“When I was a girl in rural Tennessee during the Great Depression, one could scarce find an able-bodied man. They had all gone to Detroit to find a job.”
Ma’am, there is an entire novel in that one sentence.
Strange you should say that. I've been thinking about writing that novel. Barefoot girl, share-cropper's cabin on grandfather's farm. Black Mammy Rose living with our family of six; living on what we could scrape out of the land and Dad teaching for pennies at a country school. No welfare in those days. Mammy Rose's "menfolk" had all gone to Detroit. She was left alone, so we all crunched together in that old house to sink or swim. It was not a bad deal for a kid. We had lots of outdoors in which to roam, we picked cotton and scratched out enough food from a garden, chickens, and pigs.
Stay tuned for "the rest of the story."