The Gleaners(Carl Brooks) The Gleaners

A Remembrance
By
Carl Brooks

Bowie Texas wasn’t much if you happened to be passing through on US 287; the highway that runs from Fort Worth to Wichita Falls. There were no freeways there in 1950 and travelers just had to deal with the inconvenience of slowing their pace to get through the small rural towns that dotted the north central part of the state. No one ever paid much attention to such places, unless they had a particularly odd or recognizable name. Our town was named after Jim Bowie, a hero of the Alamo, who, as local legend has it, was once wounded there by Comanche Indians. No one ever corroborated the story, but we were quite willing to accept the minor distinction. Nocona (which was named after Chief Noconus, of the Comanche Indian nation) was a bit more famous; a town just north of Bowie about 20 miles that earned its fame as the home-place of the Nocona Boot Factory. Such are the ingredients in the making of home towns.

My youth spent in Bowie contained a mixture of turmoil, family divorce, displacement, uncertainty and violence. There were some good times too; stretches of my existence when the only thing to think about was what adventure awaited me at wherever I might find myself at the moment. At age nine I really didn’t think much about the future, at least not beyond next week, or next month, or summer vacation from school. But it is funny how, in life, the really rich lessons we learn seem to attach themselves to surprise, shock, or trauma… even the milder forms of them. Our family had been relatively stable for the first seven or eight years since I had joined it, but as time went on, it got pretty crazy. My older sister and brother and I had been displaced several times after those early years until we were feeling pretty battered.
We couldn’t help but notice the differences between the stability of home-life we observed between ours and the families around us; our friends, and of course those that we just naturally sized up as being “normal.” There were lots of feelings of regret that we weren’t quite on the same level as those around us. This assessment was also nurtured by the attitudes and treatment we received from those well-meaning people who seemed to know just exactly what social and economic slot to fit us into. Involuntarily, an element of self-pity crept in and we were guilty of feeling a bit defensive and sorry for ourselves and our plight. Oh, we didn’t brood over it, but we carried our perceived downtrodden social status around with us as we would our shirt, shoes, or pocket knife. It gradually became who we were; part of our personalities. Circumstances, fate, or whatever you wanted to call it had played a cruel trick on our family. In retrospect, I suppose that our parents were the cause of their own self-destruction, and to a certain extent, ours too. We did what most people in our small world did; we assessed ourselves in relation to others around us who had either more or less than we did in material things, as well as that ethereal glue that bonds families together. We didn’t have many material things and that familial glue seemed to be getting weaker and weaker all the time. The only real bonding we had towards each other was out of the necessity of survival. It was a “circling of the wagons” mentality… a purely defensive posture.

After our parents were divorced, things really seemed to deteriorate rapidly and seriously. Our home had been a nice, stable, middle class, older house with a detached garage apartment that my father, a house-painting contractor, had built. The rent from the garage apartment added an extra windfall to our income. When the house was awarded to my mother in the divorce settlement, my father promptly burned it to the ground for spite, or revenge, or both. In any event, my mother, sister, brother and I had to move into a one room garage apartment behind my grandmother’s house. It was a real come-down from what we’d been accustomed to, so we thought that our world had been severely devastated. We only saw how far we had fallen economically and aesthetically and not how much better off we were than many of those around us. It seems to be a truism that most of us don’t notice those who have been relegated to the bottom quarter of our socioeconomic hierarchy. They are more or less invisible to us… unseen by choice, chance, or by virtue of the sight of them being somewhat uncomfortable for us to look at. It is scary, but most of us are but a few short circumstances away from serious change in our comfortable lifestyles. I was rapidly learning that at an early age.

