Page 67 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

was no turning back. The rent still came due every month and I still needed to eat. The box lay on the dining table for a week, but each time I resolved to open it, Mother whispered in my ear, “Not yet.”
Suddenly, life was large. The summer sun was warm; strangers smiled and spoke; we collected friends. We had the wherewithal for books, movies, and restaurant meals. We cheered the Pirates at Forbes Field and took long walks up and down the hills of our Beechwood neighborhood. The future spread infinitely before us, shining with hope.
Without my notice, Mother and I had become part of a community. Neighbors frequently in- vited me to dinner and sent me home with food enough for days. My landlord agreed to forego my
A year later, the company had gone glimmering, and with it my job. I was set adrift in a suddenly indifferent world, with no employment, no pros- pects and my own child on the way.
“Many mes in my life I have held
the box in my hands and challenged fate.”
rent until I could find decent work.
I brandished my resume and answered ads. I walked the streets knocking on doors, but one by one they were closed again. I was underqualified, I was overqualified, maybe next month, maybe next year. As days passed, irritation turned to anxiety and finally to panic.
My friends from school were no more affluent than I, and our mutual poverty drew us close. We played ball, sneaked into movies, and chased girls, most of whom seemed to enjoy the sport as much as we.
I retrieved the box from its hiding place at the back of the closet, hoping for a windfall to stave off disaster, if even for a while. But there would be medical expenses soon, my wife reminded me. Greater need. We should save the box for that.
By this time, the depression had eased its grip, and I took my turn waiting tables at the diner, begging for a few hours of work each week at
the factory and delivering newspapers. I worked nearly every daylight hour, but somehow the time passed quickly and I, like Mother, began putting aside a few pennies each day for the future. For college. And I realized that the second test had not been so hard as I thought it would be.
Eventually, I earned a degree. I married. And at age twenty-eight, just as I feared my life’s ad- venture would be buried in the mountainous backwoods of Pennsylvania, I was offered a job in Pittsburgh. Virginia and I struck out for big city life, where rumor had it there was a chicken in every pot and the streets were paved with gold.
Surely other jobs existed in a metropolis such as this, and I determined to find them. I arranged in- terviews, stood in unemployment lines and ate at soup kitchens, leaving with pockets stuffed with rolls, small boxes of cereal, jam packets. It became a game between us—what small delights I could pilfer or smuggle out to brighten our cold dinners.
~
~
Within weeks, my industry had paid dividends, and a good paying job presented itself. We sur- vived. And, eventually, prospered.
Many times in my life I have held the box in my hands and challenged fate. And each time I found it easier to resist its call, more sure of my own strength.
This evening I sit in a nursing home, the sun ser-
enading me through the window in a thousand
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