Survivor Marathon

Reading the headlines and listening to the news of late, it seems like hard financial times, also mean that otherwise good people sometimes resort to desperate actions, that they might not have considered before.

It got me to thinking about how lack of work, shelter, food and the potential for extra money during the Great Depression changed lives, not always for the better. While the world considers the Depression starting with the stock market crash, in reality we were all in a bunch of financial trouble way before that. Hopefully, history is not about to repeat itself.

Here in Central Florida you can get used to seeing hidden pockets of American near poverty. The state's been a magnet for young paradise bound hopefuls leaving northeastern winters behind, thinking they'll make a lot of money in the former housing boom. Then, there are the seniors on fixed income, also eager to leave behind snow shoveling and high winter heating bills. With a transient population dependent upon tourism, if you stay long enough in Florida, you can't deny that "somewhat invisible" desperate people live among you.

With so many jobs being laid off, the stock market woes, high gas and food prices, the banking crisis, the mortgage crisis, the credit crisis, etc. -- desperate people are becoming more and more visible. Just this week, small headlines and news stories have been:

• Rise in grocery store thefts of food (one man caught with several pounds of shrimp stuffed in his underwear; an elderly lady with chicken in her purse, etc.)
• The local Sam's Club and Wal-mart's suddenly have increased security roaming their parking lots (due to robberies and pan-handling)
• Several long time established restaurants closing
• Local major new car dealer being investigated for not paying off the trade-in vehicles, he took in before he permanently closed his doors, and filed for bankruptcy

Just this weekend while out doing errands, there was a out-of-place young family holding hand-made signs at one stop light, that read:

"Landlord didn't pay his mortgage, we were evicted. Husband was laid off yesterday. Not looking for a handout, just want a job and a roof over our heads. Will do anything legal."

Now, in my jaded and well-traveled mind, I normally would be skeptical about such a desperate act. That's because in our somewhat affluent neighborhood, the professional homeless come for the day, everyday. You learn not to believe their stories.

Seeing them, however, reminded me of a part of the life story of my own beloved grandmother, a story I didn't know until I was an adult. Her story was a secret shame left over from the years leading up to The Great Depression. It was a story about desperate people in desperate times, and things people do to survive.

In 1926, a fifteen year old runaway sat in the St. Louis train terminal in tears. Orphaned and living in an abusive home situation with extended family, she'd secretly saved a stash of money -- enough she thought to get her to the land of dreams, "California." She'd once been to the movies and thought that Hollywood was her destiny. her fame, and her fortune. The ticket clerk had just informed her that she only had enough money to get as far as Houston, Texas.

She was just a naïve small town girl with big dreams, to become a Hollywood fashion designer and earn enough to get her two younger brothers away from the life of being a source of free labor on a relative's farm. She'd promised her mother, her children would stay in school, only by escaping could she make that promise good.

Her realities in the 1920s, just before the Great Depression, was that of many impoverish rural Americans. While the news of the times often focused on other exciting events, like Charles Lindbergh's solo trans-Atlantic flight -- those on the sidelines, were battling a different kind of survivor marathon. Self-endurance and borderline poverty was more the rule than the exception.

Depression era dance marathons came into popularity when Alma Cummings, danced non-stop for twenty-seven hours straight and claimed her moment of fame while setting a world record. While some were inspired to break Alma's record, Daisy had never even heard of a marathon dance, nor did she even know how to dance. She'd never even held hands with someone of the opposite sex, unless you counted her little brothers.

Sitting in that train station that day, there was no turning back, so she sat -- with only thirty cents left in her pocketbook, a carry-on bag of clothes, a handful of pictures, and an ornate mirror that once belonged to her deceased mother. She'd made the gut wrenching decision and purchased a ticket for as close as she could get to Hollywood.

Noticing the young girl's tears and distress, two street-wise young men, befriended her and bought tickets for the same train. Before the train arrived in Houston, she agreed to throw her luck in with their plans to make a lot of money. Once in Houston, the trio headed straight for a dance marathon at McMillan's Dancing Academy and spent Daisy's last thirty cents to get in the door.

After a few hours of watching couples dancing the Charleston and Fox-trot, Daisy was given a few dance lessons over in the corner -- before one of her companions sold his watch to another spectator, for them to enter the contest. He and Daisy made $2.00 dollars, while their friend made solicited donations from the crowd, cheering them on in the marathon, made another dollar. Twelve hours later, they half carried an exhausted Daisy out of there, with enough money for a flop house room and two beers.

All three were intent on getting to Hollywood to seek their fortune and fame. To earn enough money to get into the better paying dance marathons, and to build up stamina, her young male cohorts would take her to "taxi-dance halls." There Daisy would dance with men for a dime a song, as the women got paid to dance with customers.

If she had a really good night, she could earn $8.00 in six hours. That's dancing fourteen dances an hour! There weren't very many good nights. Still in a time when the average worker was lucky to make $15.00 a week, this made the difference between getting a room at the local rooming house, meals, and travel to the next town for all three of them. During that time, a loaf of bread cost ten cents, cheese could be bought for another thirty-seven cents, and a pound of coffee for forty-seven cents. Cheese sandwiches and coffee were their main meals.

Traveling from St. Louis to Tombstone, Arizona, the most the group ever made at a dance marathon was $200.00 and part of that was petty thefts made by one of the men. In Tombstone, the men slipped out during the night with what money they had, leaving her alone and broke. There the woman who owned the rooming house took pity on her and allowed her to stay. She even secured Daisy a job as a waitress, until she had enough money to take the stage coach (there was no train) to Phoenix, Arizona.

