The Depression

THE DEPRESSION

One evening in 1930 a factory worker walked slow into his home & he looked tired and worried.

"What's the matter, John?" ask his wife anxious glance in her eye.

"I'm laid off! Out of a fucking job! The factory closed today."

"But it 'll open again ..."

"I doubt it," answered Mr. Gale throwing cap aside and sit in chair. "Two other factories are closing in town this week and they'll probably stay closed for months. Things are looking bad all over the country."

"Have you taken a shit yet?"

"What!!??"

"Well, have you taken a shit yet? I got some new Jones Scented Toilet Paper at the store today. You can have the nicest smelling asshole at the plant if you go use some."

"Betty, for Christsake, I'm fired!"

"But why, John?" asked his wife. "Everyone's been so prosperous."

"Yeah, that's the way it looked for awhile all riglit. But things have changed. Lots of companies are closing. They won't be hiring anyone and plenty of us will be out of jobs." He opens a can of chocolate covered ants. "lt certainly looks like trouble ahead."

It began in the fall of 1929 sweeping country like a mad net. Depression. Hard times for millions. Thousands of factories, milis and other businesses closed. Smoke no longer poured from the steel mills in Pittsburgh. Workers no longer streamed from the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. And with no work the banks suffered. People took their savings from the banks and soon many banks failed and some depositers lost their money. Things reached a point where people could not pay their grocery bill or rent bills. "For Rent" signs hung from empty porches. Men walked streets looking for work. They stood in one spot for a long time with their hands in their pockets and no ideas. They jumped from hotels screaming desperate. Churches ran soup lines and people stood in the lines for clear soup and bread. All over the country.Men looked at each other and did not talk. They carne up to you and asked if you'd like to buy an apple mister.

A man and a woman were in a boat out in Santa Monica Bay. It was night and they sat on the afterdeck in wicker chairs drinking Scotch.

"Well how do you like that, Vahlia, you dope!" said the woman. She had long blond hair & with a bikini.

"Something the matter, doll?"

"The Depression!"

"What's wrong with it?" asked the man smoking a pipe of uta.

"No good."

The boat rocked gently. On shore lights burned.

"Why it's lasted this long I'll never know," the woman said. "I do know it' s your fault, though, tall, dark and handsome. "

"I don't get you?"

"In all the excitement of leaving The Narko with you, Joe, I packed the wrong gear!"

'They are jumping from the Hotel Madrid."

"It is the Depression."

"You wanted it that much?" he asked her.

"What?"

"You know . . ."

"Don't look at me like that, Joe."

"Well, we're broke now. You know that I suppose?"

"Let's play Gin Rummy," she said.

"We'll have to start again somehow."

"Come on up to the bow with me and do the Big Apple."

'I'll have to find some sort of employment. Something." The man gazed vacantIy across the water.

The lights on shore were far away.

"Life's full of mystery." said the man and then he began to weep.

"Come on up to the bow of the boat. We'll take off our clothes and do the Lindy and the Black Bottom and the Big Apple and the Charleston. I got some dirty pictures of a Jew getting fucked by a mule. We'll discuss Freud and read some F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. We'll eat eskimo pies and play backgammon and drink in speaks. I'll be a flapper and you put on the raccoon coat and wear the wide pants with a hip flask. It's not over! We'll watch Shipwreck Kelly and Floyd Collins. It hasn't ended! Let's go! To the bow of this boat! To the rocking hours! Let's make it!"

The man looking down at the water. It was black. He was coughing and looking at the puke on the dark water. Jesus, he thought. Somehow he had to get rid of this broad.

SECOND ENDING

The man looked down at the water. It was black. He fell over the rail and swam as deeply as he could and he felt happy at the feeling inside his brain and everything was fast and slow and then he was dead.

Bill Hutton's History of America was punished by the Coach House Press. Toronto/ Detroit. Copyright  1968 by Bill Hutton,