Brief Moment in Time

by Dicksion, William Wayne

  I found a room for rent in a big apartment house that had been converted into a rooming house. The place was old, looked bad, and smelled worse. I later found out that the bad odor was from being so close to the docks. But suited me just fine, as it was within walking distance to work. I was home only to sleep and prepare my meals. I ate dry cereal for breakfast and made sandwiches for lunch and ate supper at a little fast-food restaurant.

  I spent most of my time either working or sleeping. It was easy to save money, but I had three problems: One was how to earn enough money to return home to finish my senior year of high school and to help my family back in Oklahoma. My second problem was contending with drunken sailors on shore leave.

  To young servicemen in those days, the worst thing a man could be was a draft dodger or a zoot-suiter. The nearest I can come to describing a zoot-suiter is a wildly overdressed young man who was assumed to be avoiding his duty to his country. I was a young man and not in uniform, so to a drunken sailor I had to be either a draft dodger or a zoot-suiter, and it was their duty to beat up on me.

  Since I got off work at midnight and the sailors were returning to their ships at the same time, there was no way to avoid them. They were always in groups of two or more. I had to fight my way home every night. The training Dad gave me in self-defense came in handy. When people ask what I did in the war, I tell them, “I fought the battle of Long Beach Boulevard.”

  My third problem was almost as bad. The shipyard was a union shop, which meant that you had to belong to the union to work there. I felt that there were so many men fighting for our country that it was my duty to do the best work I could, and in my opinion, the union didn’t do that. So my way of expressing my disapproval of having to be a union member was to wear the union button on the seat of my pants.

  The union steward wanted the boss to fire me, but my boss told the union man that since I was a good worker, and I was complying with the union rule of wearing the union button, he had no grounds on which to fire me. I kept my job, but it sure caused me a lot of trouble, until one day the union steward was involved in a labor accident. The union steward was burning the old paint off of the anchor locker, and passed out from breathing too much lead and sulfur fumes. I was nearby and saved him from suffocating. Things went a little better after that.

  It was September now, and time for me to return to Oklahoma to complete my senior year of school. I quit my job, took all of my paychecks to the bank, and asked the teller to give me the money in hundred-dollar bills. It came to a little more than four hundred dollars. I wanted to show Dad that I was worth my salt because he had always told me, “Son, you’ll never be worth your salt.” Four hundred dollars in 1943 would buy a lot of salt.

  Aunt Lois and Uncle Don took me to the bus station in Long Beach to catch the Greyhound bus to Oklahoma. At the station, while I was buying my ticket, a young lady walked up and stood at the counter beside me. She was waiting to buy hers and her younger sister’s tickets to Noblesville, Indiana. I didn’t notice that she had set her suitcase down right behind me. When I turned to walk away, I tripped over her suitcase, stumbled, and fell the full length of the bus station.

  Everyone in the station was laughing. I wasn’t hurt, but I was embarrassed and angry. I walked back to the counter and asked her why she had done such a stupid thing as setting her suitcase down right behind me. I expected an apology, but instead, her reply was: “Me, stupid? Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  This brought on more peals of laughter. I didn’t like her comment, but I admired her spunk, saw the humor of the situation, and joined in the laughter.

  The seats on the bus were not reserved, and you could sit anywhere you wanted, so I selected a window seat in the first row by the front door. I wanted to be able to see out the front of the bus as well as have a view to the side. I was first on the bus and took my seat. Then here came the young lady—the source of my embarrassment—and her sister. Wouldn’t you know it, they sat right behind me. I thought, This is going to be a long ride. I had to admit they were both pretty. With the luck I had with girls, I felt I had better just steer clear. No such luck, the younger one looked right at me and laughed as they entered the bus. I returned a sick smile and slid down in my seat.

  I had been right about one thing; it was a long ride. The bus made rest stops every two hours, and meal stops every four. The trip to Dallas took a couple of days. Since the seat beside me was empty, the girls occasionally took turns sitting beside me, and we talked. As the trip wore on, the older one spent more time with me. I enjoyed her company, and she seemed to enjoy mine. She told me something of her life, and I must have told her my whole life story.

  The girls had been visiting their older sister, who lived in Glendale. Their sister’s husband had been in the navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They were returning home for the fall semester of school, the same as I was; only they were going to Indiana and I was going to Oklahoma. Needless to say, after spending many hours sharing the same seats, we became well acquainted. The girls’ names were Wanda Ellen and Cynthiana Kepner. I had to change to another bus in Dallas while their bus proceeded on to Indiana. But before we parted, we exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch.

  The following Christmas, I sent Wanda a Christmas card, but I received nothing in return, and I never knew if she had gotten my card. Then one day in late February, I saw an open envelope lying on the dresser in Mother and Dad’s room addressed to Bill Dicksion. It was from Noblesville, Indiana. I knew instantly who it was from and why I hadn’t been told of its arrival.

  In Oklahoma, everyone referred to me by my middle name, Wayne. My father and I have the same first name. He, at times, had been called Bill. I picked up the envelope and removed the card. It was a Valentine from Wanda. The only writing I remember was the signature. I laid the card back on the dresser and went to the barn to do the chores.

