107 Main Street

By Ross Davidson

Author Ross Davidson's story is based on his precarious life growing up in privation. He shares his daily struggles from indelible memories in the pages of this book.

Pass by and visit 107 Main Street, where the author was confined to a world of poverty, but accompanied with hope and other people's kindness and generosity. Nevertheless, the story contains odd twists and turns.

This is a strange, highly unusual and complex story of a boy born during the Great Depression. Its foundation and running theme begins with the unlikely marriage between a wealthy American and a poor immigrant woman, escaping famine in her native country. After two years of marriage and living with his controlling mother and matriarch of the family and business, Nellie, unable to cope with the prison-like atmosphere, seven months pregnant, left and accepted a room with a friendly family nearby. While his wife and son were destined to a life of poverty, he continued to live in prosperity. Throughout, no child support was ever received, despite court orders.

It is the chronology of the haves and have-nots, an encyclopedia of life lessons woven through a small rural American community-a place where a teacher, employers, an iconic hero, two coaches, a mentor, and above all a devoted mother-impacted the life of a young boy. In academics, athletics, student activities and jobs, the boy had good times and bad, but not without periods of anxiety and fear. He learned, however, to use these emotions as stimulants, not deterrents; where discipline, commitment, perseverance and an attitude of never giving up became part of his philosophy.

The gravity and sadness of it all were overridden by love, care, support and attitude-the mother who died prematurely, the son who applied the lessons learned to his motivation and maturation.

The author and his wife live in the Northeast and have children and grandchildren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462854677

Ross Davidson

“Growing up poor, but not disadvantaged.” Ross Davidson’s book is based on the story of his precarious life growing up in privation. His daily struggles created indelible memories. This is a strange, highly unusual and complex story of a boy born into poverty during the Great Depression. The surprising marriage of a poor immigrant woman to a wealthy American lasted two years. Nellie, seven months pregnant, moved to a neighbor’s home. The continuing story has odd twists and turns. Throughout, no child support was ever received, despite court orders. The author changed the names and locations. It is the chronology of the haves and have-nots, an encyclopedia of life lessons woven through a small rural American community. In academics, athletics, student activities and jobs, the boy had good times and bad, but not without periods of anxiety. He learned, however, to use fear as a stimulant; where hard work, discipline, commitment, perseverance and an attitude of never giving up became part of his philosophy. The gravity and sadness of it all were overridden by love, care and support – the mother who died prematurely, the son who applied the lessons learned in his life. The author and his wife live in the Northeast and have children and grandchildren. ID 95094 107 Main Street

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Copyright © 2011 by Ross Davidson.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011905687

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-5466-0

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-5465-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-5467-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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95094

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Epilogue

Epilogue Part II

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Originally, the apartments were built as a factory in 1850 to manufacture men’s clothing for shipping to stores in distant New York City. Through the Great Depression to the late 1930’s, the building was unoccupied and fell into disrepair. It was then sold to a speculator who marginally and basically reconfigured the interior into a grocery store and six apartments. We occupied three rooms in the back of the second floor (not shown in the photograph).

In 1963, the structure was torn down and replaced with a convenience store and small parking lot.

PROLOGUE

When I tell stories from my childhood to friends and family I’m sometimes asked how I can recall the past so vividly. I used to believe that everyone could. For me farmyard smells evoke a feeling of nostalgia tinged with bitterness. The odors of a locker room, chalk and chalkboard, muddy football gear drying out, fresh-made bakery brownies, the pine smell of Christmas—all bring back to life particular scenes and feelings. The scent of lilacs reminds me of Memorial Day in Hansontown, baseball season the spring play, and summer freedom.

A childhood of daily struggle tends to secure indelible memories. I think one reason my memories are so sharp is that my childhood was a precarious one. This the story of my mother and me, and the life we made together while I was growing up. The two of us were confined by poverty, alone in a world where Mom was a foreigner and I was just a child, yet always accompanied by hope. Good fortune brought us to a small town where kindness and generosity helped to keep us going. That town, its inhabitants, and its obsession play a large part in this account.

Everything could have been different. We might have lived comfortably. I might have grown up feeling self-assured. My father was wealthy and living a few miles away. We were poor, he was rich, but he never contributed to our lives. The reason our story unfolded the way it did remains a mystery. One thing I’m certain of: I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything.

