Document text
ORIGINAL MSS. OR FIELD NOTES (CHECK
ONE)
PUB. These Are Our Lives
TITLE Laura Bickford
WRITER Sevmour BInk
DATE July 21.1939WDS
CHECKER
PP. 14
SOURCES GIVEN
COMMENTS
7/21/39.„,
July 19, 1939.
Submitted by: Seymour D. Buck Newburyport, Mass/
Name of WPA Worker: Miss 'aura bickford.
Residence: Willow Ave., Newburyport, Mass.
Occupation: Laborer WPA Household Aid Project.
(This WPA project permits workers to enter homes
of WPA families where there is illness, to per-
form the routine housework duties, washing,
ironing, dusting, mending, sweeping, etc. etc.)
Personal Sketch:
A tall, thin, white-haired woman, aged between
45 and 50 Try ,and get it, absolutely'.
Old-fashioned cO9hes, snug -necked, long
skirted, cotton stockings. A little, round
face hung on the end of a long, stringy neck,
with mild, blue eyes peering almost startled
out at the world. Gentle -voiced, extremely
industrious, evidently frugal to a fault.
"Well, now, won't you come in? I'm glad you found
me home early. I wouldn't have wanted to keep you wait-
ing. I'm afraid there isn't very much I can tell you
that matters very much."
Miss Laura Bickford led the way through the long,
high-ceilinged hall and turned into the great square
living room.
"Set yourself in the rocker by the window," she
invited cordially. "I've had the shades drawed in here
all day. It's not very cool, anywhere, but you'll get
what breeze there is."
"I'm afraid things aren't very tidy," she apologized,
as she sat primly erect in a straight-backed chair, and
smoothed her long, print dress carefully over her cotton
stockings. "I have to let my own work go until night
time. Sometimes I'm so tuckered, it seems as if I'd
never get the rooks finished."
"My goodness, I suppose you think I'm foolish,
living here with just my boy, in this big house. Itts
just that I've so many things of my folks') and really,
there's no place to put the*.
"That's my grandfather," she said softly, indicating
a gilt-edged portrait hanging on the wall between the
windows. A wide black ribbon was fastened diagonally
across the upper corner, above the stern faced Puritan
of an earlier generation.
Grandfather had one of the first dry -goods stores
down in Maine. Father took it over after grandpa passed
on. He was
She stopped talking long enough to address the little
bundle of black and white that had darted soundlessly
into the room. "Well, now, Betsy. Here, sh-h----"
and, tongue hanging limply from between his tiny jaws,
the little terrier sank at her feet, digging his nails
tentatively into the faded carpet.
"She's a blessing," Miss Bickford stated. "Sort of
gives me something to take care of, nights, when I'm alone,
when my boy's gone somewhere. He always comes in early,
and he's a good boy
*Excuse you for thinking I'm Miss Bickford? I aml
I've another boy,* she went on firmly, *he's twenty-one,
now. My own sister's baby, he was, I took him from her
arms the night she died:
*Robert? He's nineteen, come Octoober. He's awful
smart, but he just don't seem to take hold-, any job he
gets. He just can't work in the shoe shops. The smell
of the leather makes him throw. I know how that is.
I was that way, even just working the packing room
until one day I said to myself, *Laura, you got to throw,
until it doesn't maka you sick anymore, that's all.*
I was pretty sick, but you know, after that, I didn't
mind the stitching roolpi. or whatever."
"Robert, though. He's more like his father. Robert,
his name was. I had come to Newburyport, to keep house
for my brothers. They used to have the old bicycle shop
down on Water Street, it's the bowling alleys now. It
just got so I couldn't be without him. He was sick, and
we hadn't been together much more than six months before
he died. Diahetis, they called it. It might of been,
but I can still see him wakinl up in the night, hollering,
*Goddam Heinesl Look out, there's another one.* He'd
sweat something terrible, and almost choke the life out
of me before he'd known what he was doing. It was
everything he couldn't forget what he'd been to, over
there acrost the ocean.
Maybe it doesn't sound very religious, Mister, but
I'll tell you now. I'd rather have had what I did of
this life with my man, and Robert, to take care of,
than all the fine rich things those old fuddy-duddies
up High Street have got to look act and leave to museums.
