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August 18, 1939
Robert 11. Delveolds (white)
Hendersonville. N.C., Rt. 1
(tone mason)
Mrs. Luline Mabry, interviewer
Frank Massimino. writer
ORPHAN:: TO
Or dual Names
Robert H. Delveohlo
Hattie Delveehlo
Janie Dellvehlo
,c)beirt Hardy
Joseph Delveohlo
4* (tg• 144pellg
Joe wivelli
Mary &m all
Janie
Joseph i3edi1lUageo
Antonio Jave111
ORI'HANr TWO
Joe Seven' is a damned good bricklayer and stone mason
by his own admission. When he works he oan earn six or eight
dollars a day even in hard ties, which walld allow him plenty
of change to jingl in the trouser pockets of his sixteen
fifty Sunday suit, save for tb fact that he has a family to
feed and clothe and put up under a roof and he doesn't- t-7:et
more than three solid months work out of a year. Joe :AvelIi
is no spendthrift, therefore He mopes around the house mostly,
when he's not working, and writes to his Legion buddied or
fools with the pesky carburetor on the engine of his seoond-.
MM jalopy or ?robes around his four room house until Mary,
his wife, chasee him out to save her bric-a-brac from destruc-
tion and at the same time aave .tear and tear on her nervous
systen. Then Joe goes out on the front porch, or anywLere in
the shade and site in a chair and smokes a cigarette and
watches the neighbors, who move languidly about the shacks in
the settlement, or talks if anyone's around.
Joe Severn sits there and talks, if anyone will listen,
and I an there to listen to his life story. 6o he talks. He
has juA come from the store. It la ';tast ten o'clook in the
morning. The hot sun already is beginning to beat down on
the red and unproductive land thereabout, which is given over
alost entirely to the cultivation of corn, which best
&rows sparsely. 44ivelIi props his feet on the railing and
leans back in his chair. 3omeone t rattling pane in the
kitchen.
*She's melting a bell of a lot of noise, velli says,
jerking his head in that direction.
*Your wife?* I inquire.
*No," &nye 2avelli„ *the missus is in town this munining
That's Janie.
Your daughter?*
*Yeah," says 3avelli. "110 is now. Her old lady run
off and lft her with us.*
The child Janie comes out the side door, emptying a pan
of dish water. Her face is pinched and bleak, and her dark
eyes shine. he is wearik; what ap,oara to be a h•nd-ae-down
dress, which hangs like a sack on her skinny, gan,laing frame;
and you can see that she doesn't have another stitct on under-
neath, but it is hot weather which probably accounts for that.
I wonder how a skinny child like that can do heavy housework.
Just then she turns and goes back inside and I look again at
zAvelli. He's been watching the child too.
*That kid's all right," he says. "She's a help to the
missile. She picks up things in no time. She'd pick up things,
cute things, when she was onl., so big." Savelli spreads his
leathery palms P:bout two feet apart. *Of course, the alsaus
has a way with her. But the kid learns fast."
I am puzzled by this Savel I. Es has a swarthy corn-
plinion and a Latin-aounding namv, but hp looks like an Anglo..
American. Be lives here in the south, :n the mountains, in a
rural settle -Amt, and he speaks like a mid -westerner. I ask
him about it finally.
He smiles, very friendly, looks his fingers behind his
head and slumps down on his spine.
"There's where my life story comes in," he says.
"How's that?" I pramot.
9'ou're gonna write this un?" Me etas.
"Certainly," I answer.
74:11, then," he begins, "my real name is Magee Joseph
Yedill aee. y old man died when I was two. There wes
four of us kids My old man didn't have any insurance,
didn't have any money to leave to take care of us kids Maw
was up a tree. carled to death. 'ns were :rowing and we ate
a lot. She finally had to send two of us to the orphanage.
"Two?"
"That's all they would take. :aid she could take care
of the others. They had her .in papers and admitted me and
one of my sisters. be was just past nine. I heard they
made my mother send her instead of on of the others, beoause
she was big and strong for her as and could be put to work in
the kitchen or out in the fields. Of course, I was too young
to know that then. I learned that later on."
Savelli stops to reflect a moment, then finally he says:
"Boy, what a joint that 'must of been!"
"Must have been?"
"loll, I don't remember much about it myself. I'm just
going on what I heard about the place. You see, I was just
knoo.hign-to-a-door-ste then, end I was adopted right off the
bat.
NA °Guile of days after I was brouht there, I was
hauled into the officio, and there stood my future father
and mother.. The old an was a Italian. Been over here a
long time, though. His wife was born here In North Caro—
lina, They wanted to take me that is, the old man did,
but his wife couldn't make up her mind, and finally the woman
there in the office said, 'Ain't you two decided what you're
gonna do yet? And the old Italian, Antonio, took his wife
to one side and began to talk to her, with gestures, and
finally she give in. I learned all that later on, too. And
I learned that the reanon the old man wanted me was because I
was dark like a Italian and his wife couldn't have any babies,
for some reason.