CHAPTER 1

My mother was Nellie Buell Davidson of Morganstown, Scotland. As a girl she lived with her parents and six elder brothers and sisters in a small tract house owned by the mining company her father worked for. In 1930, her father lost his job. The money her mother earned taking in laundry was hardly enough to sustain the parents, let alone a family of eight. The fledglings had to fly the nest.

Nellie never dreamed a small dream, then or ever. She could have tried for work across town, or in the next town, or in some other region of Scotland, I suspect. Instead, she pictured what she could achieve in America with nothing but hard work and confidence. That image would have been as real and solid to her as anything in her narrow experience up to that time. In those days, the government of Scotland encouraged the unemployed to go away. For free, they’d give you a passport, a cardboard suitcase, ten pounds, and a promise of employment in Canada. Ten days after she had applied, Nellie found herself on a converted WWI troop ship, in cramped, dormitory-style quarters, bound for Toronto, and a job as an au pair. She was fifteen years old.

I don’t know how she came to cross paths with my father. Under what circumstances would the scion of a prominent New York State family meet a Scottish au pair, who spoke with a brogue so heavy it was almost unintelligible? He would have traveled to Toronto on business. Guernsey and Holstein milk cows of the highest quality were raised in the farm country surrounding the city. My father, Frederick Russel Thompson, visited periodically, buying for his family’s multiple farms and to sell to others’ in upstate New York. I have no idea where he would have stayed on these trips—perhaps in a boarding house where my mother came to work. Or perhaps he stayed in a hotel and met my mother on some outing, in a park or at some entertainment—though it’s hard to imagine my frugal mother spending money on entertainment in those days, when her earnings must have been puny and she had just started supporting herself. They couldn’t have been introduced to each other by anyone who knew his family; the difference in their social standing would have made introductions embarrassing.

But they did meet somehow, and got to know each other somehow, despite Nellie’s brogue and Fred’s meager social skills. Hard though it was to believe later on, they must have fallen in love. A manipulative girl, a gold-digger, could have laid a trap for Fred. He wouldn’t have been difficult for a determined young woman to hoodwink. I know my mother’s integrity and self-respect, her confidence in herself and in life, and I know that nothing but love—or, perhaps, infatuation mistaken for love—could have persuaded her to marry, no matter how much comfort and security the wealth of a man like Fred offered, if she even knew of it. As for Fred, it’s not too surprising that he would fall for a pretty and lively young girl, full of high spirits and a spontaneous gaiety that might have made her fascinating to a young man from a hidebound family. Given later events, I have sometimes wondered whether a wish to defy his mother played a part in Fred’s decision to marry Nellie. If it was self-assertion or rebellion, he never again dared such a bold move.

They married on November 14, 1930, three months after Nellie arrived in Toronto. Fred Thompson brought his bride home to Thompson Farms in Iroquois, New York, where he had lived all his life with his parents in a large, imposing house. Five such substantial homes had been built on the property, all occupied by members of his immediate family. The estate covered fifteen hundred acres altogether. It comprised several separate farms over which were scattered seven small houses for farm hands and their families, a network of outbuildings, and five hundred dairy cows.

Living in such an elegant house, amid such plenty in the middle of the Depression, and with in-laws, would have made daily life vastly different from what Nellie was accustomed to. I wonder if she enjoyed it, or if she wished from the start that she and her husband had a small place of their own instead. She never told me much about this time in her life. I don’t know how she first learned that her mother-in-law had picked out a different bride for her son. She, the matriarch, openly disapproved of Fred’s choice. The petite and pretty teenaged foreigner from a poor family, speaking English with an accent that made it sound to New Yorkers like a different language, might have looked like a conniver to the maternal boss of the stoic Yankee family. She expressed her anger and disappointment by treating Nellie with an icily polite contempt that descended more and more often to ridicule as time went on. Fred could not or would not defend his wife. Nellie endured life in this household that did not want her for a year-and-a-half. Then she moved out to the farmhouse of a couple living nearby, who offered temporary lodgings. She was seven-and-a-half months pregnant.

