The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [34]
Riding back to Cal’s farm at the end of the day, Harry felt tired but satisfied. He had ten dollars in his pocket, and the words of the older man lodged somewhere deep in his breast. It was not until days later that Harry would discover that the friendly fellow was the legendary Mickey Walsh, the man who had started leading out ponies in Central Park and was now an influential millionaire.
Nonetheless, Harry turned over the words in his mind as he lay down to sleep that night. He couldn’t imagine wanting anything more than he wanted to ride. But rows and rows of shiny green tobacco plants were implanted behind his eyelids, and he and Johanna were all too aware that they needed that crop to do well or they would be out of money. Harry was starting to understand that things didn’t look good. Bill McCormick was a drinker who did not manage the farm very well, and even worse, the summer season had been hot and dry. They needed rain, and a lot of it soon, or the crop would fail.
In tobacco country, November is auction time. Ever since the Great Depression, the government had put in subsidies to support the price of the crop, but even so, there were great variations in the prices. Johanna was now seven months pregnant and their start-up capital, the $160 they had saved in Holland and brought with them as a nest egg, had almost been exhausted as the long, hot summer dragged into a dusty, dry fall. Each day, the locals searched the sky for rain that did not come. The glossy rows of tobacco started to shrivel and yellow.
Eventually, Harry and Johanna had to face the truth. All of their hard work had come to nothing. The tobacco crop was worthless that year, and their 50 percent take of the crop ended up being 50 percent of nothing. It was time for them to look for work somewhere else—Harry needed a salary, however small, to keep them afloat.
Harry had stayed in touch with Mickey Walsh, who promised to keep his eye out for work for Harry, but so far, there’d been nothing. With the baby almost due, they realized they had no choice. Johanna’s sister, who lived near Greensboro, offered to take them in while they waited for the baby to come. Harry continued to pick up odd jobs. It was the only work he could find. The bill for the hospital was $130, and Harry worked round the clock just to get that amount. Paying the hospital bill in full, in cash, cleaned them out. Their son, Joseph, who quickly earned the nickname Chef, was born into uncertainty. Harry and Johanna just didn’t know what their next move should be, and now they had another mouth to feed.
With all of the changes going on in the American farm economy, it was not a propitious time to be an immigrant trying to make a living in farming. In prewar Holland, the farm and brewery had supported their entire family—but as Harry had quickly learned, the gulf between working as a hired hand and owning your own land was vast. All over the country, droves of young people were leaving the land behind for higher education or factory work. Farms that had been in families for generations were sold off, the land consolidated into fewer larger farms, the beginning of a long-term trend that by the 1980s would mark the virtual end of the family farm.
When they’d stepped aboard the ship bound for America, it had never occurred to Harry that he would not be a farmer. He’d spent his entire life working the land. But times were changing.
Harry and Johanna needed a place of their own. They could not keep imposing on Johanna’s sister. Harry traipsed the streets, continually looking for work. The furniture factories in High Point were hiring—Harry scanned the ads, wondering if it was time to consider that kind of job.
But Mickey Walsh had kept the young man in mind, and just when things were looking bleakest, a call came through. Mickey had recommended Harry for a position in a Pennsylvania riding stable. A job in horses. For the third time since arriving in Hoboken, Johanna and Harry packed up their suitcases and moved on.
8
The Stable