The Half Tramp
(The Years 1922-1932)
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
Chapter One:
The Half Tramp
They—his mother and father had tired to instill it into their two boys, we all knew that in the family, I am speaking of fortitude, the heart and the will to endure, Gus and Shannon neither could answer them in logic or reason, or have explained back to them what they were trying to instill, but we all knew what they had instilled, what their mother and father had implanted, we always knew, and they had it, matter-of-fact, they had more than their share. And their mother knew—beyond her battered life—knew, beyond any doubt, and within their small lonely spot, forlorn spot on earth, which God and humanity gave them: she knew she needed to instill this before she was blotted out of this existence.
And it was this will, this fortitude that held him through the war years (the Great War), and it was that he was fleeing those memories because he was not going anyplace soon; he spent the following decade (between 1922 and 1932) as a half tramp, somewhat of a casual tramp, between getting drunk in his brother’s cornfields outside of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the bars and streets of the inner city, working part-time jobs as he could, in per near every factory and foundry in the city, and a general laborer during a few summers working in the field of construction of building, buildings and houses. He even worked a spell in the South St. Paul, Stockyards, drifting from one job to another, drinking before and after his work hours, and finally getting fired from there. And back to the Gem Bar he’d go; now Ira Ingway owned it; where Sally-Anne, now his wife was bartender.
At twenty-five years old, in 1925, he could hardly bear to take a cold shower, feeling its needle like thrust of shooting out water, on his sensitive skin; taking five aspirins to subdue his headache and unsteady hands. But he could somehow afford to drink as much as he pleased in those trying years, particularly in the evenings, and on the weekends in his friends or brother’s cornfields. He did this of course with the knowledge of everyone knowing, because on Monday mornings, shrill cries of half drunken women followed him to his work which he had a hard time, at times, driving himself back even to the city, several miles away, how he got to work from there, puzzled all of us. We all learned in time, he’d walk into work in some dreamless stupefaction of reeking alcohol from last night’s uproar, that was still pounding in his head—, in the afternoons it would die, and the recuperation process would start in full swing.
Ten-years of an insane desire to drink—Sally-Anne, made it through the first two; she had married him in 1922, and left him in 1924. In 1932, he still had that shrewdness, that luck and fortitude imported from Europe, by way of his mother and father, good Irish stock.
(It was his brother who had fetched him back—when their mother died, prior to his 14th Birthday, with a kind of abashed and thoughtful unshakability and brought him here, to our farm, and home in which he would live thereafter—until he went to France to join the military, to fight Germans. He had started drinking a little prior to this time with his brother, ten-years his senior, in those cornfields, not one in all those years had he failed to stop drinking, to my knowledge, not even during the war years I would guess.)
Of course all this drinking, required and took, and drained the character and strength of Shannon O’Day. At the Gem Bar, Ira Ingway, had bequeathed him credit, and a discount of 20% off all he consumed, if he agreed to patronize his establishment over the other bars—although an occasional stop at the Coney Island Bar, didn’t matter, and Sally-Anne, now married to Ira, didn’t care for that, but Ira had said, business is business, and since he was such a half tramp in drinking, she could keep an eye on him that way better, so no harm would come to him. Such logic, but it worked. On the other hand, one could say, and many of us did say, Ira Ingway helped Shannon’s dig his hole. By and large, Shannon did drink there the majority of the times, and didn’t spend more than ten-minutes talking with his now ex-wife, Sally-Anne, per week, who was now of course much better off economically.
Sally-Anne, on the other hand lived in complete physical and mental ease and peace as she could devise with Ira Ingway and his bar. She would have had to agree, her life no longer required cash, it was all there for the taking, in the form of credit wherever she went: at the bakery, the butcher, the Emporium Department Store, you name it, and she had credit there.
She could have had servants, if she so desired, or wished to, but she never did, an old habit, a do it yourself thing.
So it would seem she had done right by her new marriage, and nobody blamed her for leaving Shannon, not even Shannon.
