Judy's Journey Read online

  Judy’s Journey

  Lois Lenski

  For

  Emma Celeste

  CONTENTS

  Excerpt from Journey Into Childhood, an Autobiography by Lois Lenski

  Forward

  CHAPTER I. Alabama

  CHAPTER II. Florida

  CHAPTER III. The Little Lake

  CHAPTER IV. The Middle-Sized Lake

  CHAPTER V. The Big Lake

  CHAPTER VI. The Canal Bank

  CHAPTER VII. Bean Town

  CHAPTER VIII. Oleander

  CHAPTER IX. Georgia

  CHAPTER X. The Carolinas

  CHAPTER XI. Virginia

  CHAPTER XII. Delaware

  CHAPTER XIII. New Jersey

  CHAPTER XIV. Journey’s End

  Excerpt from Journey Into Childhood, an Autobiography by Lois Lenski

  THE BIG EVENT OF THE 1940s was the award of the Newbery Medal to Strawberry Girl in 1946. No one was more astonished than I to receive it. Had it been given to my book Indian Captive, the Story of Mary Jemison, which I considered my major and most scholarly work, I would not have been surprised. I had envisioned a series of Regional books, for I knew there were many regions little known and neglected in children’s books. The series was barely started, and I had already daringly broken down a few unwritten taboos, I had written more plainly and realistically than other children’s authors, I had taken my material and my characters direct from real life instead of from the imagination, and my Regionals were not yet entirely accepted or approved. I was an innovator and a pioneer in a new direction, and I knew I had a long and difficult task ahead to earn the acceptance which I was not expecting so soon. But the award focused national attention on Strawberry Girl and the books to follow, so I was very grateful.

  The convention of the American Library Association was held at Buffalo that year, and at various meetings and receptions, I received invitations from librarians to go to many parts of the country—Seattle, Utah, California, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota—to write about their region. Afterwards, the award brought much publicity, including requests for personal interviews and radio appearances, for personal appearances at libraries and schools, most of which I was unable to accept. Those that I did accept were strenuous and wearing, and I was glad when the flurry subsided, and I could retire to private life again.

  An entire book could be written about my experiences in other regions during the 1950s—in San Angelo, Texas, for Texas Tomboy, in Perry, Oklahoma, for Boom Town Boy, in McLaughlin, South Dakota, for Prairie School, in Remsen, Iowa, for Corn Farm Boy, and other places. The list goes on and on, always a new environment and way of life to be studied, and always good people who shared the intimacy of their lives with me, each region more exciting and stimulating than the last, each region calling for one’s deepest powers of observation, understanding, and compassion.

  As soon as I return from a region, I have a big job to do. I have to copy all the notes I have taken, classifying them under various headings, making them readily and quickly accessible. Then I make an outline for my story, listing the various incidents I wish to include under the different chapter headings. I write my text in longhand first, and often revise it in longhand, then revise again as I type it. (The subject has, of course, been approved by the editor in advance.) I send the typed manuscript in, to be read and approved, copyedited (improving or disapproving of my punctuation!) and sent to the printer to be set into type. If any changes are suggested by the editor, the manuscript or portions of it may be returned to me for this purpose. If any changes in format are contemplated, I am always consulted. For many years, with Lippincott, I worked directly with the head of the manufacturing department in planning all details of type and format. It was in this way that a beautiful format was devised for the Regionals.

  While the manuscript is at the printers, while I am waiting for the galley proofs, having kept a carbon of the manuscript, I am working on the illustrations. For the Regionals, these are graphite pencil drawings on 3-ply Bristol board, and are reproduced by high-light halftone offset. The drawings for the Roundabouts are ink drawings, reproduced by letterpress.

  When the galley proofs reach me, two sets are sent, one for me to read and correct, and to answer editorial or printers’ queries; the other set for me to cut up and paste into a blank dummy, allowing space on the proper page for each illustration, of which I usually make about fifty.

