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Bob Curtis: River Drifter

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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 quiet-
spoken, and there is a graciousness about her that seems
out of place (on the river) in the environment to which she has been sub-
jected. 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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