Ludmilla Bollow - Lulus Christmas Story. A True Story of Faith and Hope During the Great Depression

T heres this loud banging on our back storm door, as if someones trying to break into our house. It scares me every time, because that dreaded pounding means another tramps waiting outside. I quickly run to my watching post behind the bedroom curtains, my curiosity stronger than my fear of strangers. Mamas footsteps click across the linoleum floor and the door creaks open.

Maam, do you have any food you could spare?

They always look the same. Raggedy clothes, shaggy hair, and oh, such sad eyes. Just wait a minute, please, Mama says, and goes to the kitchen to fix him an extra thick sandwich from leftovers, wrapping it up in newspaper. She never turns anyone away.

Thank you kindly, maam, the tramp murmurs, grabbing the package. He tears it open right away and begins hungrily chomping off big bites.

Maybe times will get better, Mama tells him.

Lets hope so, he mumbles, still chewing as he shuffles away. Only, tramps dont have homes, so where does he go to live?

Last week, Mama bought the popular record, Hallelujah Im A Bum. Right away, we wound up the tabletop phonograph, laughing and singing together as the comical song spun round and round. But watching this tramp right now, I know being a bum isnt funny at all.

Im nearly eight years old and know many things, because reading is my favorite thing to do. I read the newspaper every day, skipping mostly to the funnies in back. Only sometimes I get stopped by stories on the front page, about people looking for work. There are photos of sad-looking families who dont have any money, or even a house; of men waiting in long lines for food from big kettles. 1 hurry past these stories. Its better reading comics, because theyre not true. Mama says newspaper stories have to be true.

I hear Mama talking to other grown-ups about things printed in the Herald Times. Paper says the future of our country doesnt look very good.

Never been this bad ever before.

Radio announcers broadcast every day, No good news today. America is still in a great depression, and it wont be ending any time soon.

Im not sure what Great Depression means. It must be about other people, not us. We have a house. We have food. I know we dont have much money, but neither do most of my friends. I think it means everybodys having a sad time because theres no way for them to get food, or find jobs to earn money.

The whole world feels different lately. Daddy doesnt go to work anymore. He used to work at the Mirro Aluminum Goods Company, a giant building thats shut down now.

We used to run down the block yelling, Daddy! Daddy! the minute wed see him in the distance, carrying his black metal lunch box. Quickly, wed grab his other hand and walk the rest of the way home with him, jabbering the whole time.

We dont do that anymore.

Some days, Daddy cuts wood at nearby farms, hauling it home in his small car trailer, piling it up against our garage for the long winter ahead. Other days, he helps the junk man, Krause, at his over-cluttered second-hand store. He brings home different pieces of odd junk, telling Mama, Well, I just might use that stuff some day, you never know.

And Mama tells him, Someday, youll be having your own junk shop right here.

A few times, Daddy even brings the junk man home to eat dinner with us at our large kitchen table, making us squash together tighter to fit Krause in. We try to keep as far away from him as possible, because he scares us his greasy clothes, dark grizzly beard, and thick foreign accent. He even smells different.

Mama works hard too, every day, but she works at home. Well, except on Fridays, the day Mama works as a cleaning lady.

I hate that Mama has to be away, cleaning for a rich doctor and his wife, when she has children of her own to cook and clean for. It never seems fair.

Theres six children in our family. Catherine, Betty Jane, and Buddy are older than me. Sonny and Mitzy are younger. We live in a two-story painted white house on the corner of Columbus Street in

Manitowoc, a small town in Wisconsin. Theres a large front porch, dark scary attic, and roomy damp basement. The giant elm tree in front, so big it pushes up cracks in the sidewalk, is our goal post for neighborhood games. I really like that house, except not on Fridays.

Thats the only day I come home from school to an empty house. No cooking smells greet me when I open the door. The wood-burning kitchen stove is icy cold. Theres nothing simmering on its blackened lids. It just doesnt seem like the same house when nobodys there, especially without Mama.

Because I get home first, its my job to begin supper. I quickly change my school clothes to play clothes and start shaking out the gritty ashes in the frigid stove, wishing Friday was already over.

Besides having to be meatless, because church rules say no meat on Friday, food never tastes good when I make it. Pancakes are what I do best. Milk, flour, eggs from our few chickens. I can even make homemade brown-sugar syrup, only mine mostly turns out too watery.