03709_0041: River Drifter (another version)

[handwritten] AL38-B Bob Curtis and Family, Jack Kytle, 2m. North of Talladega Springs, Ala. Editorial Dept.

BOB CURTIS: RIVER DRIFTER

Along the banks of Alabama's large rivers-- the Coosa, Warrior, Alabama, Chattahoochee, and Tailapoosa--human driftwood floats to tangle the State's social structure. The driftwood is often migratory, turning to the rivers and a bare existence when the mines, the steel plants, and the textile mills cut down on employment. The driftwood is made up of people who are always on the very fringe of employment; they are given work only when operations ([handwritten] ? of "speed-up" which cuts down employment) are speeded to a point where any able-bodied man or woman, no matter how shiftless and ignorant, may be able to accomplish a job of sorts.

Each year, they come and go. They may stay on the rivers only a month, or they may stay a year or more. It would be impossible to estimate the State's average annual river population. It is sale only to say that hundreds are always there, fighting grim battles with nature, and living only from one day to the next. No one dares to look beyond tomorrow; for the river people have become afraid to plan and hope.

Bob Curtis is afraid of life, and perhaps that is why he has always been a failure. He is forever going away to some job, but before two months are spent, he is bad: in a river shanty. He has come to depend upon the

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river as if it were an employer. It gives him and his hollow-eyed women folk only the barest and most tragic of livelihoods; yet, it keeps them alive. Bob says, "Th' Lord keers for his own. When hit gits t' whar hit seems we'uns will starve, a catfish gits on one o' my lines. I sell 'im in Sylacaugy fer ten cents a pound, an' that'll git some sowbelly an' bread."

The tragedy of his life is somehow heightened by the woman he (Bob) married forty years ago. She is clean and quietspoken, and there is a graciousness about her that seems out of place (on the river) in the environment to which she has been subjected. She can even read and write a little, but she has only one book to read. More and more during the last ten years, she has turned to the Bible for consolation. She has stopped hoping for anything better in this life, but she says, "A great day is promised. I believe it will come for me."

Bob and Christine Curtis have three children, all girls. One is married to a textile worker in Sylacauga; the other two live at home. One of these, Nora, a petite brunette whohas the gift of determination perhaps from some ancestor, has made a valiant fight for education. She has managed to finish the eighth grade, often walking as many as four miles to ride in a school bus. But she is a woman now, and embarrassed by (margin: How do you know?) being in the same classes with children. Then, too, her clothes are old and frayed.

The other daughter, Beatrice, has accepted her father's (margin: How do you know? Quote the people) philosophy of life. She is interested only in finding a man, and she does not mind if he also lives in a shanty, surrounded

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by direst poverty.

Christine Curtis is one of those women who are taught from childhood that a man is superior to a woman. She still calls Bob "Mister Curtis," and she would die for him if he said the word. Blindly faithful and devoted, she has followed his(m) from shanty to shanty through the years, watching her (margin: anti climactic) pitiful little collection of furniture mauled and ruined.

She was not meant for the river; for she loves beauty, (margin: as do we all use her own words.)cleanliness, and honor. Her task in preserving either (any of these) in the midst of stark ugliness has been difficult; but the shacks in which she has lived bear the marks of her patient toil. Flowers grow at each of them.

She never complains of poverty. Hunger and need have become old stories for her. She did not complain the day Bob's trotlines yielded a 46-pound yellow cat, a fish which would have brought him $4.60 worth of food, but which was traded for whiskey and a roaring drunk. That, also, is an old story.

We were in the middle of the river, baiting a trotline with red worms and minnows. It was barely daylight, and a heavy fog lay over the glassy water. An occasional bass rose to the surface, turning over with a splash and looking for all the world like a bronze slab. Bob said, "Damn yore skin; I'd like t' sink a tooth in yuh!"

I asked him then, "Bob, do you plan to stay on the river this time?"

He pondered a moment, his eyes narrowed. "Damned ef I know," he said at last. "Hit's about as good a place as anywhar. I mought stay, an' then ag'in, ef thangs pick up

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in Sylacaugy, I mought go back up thar t' work in th' mill. I jes' ain't decided."

"You and Christine are getting along in years," I ventured, "You ought to settle down."

"Maybe," he replied, "but we'uns air gittin' along 'bout as good now as we'uns ever did. WE'uns ain't never had nothin'."

"You've got a fine wife."

His bearded face broke into a grin that bared stumps of tobacco-stained teeth. "Shore, I have," he laughed, "I wouldn't keep no other sort."

We were silent as he pulled the boat along the trotline, baiting it carefully, but he paused at one of the hooks and glanced at me over his shoulder. He was not smiling now.

"Yuh know," he said, "I've tried time an' ag'in t' git ahead a little, so thet I could do somethin' better fer my folks, but I don't never git nowhar. I ain't never had but one job thet payed me mor'n $1.50 a day, an' thet was in the mill, whar I made $12 a week. But they laid me off, an' I couldn't do nothin' else. When I come back down hyar, I have t' come. Hit's better t' eat a little bit than none a-tall."

He began pulling again slowly along the trotline.

"Mos' people don't know whut hit means t' go hongry."

"I guess lots of them have learned during the last few years," I reminded.

"Well, I ain't never been no other way," be said, and laughed a little. "I guess th' best times I ever seen was

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when I worked fer a sawmill over in Coosa. I was a teamster, an' a damned good 'un. I drawed my grub from th' commissary, an' me an' Christine got along fine. Th' kids begin comin' along then, an' my oldest un was jes' a tiny tyke when th' mill shet down. I hunted another teamster job, but thar warn't none; then I come back to th' river. Off an' on, I been up an' down th' thang ever since.

"Shore, I've monkeyed with 'shine. Who wouldn't when hit brung in some cash money? But when th' county men started gittin' wise t' me, I quit. I couldn't 'ford t' leave my folks fer a jail stretch. Why, they'd never git along.

"Folks have been purty good t' us sometimes; givin' us clothes an' th' sort, but I never axed fer anythang. I allus (margin: figgered) thet th' Lord would take keer of thangs when they went too bad. Leastways, Christine allus told me He would."

"You believe in religion?, " I asked.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I b'lieve in hit; leastways, Christine has learned me t' believe. Yuh know, th' Good Lord was int'rusted in fishermen. Christine read me 'bout thet. He was pore, too, an' they nailed Him on a cross. Sometimes I think that them who are pore an' hongry hyar will be rich and fed in Heaven. Th' Book says, 'Blessed air th' pore----'." He paused, for he could not complete the beatitude.

I said quickly, "The Bible is full of comfort." "Hit air," he agreed, and then he shook his head. "I know thet I am full o' sin," he went on, "Thar air so many temptashuns; but I'll git aroun' yit t' doin' decent.

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