The Old Man And His Books

The Old Man and His Books (one part only)

A few years back, in 1931, my husband, my son James, and I were evicted from our home in Colorado. My husband had just come home from work one day when the landlord came and ushered us all out of the apartment. We sold everything that anyone would buy and tried to look for a new place to stay. We only made a few hundred dollars but we were able to stay at my brother's house for over a year then. A few months later, my husband lost his job. This was the point where everything really started falling apart. We barely had enough money as it was, trying to support James, who was only five. I tried not to depend on my brother too much, because his family was having it just as rough as we were. And then, as if things couldn't get any worse, my brother came down with tuberculosis, and I knew I couldn't let my son get it. We didn't have any money for medicine, so we left.

            It was off to Hooverville for us. We packed up the few belongings we had and headed out. We had heard of the shantytowns popping up everywhere since the depression hit, but I had never seen one in person. I remembered the first time we saw the shantytown. It was a dismal place. The town was on the outskirts of Denver, and the whole area was barren as a result of the Dust Bowl. There were rows of lopsided wooden shacks, ratty and torn tents, and dirty people sitting on cardboard boxes. We must have looked completely lost because an old man came out of his home and offered us the shack next door. The old man had tan and leathery skin, and he was wearing an old shirt and some worn out trousers. He had a full head of silvery hair and a long, coarse beard to go with it. My family accepted graciously and started to make our new home. We didn't have much to work with, though, there were only thin wooden planks as a door and covering the floor. The shack had only one room, and the previous owners left no furniture or belongings behind. I remember James was huddled in the corner of the shack that very first day, with pure fear in his eyes. It broke my heart, but I couldn't blame him. This life wasn't the one I had wanted to provide for him, but I didn't have much of a choice. The day after was the first day James started coughing. He didn't have very long coughing episodes, but his head had started to get warm. It was clear he had gotten tuberculosis from my brother. I tried to keep him healthy, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he'd be too sick to continue.

The first week in Hooverville was the toughest. We were just getting accustomed to our new lives, and it wasn't easy. Each day my husband would go out and find odd jobs to do, but he never made much money. He also tried to collect stray supplies or food wherever he could find it. If anything, he would bring back small cans of food, firewood, and Hoover Blankets. The newspapers didn't keep us very warm at night, not to mention the headlines were always hard to read. Every time, it was about another business that went bankrupt or a bank that had to close. My family was one of the many unfortunate ones that hadn't been able to get our money out of the bank before it was shut down. We wouldn't have been able to buy much anyway, with the tariffs and all. Now we only had a few dollars saved up, for emergencies.

Living in the shantytown was hardest on James, because he had nothing to keep him preoccupied. He had always been adventurous, but he was sick so he couldn't ever do much of anything. One day, he went outside, and when he came back into the shack, he had the old man from next door in tow. We hadn't seen much of the old man since the first day we had been there. James said he had visited the man that day, and that we should meet him. We invited him over, I thought it would be nice to get to know someone in this town. We all sat down around a fire and I asked the old man how he ended up here. I remember his story like it was yesterday. "I've been here awhile, I was one of the first. The Depression took everything from me," he told us, "I used to own a small book shop in town, but it went under as soon as the depression hit. It never made much money in the first place. I used to do the stocks too, I thought I had good luck so I put all my savings into it. I lost everything when the market crashed. My job, my house, my money, my family, it was all gone. I moved here and tried to start over, but it's a hard life. I had a son, he died awhile back. The Great War took him, he was too young. My wife, she was never the same after our son had passed. And then when the shop closed, she found and man with more money and ran off with him. That was the last time I ever saw her." I remember how his wrinkled face twisted and cringed as he told us about his life.

​After that, my son visited the old man regularly. His tuberculosis was becoming more and more apparent each day, and I warned him not to get the old man sick. They were inseparable nevertheless. The one thing the old man had left was a collection of books from his old store, and James would always come back from the man's house with a new book to read. One day it would be The Story of Babar, and the next, The Velveteen Rabbit. His absolute favorite, though, was The Little Engine That Could. Oh how he loved that book. He would sit in the corner of our shack and read that book over and over again. The old man was generous, and James had taken a real liking to him. He and his books were the only thing that could bring a smile to James' face anymore. My husband and I acted as if the man was an old friend of ours, too. He was lonely without his family, so we all spent a lot of time with him. I remember once he told me and my husband that James reminded us a lot of his son, and how my husband and James and I were like family to him now.

​Everything changed on a dry day in June of 1933. The wind had been unusually still that morning, but at the time I thought nothing of it. Later that afternoon, as I was going about my daily chores, the wind started to pick up. Huge gusts were tearing across the town, sweeping up and knocking over anything not firmly planted into the ground. I grabbed James who was outside and my family ducked into our shack. Our home didn't have any windows or cracks, so very little dust and dirt had gotten in. I covered my mouth and nose with my skirt so I wouldn't breathe in anything. The gusts went on for what seemed like forever, and I remember hearing the wind blowing and the dirt tumbling past. Eventually, the winds started to slow and the dust started to settle. I had gone outside and seen our shack was completely plastered with dust. The old man's shack was not as well constructed as ours, and we rushed over to make sure he was alright. When we had gotten there, there were piles of soil all over the floor. We couldn't find the old man anywhere, but my son pointed him out, drowned in a pile of dirt. James had fallen to his knees then and quietly sobbed while holding the old man's hand. My husband and I carried his frail, lifeless body out of the shack and laid him down behind ours. We dug a shallow grave and placed him in it. I wanted to see if he had any belongings we could bury with him, so I returned to his shack. As I looked around, I had seen that everything from floor to ceiling was caked in dust. I was brushing the dust off when I had come across a table. I found a pile of scattered pictures and a stack of old books. The book on top was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That was my favorite book growing up. I clutched it to my chest and shed a tear. I held on to the book and rummaged through the pictures and saw what looked like family portraits and pictures of his old book shop. I collected them and brought them back outside with me, along with the book. I laid them next to the old man in his grave, and then filled in the grave with soil. The old man had become such a big part of our lives at that point, and the Dust Bowl ripped him away from us. I realized we had never thought to ask him his name, but I don't believe we ever needed to know it.

​Shortly after, James became too sick to continue. He would sit inside coughing all day long. He missed the old man so much, I think the only reason he had been able to go on so long when he was so sick was because of his friendship with the old man. It seemed that James had been sicker from heartbreak than tuberculosis at that point. But on a cool July evening in 1933, just after he had turned six, James was fully consumed by the tuberculosis. I had known this day was coming for almost a year, but I still felt blindsided. We decided to bury him right next to the old man, it's what both of them would have wanted. My husband and I dug a small grave for him, and laid newspapers down before we set him down on the dirt. I surrounded James in the many books the old man had given him. Then, I took special care to place The Little Engine that Could on James' chest and wrap his arms around it. I wanted him to have his favorite book with him forever. I remember I had kneeled down beside him in his grave and kissed his forehead before I helped my husband replace the soil on top on James.