The question had come among us, “Did Shannon think about Sally-Anne, thereafter?”
Shannon told me once, and he always added a little smartness to his dialogue, so I can’t say one way or the other, where the truth lies, but he said, and he had a sense of humor of course in saying what he said, “Yes I think about Sally-Anne, when I take cold showers, and when I roll out of bed, in the middle of the night to get a drink of corn whisky, or when I drink out of the ordinary.” If this indeed was true, I was the only one he told.
At times he had a hard time distinguishing between reality and illusion, during those years. But in 1947, still a drunk, and still a hard worker, but not quite the half tramp he was during the previous decade, as I recall it was a peculiar winter, and a sad Christmas for Shannon or at least it started out that way. Let me explain…
Subchapter:
Foolish Years—1930s
It was hard on Shannon when he got jolted by his wife, first wife, perhaps the bitterest thing he ever had to face, and it all came about of course because of his lifestyle, his drinking, and his thoughtlessness. Even now, years later, when I think about it, I want to cry, if not swear or kick him in the pants. Yes, even now after all this time and he is of course buried six-feet under. I’m old now, and when I look back I know there will be no satisfaction in telling this, but I will.
To tell the truth, I feel a little foolish bring this up, but during the summer of 1930, Shannon brought a nigger named Otis Wilder Mather over to the farm, Otis, he said was working at a ranch, where people rented out horses, Hilltop Stables, they called it. I guess his job was as a helper all-around, whatever that means. Shannon thought it something disgraceful that one of his friends, in this case, new friends should take a job like that. Otis had been working at the stables for a long spell, some three years trying to save enough money to bring back home to his ma and pa, down in Ozark, Alabama; he had told Shannon in front of me half drunk one afternoon after coming in from the cornfields with him—each with a bottle of whisky in hand, “I gots to work dhere cuz dhere aint no other work to be got.” He was a big nigger fellow, young, big as a lumbering jack, you know one of those tree climbers, and cutters, he was only twenty-years old, and Shannon was thirty.
And they just got to hanging around the farm drinking, and Gus didn’t say a word, but it got on my nerves. And I told him so, and he said, “Mabel, I’m not mowing people’s lawns anymore, nor am I going to sell newspapers like I did when I was ten-years old, and I’m not cleaning any cistern out. So what can I do but get drunk!”
Well, Oscar had moved in with Shannon, and here were two lazy sprawling bodies, cockeyed drunk every morning, in his little hotel room on Wabasha Street. And if anybody had the luck of the devil, it was that nigger.
They both kept a peachy time I’ll say that, I don’t mean any of that funny stuff, just drinking, and joking. And they took off one weekend, jumped a boxcar in August, of 1930, and Shannon took all the money he had left, some $500-dollars I’m supposen, and he bet it on a horse Otis had picked out. And I’ll be, he own $5000-dollars, enough for a house, two or three years of wages. Otis was a fine nigger, like Shannon tried to be a fine brother-in-law, neither one ever stole a thing, or would steal anything, just get drunk a whole lot, swear a little, like his brother Gus, my husband. Shannon even told me once, he said, “That young nigger taught me how to rub down a horse, and can you beat that Mabel?”
He’d get so excited about it he’d even explain it to me in detail, “You wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg, you see, and make sure it is smooth.” And I’d say, “Yaw,” waiting for the next whatever he was suppose to do to the horse, and Shannon would say, “That’s it, there isn’t anymore.”
“Gee whiz,” I’d say, waiting for him to say something else.
Anyhow, it left him with a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse stories from Otis as they’d yap in the warm air in the cornfields. He gave that nigger $500-dollars, and the next day he was gone, said he was going back to Alabama, to be with his folk. And Shannon gave Gus $1000-dollars. If he had any sense he would have bought a house. “Gosh almighty,” I said to Gus, “your brother was sure nice to us,” and that paid the farm off.