The hand-up from the rooming house owner was nice, the job allowed her to slowly save money, and got her out of dime dancing, but it wasn't her dream. Besides, she found it difficult to sleep in her room, as the old wooden shack of a house, had ghosts from the past -- of that she was certain. For a small town girl, not yet even a woman, the paranormal night life of Tombstone, Arizona was a bit too real.

In late 1927, Daisy actually rode in a stage coach from Tombstone, Arizona to Phoenix. This was only a distance of only one hundred and eighty-seven miles. It took seventeen hours of desert sand choking endurance, in the hot Arizona heat. Because of the need to change horses and for the drivers to rest, the trip took four days.

In case you might think that riding in a stage coach was a romantic way to travel, this was Daisy's version of that fateful ride, she described as "my first hint of my next eight years in hell."

"Forget about everything you see on TV about riding stagecoaches. It was a long hot ride, with sand covering everything, even in your teeth, no matter how hard you tried to keep your mouth clamped shut. We were thirsty, hungry, and the wooden seats were a torture chamber for our butts."

"Mine hurt so bad I cried, and I ended up sitting on the lap of a very kind, but old fat man. When we finally got to Phoenix, my opinion of him changed when he had the gall to give me a departing pinch, that left another bruise. My backside was purple for weeks from that ride."

"The trip to Phoenix taught me a big lesson, if I was going to get to Hollywood, I'd better work hard, because I was going by train or car, never again would I ride on a stagecoach, or the lap of a stranger."

When Daisy arrived in Phoenix, she convinced another local rooming house owner that she was eighteen, and got a job as a local car hop in a hamburger joint, famous locally for looking like a watermelon. She didn't earn enough to meet her goal to get to Hollywood, and soon found herself back to at least-part time supporting herself by working the local dime-a-dances.

Only in Arizona, they often weren't held indoors, but out in the desert, in impromptu and illegal casual get-to-gathers, hosted by local criminals and former bar owners -- as these were also the days of prohibition. Prohibition and the Depression combined spelled, desperate times for desperate people.

It was at one of these dances that she met and fell in love with my Cajun grandfather. He would take her to the more popular and more lucrative "Indian" dances, where everyone brought their own homemade brews.

After standing around and watching where others would bury their liquor in the sand (to safeguard their stash from thieves), he'd send her out to dance, while he watched. After he'd determined they'd made as much off her dancing as they could expect, he'd cut in for one dance. That was her signal that it was time to go.

The next man who paid her to dance would find himself, unjustly accused of "pinching my wife" when she unexpectedly slapped him. My grandfather would then throw a punch to start a fight. While the men slugged it out, my grandmother would quietly disappear to steal some of the liquor stashes hidden in the sand as the spectators enjoyed the drama. They would then "sell" the home-brew back in town as a way to earn enough money to eat for the next week.

Even though both of them were employed, they simply didn't earn enough to keep both a roof over their heads and eat. What many would find more interesting, was that at the time, my grandfather and his brothers were the "law" in area. He was a deputy sheriff and the local truancy officer. During the Depression and prohibition days, his pay often was month's late, or several dollars short.

To have known my grandmother as I did as a child and an adult, no one would have ever guessed her past. She was a very upstanding woman, community leader, and someone whose lips never ever touched alcohol. She was also a well-educated and a savvy business woman -- one who raised three grandchildren simultaneously to all her financial endeavors.

She did make it to Hollywood by 1937, eleven long years after she began her journey as a teenage runaway. She did keep her promise to her dying mother to send for, raise, and educate her younger brothers. However, like many of my relatives, she was a character. Certain little habits, betrayed her past, like carrying both a pocket full of handwritten prayers and poems, along with a pistol on her, at all times.

Looking back at my grandparent's Depression era story (and this was only part of a story that would take several hubs) -- it makes me think about not judging so harshly, those who resort to desperate measures in today's troubling financial times. I'm not talking about the criminal and violent acts that are on the rise, but more about the desperate and exploitative jobs, that people, particularly women -- are resorting to, to stay afloat financially.

Today, here in the U.S. we sometimes read in the news about the dollar-dance clubs that exist in many communities. In Daisy's time, most of the women were from poor families from Eastern European and recent immigrants (or like Daisy --young women with few options). Now, most of the young women getting paid to dance are new immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and similar countries.

They no longer only make ten cents per dance, but get $2.00 per dance. Many such establishments charge $10.00 a set and $40.00 per hour. These clubs are jobs of desperation, with women working there often keeping their employment a secret from their husbands and other family. Just like in Daisy's day, they are not nice places.

Not just the poor, or uniquely a problem to the female gender, hard financial times often mean taking menial jobs that a person would never consider in less desperate times. Here are some other modern day examples besides dollar-dances:

• Even young college age women, are being exploited into thinking that dancing in strip clubs is a way to big money. Some young women have no choice, as they are also single parents.
• Other young women are selling their "eggs" to make embryos for infertile couples (without understanding the long term medical risks).
• Other women are being exploited by lower wages and dead end jobs, such as in the textile, clothing, call-center, and factory assembly jobs.

Just in case you are thinking this is an American problem, remember that in other countries, especially ones that we have outsourced our jobs to, women in desperate circumstances take desperate jobs -- just ask any karaoke girl in Asia and any maquiladoras girl across our border in Mexico.