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FL-6B
February 8, 1939 Horace and Allie Thompson (real name) Lake Anoka Road Avon Park, Florida Citrus worker Barbara Berry Darsey, writer Veronica E. Huss and Robert Cornwall, revisers.
LIFE HISTORY
of
THE THOMAS FAMILY
From the dirt road which curved around the lake shore a side view of the squalid Thomas home was visible long before I reached the house.
At one time the small, square, box-like house had evidently been painted but its color was now nondescript. Front and back porches, with rotted sills, sagged away from the house. The steps seemed ready to fall apart, while the porch roofs appeared to be in a state of imminent collapse.
The two windows of the house were hung with rusty, ragged screens, which were so awry that a large bird could enter with ease, and which afforded little protection against flies and mosquitoes. A pane of glass had been broken from one window, and the opening was stuffed with rags and newspapers.
About the house stood citrus trees, both orange and grapefruit, heavily laden with fruit. Much had fallen and lay decaying upon the ground. The yard was cluttered with an assortment of trash: tin cans, old bones bleaching in the sun, rotting fruit, a pile of brush, trimmings from some leafy vegetables, many bean hulls, and heaps of cinders and charred wood, evidence of many wash days. A rusty broken wire fence staggered along the side yard and supported a small scrawny bougainvilles.
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from which blossomed a few small sprays of magenta-colored flowers.
At the rear of the house, some twenty feet from the corner of the back porch stood a lopsided outdoor earth toilet with a piece of torn sacking in lieu of a door. About twenty feet from this and some ten feet from the side of the house, on a gentle downward slope, stood the pump which supplied the family with water. About the pump on the soft wet earth more vegetable scraps and decayed fruit had been scattered, while small pools of greasy water in the sogginess at the pump's base dully reflected the brilliant Florida sunlight.
At my knock, a tiny, dirty girl scrambled up from the hall floor and ran screaming into one of the small front rooms, and a small, also dirty boy peeped through the back door. Then, a woman in soiled clothing, with her head tightly bound in a grimy cloth came to the door from the room in which the little girl had disappeared. I made known my errand and asked for Mr. Thomas. The woman stated that he had gone to work but that she was Mrs. Thomas and would be glad to talk to me. She then offered a clean but work-worn and roughened hand in greeting and invited me to come in. We entered the front room on the right and Mrs. Thomas excused herself for a moment and went across the hall.
Soon she returned and sitting down opposite me in a dilapidated rocking chair, she said: "I jest had to see how Della was a-gettin on. She's my sister. She in that room there." Indicating with a nod the room across the narrow hall, "and she sure has been powerful ailin. Hit takes a right smart of my time a-lookin after her, too.
"That poor girl, she sure had had a time. About three weeks ago her baby come, and she were right puny long before time fur hit. She got up a week after hit came and seemed to feel right well, then she were took
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with a fever and a turble cough. Jest seemed like no matter what we done fer her,hit didn't do no good atall. No mam: Not a mite of good. There is a nuss-woman (trained nurse) that lives right acrost the road there and she come over and said hit sure looked like the pneumony to her, and thut we'd better send fer Doc. We didn't know whether he'd come or not fur we aint paid him fer bringin the baby. Well, she kept on a a-ailin till we sent fer him, and he come.
"That girl sure were low-down too (very ill) when he did git here and he said she were just about to have the pneumony, jest like the nusswoman said. He gave me-uns some pills for her to take regular and said fer her not to eat nothin but soup and fruit juice. She don't like them things and I don't see why she can't eat what she likes especially when she is so puny. That nuss-woman, she been a-comin over every day and abringin soup and milk. Tother day she saw me a-fixin some orange juice fer Della and cause I left the seeds and pulp in hit she bout nigh on to throwed a fit, she did. Fust she said it oughter be grapefruit juice instid of the orange what with all the fever Della is a-havin, then she run home and got one of them little mites of wire strainers and said I must strain all the juice through that. Why, mam, that jest takes all the goodness outen the juice and you know hit. Poor Della, she's been so puny fur sech a long time.
"Most two year agone now, she seen her man a-fightin with another and he got knocked plumb out. Poor Della, she thought he were killed and so she went a plumb rarin crazy and had to be sent to the insane 'slyum fer a spell. Seemed like-as-how she never woulda git outen there neither, and George, her ole man he weren't hurt none to speak of. Jest knock'd out.
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"Bout eleven months agone now, they done turn her out and then of course soon as she got home she got in the fambly-way right away, and with this here youngun what she just had. She were sick and puny the whole time too and just nothin would do her but she must come and stay with me. Well, we took her and George, and Billy their little boy, and we been a-keepin them all this time fer George he just couldn't git nothin to do.
"George, he went down Lake Okeechobee way jest before the baby come. And the reason was, Harris he told him we jest couldn't keep him no longer less he paid some board. Fer Harris, he don't hardly ever have no work neither. So George, he got mad, and he left outter yere and went to the Lake country. He promised to send me and Della some money when he got a job, but he aint sent but three dollars yet and we had to use that fer food. He borrowed two dollars from the nuss-woman over there and he aint been able to send that back yet, neither. He wrote he got a job but hit takes nigh on all he makes to live fer hisself.
"Della, she had a powerful hard time with the baby too. Bout three weeks before hit did come she got mighty sick and we thought hit were her tiem so we sent fer Doc. He come, and he thought hit were her time too, so he stayed right here all night because hit is too fer to town and we didn't have no way of sendin' him word in a hurry, so he stayed right on. Come mornin there wasn't no baby, and Della didn't have the pains neither. Gee! Doc, he sure were mad. He told us to be sure the next time and not send fer him tell we wus sure. I thought hit were a right good joke on him fer he is educated to be a Doctor and he thought hit were Della's time too."
Then she said meditatively: "Come to think of hit, thet were a good joke on me too fer I am a mid-wife, and Della had me fooled too. I never
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had no trainin fer sech; hits just a talent what I got. Guess I caught nigh on to 34 babies fer my friends and neighbors, and other folks what has heerd of me. I never charge nothin fer hit. But ifen they want me to stay and nuss a spell, then I charge somethin. Folks say I oughter get registered with the State then I could charge somethin, but what good would that there do, most of the folks what sends fer me is as poor as I am. Guess you wonder why we had Doc fer Della with me a mid-wife, but she was so puny all the time I was scared of handlin her case.
"Well sickness, hit sure air a turble, turble thing, and we had our share lately," sighed Mrs. Thomas." My boy Joey, and the onliust boy we got so fer, has been mighty puny fer most a year now. He took a-swellin in his nose and his face hurt him something turble. We had Doc to see him, and he said Joey had the dipthery of the nose. He doctored on him fer a spell, but Joey, he didn't seem to git no better. Doc said then, he must go to Tampa to a nose specialist and he got the County to help some. The County Officer he weren't satisfied none, seemed like, with what Doc said. So fust he had tother doctor to see Joey. He didn't say just what wus ailin him, but they tuk him to Tampa.
"That doctor in Tampa said he had a sinus trouble, and had a growth in his nose. He also claim he must have a bone cut outen his nose, but he never done hit. He just give Joey some medicine to put in his nose and throat and sent him home. Guess he charged so much the County wouldn't pay hit; I heard that Doc charged them nigh on to a hundred dollars fer what he done fer Joey. Joey's a mite better now, but ifen he gits in a cold wind his head hurts him somethin turble. He goes to school though most of the time, but he sure looks puny-like.
"I aint so well neither. I got a-breakin out on my legs an feet,
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