I don’t know whether she imagined that this drastic action would be the shock Fred needed to make him act on his love or loyalty or sense of duty toward her in spite of his mother’s displeasure. She might have thought that at least, even if he’d lost interest in her, he’d try to make peace in order to gain access to his child. I hope this wasn’t her plan, because it failed utterly. Fred didn’t come for her. But there exists a piece of evidence that suggests she hadn’t yet given up. When I was born at the farmhouse on June 13, 1932, she named me Grant Russell Thompson II, after my paternal grandfather, a name that should have tied me tightly to my father’s family. The way news travels in rural communities, they would have to have learned of my birth and baptism quite soon. Instead, I have been told, my relatives denied any knowledge of my existence, and so far as I know, no one in the Thompson family set eyes on me until I was two years old—and then only through a subterfuge.

The opportunity presented itself by accident. The couple who took us in had heard somehow that a photograph of the Thompson clan was scheduled to be taken in nearby Taylorsburg on a certain date. Our landlord-friends, my mother, and the photographer, who evidently joined the scheme beforehand, devised a plan that would put me where I belonged: in the picture, surrounded by my blood relations. After fifty-some Thompsons had arranged themselves on the steps of the porch in front of the Taylorsburg hotel, the photographer signaled to my mother that the picture was about to be taken. With me in her arms she emerged from the lobby and lifted me up above the heads in the last row.

The friendly photographer set aside a copy of the picture for us. When Fred’s mother saw hers, she ordered the photographer to paint me out. Nellie, with her untouched version, nonetheless had solid evidence that at least some of the Thompsons knew Fred had a son. That photo, which I had framed, hangs in my study and serves as a daily reminder, not of my lineage, but as material evidence of my place among the clan—disadvantaged, but small, insignificant, and in the rear.

My first memories are vague ones of life on the small farm. Nellie and I lived in a bedroom in the farmhouse. She took in washing to pay for room and board and, I expect, helped with the multitude of chores that a farm of any size requires. I have one vivid memory from that time: I reached my hand through a split-rail fence, intent on touching a day-old calf. To my surprise and alarm, she took my hand in her mouth and began to suckle my fingers with her warm, moist, gummed mouth. In an instant, my feelings shifted to a sense of peace and contentment. I don’t know how the poor calf felt, expecting an udder full of warm milk.

The summer I turned four, my mother and I moved to Hansontown, where friends had located a small three-room apartment for us above a store/restaurant. With a population of 1,800, Hansontown was a metropolis compared to thirteen-family Iroquois. It covered twenty square blocks. Four or so blocks in the middle were known as uptown. From north, south, east, or west, if you were going to the center of town you were going uptown. Main Street (Route 67), a two-lane highway, stretched from New York City to the Adirondacks. Cars passing through town might have to stop at our single traffic light. At the north end, our stop sign saluted visitors with its polite message, Thank You for Visiting. Sometimes teenagers would refer to our town as, Nowhere with nothing to do. I never saw it that way. It was my lifeblood.

Now that we were in a place of our own, Nellie had to get a regular job. She found one at the hosiery mill, where she worked weekdays from nine thirty to three. I could go along on her weekend housecleaning work, but during the week she needed a safe place to put me in. In those days there was no preschool or kindergarten, let alone day care, and no laws regarding age requirements for starting elementary school. And so, at the age of four, I began first grade.

On that first day of school, my mother initiated a routine she maintained all the way through high school. As we sat down to dinner, she’d ask, What did you learn today? As time went on I discovered that a deliberately obtuse reply like not much was unacceptable. She had to be convinced; I’d have to consider the question seriously. In this small way, every day she underlined the importance of education.

Before I learned to read, Nellie read aloud to me at nights, and through her I knew every nursery rhyme and children’s song. Nevertheless, perhaps because school began to influence me so early, I remember struggling to understand her accent while still quite young. Some expressions—all hers, which I’d never heard elsewhere—stuck with me: aye, lad, wee-un for child, Ah dinnie nu wat yadun (I don’t know what you’re doing). Her Os were so elongated that the last letter of a word was sometimes unintelligible, and I could distinguish boooots from booooks through context alone. Her rolling Rs and singsong delivery compounded the problem. Sometimes, we had to repeat words back and forth to each other, like Abbott and Costello with their, Who’s on first? routine.

Throughout her life she continued to improve her English, but strong emotion, positive or negative, caused a reversion and I learned to wait until the storm had passed for a translation of her Scots, Gaelic, and brogue-accented English, all mingled together in a single passionate sentence. As far as I know, nobody in town knew her as Nellie, her given name. Her brogue identified her. Everybody in town knew her simply as Scottie.