5-12-1009
(The Years 1922-1932)
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
Chapter One:
The Half Tramp
They—his mother and father had tired to instill it into their two boys, we all knew that in the family, I am speaking of fortitude, the heart and the will to endure, Gus and Shannon neither could answer them in logic or reason, or have explained back to them what they were trying to instill, but we all knew what they had instilled, what their mother and father had implanted, we always knew, and they had it, matter-of-fact, they had more than their share. And their mother knew—beyond her battered life—knew, beyond any doubt, and within their small lonely spot, forlorn spot on earth, which God and humanity gave them: she knew she needed to instill this before she was blotted out of this existence.
And it was this will, this fortitude that held him through the war years (the Great War), and it was that he was fleeing those memories because he was not going anyplace soon; he spent the following decade (between 1922 and 1932) as a half tramp, somewhat of a casual tramp, between getting drunk in his brother’s cornfields outside of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the bars and streets of the inner city, working part-time jobs as he could, in per near every factory and foundry in the city, and a general laborer during a few summers working in the field of construction of building, buildings and houses. He even worked a spell in the South St. Paul, Stockyards, drifting from one job to another, drinking before and after his work hours, and finally getting fired from there. And back to the Gem Bar he’d go; now Ira Ingway owned it; where Sally-Anne, now his wife was bartender.
At twenty-five years old, in 1925, he could hardly bear to take a cold shower, feeling its needle like thrust of shooting out water, on his sensitive skin; taking five aspirins to subdue his headache and unsteady hands. But he could somehow afford to drink as much as he pleased in those trying years, particularly in the evenings, and on the weekends in his friends or brother’s cornfields. He did this of course with the knowledge of everyone knowing, because on Monday mornings, shrill cries of half drunken women followed him to his work which he had a hard time, at times, driving himself back even to the city, several miles away, how he got to work from there, puzzled all of us. We all learned in time, he’d walk into work in some dreamless stupefaction of reeking alcohol from last night’s uproar, that was still pounding in his head—, in the afternoons it would die, and the recuperation process would start in full swing.
Ten-years of an insane desire to drink—Sally-Anne, made it through the first two; she had married him in 1922, and left him in 1924. In 1932, he still had that shrewdness, that luck and fortitude imported from Europe, by way of his mother and father, good Irish stock.
(It was his brother who had fetched him back—when their mother died, prior to his 14th Birthday, with a kind of abashed and thoughtful unshakability and brought him here, to our farm, and home in which he would live thereafter—until he went to France to join the military, to fight Germans. He had started drinking a little prior to this time with his brother, ten-years his senior, in those cornfields, not one in all those years had he failed to stop drinking, to my knowledge, not even during the war years I would guess.)
Of course all this drinking, required and took, and drained the character and strength of Shannon O’Day. At the Gem Bar, Ira Ingway, had bequeathed him credit, and a discount of 20% off all he consumed, if he agreed to patronize his establishment over the other bars—although an occasional stop at the Coney Island Bar, didn’t matter, and Sally-Anne, now married to Ira, didn’t care for that, but Ira had said, business is business, and since he was such a half tramp in drinking, she could keep an eye on him that way better, so no harm would come to him. Such logic, but it worked. On the other hand, one could say, and many of us did say, Ira Ingway helped Shannon’s dig his hole. By and large, Shannon did drink there the majority of the times, and didn’t spend more than ten-minutes talking with his now ex-wife, Sally-Anne, per week, who was now of course much better off economically.
Sally-Anne, on the other hand lived in complete physical and mental ease and peace as she could devise with Ira Ingway and his bar. She would have had to agree, her life no longer required cash, it was all there for the taking, in the form of credit wherever she went: at the bakery, the butcher, the Emporium Department Store, you name it, and she had credit there.
She could have had servants, if she so desired, or wished to, but she never did, an old habit, a do it yourself thing.
So it would seem she had done right by her new marriage, and nobody blamed her for leaving Shannon, not even Shannon.