They used to talk, some to them, but I notice there wasn't
any of 'em hesitated to call me in to work by the day.
"I know my place, I hope, and I try always to stay
in it. I guess as long as I'm willing to work for my
bread, I'll always be able to find some way of doing it.
"I kind of got ahead oy my story, didn't I? I was
going to say bbout how I went to work, in the first
place. When I was a young girl, of course, there never
was any need of it. There was a -plenty to do at home,
I'll tell you. I remember my grandmother, Abigail, used
to tell mother, she was Minnie $tevens, married my father,
Tom Bickford from Concord, "Gracious, Minnie, I hope
that daughter Laurie (she always called me Laurie) never
has to make her way in the world with her hands. She
is the pokiest thing
Miss Bickford laughed, and smoothed an embroidered
armchair coverlet with restless fingers. "Grammy
Abigail never did like to see people setting around,"
she said softly. "I'd used to like to dream about things,
about sailing away with my man on one of the big boats,
and seeing foreign shores and all.
to it was a motorboat ride down the
far as Portsmouth one summer, and
down and we come home by carriage!
Nearest I ever came
Piscataqua River 's
then, the boat broke
I and sister used to share helping with father in
the store. I was near nineteen then, and one summer's
night, it was a Saturday night, we were gutting the
long sheets over the counters, and drawing the fancy
little shade curtains down over the bolt goods, Ruthie
grabbed my arm and pointed towards Pa. He was sitting
up to his roll-top desk adding up the books. Now his
head had just dropped down on the pages. We thought
he was asleep and it wasn't until we'd got all ready
to blow out the lamps, that we found he was dead.
"Grammy Abigail still had her two little lace caps,
one for Sunday, and one for week -days, and still changed
her apron at two o'clock, regular, exceptinl of course,
Sundays. But there wasn't so much to eat, after the
store was sold. The boys didn't any of 'em take much
to farming, and they'd moved down the coast to Newburyport.
Francis and Harry, 'Bickford McKenna Bicycle Repairs'
was the store. I wanted to go with them, but Ma said
Ruthie was the one to take care of the boys. Did whe
think I wanted them to all be dead from eating burned
bread and underdone pies?
"Well, now, it was almost three miles from our house
across town to one of the big shoe factories. I went
over there got to the big brick building at just five
thirty on a Monday morning, I'd sneaked out of home,
and I wanted a jobs I waited, and waited. About ten
minutes of eight, who should come driving up in his
buggy but our next door neighbor? I'd forgot all about
his being thereL
"It was my first job. As I told you, it used to make
me throw, pretty bad, at first. Later on I got real good,
and used to make as high as three dollars a week.
"Oh, didn't Ma put up a fuss. It was funny, but
that was the first time I ever knowei& Grammy to say some-
thing for me. She just turned to mother and said in her
little dry voice, "Now, then, daughter, might's well make
up your mind tolt. here's a daughter who'll fit in
harness."
"I went and got pretty oilcloth out of my first pay
and brought it home. I thought it would kind of brighten
things up a little bit. Would Grammy eat of it? Never!
This one was awful pretty, too, with big bunches of
grapes, and great big round apples and all. Grammy had
to have a napkin spread down on it for hers
"I declare," she said coldly, "it ain't fitten for
a Bickford to eat God's food off 'n any such kind of cloth.
Besides, it smells something awfull"
"Ruthie didn't stay in Newburyport &nly about a year.
She up and married, she's out west, now, somewhere in
New York state. Her husband travels for one of the big
chain stores.
"My oldest boy's a store manager, too," she added
proudly. "He manages one of the Kennedy stores down to
Boston. There's one place I'd like to visit before I dbikl
My goodness, I've done more dreaming about that place.
I'd like to see where that poet Longfellow lived. I used
tp love that one about the laughing Allegra "Betixt the
dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to
lower" I wonder how you say that last, anyway? It
wouldn't sound right to call it lower, to go with the
hour in the next line would it? I suppose it's a matter
of how you like, though, well, now.
