In Honor Of International Women’s Day- A Loud Voice Of One’s Own

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She was not sure exactly how she was going to raise the rent money now that she had exhausted her unemployment benefits after having been laid off from the Excelsior Company as a line operator where for two good years she had made enough money to keep herself and her boys above water. Yes she was not sure at all. All she knew was that with three young boys, hungry young boys, nine, seven and six, that she was going to make sure they were fed, properly fed, and she was equally sure that she and they were not going back out on the streets, the homeless streets not the whore streets if that is what you were thinking (although as a runaway teenager she had tried that, tried that for about two days before giving that idea the wind). She, they, had had enough of that, trying to stay here one night, there another, someplace else the third and the boys, her precious boys, missing their schooling, schooling that she swore that they would get, take advantage of , unlike her own sorry school-less story. Yes, Alma Larkin, was fresh out of ideas, apparently fresh of luck and not exactly sure where she would turn to, hopefully not to the Sally’s (Salvation Army) again bless them like the last time.

Just that minute, and really for the first time in over two years Alma had to take stock of her situation, and she didn’t like it but the boys’ fate demanded such reflection. Alma knew two things though, come hell or high water, first, she was not going back to Harlan, Harlan down in deep coal country Kentucky where she was brought up, brought up kind of helter-skelter, kind of like some mountain wind coming down the hills and hollows. She would be just too shamed-faced to face her kin after all these years and after all the big deal she made about putting nothing but distance between herself and the “hillbillies” (hell, she had called them, including her Pa, nothing but white trash more than once) when wild man hot-rod king walking daddy whiskey, corn whiskey if anybody is asking, runner Lance Lane swept her off her fifteen year old feet. Never to look back, that was the way she put it. And then Lance abandoning her in Lexington for some dishy big busted blonde and leaving her to fend for herself (and that is where that experience of couple of days of street tricks came in, came in lonesome old Lexington).

Second, even if she could find him, Alma was not going to call on Lennie Small, the father of her three boys, to do the right thing and take care of his own. Hell, she, they, they including Lennie had tried that, tried it a couple of times but it only left her homeless in the end. See Lennie was what he himself called a rolling stone (come to think of it so did Lance, except Lance at least had sense enough not to get her pregnant as part of his rolling stone act) and he refused in the end to gather any moss. That moss thing being some red-headed waitress who took a fancy to him when they moved to Springfield and had enough dough to make it stick, for a while. The last postcard she had received from him (no letters, so no hope of child support money enclosed) he was out in California with some cocktail waitress from Reno trying to “find” himself, and still not working. So Lennie was out, out for good this time.

Then Alma got an idea, got an idea that if she pressed the issue hard enough she would get something, get another job. So she went down to the Illinois State Department of Unemployment office and did her thing. That thing included, after waiting for a couple of hours for her interview and filling out a scad of paperwork, yelling to high heaven to the intake worker that she needed a job, needed it bad, was not going to go back on the streets (implying a little those whore streets for effect), and what was the great state of Illinois going to do about it. She figured that when the office manager came to the intake worker’s desk she had blown it, that she would be arrested and that was that. Instead that office manager, who had three children of her own, called up the Republic Manufacturing Company and told them that she had right in front of her just the line operator they were looking for. And so who knows what will happen next week, or next month, but Alma’ Larkin’s three boys will had food and a roof over their heads for a while …

And hence this honor to one righteous woman on this International Women’s Day.