My first year of school is a blur to me but I have a vivid memory from second grade, of being taught to knit. We were told it was for the war effort, a phrase repeated many times during the years of WWII. At first we couldn’t imagine what the four-by-four inch squares we knitted had to do with the war. Then the teacher explained our squares would be shipped to a central location where they would be sewn together with others from all over the country to make blankets for servicemen. She said thousands of second-, third-, and fourth-graders throughout the country were participating. Since it was for the war effort, I permitted myself to enjoy this activity, which otherwise I would have avoided as too sissy.

In an effort to teach me about the big world beyond Hansontown, each evening Nellie got a newspaper from neighbors who’d already finished with it to read a few articles to me, and she insisted I listen to the six o’clock news on the radio. At first, the war seemed far off and dull. Strangely, something as trivial as knitting for the soldiers began to give me the feeling of a personal connection. Mom reminded me as well that our relatives in Scotland lived only two hundred miles from the nightly bombing in London; at the time, rumors suggested that Germany would eventually bomb Glasgow and Edinburgh. As time went on the war became vividly real. I became mesmerized by the names of the places, people, and events I heard on the radio and in the newspaper articles that were read to me: The Philippines, Manila, Tarawa, Midway, Saipan, Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Bataan, MacArthur, Paris, London (where bombing was continuous), Poland, and concentration camps. My geographic illiteracy became evident. Imagination, curiosity and the web between the emotions of fear and hope created a hunger to learn more. Six or seven years after the war, I saw the moving musical, South Pacific, and consequently read the book by James Michener, which depicted all my fantasies about the South Seas during WWII, and then many years later sat in the audience at a performance on Broadway. It had all the facets of warfare in the Pacific, including heroism, romance, humor, sadness, even racism, and bigotry.

Regular collections were made of tin cans, used rubber tires, and newspapers, for the war effort. Car headlights had to be painted black on the top half, and nighttime traffic was restricted to those who had authorization. Window shades were to be drawn at dusk. A local store was designated for distribution of sold black shades; they were handed out free to residents who didn’t have the funds to buy them. Cigarette smoking outside after dark was banned. Food stamps were issued according to the size of the household. The primary foods affected were sugar, butter, and meat. Rationing hit most families pretty hard, but made little impact on us because much of our food was donated or leftover. Gasoline was rationed as well, but, without a car, we remained unaffected.

What made the war almost too real and too close were the every-other-day preparation rehearsals in school. We were told that when we heard a certain alarm we were to hide under our desks and cover our heads. A different-sounding alarm meant that we were to march in quiet order to the basement of the building. There were the routine fire drills as well. I followed instructions to the letter, but wondered privately about two things: (1) If Germany was so far away and there was so much water in between, how could they ever reach us? and (2) How did the principal know which alarm to ring? For weeks, I alternated between being a terrified kid and being a relaxed kid because I’d forgotten all about it—until the next bomb drill. After a while, as with most situations in life, I learned to live with it. When the war ended, food rationing went on for a considerable period of time but the drills stopped immediately, for which I was grateful.

On August 15, 1945, the four years of WWII finally came to an end with the unconditional surrender of the Japanese. Some of us kids were down at the football field in the early evening throwing the ball around when we heard the town’s fire whistle go off and keep sounding. A car with teenagers inside pulled up and announced the end of the fighting to us. Almost immediately, a town celebration began with people hanging out their windows banging pots and others running up and down Main Street yelling, laughing, and hugging each other. High school band members gathered at Town Hall as if on cue. A parade was organized. Behind the band marched throngs of people, cars, trucks, bikes, and baby strollers. It was my first experience with euphoria—total happiness and joy. An impromptu block party was organized. Soda, beer, and food appeared from nowhere.