  After I wrap up a large package containing original manuscript, the original illustrations, corrected galley proofs, and the printer’s dummy and ship it to the publishers, my work on a book is finished. The rest is up to the publisher. I see and hear nothing more until months later, when a book package arrives out of the blue, containing the first copy, hot off the press, for me to hold in my hands and marvel at. There is no other thrill so great for an author-illustrator as seeing the first copy of a book he has labored over and believed in and deeply loved.

  From Journey Into Childhood by Lois Lenski © 1972 by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic for the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, Inc.

  Foreword

  AMERICANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN on the go since they first left the Old World and came to the New. They came to get land. They migrated westward, and still farther westward, looking always for land. They went west, found the land they wanted, and putting down their roots, founded our Nation. It has been an American tradition that a man has a right to own a piece of land for himself.

  In recent years, the automobile has given rise to a modern migration. But this one is of a different kind. Families are being forced off the land, either because of the impossibility of making a living there, or because machinery has taken the place of man power. The number of homeless migrants, living under conditions which make impossible normal participation in the benefits of American life, is so large that it is a matter for grave concern.

  When I read the manuscript of this book to a group of Seventh Grade boys and girls in a small Connecticut manufacturing city, they were surprised to learn that there are any poor children in the United States—children so poor they haven’t money enough to go to a movie. They did not know that there are children in our country without shoes, proper clothing and food, and even without homes. Many adults do not know it either.

  And yet there are thousands of migrant families, traveling in shabby automobiles for long distances in the Far West, the Middle West, and in the East, to get poorly paying and quickly ending jobs. They follow the crops—beans, cotton, potatoes, prunes, sugar beets, berries and fruits—at their harvest season, and help with the picking. Whenever you eat beans or peas from a can, remember that a child may have spent long hours in the sun, picking them for you.

  The individual owner or the company who raises these crops on a large scale, is dependent upon outside workers coming in, because when the crop is ready, it must be picked immediately or it will be ruined. Some growers have provided adequate housing for this extra help, others none at all, so the pickers live the best way they can. When the crop is over, they “move on” to another crop. The United States Government has provided camps for migrants in certain areas, but these have not been adequate to meet the needs.

  The Children’s Bureau of the U. S. Dept. of Labor says: “Hundreds of thousands of children—some as young as six—follow the crops with their families and work in the fields to help produce the food we eat.” These migrant children exist with only the bare necessities of life. Many of them do not go to school at all, others go for a few months a year, if the family stays in one place long enough. In the communities where they stop, they are often looked upon as aliens and therefore undesirable, and are given little or no chance to share in community life. A large number are white children, others are Negro or Mex
ican-American or other nationalities.

  I have seen and talked to migrant children and heard them tell of their experiences. One girl of eleven picked twenty-two hampers (half-bushel baskets) of beans in a day; a seven-year-old picked five hampers. They go to the field at six in the morning and return at dark. They have never had books or playthings. Some of them are no longer childlike, but are already old before they are ten. They do not know how to play—they are good fighters.

  Everything in their life is against them. As one migrant-teacher told me: “They have never had a break. And yet they are brave, courageous, full of spirit, and anxious to learn. They respond so quickly to all you do for them. They have had so little—every thing you do for them means so much.” In this teacher’s class, the migrant children are making democracy work. Here mountain white and Northern white, Southern Negro, Japanese-American and American children of foreign descent are living and learning together, peacefully and happily.

  The Home Missions Council is doing good work among the migrants by providing health centers, child care centers, religious counseling and inter-faith church services. Their work was begun on the Atlantic seaboard in 1920 and was extended in a few years to the West Coast and then to the Middle West.

  The characters in my book are imaginary, but the incidents used are taken from the experiences of living migrants. I am deeply indebted to the National Child Labor Committee and to the Home Missions Council for their generous provision of migratory material and for their invaluable counsel in helping me to present an accurate and truthful picture of the migrants.