"The old man was a mighty fine fellow. lave me a school—
ing an plenty money for ?ocket change v -hen I was in high school
and when I ;,ot out h- learned me his trade as a stone mason
and bricklayer. But his missus wasn't very nice to me. I
(wouldn't do anything to please her. I got so I didn't like
being where she was.
"'Maybe it was my fault I couldn't set along with her.
I don't know. The old man did his best to get us to like
one another. But it never did work out.
*One day she told as slap dab I ought to beat it back
to my own mother. I got mad and said I'd do it in a minute,
only lod knows where she was. But, by lode she'd put a bug
in my ear, and I wrote a couple of letters and finally I got
in touch with my real mother. When I got the Ghana*, I went
to see her. She was getting along then* end she wee tickled
to death to see me. After that, until she died here a few
years back, I kept in touch with her regular and sent her a
few dollars whenever I could spare it.
Meanwhile, I was all washed up with my stepmother.
I run away to Chicago t-nd got a job as a telegraph operator.
I forgot to tell you I studied that. Anywy, I got a job
right off, and I guess they thought I was pretty good, beeause
in a little while the .;uper made them let me travel around in
his car as his special operator.
this point Joe :muses a moment, shakes his head rue-
fully. At lenl:th he says:
*Then I made the big-3Ln damn mistske I ever made in my
life. I quitl*
Be blames that on his years, or, rather, lack of them.
Be was, he says, at the age when he liked to gad about at
night and g'b with his friends* in whose carefree lives he
seemed to find a good deal more of the desirable than in the
one he led. He wanted his evenings free, liketthem, and this
was impossible, since the complexity of railroading made it
special
necessary for employees, especially/telegraphers, to be on
call at all hours. Re even had to be back in the superinten-
dent'a car every night at ten o'clock, and he says* he didn't
like that.
3ot tired of being tied to their apron strings,* is
the way he puts it, "so one day I told the boss I was quitting.*
'what do you want to do that for, Zoe?' lw asked.
I said, 'I gotta live like any other young
fellow and have fun, don't I? Hell, I want my nights to
myself.'
"He rubbed his ehin and looked at me like I was nuts
or something, and I guess maybe I was.
"Okay,' he said finally. 'Okay, Zoe. There ain't
nothin3 I man do for you if y -u feel that way,'
'And that wtts that, and I should of had my head
exmined."
Zoe curses with pyrotechnic intensity and skill at what
he terms his 'dumbness' that led him to make the biggest
"damn mistake" he has ever made.
"I had my fun all right," he goes on. "For awhile. But
up
pretty soon I used/all the money I had left and eouldn't find
another job in Chicago, so I come on back here. I got a job.
I got a job as a bricklayer at four dollars a day. But it
didn't last. And wben it wns over, I started bumming around
the country.. Used to cadge rides from farmers, or slip on a
train before ahe pulled out of the station. Made nearly every
state oast of the Mississippi before I was fn my twenties.
Once, when I was layin;7, around dead broke In Florida, I heard
of a place in Virginia that needed hands rilht away. I hopped
a fast freight and got there in a couple of days, But the
day before I got there the whole town burned down.
'Yes, that was toulh luck. Losim; out on the job, I
mean. I considerd myself not so bad off though. Tou should
of aeon the place. It looked like those pictures you see
of eitiea in China after the Taps drop a few bombe. Every.
Vain& smoldering. 'Ralf naked mai-en digging in fire heaps
with their finT:ers lookina for their cids. God, it was
enough to male you sick. Yellin; ana soreamina and carrying
on day 771(1 ni4ht. No place to ao, either. ..ome of 'em was
livira; in brush p11eL the woods at the oda° of town,
got out of there.
"After that, the war come on. I was driving a rig and
deliverina nail out in the sticks, teaporarila, while the
regular man was getting over the flu-, and the war wale on.
I was gobbled lad 1z tae first draft and shipped overseas with
a bunch of scamly birds from New York's Ghetto. Wops and Jews.
Oh, God! I wa crawlina with crabs as bla as katydids before
we goL out of si4at of land. Jesus, it was a pleasure to
be at last shot up and in a clean hospital."
"Shot up?"
Yeah. And assed, too. Of course that was after I
got in the trenches.
"Then they sent me to a base hospital, and later on I
we transferred to a Ealip and I wound up finally back in
the states,
"Are you all riaht no
"Yes and no. I :atm% I ain't crippled or nothing like
that. I a bad chest fram the gas, thou:h. Yy health
ain't so good that way."
*Did you baask to your foster parents to recuperate?*
*No, You see, I heard from them while I was in ?rano*.
