ESCAPE FROM THE MOUNTAINS (31)

Ever since she could remember, her father was cold and cruel.  If she was sitting in the living room listening to the ratio, her father would ask her abruptly, "Don't you have work to do?"  And she always was working. She cleaned all three of the upstairs bedrooms, the bathroom, and down to the living room, dining room, den, kitchen and the basement.  Furthermore she also cleaned the front and back porches every Saturday.  All of this for a quarter. Through the week she helped her mother with the laundry (wring washer style) and hung the clothes on the line.  Helped with the meals, the clean up, etc.etc. and her father had the nerve to ask "Don't you have work to do?"  Edie ground her teeth at the thought. 

She had to sneak behind his back and say she was going to the library and in reality she was going ice-skating.  On one of these nights some boys were playing a joke and threw Edie's shoes up into a tree.  It took a long time to find them and retrieve them so she got home after the library had closed.  As she opened the door her father hit her in nose so hard it bled for four hours.  Every time they took the cotton out of her nose it bled.  They had no insurance and her mother didn't have any money at the time.  Edie was seventeen then, and she met Jim.  He had his own nose broken three times.

He was 25 years old and a boxer in the army and had been living on the street since he was nine years old when his mother had died.  Edie felt sorry for him.  Even though she had the father she had, she lived pretty good.  Even during the depression there were three cars with money for gas. And a big house with all the all the trimmings.  Her father was a big shot contractor and the head contractor over at the college.  They never did without during the whole depression.  Edie had a brass bed that had posts with nobs that came off.  That is where Frank stashed his hundred-dollar bills.

He didn't trust banks like he did before the stock market crash.  He did say that he thought something was going to happen in this country.  Something  big!  Wonder what he would think now if he were still alive?  When Edie spoke of her father she would say how mean he was, but she gave him credit for being a very smart man and taking good care of his family.