  The Song, You Are My Sunshine, the chorus of which I have quoted, is copyright 1940—Peer International Corporation. Used by Permission.

  Lois Lenski

  Greenacres,

  Harwinton, Connecticut

  October 27, 1946

  “I am a part of all that I have met.”

  A great English poet, Tennyson, once wrote this of a man, Ulysses, who had been all over the world and met many kinds of people, and seen how they worked and lived. And so we too are a part of all that we have met. Each person that we meet teaches us something that can make us kinder and more understanding of the people of our own country and the world.

  CHAPTER I

  Alabama

  “HEY! ANYBODY HOME?”

  A ten-year-old girl, big eyes in a pale face and stringy hair hanging loose on her shoulders, peered out of the open door. She wore overalls and her feet were bare.

  A cold wind blew round the corner.

  “What you want?” asked the girl in a frightened whisper.

  “Where’s your Pa?” asked the big man who stood there.

  “Gone off,” said the girl. “Don’t know where.”

  The man did not offer to come in. Through the open door of the rickety, unpainted cabin, he could see that the place was empty. The walls inside were papered with old newspapers. Dirt and refuse covered the floor. The sight was unpleasant, so he turned away.

  Outside, there wasn’t much to see either. The house sat in the middle of a cotton field, where the dried stalks of dead cotton plants leaned crazily against each other. Splotches of white were sprinkled over them, mute evidence of a ruined unpicked crop. There were no farm buildings, no trees, no bushes—there was no green grass.

  The man’s car was in the narrow dirt lane that led in from the road. In front of the car stood a pile of furniture, heaped carelessly together.

  “Ain’t you folks got out yet? What you hangin’ round for?” the man asked in a loud voice. “Come on out—no use your hidin’ in there.”

  The girl had disappeared. A scuffle was heard inside and a woman came to the door, holding a baby in her arms. She was thin and pale, her straight hair rolled in a knot on her head. Her eyes were soft and patient.

  “Howdy, Mister Reeves,” she said in a dull voice.

  “I done tole him Papa was gone off and we don’t know where,” said the girl, appearing again with a younger girl beside her.

  “I see Moses and Smoky moved your plunder out like I told ’em, Miz Drummond,” said Reeves.

  “Shore did,” said the woman. “We’re jest puttin’ our vittles in a basket, sir .… We’re most ready to go .…”

  “Well, I can’t wait all day,” said Reeves. “I give you-all your orders.”

  The girl stepped forward.

  “Now, Judy,” said her mother, “don’t you say nary word to rile Mister Reeves.”

  But Judy did not listen. She faced the man and said: “I reckon you think you own the whole world!” She set her bare feet on the rickety step and stuck out her tongue.

  “I’m overseer for the Company,” boomed Reeves. “It’s my job to make this land pay. I intend to put some one on it can take care of it, make the crops and make ’em pay!”

  “You can have your ole fields and your ole cotton and your little ole piecy house as full of holes as a sieve and welcome!” snapped Judy. “But you can’t have the sun nor the blue sky nor the moon ’n’ stars, nor the sunset, so there!”

  “I notice you-all got plenty time to set and study the sunset,” said Reeves. “Plenty time to set and do nothin’. Your Pa had plenty time to go huntin’ and fishin’, with cotton bustin’ open right under his nose——”

  “Where’s my puppy dog?”

  The sharp cry came from a boy who dashed round the house. He doubled up his thin little fists at the man. “What you done with my little ole puppy dog?”

  “I told you you couldn’t keep a dog on this place,” answered Reeves, “and I’d run it off the farm if you brung it here.”

  “My Uncle Barney give it to me .…” The boy began to whimper. “He said I could keep it for my very own .…”

  “What you done with Joe Bob’s dog?” asked Mrs. Drummond in a fretful tone. “You ain’t harmed the little bitty thing, have you, Mist’ Reeves? The boy set such store by it, it’ll cut him to pieces if you——”

  “You jest went and killed it, I betcha!” said Judy. “You jest like to be mean. You’re the hatefullest man this side o’ Kingdom Come!”

