Donna Marie Todd

It was one of those days when I needed a pick-me-up, so I decided to treat myself to lunch downtown. All the street spots were taken, so I pulled up under the overpass to park, and found myself in the middle of a homeless gathering. People came streaming down the slope from the streets above until the whole area under the bridge was filled with homeless people.

They all had a backpack or grocery sack. Most carried dirty blankets, a few had dogs. There was a couple, clearly in love, and a veteran in a POW hat living somewhere in a far away land.

A rescue-mission van parked on the other side of the bridge. Staff and volunteers opened the doors, and began handing out sandwiches and bottled water.

That’s when a fight broke out. Two young men, about my son’s age, circled each other like wrestlers on TV, shouting insults and gesturing wildly with homemade walking sticks. But they had no tricks or thick mats to fall down on, just a rapidly closing ring of bodies, chanting and egging them on. I had this weird sense that I was watching a serial TV show. When the sheriffs showed up, they seemed to think so, too.

The men were fighting over a used blanket. In a small city known for its mountain vistas and moneyed populace, two young men were fighting over a thrift store blanket.

Why? Why would they fight over an old blanket? And then I noticed the cartoon characters. It was a Pokémon blanket. My son loved that show when he was young. He watched every episode and traded the cards with friends! It was the center of his life when he was six.

I could still hear the show’s rallying cry: “Pikachu! I choose you!” And, I wondered if these lean, bearded young men had watched Pokémon, too.

Were they in a fight to reclaim their childhood? Did the blanket take them back to a safer time? Did its characters bring them comfort as they slept on the streets?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t wait around to find out. In times like that, my bravery disappears like dust on a county road. When I’m confronted with things I don’t want to see, I usually just leave. I don’t know about you, but I am never sure what to do and I don’t want to do the wrong thing. (Or maybe I do, and it’s just too much or too inconvenient.)

But, the incident reminded me of a story about my great-grandmother. (You knew this was going to happen, right?)

It was the late 1800’s and times were hard. Her husband was a tinker-man. He traveled from farm to farm, town to town, in a buggy, fixing pots and pans.

One spring, her husband left to go tinkering, and never returned. The horse wandered back a few months later, minus the man and the buggy, and after another month or two, the county judge declared my great-grandfather legally dead. Later, a neighbor told her they’d seen the tinker man, alive and well, with a new woman by his side, and she said, “That man’s dead, or he better be.”

Now, he left my great-grandmother with a son and two daughters. The son was sent live with her brother. He was to work the farm in exchange for his keep. This was a common practice at the time, because death was a frequent visitor to families in those days. My grandfather was fortunate to be indentured to a kindly man.

Then my great-grandmother, by all accounts a comely woman, remarried. She married a man much older than she, who lived in a city across the Ohio river. The man was well-to-do, and he owned a large home, about a mile upstream from the steel mill.

A few years after they married, the man grew gravely ill, and died. They’d spent his savings while he was ill, but he left my great-grandmother his house.

Down the road from that house, was a mill that never slept. Men moved from the hills across the river to work twelve-hour shifts, in front of open-hearth furnaces so hot they’d make the fires of hell feel cold.

When they weren’t at the mill, most had no place to go. They made just enough to survive. The lucky ones crammed into run-down boarding houses. The not-so-lucky lived under blankets on the streets. About once a month, they’d travel home, and take the wages they could spare back to their mother, or a wife and kids.

Now my great-grandmother was also a clever woman. She had two strong daughters, and she owned a big home. So, she opened a boarding house to make ends meet.

Her husband’s study became a family bedroom. She slid a 2x4 through iron loops on the door at night, to keep herself and the girls safe. She was a God-fearing woman and a force to be reckoned with. She was a good cook, so she never lacked for renters.

She bought cots, extra sheets, and towels, and put them upstairs. And then she opened her house to the men working at the mill. $10 a week bought a man a bed for sleeping, a hearty meal, and a sandwich for work.

Just like the mill, she ran two shifts a day, five men per shift. In case you’re wondering, that brought in $100 a week, not bad for a widow woman.

Now, a business like hers needed a system. And you better believe she had one. She sewed a tag into each man’s linen to keep things straight, and collected their rent at the front door on payday.

When a man left for his shift, her girls folded his sheets, put them a closet with the tag facing out, and remade the bed with the next man’s sheets.

On Saturdays, they boiled the linens to kill the lice and bugs. She ran a clean house and the whole town knew it. No cursing, no drinking, no touching her or her daughters. You smoked out on the porch or not at all.

She traded one man a private room for chopping wood and doing chores. He picked apples and fixed the roof, laid in the fire at night, and kept the cook-stove woodpile stacked high.

Year after year, she boiled sheets and packed sandwiches. Monday-Saturday, she cooked eggs in the morning and beans at night. Hot biscuits came with every meal, and on Sunday, she made chicken and dumplings.

For years, my great-grandmother had a good thing going. She helped herself and the men of the mill. But then her daughters grew up and times changed. The girls married, a year apart, and moved down river to start their own lives.

She had no choice but to sell the boarding house. It was too much to keep up by herself and rumor had it that a world war was coming. So, she moved in with her son, my grandfather, to tend to his garden and kids.

After my husband died, I was in the same place. I had a son to look after.

Just like my great-grandmother, I had a kid and a house. So, I converted my husband's studio into a rental to help pay the bills. When my cousin came to town she said, “Well, look at you, aren’t you making out like great grandma!”

We both laughed. But it was much bigger than that. Because that story saved me. When I found myself a widow, with a son to support, I had a house, and I had her story.

Her story taught me what to do. It kept a roof over our heads and food on the table. I even put long iron locks in the door, just like she did, to keep us safe.

Now, my son has moved away to start his own life. And, just like my great-grandmama, I’m contemplating what to do.

But I don't think it's just me anymore. It feels like we’re in a different time. A time when what once was, seems to have come back again.

What if the stories of how folks got by then are just what we need to get by now?

But I don't always know. What’s your story telling you?