  Dad was in the barn working with the animals. When Dad was in the army in World War I, he had spent time in Indiana. He had no way of knowing who the card was from, and I had never mentioned meeting the two girls from Indiana.

  “Dad, who’s the person in Indiana that sent you a Valentine card?” I asked casually.

  “You know, I’ve no idea who that’s from,” he replied, turning his head to one side as he looked at me.

  I never said a word; I never told him that I knew the sender. He must have wondered who that card was from for the rest of his life.

  There was no further exchange between Wanda and me until we met again when I happened to be visiting California in 1944. I don’t remember how I knew she was back in Glendale, but I must have gotten the information somehow because we resumed our relationship. We married in 1945.

  A TRIBUTE TO MY MOTHER AND TO THE WOMEN WHO WERE THE TRUE HEROES OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

  A Day in the Life of a Woman in the Early West

  The grandfather clock on the wall strikes four and Almeda awakens. She arises quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping husband, then removes her homemade dress from a peg and pulls it over her head. While still silting on the bed she runs a curved comb through her long black hair and pins it into place with the comb. Almeda then walks on bare feet across a floor of rough-hewn boards that had been worn smooth from long years of wear.

  While making her way to the kitchen, she checks on her children. Her three boys are sleeping, huddled under the warm comforters she had made. Her daughter is sleeping soundly in her own small bed with the covers pulled up around her chin.

  Almeda feels her way through the dark house, then lights a kerosene lamp that is sitting on the dining table. The lamp gives off only a feeble light. She pours water into a pan and washes her face and hands.

  She uses no powder, rouge, or lipstick. Being attractive isn’t her concern. She has more important things to do. She’s not a big woman, but she’s strong and capable. Her eyes are brown and her nature is to be kind and gentle, but she can be stern with her chil
dren if the need arises.

  The walls of the three-room house are covered with coarse blue paper attached to the walls with short nails driven through thin metal washers, giving the walls a buttoned look. The wallpaper serves the triple purpose of covering the cracks between the ill-fitting boards and keeping out the cold wind in the winter and the insects in the summer. The blue paper is fading where moisture and sunlight has left streaks running up and down the walls. Three oval-shaped tintype pictures of her family hang on the wall.

  Wooden pegs line the wall near the backdoor for hanging hats, caps, coats, and jackets and are handy for grabbing what you need on your way out.

  The room is twenty feet square and serves the dual purposes of dining room and living room. A large oval-shaped dining table that seats eight almost fills one end of the room. The table is the best furniture in the house and the most used. Six cane-bottomed chairs sit around the table. The strands of cane in some of the chairs are broken. The broken cane pokes and scratches the occupant, so Almeda has placed thin pillows over the worst of them. She sits on one of the pillows as she pulls on a pair of coarsely made shoes.

  A pot-belled stove sits in one corner of the room; its pipe extends through the ceiling. The cook stove is on the other side of the room near the back door. A window over the stove allows Almeda to see the backyard, the well, and the fields beyond.

  The garden is just to the left of the back door, about fifty feet away, and the barn is down a lane another three hundred feet.

  Almeda goes to the cook stove to build a fire with kindling that was prepared the previous night. Using paper from an old Sears catalog, she crumples the pages, pours on a few drops of kerosene, and lights a match. The light from the match and the burning paper brightens up the dark room. She lays heavier pieces of wood on the kindling and soon has a fire hot enough for cooking breakfast.

  She then picks up the pail, steps out the back door and walks thirty feet along a footpath to the well. The darkness is less intense outside. It’s a crisp spring morning and the sky is filled with stars, but she has no time for looking at stars; her mind is filled with the things she must do. This day, like all others, she has more to do than she can possibly get done.

  A bucket is attached to a rope and a pulley hangs from a crossbeam over the well. After Almeda draws water and transfers it into the pail, then returns to the house, and pours a portion of the water into an iron compartment that has been built onto the side of the stove. The water in the compartment will be heated while she cooks breakfast and later used for washing dishes. She also pours water into a fire-blackened coffee pot, and puts coffee grounds into the water, and sets the pot on the stove.

  It’s time to awaken the rest of the family, so she goes to her husband and gently shakes his shoulder. “Maddon,” she says. “It’s time to milk the cows and do the morning chores. You and the boys had better get started.” Then she goes to her daughter’s bed. “Get up, Naoma; it’s time to fix breakfast.”

  As she walks back into the kitchen, she hears her husband’s deep, commanding voice: “All right boys, it’s time to get a move on.”

  The boys tumble out of their warm bed. They know to do any less than hurry will incur their father’s wrath, and none of them wants to do that. In a matter of minutes, the boys hurry out the back door, grabbing their caps, jackets, and milk pails as they go. They dash away to the barn to begin their morning chores.

  Maddon is a big man, strong, gruff as a grizzly and as unrelenting as a barbed-wire fence, but it’s only a facade. Underneath all that gruffness, he is gentle and kind-hearted.