As I walked, after the parade, to the party, I noticed hanging in the windows of two houses I passed small blue banners with a white star in the center, indicating that a family member had been lost in the war. I imagined the emotions of those families must be convoluted: the continuing sadness from the loss, with a deep pride for the sacrifice, but also gladness that the hostilities had ended. This jolt of reality caused me to slow my gait as I reflected on what had happened since December 7, 1941: from Pearl Harbor to the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to that day, the end of the war. I recalled the German Bund, made up of German loyalists, which operated in this country even after fighting commenced with Germany. Many Japanese immigrants who were naturalized American citizens had been rounded up and placed in reservations in isolated states such as Oklahoma to live in barracks for the duration of the war. The fact that in some Japanese-American families sons, brothers, or husbands enlisted in the military and fought in the Pacific against the country of their heritage, while their adopted country confined other Japanese-Americans was confusing to me as a young boy, but I trusted our government and its decisions. How could I not be an absolute American patriot, opposing everything Japanese or German? Presidents Roosevelt and Truman were real leaders in my eyes. The invasions by the Germans of France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania; their nightly bombing of London; the atrocities of the Japanese and their torture of prisoners swirled in my mind as I thought also of the millions who had been killed. As my mother always reminded me, how lucky and fortunate we were to live in this country. Never before or since have I joined with so many people in the exhilarating joyfulness of a single event. It was as though we had been released from bondage. But I couldn’t help but continue to wonder what the emotions must have been for those families whose loved ones had made the ultimate sacrifice.

Early in the war, the Air Force took over the hosiery mill to convert it to a parachute factory. They brought trained workers with them, which put my mother out of a job. At about the same time, the army purchased an obsolete tractor factory and began to advertise for employees who would learn to rivet iron parts for the hatch covers of tanks. This was typical of Mom’s luck—lose a job one day and get a new one the next. She was the only woman among twenty new employees; the rest were men over draft age or classified 4F. Mom enjoyed the work and within a few weeks was continuously exceeding her quota. Every morning at 6:00 a.m. she walked to work decked out in her Army uniform: gray coveralls with USA printed on the upper left side, black work boots with steel toes, and a fatigue-type hat with Army printed on it. She was very proud of the work she was doing for our boys in the service.

The pay was good but army regulations at the time limited women’s work hours. According to army logic, women didn’t have the stamina to work for more than half the time men could. Some believed the rule was put into effect so that men could fill most of the jobs. To make ends meet, Mom continued to clean houses on weekends and to waitress for special events.

When I was six, we moved into a house with a family of six where Nellie and I shared a bedroom. One advantage to the move was that the place was only three blocks from school. Mom took care of the two children under five, prepared all the meals for everyone, and cleaned the house. My contribution consisted of taking care of the two dozen chickens and the rooster each day, as well as gathering the eggs. In return we received food and a roof over our heads, but no pay. When the chickens became my responsibility, Mom added a second nightly dinner-table question: Did you feed the chickens?

I remember the front door, the stairs, our bedroom and the kitchen, but my number one memory of that time is of being given a teaspoon of Fletcher’s Castoria every Friday. According to my mother, it insured regularity. I haven’t been able to drink birch beer ever since because that’s exactly what Castoria tasted like.

That same year my mother took me to the rerelease of the Wizard of Oz. I remember how old I was because the movie produced such overwhelming emotion in me. It was the first movie I’d ever seen, but that’s not the only reason the impression was indelible. I liked the beginning, with Dorothy and Toto on the farm in Kansas, but I didn’t like the ugly woman on the bike who took Toto away. Then came the tornado and the house swirling up and up and finally falling into Munchkin Land. The appearance of the little people surprised me; I’d never seen people that small before. I knew they were supposed to represent good, but I was startled. When the good witch came along, I was somewhat comforted. I enjoyed the songs and dances along the Yellow Brick Road. Then the Wicked Witch arrived, which was bad enough—but the flying monkeys were too much for me. I grabbed my mother’s hand, slid under the seat, and listened to the remainder from the floor. Even after the witch was dissolved, my mother couldn’t persuade me to come up and watch what she called, the good parts.

The movie’s classic song, Over the Rainbow, struck a deep chord in me. I responded to the sense of yearning in it, but also to the hope behind the lyrics, Why then, oh, why can’t I? This was my introduction to the difference between the dreams that come in sleep and the kind that you weave out of your hopes and wishes while you’re awake. The song promised dreams really do come true, exactly the kind of stimulant I needed in order to begin to imagine a future for myself. The lyrics to another song, I’m always chasing rainbows, watching clouds drifting by, persisted in my dream world as well, helping to keep me energized.

A year later we moved again, into only three rooms—but it was our own place. Nellie made just enough to pay the rent and to buy staple foods: cereal, tea, milk, bread, peanut butter, jelly, canned vegetables, potatoes, and occasionally meat. Clothes were hand-me-downs, make-me-overs, or donations from the Salvation Army’s monthly visit to town. In her work-filled life, she seemed to have little reason to be happy, living literally from day to day to survive and raise her son. Yet her