The old man was pretty sick then. Be had the flu. When I
was in the hospital, his missus wrote no another letter. She
said he had died, so I never bothered to go back there. The
old man was the only one outside of my own mother I oared
about anyway.
'Well, after I got feelins a little better I says to
myself: 'Joe, you better settle down. You're gonna be up
against it if you don't.' So I got the damned idea I ought
to go in business. I bought a furniture store dealt mostly
in seeond-hand stuff and there I was. But I was ramming my
head against a brick wall: I didn't know nothing from a hole
in the -7;round about the business. Finally I failed.
*Well, I pounded the streets for a lon time after that
before I found a job. You know, that was when things in
general went all to hell. The building gams was worse hit
than anythiw,.. I went from door to door asking for work.
Sometimes I'd get booted out. Once I didn't, I got a Job
there. It looked like it might last a little while, so I
got married. I saved some money before the missus had her
first baby, so finally I want beak into the furniture business.
Then we had another kid, and things got tourr,her.
Then that business went to hell, too. °di ,ovihe
customers stayed away from that store. I sold out finally,
took what furniture I thou-1'st weed need to set us up house-
keepial, and come on up here.
The reason we come up here is because things ain't so
so costly. Of course, it ain't worth mAth money. The whole
damned place, I mean. You can see for yourself. Take the
neighborhood, for instance. These birds around here call
themselves farmers. Only they're too damned poor to farm
any. Keep a pi f; and a cow and live on fatback and corn bread.
And most of t'em are on relief, When I moved here one of 'ea
told me owtht to sign up for relief. I told him I wanted
to work. I didn't want relief. I get damned put out when
they talk like that. If they wasn't my neighbors I'd tell
em where to head in,
"'Course it ain't their fault. 3ut they ought to make
the country give tem Jobs, not relief. That's what say.
I ain't no better off than them and I ain't on relief yet.
Look how I live. Come on I'll show you."
I follow him thro!)gh the house while he points out the
layout. The entire buildings isn't over twenty feet square.
There's four rooms: A kitchen that you can scarcely breathe
in for fear of bursting the walls, a livin room with a
settee which fills all the space esainst one of the walls,
and two bedrooms, one with a bed that Toe and his wife share
and the other with a couple of cots for the children. The
toilet is outside, behind a hedgerow In the back yard. Rent,
Jo says, costs five dollars a month. It costs twice that to
heat the plrIce in the winter and buy wood for the kitchen rangers
"I've stuck to this layout Net about as lonl as I want
10
to" Says1:1 goes on when we resume our seats on the front
porch. "But what 1 want and what I gotta take is two different
things. I gotta get workin,3 steady first. This laying around
is drivin,; me nut* But :You know how it is There ain't no
jobs. No steady ones. Vot even for t ex-serviee man. I
think personally that that is a damn Genie. After what we
done for the country, too. God* I don't know what those
fellows up in Washington are thinking of. At least they
ought to see that we are taken care of. Not o relief or
cm lousy little 7rensions or anythini; like that. Just a
chance to work steady, that's all.
"Take me, now. I'm a damned good bricklayer and stone
naeon, and what do I get, If I'm luvO'y I get a job once in
a while. They only last a couple of weeks, though. Then
what? What -3 I'm laid off. 7.3sus, you can't raise a fa ily
on air.
"And not only do I have my own two kids, but now I got
Janie to raise too."
How's that?"
"Well, her mother slipped up when she was young and had
Janie and she didn't want nobody to know it So she came over
here one day and got us to keep her baby, saying she would
take it back when she got married and could give the kid a
decent ammo. Vy wife wasn't keen on the idea at all. She
didn't trust that woman. But sines Janie didn't have nothing
to do with it, and since I was once 0 orphan myself. felt
different about. I felt sorry for the kid.
"I argued for Janie's mother, and the atasus piped down.
We took Janie, and her mother paid her keep like she said.
Well, Janie wns here thret years and all of a sudden the
payments for her board stopped °aiming. T tried to get in
touch with her mother, but she had skipped. God, the missus
WIS sore as hell then. She had re trace Janiels mother and
I tinnily found out that she had got married and skipped off
to a bi3 city in the North, where she filured noboded know
about her baby, least of all her husband, and she would
leave it with us. That's the last we !:eard.
"So I guess Janiels ours for keeps now, like I said.
The miseus went to see a lawyer about putting her in a home,
but he said no sir we couldn't do that now. He said it vms
too late. You see, Janie's seven now, and going to school.
The law down here says that when you've 4opt a kid that long
and sent her to school you got to take over the responsibility."
Savelli is rising to signal the end of the interview.
As I leave I wish him a happy solution to his problems., and
say that it is too bad about the child Janie.
"Oh, that," he calls "Hell, it's the miaow, that is
worked up over it. Personally I now look on Janie as one of
my own. And even if I didn't, I'd take care of her. You
see, when a guy was a orphan ones himself he feels different
about things like that."