By Russ Farrell
(From Yesterday is Hardly Gone)
Our barn caught fire; the sparks lit up the harvest night.
All forage gone; we’d saved the house all right.
And that was yesterday, and I was six.
To you of ten or twenty ‘twas an age or so,
Years and years and years in long ago.
We moved in March on roads of frozen clay, in a hayrack.
Father showed me on the way,
“Four died here, TB. Two across the way.”
One-third had died in all the homes we saw that day.
I was eleven then.
So long ago it seemed when they had passed away.
Six feet of snow in Lake Superior’s Arrowhead,
A conservation camp, “CCC” was how it read.
“Oh, you’ve been on charity,” our neighbor said.
He’d plowed crops under for his dole. Some went unfed.
Our baby girl lay dying, winter woods shut down,
No money for doctors in far Seattle Town.
I asked the woods Boss to give me all my pay,
And with that measly thirty bucks, wife and child were on their way.
The girl is grown…five chicks she has today.
I had a war deferment, for I logged in forests damp,
The Company dropped it when I organized the camp.
What matter our three toddlers, plus the one upon the way?
A Company lives for profit, a Union’ d raise our pay!
They hung the black ball on me. I can’t work there this day.
Full twenty years ago it was. And yet, but yesterday.