Even being displaced and thrust into poverty, whatever we had to endure in our new situation was far better than lying awake at night listening to our father beat our mother with his fists on a regular basis… always when he had been drinking. Besides, we were pretty young and a change of just about any kind was just another adventure. We made it that way out of self-defense. Adapting is probably what humans do best, and children are better at it than anyone else… they have to be. My sister, brother and I had very little control over our circumstances, our lives, or where and how we wanted to live. We were obliged to go where, and do what, we were told. The decisions for these things were always left up to the older, smarter adults who were more in control of things. Right or wrong, they were the parents, we were the children.
Television, having not been introduced into our small community as yet, was not a refuge from our grinding poverty. Instead, we generously used our imaginations. Radio was king and it was a rich source of our evening and Saturday morning entertainment; our escape, plus the very necessary fact of it being free of charge for the listener. Supporting the program sponsors was a luxury afforded to those other people who had the means. Mostly, I spent the majority of my waking hours outside… exploring the world.
We had three movie theatres in our small town. Admission was nine cents, but most of the time that was an insurmountable sum. Our mother worked as a waitress in a local café and we were relegated to living on her tips. It was just about then that I discovered a really fun thing to do. Once every week, my grandfather would gather up all of our trash that had accumulated between his house and ours and take it to the “dump grounds” for disposal. Most everyone had a 55 gallon barrel situated near their back alley where they burned most of their daily trash, but eventually, there had to be a final dumping site for whatever was left. Our “dump ground” was located behind Elmwood Cemetery, where families could simply take their trash to a city maintained landfill and dispose of anything they didn’t want anymore. It was a smelly and all-around gross place, but that was just on the surface.
My mother was the first in our family to realize the relative value of the place. She and Granddad would go there and not come home for several hours. I couldn’t figure out what the interest was until one Saturday morning I had nothing else planned, so I decided to go along for the ride. Granddad sometimes allowed me to ride in the pickup bed and that was fun in itself. The freedom I had been allowed up to that time gave me the confidence to go and do just about anything I wanted that didn’t hurt me in the process.
Mother had previously brought things home from the dump ground which she was very proud of, and used the items to augment our meager existence. She regularly found hardly-worn clothes, pots, pans, dishes, building materials, tools, perfectly good appliances, radios, shoes and many other items that people had discarded for any number of reasons. Her creativity and resourcefulness then took over as she remade the items. Old clothes were altered, chipped or broken things were mended or patched, other, smaller things, were used to make larger things. She had raved about her little bonanza, but none of us really paid much attention… plus, there was the obvious social stigma attached to anyone seen rummaging through and retrieving trash from that nasty place. It had never really occurred to me that in picking through that stew of refuse and discards, one might find anything valuable or interesting.
Then, simply by chance, I discovered the true value of the place in spite of myself. Feeling a little strange and insecure on my first visit, I wandered around kicking a can or two, chunking rocks at bottles, then, I spotted my first treasure. Apparently someone had thrown away several WWII military medals, along with a small display case. What a find! I thought I’d won the door prize at church bingo. After a few more similar finds, I became a true believer. I forgot about the stigma and the smell and from then on became a dump-ground beachcomber. Not many interesting artifacts got past me. People frequently discarded radios with nothing wrong with them except a loose cord, pocket knives with one blade broken or chipped, neckties, wallets and purses with change left in them. Sometime later, I discovered that it was considered bad luck to discard a purse or wallet without leaving at least a small amount of money inside. I wasn’t particularly superstitious, but was glad other people were. Even glass pop bottles were worth two cents each at the grocery store; a redemption of the initial deposit. It seemed that when people finally made up their minds to clean out their attics or basements, they just dumped everything from those storage places and never looked back. Being discarded didn’t mean the items weren’t useful anymore. It just meant that the previous owner had little or no use for them. As the old saying goes, “One man’s floor is another man’s ceiling.”
The excitement I felt in the discovery of my small findings was something akin to ocean fishing… you never knew what you’d latch onto during any given expedition. Then, the follow-through was in making something useful from what had been recovered. We dubbed our excursions “treasure hunting.” The mining of the items we found was truly addictive. I’d search for an hour and not find anything, then, a beautiful picture frame with a photo of Jane Russell. Wow! That was enough to spike my interest for another couple of hours. Then, next week, a whole new and replenished ocean from which to make a new catch; everything from Monopoly games to playing cards to watches and jewelry.

Looking back, I can see a kind of similarity between our ragged family and the trash that people had discarded and dubbed as “unusable” at the dump ground. We had also been discarded, in a sense… determined as useless and unsalvageable for all practicable purposes. But just like the very useful things we were finding among the trash, we also contained valuable and useful possibilities. Sure, it might take a little extra effort, a little insight and imagination, but we had a very special ingredient… potential, and that made us worth saving.
I was aware that my adventures at the dump ground were not something I could brag about with my friends, or was the least bit acceptable in polite society. In fact, it was mostly seen by normal people as scraping the bottom, socially. I had a few encounters with people who got very angry with me for disturbing and retrieving items they had thrown away and didn’t expect to find back in circulation… on any level. But, for me, Christmas came on every excursion. In a few short months I had an entire collection of comic books, medical books, discarded library books, parts of a train set and lots of cancelled bank checks my friends and I used as play money. The uses for the things I found were limited only by my own imagination and creativity. Pretty soon, I had a small business established in refurbishing many items and reselling them. Reworking and repairing cigarette lighters was my specialty, especially Zippo lighters. I tried to offer a good product at a fair price, but I think many people just wanted to reward me for my ingenuity. The nine cents admission to the movies was no longer a problem.
There’s no way to know how many of Bowie’s citizens were aware that we were garbage gleaners… trash pickers. Truthfully, at that time, I really didn’t give it much thought. I knew what I was doing and how it looked. We were so intent in searching through the piles of garbage that we hardly noticed anyone else noticing us. Our intensity of focus reminded me of the opening line of Stephen Crane’s book, The Open Boat: “None of them knew the color of the sky.” We were concentrating so hard on our task-at-hand that the rest of the world was temporarily ignored. Many people had already placed us in the same category as the dump grounds. We were just trash ourselves.
As bad off as I thought our family’s situation was, relatively, I was about to have an awakening. In our constant self-assessment, we generally have to evaluate everyone around us in order to gauge where we are in the pecking order; those who enjoy the “good life,” as well as those less fortunate than ourselves. As far as I could determine, we were well below the average line. It was difficult for me to see the reality that was only a short distance all around me. I was about to see a bigger picture and feel a bit less sorry for our ragged family in our circumstances.

