She's a Doozy..Working Title

Howdy Folks!

Well remember at the end of the Nataraj Mundunga I said I'd add some more stories to the world?  Ready? I don't know how often im going to kick out a piece but enjoy the ride : )

“Never thought I’d be glad to see this again” Hosea thought as he bent over to pull another fluffy piece free from the razor sharp plant that protected its’ prize production zealously.  He was happy though, more happy to be back on the Mississippi delta picking cotton than he had been 3 years ago when he left it for France and the crusade for liberty that he saw first hand as a litter bearer. 

They weren’t too happy to let the Negroes have guns but they were alright with letting them dance among the shells to pull back the wounded.  Hosea felt like he had pulled as many wounded and dead as he had cotton bolls, and now he was just happy to liberate the plants for the White family his people had worked for less than more willingly for 100 years as he was to escape the smell of the gas of France.

He even let himself smile when the last plant he was going to pick after the horn sounded to bring the days haul to the family gin sounded cut him to the white meat.  He and the other families sang sweetly in the manner that would have been familiar to waves of their ancestors who worked these fields since the cotton engine Eli Whitney developed made the plant easy to clean and Negroes valuable. 

The ride in on the wagon stacked high with unrefined cotton bales was made even easier with the jug one of the cousins was passing around and Hosea drank easily from it.  Hosea was satisfied at the near conclusion of a long day that didn’t include anyone being shot through the neck.  He almost didn’t notice the first tug on his right arm as he was throwing a bale into the teeth of the machine designed to remove the cotton from it’s boll and spill out nothing but clean cotton at the other end.  It wasn’t until his forearm exploded in pain that he realized that he had let his hand slip into the input hopper of the gin where one of the preliminary teeth had quickly chewed his fingers then hand and was merrily working on his forearm when he finally thought to scream and pull back.

As he watched the newly made stump of his right arm spurt his blood into the gin he thought about how many times he’d seen such a wound in France and thought, “huh lucky bastard if he don’t die of infection they can clamp that off right clean” then it occurred to him it was his own arm and by the time Blake the current young Mister from the family got to his side and made him sit down and began placing his own belt around his arm the pain and loss began to hit and the day became much worse than France.

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh the Amalgamated Tool and Die Company the exclusive supplier of automotive parts to the Dusenberg Automobile and Motors Company of Indianapolis Indiana was suffering an industrial accident.  As a progressive for the time company ATD employed Negroes in their janitorial staff and one of their most trusted ones was busy in an active part of the factory.  Amalgamated did not generally employ the Negroes in such capacities as the production of the precision parts, but was more than sanguine with allowing them the positions of cleaning up after the men who did.  The report that was prepared for the payment of settlement to the Negro and his family read that he made a superhuman effort in leaping to escape the loop of  cable that operated portions of the massive forge, and that without such effort the loop would have closed around his chest as opposed to his legs below the knee neatly severing both feet.  The report was also careful to note that no production was lost in cleaning up the various viscera and no loss in the integrity of the product was expected despite the unusual addition of Jake’s blood.

There were similar stories like in Texas where the ranch that produced the leather lost a Negro hand in a routine loading accident, and from Guyana where the new rubber plantation seemed to have a bit of bother with a group of Negroes loading tires for shipment.

The Dusenberg Automobile and Motors Company of Indianapolis did not employ Negroes. They had previously produced aircraft and marine engines and the struggle the company was experiencing in producing it’s first models did not include worrying what happened along it’s various supply chains, and so car 36 was born.  The seats made with beautiful Texas leather and cotton from the heartland of Mississippi.  The mechanicals and engine parts lovingly cast from America’s new industrial might and engineered with America’s new thoughts number 36 didn’t need a buyer.  Such things would literally fly off the shelves and so it was produced.

The Day number 36 was finished it was left outside as part of the advertisement the company did.  Lola a beautiful little Negro girl of maybe 9 being escorted by her older relations asked the man in charge of the display if she might touch it’s shiny red fender, a request the man happily allowed.  It cut her to the white meat.