changed the name of their capital city to Istanbul<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My grandmother, Josephine Martell Dewey, had a passion for Pinochle, which she sometimes called Bezique<\/em>. I often listened and watched the grownups play. Early on, I learned that my grandmother was an awesome card player. The other players handled her with caution and care and the utmost respect.<\/p>\n She was a big woman, broad in the beam. She would sit royally at the end of the table,straight up, impassive, surveying the scene, quietly goading other players into overbidding. I noticed that in a pinochle game, she consistently won trick after trick, piling up the points.<\/p>\n She would have made a great poker player.<\/p>\n I spent a lot of time with my grandmother during those early Depression years. She was a smart, tough, soft-hearted woman with a sly sense of humor. She let my grandfather do the posturing and the roaring. But she controlled the purse strings. She knew exactly how much money we had left at any moment, what still had to be paid out, what had to be stretched.<\/p>\n She taught me how to play Papillon<\/em>, the ancient card game that is easy to learn, yet so difficult to master. We would frequently sit at the kitchen table and play all evening long\u2014-just the two of us. A few years later, I discovered that everybody else in America seemed to call the game Casino<\/em>.<\/p>\n My grandmother had the ability to keep track of almost every card played in Papillon<\/em>, so that when we came down to the last deal, she always had a good idea of what four cards I was holding. It was infuriating.<\/p>\n In playing a game of cards, she showed no mercy. She forced me to study the cards carefully and to do my best. She taught me something else, too. She would wiggle her finger in my face and speaking in her fractured French- Canadian accent, she would warn me, \u201cPlay smart, Byron. Play smart. But nevair cheat at cards. Nevair. Nevair.\u201d<\/p>\n A good lesson for playing at cards\u2014and life.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n During those days, my grandfather made a good full- flavored home brew. Strictly for our own family and friends, his beer was a big hit at family dinners and pinochle parties.<\/p>\n However, with no steady job and with the Depression pushing us toward the bottom, he began a little local bootlegging to bring in some extra money. He would take advance orders and then deliver the finished product\u2014a case or two here, a case or two there, mostly to industrial workers at the machine shops and warehouses in our neighborhood and down around the docks.<\/p>\n He cooked the malt and the hops and the other fixings in an old 10-gallon enamel kettle. Then he\u2019d siphon the cooled wort into glass jugs, adding the yeast. In about\u00a0a week, the product was ready for bottling.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother would come over to help out at this point. We used a thin rubber hose about five or six feet long. When my grandfather sucked on the hose and got the brew flowing, he would quickly hand it to me. It was my job to fill the bottles, working my way from one to another, trying my best to avoid spilling a drop.<\/p>\n My mother\u2019s job, kneeling next to me, was to carefully and firmly work the capper in order to get a tight seal. My grandfather would then get at the other end of the line, stacking the bottles in cases. Finally, the finished product was ready to move on out. We had a crude but effective small batch operation going.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In March 1931, our fourth grade class had a short history lesson the day after an act of congress officially approved the \u201cStar Spangled Banner\u201d as our national anthem. We stood up in class and sang the new anthem as best we could, in our pre-pubescent voices.<\/p>\n The American poet, Francis Scott Key, wrote the \u201cStar Spangled Banner\u201d while he was held by the British during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. Later, his words were put to the tune of an old British drinking song and it became a patriotic 19th century American favorite.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always maintained, however, that congress made a mistake. They picked the wrong song. They should have selected \u201cAmerica,\u201d written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. Smith\u2019s simple and very moving work became the most popular song in the entire history of American music. And every school kid in America can reach all the notes, too.<\/p>\n My country. Tis of thee, ***<\/p>\n One other World War I aviation saga I wanted to see as a kid in the early \u201830s was Howard Hughes\u2019 aerial spectacular, \u201cHell’s Angels\u201d, starring that platinum- haired bombshell, Jean Harlow. \u201cHell’s Angels\u201d was a talkie. I never did get to see it, though. Later on, somebody told me the aerial dog fights were terrific, but the sound wasn’t so good.