There wasn’t much real danger from everyday encounters with other people in our town; not like there is today. Everyone knew everyone else and even children could wander around freely, while sort of being looked after by whoever was there. It was the best example of a working community I’ve ever known. Consequently, having little or no direct supervision while my mother was at work, I went just about wherever I wanted… whenever I wanted. At age nine, I had purchased a small squirrel gun from a local fix-it shop, a short .22 rifle that I had bought with $6.00 of my earnings. At a distance of up to fifty yards I could hit just about anything I aimed at. No one in the family knew of my secret rifle, and if Mother ever found out, I’d have been severely reprimanded. It could have been dangerous, but I was very careful at where I pointed and how I used it. The short .22 caliber bullets only cost about 2 cents each and with practice I became quite expert at shooting small game. Summer afternoons would often find me wandering around the cemetery/dump grounds and the woods surrounding them. I had no destination in mind, but just greatly enjoyed exploring and finding things. Occasionally I’d shoot a helpless squirrel to take home for Mother to skin and fry up for dinner, a chore that I found out later was very distasteful for her. Of course I’d tell her that someone else had shot it. I know! I know! But you had to have been there at the time.

On the particular day of my revelation, it was very hot. Heat waves were rising over the tinder-dry grass and shrubs. The ever present cicadas were rattling in protest from just about every tree. Most animals had sense enough to stay indoors where it must have been cooler. I found a shady spot under an oak tree and waited for something to stir. Nothing did. Finally, I was awakened from my heat-slumber by loud voices coming from the woods about fifty yards away. I wandered over to see what was causing so much activity in the stifling, oppressive heat. To my knowledge, there was nothing in that direction except the city’s waste treatment plant. I had avoided the area on purpose because of the smell that begged the question of why anyone would want to get close to it. Once before, Granddad had tried to explain to me how the waste treatment system worked, and why, but it just held no interest for me. I wanted no part of the place.
Peeking through the stunted oak trees, I saw something that surprised and shocked me. Two boys and a girl were all naked and jumping into one of the waste treatment reservoirs as if they were at the swimming pool. Granted, the last of the three pools they were using contained clear water, but that only accounted for the looks of it and not what might be lurking within its micro-biology. The older of the boys spotted me and beckoned for me to join the play. I declined. He was about my age and I’d occasionally seen him at school. He wasn’t a regular attendee at school, but that wasn’t unusual due to Bowie being an agricultural community and several boys had to drop out every now and then to help with farm chores.
I waited around for awhile as the kids finally finished their frolic. Almost in a routine manner the boys put on their worn overalls, while the girl slipped into her cotton dress. Then, they jumped back into the water, splashed around a bit and got back out again. My only guess at this unusual action was that they were using the opportunity to wash their clothes. Besides, the wet clothes probably helped to keep them cool in the Texas heat.
I’d never seen anything quite like this before and was very curious about my new acquaintances. We talked for a while as I asked a lot of questions and gave a little unsolicited advice, mentioning that the treatment plant probably wasn’t a safe place to go swimming. Instead, I recommended a cow pond that wasn’t too far from there that I often used on hot days. It never occurred to me that either place was probably just as polluted as the other. They all laughed and told me they’d been swimming there for years… that it was their own, private swimming hole that no one else knew about. They volunteered in a rather matter-of-fact manner that they “sort of” lived with their very old grandmother in a gray-weathered shack further back in the woods. There was no shame or embarrassment in either their words or tone. That was simply the way it was. Mostly though, they were pretty much on their own and fended for themselves. Going into town only called attention to them and their situation, so they tried to “keep to the woods.” If people should ask too many questions, they’d end up in some “orphan asylum.”
Apparently their story wasn’t much different than that of a lot of children in that time and in that place. Their father had come home from the war and couldn’t hold a job because of his drinking, so he caught a railroad boxcar westbound and they never heard from him again. Their mother had gotten sick and died two years before and the kids just fell to their grandmother to look after them, even with her ill health and advanced age. The kids knew they had a difficult life, but didn’t dwell on it. They must have personally coined the phrase, “make lemonade out of life’s lemons.” Their positive attitude and lack of self pity was what seemed to define them as a close knit, although somewhat incomplete, family.
