husband, Louis, was some kind of ironworker. They had all sorts of ironwork - gates and grills around the house. Louis would travel all over. Once he came back from South America with a couple of monkeys named Minnie and Sally that he kept in the basement. I remember them jumping from the pipes. Great entertainment for us kids. One of my friends was a girl named Geraldine whose mother had passed away. I took some hand- me-down clothes from Aunt Pearl’s (Uncle Char- ley’s wife) kids and tried to give them to Geraldine. Her father would have none of it and made me take them back. No matter how poor some people were they had too much pride to accept charity. SADIE WRITES TO THE PRESIDENT I would run an errand for my mother to the place where the government gave out free sugar 28
and flour. My mother once wrote a letter to Presi- dent Roosevelt complaining about how bad things were. And, believe it or not, two very well dressed young men came to our house in response to the letter. I don’t think there was anything more done but even that was important. After all, this was America and when my mother wrote to the Pres- ident you expected him to listen. I made ten cents an hour for reading to a man in our neighborhood who was practicing to be a legal secretary in a courtroom. In anoth- er instance, my mother rented a room to a very nice young man from New York. He paid $16 per month. He loved to sit on the chair in the living room and I should play with his curly hair. He promised me a pair of roller skates if I did that. After a couple of months I had to beg for the skates. He finally bought them for me. Meanwhile, Pearl
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