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In the third or fourth grade, I won third prize in a safety poster contest. Two Japanese sisters won first and second prize. I thought their posters were sensational. They were beautifully done. As soonas I saw their work, I figured they deserved to win. And they did.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n When the law came knocking on our door, I was home alone with my grandmother. It was late afternoon. She was in her bedroom, not feeling well.<\/p>\n I could hear them lumbering up the stairs. They knocked sharply on our door. I opened it. And there stood two large men. I remember they wore lumpy blue serge suits and green fedoras. One was silent. The other spoke in a flat voice.<\/p>\n \u201cIs Jim Dewey here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, six.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho\u2019s in here with you, son?\u201d<\/p>\n I hesitated. The spokesman flashed an open wallet at me. I saw a police badge.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re from police headquarters.\u201d<\/p>\n I squeaked out my reply. \u201cMy grandmother\u2019s here with me and she\u2019s sick in bed.\u201d My throat was dry. And I was scared.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019re takin\u2019 care of her, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, sir,\u201d I squeaked again.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it alright if we come in and look around?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess it\u2019s okay,\u201d I replied doubtfully. I really didn\u2019t know what else to say. Asking for a search warrant or anything like that was far beyond my state of mind.<\/p>\n For the next hour or so, these two plain clothes cops minutely ransacked our apartment from one end to the other. They asked me a lot of questions while they went about their search. For some reason, they were especially interested in our wood-burning stove. They peeked and poked all around inside and on the back and underneath.<\/p>\n Twice, they asked me when we had used the stove last. I told them early that morning.<\/p>\n Ironically, it wasn\u2019t -until the very end of their search that they discovered my grandfather\u2019s home brewing equipment, stacked neatly in a closet next to the front door where they first entered.<\/p>\n My grandfather had already made his deliveries that week from our most recent batch. All that remained was about a half a case of beer which he was saving for himself. The two cops examined the bottles of beer and our pitiful little stack of home brew equipment and looked at each other in disgust. One muttered something like, \u201cFor Chrissakes, Hal, this is nuthin\u2019. Let\u2019s get the hell out of here. We\u2019re wasting our time.\u201d<\/p>\n Hal gave me his card and told me to have my grandfather call him at headquarters the next day. They said they wanted Jim Dewey to come on down to headquarters for a little talk. Our phone hadbeen turned off for months, but I told them I\u2019d sure have my grandfather call him.<\/p>\n The two cops in mufti took our half a case of beer with them as they trudged on down the stairs. When they walked out the door, I also noticed for the first time that one of them wore white socks with his blue serge suit and green fedora.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My grandfather spent most of one day at the Portland police headquarters. When he came home, he told us an interesting story. It seems that somebody had reported to the police that Jim Dewey was running a big bootlegging and dope operation. So much for my budding career as a bootlegger.<\/p>\n
\nHis early days as a ranch hand and river boat roustabout had not prepared him well for the urban milieu. Throughout his years in Portland, he had to work hard\u2014-very hard\u2014as a\u00a0manual laborer. Yet he held to a fierce level of pride, salted with a strong sense of personal responsibility. He went from job to job, eking out a living for my grandmother and me and sometimes helping out my mother, too. Even when things looked hopeless, he stubbornly refused to apply for relief. And he retained a lusty sense of humor.This was at a time, too, when there was no such thing as a \u201csafety net\u201d. No unemployment compensation. No Social Security. No Medicare, or Medicaid, or insured savings. No federal help of almost any kind. There was only local community relief for the destitute\u2014and oftentimes little of that.<\/p>\n
\nThey were having an awfully hard time making it.<\/p>\n
\nSweet land of liberty,
\nOf thee I sing.
\nLand -where my fathers died.
\nLand of the Pilgrims\u2019 pride.
\nFrom every mountain side,
\nLet freedom ring!<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nOut of our little dump?After the questioning, the cop in charge sort of insulted my grandfather by telling him that our ten- gallon kettle and half a case of beer weren\u2019t worth the paper work it took to write ’em up. They gave my grandfather a stern warning, however. They told him to stop selling home brew\u2014period. Then they sent him on home.<\/p>\n