Letters 3 from the 30s (*)

Evergreen 252

Rockwell, Alabama. 650200

11/26/1931

Dear Jim:

How are you doing? Her in Rockwell things continue going worse each day. Now the problems started at school. The school was the place where all my problems disappeared and where I could relax and be happy, but now it changed; the great depression affected our way of living forcing me to work after classes to gain some extra money for sustaining.

At school, several boys as me have to work and some of them had to leave the school, like my friend Jack, who works with his father now trying to get some crops to sell from the desolated fields beaten by the sandstorms. From thirty-eight boys we were at the start of the year now we remain seventeen, and every day we are less.

Apart from that, there’s no motivation to go to school anymore, the building is ¡s filthy and the windows are broken by the storms with pieces of rock. Some families are staying at the school at nights because they don’t have another place to go. At least the school is big and the playground is still usable. The teachers are in the same situation than us, some days they stay at home and when they come to school, they just lie around and leave us luckily some work. They don’t even correct the works, they just put A to us and tell us that we have done well, but it won’t help to fix the situation.

The biggest entertainment we got is to watch out the window, because in every moment a sudden storm could come and damage us. At home we just try to rest, because the days are awful and very tires. Hope things get better for my next letter.

Sincerely, Bart