  Mister Reeves eyed the girl fiercely, backed away and said nothing.

  “He ain’t said he hurt your dog, sonny,” said Mama. Joe Bob began to cry.

  “Come on, git out o’ the house!” roared Reeves. “I’m sick of the lot of ye. Come on outdoors, you-all!”

  “What’s outdoors? What’s the blue sky to us, even in wintertime?” said Mama. “We been livin’ outdoors, what with all them big holes in the roof. Rain always leakin’ through—I’m plumb tard o’ movin’ the bed every night to keep it out of the wet. All that terrible rain—”

  “Can ketch a dishpan o’ water over the stove ary time it rains,” said Judy.

  “Holes in the roof big enough to throw a shoe through,” said Joe Bob.

  “If we jest had some shoes to throw,” added Judy.

  “Cold winter wind nigh blows the covers offen the bed,” said Joe Bob.

  “We like to froze to death on them cold nights,” said Judy.

  “Worstest house I ever seen,” said Mama. “We’ll leave it and welcome. We can’t worst ourselves much by leavin’ such a place.”

  They talked back to Old Man Reeves in loud voices. They took delight in shouting what a bad house it was. But their feet kept moving out of it—reluctantly. They remembered it was all the house they had. Even with holes in the roof and walls, it was home. Even if it didn’t keep the winter cold out, it was home.

  The baby began to cry.

  “Lonnie’s sick, my baby boy,” said Mama. Mama’s voice was not defiant now. It was sad, as if she might start crying too. “No time to be movin’ in winter when your baby boy’s sick.”

  “No fault o’ mine,” said Reeves. “Been tryin’ to get you folks out ever since settlement time. Why don’t you take care of your kids?”

  “Pickin’ cotton all day, that’s why,” answered Mama. “That’s when Lonnie first took sick. Nothin’ to eat but fatback an
d cornbread. You wouldn’t never let us have a little garden patch.” It was true—the cotton field came right up to the house on all sides. Only the narrow lane was implanted.

  “Teacher at school said we should eat garden sass,” piped up Judy.

  “Teacher said we’d git puny if we didn’t,” added her sister, little Cora Jane.

  “Can’t have good cotton land wasted,” growled Reeves. “Don’t stand there a-talkin’ all day. Git on out. I got a new family a-comin’ in.”

  “Lord help ’em!” said Mama.

  “Come on then!” ordered Reeves.

  They all followed at the man’s heels.

  “Judy, we left our coats,” said Mama. “Go back and fetch ’em, so we don’t ketch our death o cold out here.”

  The girl went into the house.

  “Them kids went to school instead of pickin’ cotton?” demanded Reeves. “Didn’t I tell Jim Drummond to keep ’em outa school till pickin’ was over? So that’s why he didn’t get no pickin’ done before the rains started!”

  Judy handed out the coats and they put them on.

  “It rained and rained,” the girl said. “It rained so much we couldn’t go back to school. The creek was flooded. I wanted to finish the Third Reader—”

  “I liked my teacher,” said Cora Jane.

  “’Twas rain ruint the cotton,” said Mama. “Can’t blame it onto us. It rained and we couldn’t pick. I’m right smart glad them young uns went to school when they had the chance.”

  “You want ’em to git new-fangled notions from them teachers, I reckon,” said Reeves.

  “’Bout what’s good for young uns to eat?” put in Judy. “’Bout shuttin’ up holes in your house to keep out the cold?”

  Reeves walked out to the lane where their meager furniture was piled. There was a bureau with a broken mirror, a large iron bed, a table, a kerosene stove, a sewing-machine and various odds and ends. Reeves picked up a small piece of carpet that lay on top of a heap of bedding. He held it out at arm’s length.