  When he was a young man, he was handsome, but the ravages of time have taken their toll. Now, he is just big, strong, and intimidating. He’s the type of man other men respect, but his children walk softly in his presence.

  Nothing—man, woman, or beast—intimidates Almeda.

  The male members of the family milk the cows, gather the eggs, feed and care for the animals. Almeda and Naoma bake biscuits for breakfast and cookies for the children’s lunches. They scramble eggs, fry ham, and make flour gravy. There’s also honey to go with the biscuits. Breakfast is ready when the men return from doing their chores. The adults drink coffee, while the children drink fresh milk. Everything except the coffee has been produced on the farm.

  Almeda insists on saying grace. No one can touch a fork until everybody is ready to eat, and no one can leave the table until everyone is through. They discuss their plans for the day, and everyone knows what everyone else will be doing.

  After breakfast, Almeda must get the children off to school. Their clothes must be clean, lunches prepared and packed. Almeda makes sure they have their homework with them as they leave. She then helps Maddon prepare for tending the fields. If he needs help, she’ll be there, ready, willing and able to do whatever is needed.

  After she has gotten everybody off, her day is just beginning. The dishes must be washed and the house cleaned. She uses soap that she has made from the waste oil from her cooking. She has made her broom by tying broom weeds to a stout stick.

  She then goes to the garden, tills it with a hoe, plants seeds in the warm, moist soil that will, in time, produce vegetables. When she harvests the vegetables, she’ll preserve the extras for winter by canning them in Mason jars.

  Once each week, she washes and irons the clothes, but before she can wash, she must heat the water in a large cast-iron pot. She draws water, gathers wood, and builds a fire under a big iron pot. She dips hot water from the pot, pours it into a washtub, and blends the hot and cold water until she has the proper temperature. She then scrubs the clothes on a scrub board.

  Almeda makes her starch from corn. After completing the wash, she wrings the clothes by hand and hangs them on a clothesline to dry. Then the clothes must be taken in and ironed. She’ll heat the irons on the kitchen stove, and after the clothes are ironed, folds them and put them away. She also mends the clothes that need mending, and cut anything too damaged to repair into pieces, to be used for making quilts.

  At midday, she prepares dinner for her husband, and if she has time, in the afternoon she’ll lower the quilting frame from the ceiling and work on a quilt.

  At about four o’clock, she starts preparing supper. Soon the children will be returning from school and her husband will be coming in from the fields, tired and dirty. He and the children will attend to their own baths, but she must have clean clothes and towels ready.

  Mealtime is more than a time for feeding the body. Almeda says, "It’s also a time to feed the mind.” Conversation and debate are encouraged.

  When the evening meal is over, the dishes are washed and the kitchen made ready for cooking tomorrow’s breakfast. With the household tasks completed, she’ll doctor her family’s aches and pains, and the medicines she uses are mostly of her own making. She uses soap and hot water to cleanse wounds, and then swabs the wounds with kerosene to prevent infection. If she can get aspirin, she’ll use it for relieving pain. Laxatives are made from a plant that grows wild along the creeks. The local people called the laxative "Black Draught" and it tastes terrible. The children call it “Black Death.”

  Almeda and Maddon have only a limited education, but when they can, they help the children with their homework. Then the family sits and talks or plays games such as dominos, checkers, chess, or cards. Sometimes she and Maddon tell stories of how it was when they were growing up.

  The children like to hear the stories their mother tells of coming west in a covered wagon. They never tire of hearing stories of their father’s experiences in the war. They also enjoy stories about their grandfather’s knowledge of, and in some instances, associations with the outlaw gangs that roamed the West.

  After everyone is bedded down, Almeda will blow out the lights and go to the bed she shares with her husband. The sounds of her sleeping family, and the mournful howling of the coyotes lull her to sleep.

  Her life is hard, but she wouldn’t trade it for the life of anyone she has e
ver heard of.

  Only a few statues have been built, and fewer memorials erected, to honor the women of the West, but Almeda and thousands of women like her are truly the people who won the West.

  * * *

  POEMS

  THE WRITER’S GIFT

  Oh come with me my lonely friend

  I’ll take you to a place you’ve never been.

  It’s just over the hill beyond our view.

  A place of beauty where dreams come true.

  A wide and fertile valley where the sky is clear,

  Fruit is bountiful, and there’s plenty of deer.

  A bright warm sun lights the way.

  Once you’re there, you’re there to stay.

  Sunlight glistens in the water of the creek.

  You don’t have to be brave; it’s a land for the meek.

  Beauty is complete wherever you look.

  You can do what you want, even read a book.

  Men are strong, sturdy, and moral.

  Women are beautiful, loving, and loyal.

  Love is universal, so you don’t have to choose.

  Everyone is handsome; there is no way to lose.

  So come with me, my frightened friends.

  I’ll take you to a place where life never ends.

  It’s a place without misery, hunger, or care.

  Sit with me a while in this old rocking chair.

  But is it true? You ask with hope.

  Of course it’s true, you silly dope.

  Truth is simply what you perceive.