The financial meltdown that has roiled talk of a reprise of the Great Depression hurled me into the vortex of a flashback the other day.
No, not to the REAL Great Depression. How old do you think I AM? I wasn’t even alive when that Depression knocked the nation on its heels with wounds that never healed for some. But I’ve heard stories and read books.
Granted, I’ve got some older friends, such as an English wiz who still is sharp enough to continue to mold youths’ minds in her native Texas. But having ancient friends doesn’t make me old, too. Truth be told, I don’t even know how old Becki is, although I’m SURE The English Maven is not as old as the The Bard. (Even if I did know, I wouldn't risk a pound of flesh by spreading such foul whisperings abroad.)
I also would venture to guess that she’s not as old as, for instance, The Alamo, Pilgrim, as The Duke might address James Stewart’s lawyer/teacher Ichabod Crane-like character in the great film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:
.
Even if the modern-day English pedagogue were as old as The Alamo (another great Wayne flick, by the way), I know better than to mess with Texas.
Hie Thee, speaking of Shakespeare engenders thoughts of age, anon:
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together
“Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
“Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
“Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare;
“Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short;
“Youth is nimble, age is lame;
“Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
“Youth is wild, and age is tame.
“Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee.”
But WAIT, this crabbed youth is taking forever and a day (as Shakespeare would say, in taming a shrew) in this digression from The Depression.
So ENOUGH about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Ranch, who is not a shrew, anyway, but a fine, upstanding woman of high repute. Teachers get a bad enough rap without my piling on, too. If I don’t drop the subject, my friend very well might say, “Et tu, Brute?” Besides, like the bumper sticker says: If you can read this, thank a teacher.
Like I said, ENOUGH about her, more about ME. I was sitting at a railroad crossing a couple of weeks back, listening to the clickety-clack and finding the sway of the train cars mesmerizing, when I time-traveled to a similar scene when I was about 10, also waiting for a train to pass.
“See what I’m talking about?” my stepmother said. “THAT’s why you should wash apples before you eat them.”
She motioned toward two hobos standing in the door of a cattle car, watching as the panhandlers (the variety from my native Nebraska, not of Texas, Oklahoma or even Florida) passed by the world.
“HUH?” I replied.
“See those tramps?” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, it’s just like I told you: The tramps urinate all over the apples the trains are carrying,” she lectured with a conviction that I suppose Ms. Becki uses when she teaches about Dante’s Inferno. “And THAT’s why you have to wash apples.”
I didn’t challenge her theory, because, well, I was only 10 and I didn’t know much about gypsies, tramps and thieves because that Cher song hadn’t even been written yet.
By the way, gypsy wagons, motorized by the time I was a lad, looked exactly like the one in Cher’s salute.
But I digress even more from my original topic, as I am wont to do but seem more want to do than usual in this episode. All I knew at the time was that, when so-called gypsies camped outside of town, store owners were more vigilant when groups of them swarmed in.
Besides, calling hobos tramps seemed rather harsh for the rail-riders who, after all, might be considered the homeless of yore. I suppose that even that analysis is flawed, as many hobos opted for that lifestyle by choice, while many these days are mired involuntarily in the homeless state.
Rarely, if ever, will you find a song that lionizes hobo life like, John Lee Hooker’s Hobo Blues.
So that’s the hobo lifestyle, but I don’t see any evidence that they relieved themselves on produce on the trains.
Even if it were true back then, and even if they still Remember the Alamo in Texas, the rail-riding hobo lifestyle has long since gone the way of the Model T. And I suspect trucks deliver more apples than trains do.
However, I still urge my grandsons to wash apples and other produce before they partake of the fruits of farmers‘ labors.
Today, the concern is pesticides and herbicides used in growing the food. And I would venture that they are at least as many deposits hobos used to do to taint those Delicious cargoes.
So wash your apples. OR, as we say in Nebraska: Warsh your apples.
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