Being naturally curious about their plight, I wanted to know how they did it… where they slept and what they ate… and more, much more. They told me they slept on the floor of their grandmother’s house in the winter time and outside in a lean-to from spring until cold weather set in. They regularly scavenged the dump grounds. People sometimes left food for them in a wooden box near the house. Otherwise, they ate whatever the boy could kill with his slingshot. The old woman received a small pension from the government, but it didn’t go very far. Then, the boy proudly showed me his skill in hunting. He loaded his slingshot with a rock and promptly knocked a cardinal off his tree branch, killing him dead with one shot… at twenty yards. I offered to lend him my rifle, but he just smiled, held up his home-made slingshot and grinned.
While we talked, the other boy built a small fire as the girl plucked and gutted the small bird. They all moved in perfect unison, as if they’d repeated their actions a thousand times. I watched and listened with great interest. A stick was inserted into the bird’s cavity. It was roasted over the fire and promptly eaten. All the while, my heart was going out to these kids. Here I was, with plenty of good food to eat, a soft and secure place to sleep and many other amenities I had taken for granted. The longer I stayed, the more ashamed of myself I became. These kids weren’t wallowing in self-pity. They did whatever they had to do to survive and did it with a positive, cheerful attitude. They didn’t ask me for a single thing all the time I visited with them. On the contrary, they offered me part of whatever they had.
Finally, satisfied that they were living a pretty extraordinary and poor existence, but thriving in spite of it, I said my goodbyes and wandered off toward home. That was just one more difference between them and me… I could go home to something better. My mother would be home soon and would probably bring me a hamburger for dinner from the café. I knew I had someone who cared for me… someone who was there for me when I needed her. Someone I had previously just assumed would always be there for me, along with my grandparents, our little apartment, my own place to sleep and all the rest. I was rich and I hadn’t even known it.
I know I grew up a little that day… and the days that followed. I never told anyone about those kids, or their plight. I felt that would have been a breech of trust. On occasion, I did leave things in the box by their grandmother’s house… mainly food. Sometimes I’d find something at the dump grounds that was particularly nice; a pocket knife or a piece of jewelry, and I’d leave it in the box as well.
A few years passed as I returned to Bowie after having temporarily moved away. I made a point of visiting the old shack they had lived in with their grandmother… it was long empty, dilapidated, and the yard even more overgrown than before. A hundred scenarios ran through my imagination as to their fate. In the end, I was certain that those kids could and would survive whatever fate was in store for them. If anyone could do it… they could. But I couldn’t help wondering…whatever happened to them? They have haunted me for over 60 years.
It is difficult to judge the potential value of a person, especially a child. Sometimes their real value is hidden behind tattered clothes, class distinctions, preconceived ideas, and what they have to do to survive and thrive in the world of someone else’s making. It might be in front of you all the while, just lying there in the human dump ground… waiting to be discovered and exposed to the light. Something I learned during that time period that I couldn’t possibly have put into words back then. Being poor and always on the edge of “need” or “want” can make you mean. Forced dependence is a humiliating and confidence-killing experience. However, if you can get past that and learn to do for yourself, you’ll find a much better world exists. You can create what you need, rather than waiting for someone to give it to you.

Years later, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Los Angeles, I happened upon the famous painting of “The Gleaners,” by Jean François Millet. It depicted a scene of stark barrenness in a previously harvested field. Peasants stooping over to gather whatever they could of whatever they could find. The farmer had taken most everything usable from the field, leaving nothing but the last battered remnants of remaining goodness. After the harvest, gleaners were allowed to glean what was left. That’s what gleaners do. Whether it was smashed berries on torn vines, broken stalks with damaged or stunted grain lying in the dirt, or potatoes that simply were not fit for normal consumption… anything was better than nothing. They were society’s scavengers who were relegated to the lower echelon of society, competing with animals for the essentials of life.
I stared at the picture for a long while, remembering the kids I had met in the woods by the dump ground. The world was full of such kids… of people, in that situation. They lived their lives scavenging for food and even the bare human essentials of existence. There was always enough love, care and concern for those more fortunate, but the gleaners were on their own. They had to settle for the leavings of others, or what others could spare at the time. I stared at the picture and remembered everything… the feelings, the guilt, the helplessness, the disappointment, the rage. It all came crashing back in a wave of emotional catharsis. Finally, I think, I understood that these things weren’t bad, or good, or attached to any judgmental factor at all. They simply were. I recalled something a psychiatrist once told me, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” There might be volumes of truth in that statement, but we all go to extremes to protect our own children from experiencing the feelings that those conditions cause. We glean what we can of the good things in life, even if we have to dig through the garbage to find it.

The End

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