"Whittier? Say, you know, it's funny. Goes to show
how if you want something bad enough, and it's fitten for
the Lord Almighty to give it to you, you'll get it, one
time, it was when I was working seamstress work, after
Robert was a little boy, and of course I'd give up working
in the shoe shops, and all, well, sir, this women was
spending her summer up to the Lake, Lake Attitash, you
know, over in Merrimac, well, sir, this big car came
driving down the lane here, looking for me i Yesserree,
they had gone and got a dress the lady wanted to wear and
it all had to be made over tight away', she said coldly,
Well, sir, sewing machine and me, we had a drive up
along the river, through Amesbury, and the man in the
uniform I asked him if he'd let me see where Whittier
had lived, he was the nicest man, he smiled and said,
"Sure." We was just coming up the hill toward the cemetery,
then. He ups and turns in and drives right up to within
about ten feet of the place where Whitteir's bones are
laid. We drove, back, then, and up Friend Street. I
seen the house, and the Friends' Meeting House.
Only thing was, he promised me not tell the folks.
'They don't like me to do things for myself,' he said.
I wanted to tell them people how happy he'd made me, but
I didn!t want to get him into trouble, after his being
so nice and all
111•1 WO OM MI.
'Yes, indeed. I've met some of the best. I can tell
you, well, now, that rich Dr. Hurd's wife's one, Agnes
I can't seem to made oyt her last name now, it was years
back, her man was a writer, over to Byfield they lived,
well, anyway, I've made tent stand still until their bags
got good and tired, and if I stuck a pin in 'em sometimes
it didn't do them any good to holler! People always
liked my work, seems like, always. I was helping poor
Mrs. Pride then, and my the prices she used to charge.
It was sinful!
"Overcoats weAade, dresses, everything you
can think of! The more you charged to them, the better
job they figured you'd clonal I'd have liked to been able
to buy her place and all when she passed on. I took
to working out, by tut; uay, illsidaad. Robert's always
needed a lot of things most boys don't need, and it's
took most every penny I could lay my hands on, just to
keep going, times.
"Mrs. McWilliams spoke to you about my work? Well,
now! You know, I true like to work, that I do. I'm never
so happy, nowadays, as when I come, just tired all over.
I fell good, just the same. I fell like how I'd earned_
the right to lust set here and rock, and look out the
window, or maybe read a short story out of the Com-
panion, or McCall's. Mrs. Peabody, the minister's
wife at the Episcopal church, she saves me the
Companion and McCall's. She tucked in some others, one
time, --What ones? Oh, my goodness, let's see, now.
American Mercury, seems like it was. That just roiled
me all up, what reading I done in it. My goodness, I
couldn't read things like that. It would keep me upset,
from morning till night. That was the one, a big,
green -covered book. All it did was try to show you
black was white, or black wasn't the kind of black
it seemed, I don't know what it was trying to do. I
suppose some people like that sort, but as for me, I
want to pick up a story where I know things will be
beally true, where the man will do something wrong,
and then be forgiven, and where the woman's big
enough to understand the man.
"Do I care if they marry? Why, that's kind of a
funny way of looking at it. No, I don't suppose so. I
can't see's there's much difference, my goodness, I
shouldn't be saying this, why, now, of course they'd
ought to be married. Isn't every story like that?
Well, now. I guess those writers wouldn't do these
kind of things if it wasn't like it really is, would they,
well, now?
"WPM How did I come to get on it? Well, now, I
hated to, like anything( I'd prayed to the Lord Almighty
to give me some kind of honest means of buying my bread
and butter. Robert was to High School, and I did want
him to be able to r to college. We'd lived the winter
in just three rooms, but it wasn't like a homeld aught
to be here, at all.
It was the Mayor who did it for me. I'd been doss
ing some work at his house, there's quite a bunch of
those up on the Street who are getting rid of their
maids and like, and hiring the work done by day, any-
way, he'd asked if I'd like to do housework for him by
evening, if he could get me a work on the sewing project.
Well, now, I hated to, my, my first week.down there in
the old Firestone Mill, I just couldn't bear to look at
anybody, I felt so, that Mrs. Palmer, used to be
there, likely you wouldn't know her, she used to
talk to me, some "Laura, you got to work to eatl You
got work here to do, decent, respectable work, and
you do your work, and that's not charity, Laura," shecd
tell me. Finally I got to seeing it that way. The
President had known things were pretty bad with a lot of
us, and he'd given those who could work a chance. I been
most grateful to him, ever since.