The question had come among us, “Did Shannon think about Sally-Anne, thereafter?”
Shannon told me once, and he always added a little smartness to his dialogue, so I can’t say one way or the other, where the truth lies, but he said, and he had a sense of humor of course in saying what he said, “Yes I think about Sally-Anne, when I take cold showers, and when I roll out of bed, in the middle of the night to get a drink of corn whisky, or when I drink out of the ordinary.” If this indeed was true, I was the only one he told.
At times he had a hard time distinguishing between reality and illusion, during those years. But in 1947, still a drunk, and still a hard worker, but not quite the half tramp he was during the previous decade, as I recall it was a peculiar winter, and a sad Christmas for Shannon or at least it started out that way. Let me explain…
Subchapter:
Foolish Years—1930s
It was hard on Shannon when he got jolted by his wife, first wife, perhaps the bitterest thing he ever had to face, and it all came about of course because of his lifestyle, his drinking, and his thoughtlessness. Even now, years later, when I think about it, I want to cry, if not swear or kick him in the pants. Yes, even now after all this time and he is of course buried six-feet under. I’m old now, and when I look back I know there will be no satisfaction in telling this, but I will.
To tell the truth, I feel a little foolish bring this up, but during the summer of 1930, Shannon brought a nigger named Otis Wilder Mather over to the farm, Otis, he said was working at a ranch, where people rented out horses, Hilltop Stables, they called it. I guess his job was as a helper all-around, whatever that means. Shannon thought it something disgraceful that one of his friends, in this case, new friends should take a job like that. Otis had been working at the stables for a long spell, some three years trying to save enough money to bring back home to his ma and pa, down in Ozark, Alabama; he had told Shannon in front of me half drunk one afternoon after coming in from the cornfields with him—each with a bottle of whisky in hand, “I gots to work dhere cuz dhere aint no other work to be got.” He was a big nigger fellow, young, big as a lumbering jack, you know one of those tree climbers, and cutters, he was only twenty-years old, and Shannon was thirty.
And they just got to hanging around the farm drinking, and Gus didn’t say a word, but it got on my nerves. And I told him so, and he said, “Mabel, I’m not mowing people’s lawns anymore, nor am I going to sell newspapers like I did when I was ten-years old, and I’m not cleaning any cistern out. So what can I do but get drunk!”
Well, Oscar had moved in with Shannon, and here were two lazy sprawling bodies, cockeyed drunk every morning, in his little hotel room on Wabasha Street. And if anybody had the luck of the devil, it was that nigger.
They both kept a peachy time I’ll say that, I don’t mean any of that funny stuff, just drinking, and joking. And they took off one weekend, jumped a boxcar in August, of 1930, and Shannon took all the money he had left, some $500-dollars I’m supposen, and he bet it on a horse Otis had picked out. And I’ll be, he own $5000-dollars, enough for a house, two or three years of wages. Otis was a fine nigger, like Shannon tried to be a fine brother-in-law, neither one ever stole a thing, or would steal anything, just get drunk a whole lot, swear a little, like his brother Gus, my husband. Shannon even told me once, he said, “That young nigger taught me how to rub down a horse, and can you beat that Mabel?”
He’d get so excited about it he’d even explain it to me in detail, “You wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg, you see, and make sure it is smooth.” And I’d say, “Yaw,” waiting for the next whatever he was suppose to do to the horse, and Shannon would say, “That’s it, there isn’t anymore.”
“Gee whiz,” I’d say, waiting for him to say something else.
Anyhow, it left him with a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse stories from Otis as they’d yap in the warm air in the cornfields. He gave that nigger $500-dollars, and the next day he was gone, said he was going back to Alabama, to be with his folk. And Shannon gave Gus $1000-dollars. If he had any sense he would have bought a house. “Gosh almighty,” I said to Gus, “your brother was sure nice to us,” and that paid the farm off.
5-12-1009
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