About eight years ago, the Dayton Daily News had a Christmas short story about a farm family on Christmas Eve during the Great Depression. The father heard a noise or a dog bark, grabbed a shotgun and went out to investigate. He found a neighbor trying to steal a chicken from the hen house. The man broke down and told the farmer how his family was starving and he was trying to find some food for his children. Even though the family was not well off, they shared what they had with the neighboring family and a valuable Christmas lesson was learned by all.
I had gone over to Woodie's to drop off a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream as a Christmas gift. He liked to drink that straight out of the bottle sometimes, or mix it in his coffee at other times. He pointed out the story in the paper, and told me to read it. After I did, he told me about how his brothers worked on a bridge crew for the WPA. One day, one of the other guys on the crew didn't show up for work. Later on, they found out the guy had been shot and killed when he attempted to steal a chicken from a neighbor's farm. Woodie still couldn't get over the fact that a man was killed over a single chicken. He said those were terribly hard times, and he hoped we'd never see days like them again. I hope we never do either.
No comments:
Post a Comment