"I never liked the talk the women used to have, but
i didn't pay much heed to it, though when they put the
men over acroet the room making mattresses and comforters,
I tell you it was a caution, some to the things the
women'd pass back and forth.
"Perhaps I'm old-fashioned," Miss Beckford confided,
"but I always figured there was just two kinds of people
anyway, those who were deserving and those who weren't.
The Lord Almighty'll be pretty good, all in all, about
seeing that each gets what's coming to him.ofIlicnewt
It's only when things come along, like right now it is,
oP
where they're having to lay same te us off, I guess
it's in other places besides Massachusetts, too. What
do they think has made it better for us to get along,
all of a sudden?
"I've left the WPA twice this year, you know.
Yessir, to work in the shoe shops. There's a rule you
have to take a job if they send for you, you know.
Anyway, the first time I went, Mr. Weinberg told me I'd
have to wait for a machine to be set up, and it took
them three days to find any place to set it up. By the
end of the week I'd dinly made two dolars and seyenty
cents.
"The next time I got in, and nexb day the work all
went bad. Somebody'd stopped an order they'd given, and
the wasn't any work, anymore. It seems too had for me
to have to lose out on my regular WPA work, but I
suppose sometime I'll find the shop going steady.
"Pay? Why, I couldn't hope to make what I'm making
on the WPA. But, that would be worki4g for somebody.
and it's a deal different than this made -work like they
call it. And there's so many others needing the work,
too, I'd feel like I ought to get out and give them a
chance, too.
"Newburypoat's changed a whole lot, though. 'rears
back there was plenty of work for everybody. But today,
the people who live here and have got money all seem to
feel like the rest of us must have come from Canada.
All I hear is 'Why don't they send the -d well, you
know what I'm saying, don't you? back tg Montreal.
They'd like to have these here summer visitors drive
along and see the streets without WA men leaning on
shovels waiting for a inspiration or whatever, lust
houses and gardens, and lots of quiet and like
of that. No children? No children. That's the one
thing they'd most like to have moved away is howling,
fighting young ones!
"I declare, it's too bad there isn't a part of the
country all those kind could go to and live, and have
another part where some of the rest with families could
go, only they'd want some room to move around in so's
the youngsters weren't under foot all the time, and,
I suppose, everybody'd get tired of everybody else before
it was done with.
"Still and all, when I've been over, nights, listen-
ing to the WA band, last year, that wasp.- there was
plenty of young folks sparking around on the grass and
over under the trees, I'm afraid they got to change
humans a whole lot before they can stop them from loving
each other, well, now.
"Well, now, I'm not going to run on like this any
more. My goodness, let me light a lamp. I'd not
noticed how near dark it was to, already."
She arose, removed a match from the little china
container on the shelf, and carefully lighted the great,
round globed lamp, with its. sparkling clean chimney. As
the glow filled the room, the old-fashinned furniture,
the odd pieces of wood and china bric-a-brac on mantles
seemed to fit into place. Here was yesterday! Talking
was an old-fashioned woman, who, if she had put in words
might have said, "Well, now, I'm sure everything will comp
out all right for every one of us that's deserving of the
Lord Almighty's goddness and mercy. Maybe if we don't
ask too much of Him, things like we've got no right to
expect, maybe if we just work hard, He will even things
up for us so that the WPA business, if it leaves us with
nothing, will have been one more step along the pathway
of the roads from Yesterday to the swift -moving, seem-
ingly -traffic of Toclay's highway to Tomorrow.
"Pshaw, now," she said, as the terrier scuttled
from beneath her feet, "this isn't treating you proper,
well, now. Won't you have a little cup of tea? Oh,
I'm sorry not to have thought of things like that before.
My goodness, I don't hardly know how I ever got to tal*
ing so with a complete stranger, but, then, I don't s
suppose we are strangers, where we're both on the WRA,
are we?
"I hope you!ll come in again, sometimes. I'm
sorry that Robert wasn't home, tonight. He's such a
good boy, and I'm sure he would have liked to met up
with you. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be more help to
you, but you just let me talk on so,
"Wind's swinging knto the East again. Well, the
farmers certainly need the rain. Well, now, come again,
and good -night, Mister."
1110 V. MI.