The Red Flower on my Cactus

It started with my morning coffee on my porch, during one of my favorite parts of the day.  I like to sit before the heat of the day assaults our little town, and listen to the wane of the crickets wrapping it up.  I've made the porch a little sanctuary, due in part to a little disorder I've come to call plant hoarding.  Today in particular, I noticed something new, a perfect, red flower on top of my Aunt Mildred's cactus.  It appeared overnight.  

Maybe I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today.  But the flower made me think of my Great Aunt Mildred, who passed away just about a year and half ago.  Before she passed, I'm so thankful a school assignment gave me a little motivation to document a part  of her life, and I think it's a story that is worthwhile to be shared, as she lived through a time many of us can't relate to very well.   Here's a little part of her story:

Mildred, age 11, and her sister, Ellie, were playing in field at their Oklahoma home.  The year was 1935, and the land was in the throws of the Great Depression.  It was the same year Mildred and her family would take the legendary Route 66 to a promised better life in California.  

And then, the girls, amongst their play, heard It. Something they had never heard before:  It started small, a whining in the distance…  but with increasing rumble the sound was soon to fall on them, and fill every nook and cranny of any previously safe place.  

Mildred and Ellie ran.  Their bare feet kicked up dust along the rows of peanuts battling to grow.  They struggled to make time against the net of faded, homemade,  cotton dress that entangled their knobby  knees.  

The noise did not retreat.  In fact, it’s mighty thundering grew.  In what they thought was life’s last attempt they dove, trying in vain to cover themselves with the sparse leaves of the peanut plants.  They looked up to the big Oklahoma sky, sure to witness the second coming of Christ, and to their surprise saw a big metal bird.  An airplane.  The first airplane they had ever seen, or for that matter heard.  It continued on its flight, unaware that two girls below were sure the breath they took was their last.  

Mildred  was born in Spiro, Oklahoma.  She lived with her family in a plain house on a dry patch of land.  They farmed peanuts, onions, and potatoes.  She was one of eight children.  She had six sisters named Bessie, Nina, Leila, Juanita, Mildred, Ella, Ellie and , and one brother, Virgil.  Her parents were William and Manuerva (who they called “Nuervy”) Davis.  The house wasn’t small, but the whole family slept on the bottom floor on account of the enormous rats that lived upstairs.  Three or four of them would share the same bed.  Mildred remembered, “I bet we stunk when we went to school, but everybody was in the same boat and lived the same way.”

I can't take credit for these flowers, they're actually from a future bride of mine's, Lara Ford's,  garden .

There was no electricity, no telephone, no running water.  They burned coal oil lamps and cooked on wood stoves.  “When we took a bath about once a week we would all take a dip in the same tub.” Said Mildred.  

When it came time to leave their Oklahoma home, the family loaded the flat bed Ford with all that it would carry.  They put rails up on the side to force the little truck to carry even more. Mildred said as she remembered, “The sideboards was leanin’ so much I don’t know what kept us all from fallin’ out.”  

In addition to Mildred Davis and her family, they brought an uncle, a cousin, and picked up four more in Arkansas for a grand total of 16 people and as many belongings as they had room for on the road.  “There was a big ole box built up under the truck where we would keep all the dishes and food.” Says Mildred.  

Every night they slept on the road. It was not unusual to see another family camped a few yards away, especially if it was a spot near water.  Mildred said, “It was more like a wagon train because so many of us were comin’ from back there.”  When they were near water Mildred and her sisters would help fill big canvas bags to bring with them, mostly to use for the radiator.  Every morning and night Ma Nuervy would make the family breakfast and dinner right there on the side of the road.   In the morning all the men would have to help push the truck to get it going again.  

At the 25 to 35 miles per an hour they traveled, it took the 16 of them a little less than four weeks to arrive in California.  They went to Chowchilla relying on the promise, that a man they had known from Oklahoma, who had arrived before them, could give them jobs.  Mildred spent her first night there with her family camped out under a bridge along Highway 99.

As many of the migrants found, life was not much easier in California than the places they left.  Mildred started to work in the fields or the orchards with the rest of her family.  Mildred was never too fond of cotton picking and remembered that her sisters were often better then her, her sisters totals being around 500 pounds of cotton while hers were usually only 300.  She was  paid about a dollar for every one hundred pounds she picked.