The Drunk and the Five Dollar Bill

People of my generation were reared by parents who survived the Depression. So we’ve all heard the stories about how poor everyone was and how difficult their lives were. I was all grown up before I realized that my mom’s stories were not a reflection of how everyone had lived. She endured some special circumstances, which of course made her the woman she was, but it took me awhile to understand that her hardships were very different.

For one thing, her mother left. On Christmas Day. Lee left four children, ages five through thirteen, with their alcoholic father and took off with another man. So my mother and her siblings were children of divorce, when divorce was a real stigma. And Grandpa Louis Skaggs was indeed a drunk, a working drunk, but a drunk nonetheless.

All of us kids knew this from an early age; it was a fact of our lives and of his. He had come to live with us after a stroke that left him partially incapacitated and unable to live on his own. Mom had told him, in a stern conversation, that he could come to live with her family – her husband and five small children – but he couldn’t drink in front of them. He said, “I’ll die if I don’t drink.” She replied, “You’ll die sober.”

He lived another nine years. Didn’t have another drink. But he spent his time teaching small children to play cards and cribbage and perform other useful tasks, like tricks with a penny, how to fetch his pipe, and how to light matches. It seemed to me he was very patient with us, but I wonder now if he was just trying to get through each day. We all have a lot of stories about him, but one of my favorites is the story mom told about an incident when she was a teenager.

Louis had come home one evening, drunk, which wasn’t unusual, but he had a friend with him this time, a drinking buddy. The friend was also drunk and the two of them burst into the house, laughing and cutting up. Mom, the eldest, was 14 or 15, and she was protective – she had to be – of her younger siblings. She said it frightened her to have that other drunk in the house. She didn’t know him well and was worried about what could happen. So, she did what she always did when she was afraid – she got very mad.

The two drunks pulled chairs up to the kitchen table. Louis said, “Make us some sandwiches, Ruthie!”

She replied, hostile, “I’ll make you a sandwich, but I’m not making that goddam drunk a sandwich.”

Her father reprimanded her for swearing and told her to do as she was told. At the same time, Louis’s companion said, “I’ll pay you five dollars to make me a sandwich!” And he took a five dollar bill out of his pocket and slapped it onto the kitchen table.

At this point in the story, Mom always told us, “Five dollars was a lot of money in those days. It’s like fifty dollars now. But I was mad and scared and worried.”

So she said to the drunk, “I don’t want your goddam five dollars,” too angry to care if her father got mad at her for swearing again. Her younger sister and two younger brothers stood in the kitchen door, impressed by her bravery and waiting for some kind of fight, she told us.

Louis asked her if she wanted a whipping, and although she knew he wouldn’t follow through, she reluctantly turned around and made two bologna sandwiches. She handed one sandwich to her father and put his friend’s sandwich on top of the five dollar bill that still lay on the table.

She watched quietly as the drunk picked up the sandwich, along with the bill, and ate them both in four or five bites. Mae and Bud and Arthur still watched from the kitchen door, their eyes wide, too astonished to laugh.

As soon as the drunk finished the sandwich, he noticed that his money was gone. “Where’s my five dollars?” he shouted.

Her dad chimed in. “Ruthie, where’s his money?”

“He ate it,” she replied calmly.

Louis complained, “Well why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

Mom answered, “It wasn’t my five dollars. It was his. I figured if he wanted to eat it, he could.”

We always loved hearing this story and her very graphic description of how the drunk ate the money along with the sandwich, “Chomp! Chomp! Chomp! He tore the bill with his teeth, swallowed it right down, and never noticed it!” We would howl with laughter.

Louis said, “I oughta whip you, Ruthie,” and Mom said, “Go ahead.”

He looked at her, and at the other children, who were trying not to laugh out loud. He gathered up his still complaining friend and said, “We’re leaving.”

“Good,” she said. “Don’t bring any more drunks back here.”

And he didn’t.

This story and others – about a drunken father, about a mother flirting with a neighbor man while the milk cow ate her flower garden, about petty-criminal friends, about being looked down on by neighbors and teachers – were always presented to us as funny stories, or at least stories that had positive endings. It was probably my mom’s way of getting past and putting away the sadness of what must have been a heartbreaking childhood. I continue to admire her strength, long after she’s gone.