Go Softly All My Years

The Southern Railway train, spewing smoke, chuffed through the outskirts of Chattanooga past unpainted neighborhood grocery stores where a scattered few men, faces set in lines of dumb fortitude, lounged at doors. It had been almost a decade following those terrible days when one by one, they found themselves unemployed and starting a journey downward into a bewildering poverty. The train passed sad little dry goods shops whose owners were eking out a living from a populace that had little to spend beside that which they could peddle on the streets. Men who had once held proud positions of responsibility and boasted of stellar work ethics were now buying produce from the farmers’ markets, repackaging it, standing on street corners, and hoping to recoup their money with a tiny profit. It was September of 1939 in the worst depression in the United States’ history and the train was on its way to the city’s terminal. The homeward-bound students on the train were among the few whose families could still help them stay in college. Others had not been so lucky and had had to abandon their aspirations for higher education and support themselves by finding a job wherever they could. Some would return to their schooling later, but the vast majority would not, and so would become fathers and grandfathers of children for whom they would later make enormous sacrifices so their progeny would have the chance for a college education that they themselves had been forced to forfeit. “Same old smoky, dirty town,” Averill Lowe said to her seatmate as the train chugged through its last minutes on the Nashville to Chattanooga run. Averill and Henrietta Drayson had progressed from acquaintanceship to friends in the interval during the three hours, which elapsed from the moment Henrietta sat down beside Averill. They were both recent graduates of colleges in Nashville and both intended to look for work as elementary school teachers in Chattanooga. “But it’s so alive,” answered Henrietta. “Don’t you always think of it being a great big, busy giant huffing, puffing, and pushing everyone else aside on its way to the top of the world?” She spoke in a state of excited breathlessness that Averill was to find was her almost constant state. Her gold-blond curls quivered with intensity. Averill agreed, “You’re exactly right. It’s built on iron ore and manufacturing, heavy industrials, newspapers, and Society—all the necessary things for a cosmopolitan city. Nashville’s been where I lived, but now I feel like I’m really home.” “I love it,” said Henrietta. “I couldn’t live anywhere else.” The two young women now stood waiting at the exit door. Averill’s long brown hair spilled over her shoulders, parting at her neck as she stooped to settle her train case at her feet. Several masculine eyes showed appreciation at the sight of that slender form which was now in the process of un-doubling as she raised and steadied herself when the train shuttered with a sudden jolt as the brakeman applied the brakes. She lost her balance, plowed into a young man with a gold ‘V’ on his black sweater—an obvious Vanderbilt student—and he reached out willing hands to support her. His hands lingered and she pulled a tangle of hair that had wound itself around his glasses and said crisply, “It’s okay. You can let go now.” “Sure you don’t want me to hold on to you? Just think what would happen if somehow the cars came uncoupled,” he asked hopefully, smiling. “I’m fine, thanks,” said Averill, turning her eyes, a tapestry of golden brown flecks against green flanked with impossibly long, black lashes, upon her eager benefactor. She smiled a slow, generous smile onto the bedazzled young man; but this picture of remote disaster did cause her to suppress a little frisson of fear. After all, the sheet of metal that bumped under her feet covered a cavern that yawned between two cars. What if it did suddenly collapse? She would plunge under the wheels. Hauling herself out of this morbidity, she wrenched her full attention to keeping her balance as the train rattled its way to the platform, but soon fell to studying the crowd waiting to disembark. Many were college students who, like herself, had boarded the train in Nashville. Not without reason was Nashville called the Athens of the South. The city was chock full of colleges and universities and on the journey she and Henrietta had played the game of guessing which schools were attended by which students. Besides the Vanderbilt students there were two others she pegged as from Belmont. One she knew was from David Lipscomb because she had met her at a debate. Two rather serious girls stood quietly off to the side and she placed them quickly from the stickers on their baggage as Tennessee State University co-eds. Many of the women were dressed as she and Henrietta were dressed, in their best clothes with heels, silk hosiery, tailored suits, she with a snood encircling and controlling her thick hair, Henrietta, a ribbon tied rakishly around her bobbing curls. Some of the men wore suits and ties. But there were a few who were dressed in their college clothes—men with lettered sweaters and light woolen slacks, women with saddle oxfords and socks, pleated skirts in plaid, woolen sweaters fitting small waists, and hair pulled from forehead and sides, rolled over mesh cylinders, and fastened with bobby pins. These rolls were known as ‘rats’ and were the feminine rage of the day. Fall had come early in the bowl city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Averill guessed the college students were coming home just as she was, having finished the school year by taking summer school. In her case, she had finished her college education in summer school because she had had to take almost a year off from studies to work as a sales lady in order to pay for college. Henrietta, she had found during their conversation, had gone through college ‘on a check book’. The L&N line of the Southern Railway screamed to a halt alongside the platform. Porters were already there with flat empty carts ready to load the baggage from the baggage car. “Watch your step, little lady,” the conductor said solicitously as he took each girl’s hand and helped her descend to the concrete. “Oh,” breathed Henrietta, “there’s Momma. Momma!” she screamed, waving an exuberant arm in the direction of a plump, matronly-looking woman hurrying as fast as her body, hampered by corsets, would allow. Averill didn’t look for anyone. No one but Mother knew she was coming, and Mother was sick in bed. She retrieved her baggage, became separated from Henrietta, and exited the station to look for a bus. Did the busses still run along here? She strained her eyes to find a glimpse of one. She heard running footsteps behind her. It was Henrietta. “Averill! We can drop you off at your house.” “But isn’t it terribly out of the way?” she asked. “Not a bit of it. We’re going up the Ridge. Your house is just off it, isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Well, that’s settled. Momma’s gone to get the car.” Averill looked around her at the familiar buildings. The terminal was in an industrial part of town and the railroad tracks ran right through it. Down toward the Tennessee River sprawled the main part of town. She couldn’t wait to go to Loveman’s and shop. She had dreamed for months of lifting gossamer silk hosiery out of their boxes, holding them up to the light marveling at their fragility, and buying a pair with her very first paycheck. She would delve through dressy soft calfskin leather gloves reveling in their elegant colors: white, chocolate, coffee-colored, soft dove-blues. Oh, it would be heaven. “Here’s Momma with the car! Momma, this is Averill Lowe. Averill, meet my mother, Camille Drayson, the worst driver in Tennessee. Do you want me to drive?” “Hello, Worst Driver in Tennessee,” grinned Averill, reaching across the passenger seat to pump Camille Drayson’s hand with its firm grip in an up and down thrusting motion as hearty as any of her father’s m