Crazy Quilt: (memoir) stitching life's tales together any which way

A Little Kindness

My father grew up in rural Wyoming during the Great Depression, against which the troubles of 2020 pale in comparison. He remembers one long stretch when the family had nothing but bread and potatoes to eat. Nothing else. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

They counted themselves lucky, since plenty of town-folk were going hungry. The family did at least have that home-made bread, and the reject potatoes from their fields that weren't worth selling or trading.

Unemployed men traveled the country desperate for work. The hobo network had flagged my grandparents' place as worth a stop. My grandmother never turned down a request for food, although she always pointed out a task or two they could do for her in return.

My grandmother sewed, patched and darned since the budget had no room for new clothing -- or for new shoes. The kids went barefoot most of the time. After schoolwork and chores were done, my father and his siblings entertained themselves with home-made toys, a wagon and bicycle they cobbled together from salvaged parts, and adventures out in the fields and scrub.

In his life story my father wrote about one jaunt to a particular hillside that drew the children back again and again until it became a tradition they would never miss.

"My first memory of a home was on what was called a desert improvement claim that dad had filed on that he knew he could not prove up on, but it gave him a legal right to be there for three years, so he assembled a cabin out of discarded railroad ties.

"The cabin was built into a hillside that protected it on the west and the north sides from the cold winter winds that blew through there. The area lived up to its name of Wind River. There was a wind blowing most of the time, and during the winter that wind would be thirty below zero. I don't know what the chill factor would have been.

"The railroad ran across the east side of the property. My sister and brothers and I discovered that if we ran up the hill to where the railroad ran through a cut in the hillside, we could look right into the cabin of the engine when it came along. The engineer enjoyed breaking the monotony, too. He'd see us coming, he'd salute us with his whistle, and wave to us as he went by. We'd watch him go by and have our fun and go back down to the house.

"One Christmas he tooted long and loud. We got out there, and saw him swinging a burlap bag out the window. As he approached the cut, he tossed it. That bag was just half full of toys and clothes and stuff that we couldn't afford. That was like Santa Claus riding a train.

"Anyway, we never missed waving to him when he went by again!"

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Doll quilt in photo at top: sewn by my Wyoming grandmother, using up every little scrap of cloth.