Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 12:39:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Macout Mann <macoutmann@yahoo.com>
Subject: In the Great Depression 1

This story is designed to show what life was like in the rural Southeastern
United States in the 1930s.  It covers several weeks during the summer of
1934.  I have researched as carefully as I could to make the dialogue and
events as authentic as possible.  It does contain examples of homosexual
sex, so please be warned!  Also be aware that, given the time and place,
the sex, at lease in the first few chapters, may not be as frequent or as
explicit as you may be used to.  Nonetheless, I think you will find the
story appealing.  The events depicted are totally fictional, and any
resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.  Actual
places and products are referred to for the sole purpose of adding
authenticity to the story.

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It also means a lot to us authors to know that our work is being read and
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Copyright 2014 by Macout Mann.  All rights reserved.



                               IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION

                                   by Macout Mann



                                      Part 1

                                   The Plantation


It's 1934, the depth of the Depression.  Jason Cromwell is 14, a good
looking blond-headed boy with deep blue eyes, just getting the beginnings
of fuzz on his face but proud of the light thatch of pubic hair above his
dick.  It's June and Jason has just had a growth spurt, so he's very proud
of his five and a half feet.  He's also proud of his regular, Cromwellian
features.  Looks just like his father and has a strong resemblance to his
uncles and grandfather on his daddy's side.

Jason's an only child and he's a city boy, that is, if in 1934 you can call
Jackson, Mississippi a city.  It's the biggest place in Mississippi, but
doesn't compare to New Orleans further South, Memphis to the North, or to
Birmingham or Atlanta to the East.  However, the boys and girls that live
in the vicinity of the Cromwell Plantation, where Jason is visiting, are
very impressed by the idea of Jackson, because almost none of them have
been even thirty miles from where they were born.

Jason's father works at a cotton plant in Jackson.  The family is pretty
hard up.  But these days everyone is.

Cromwell Plantation has been mortgaged to the hilt, and the best Luke
Cromwell, Jason's uncle, who runs it, can do is just pay the interest on
the loans as it comes due.  The bank is willing to accept that arrangement,
because the last thing it wants to do is to foreclose on another piece of
rural landscape.

The plantation was started in the 1790s by Jason's great-great grandfather,
Samuel Cromwell, with sixteen hundred acres of land.  He built a log house,
and with a lot of toil and sweat prospered well enough to own a few slaves.
The slave records can still be found in the Cromwell Family Bible.  The
original log cabin grew to become a real plantation house, and the
Cromwells became true Southern Gentry.  When his eldest son, Timothy, got
married, his father's wedding gift was a whole section of new land, six
hundred and forty acres with its own manor house on it.  Luke Cromwell and
his wife still live there.

When Jason's grandfather, Ezra, took over the plantation in the 1890s, he
built a modern house in Victorian style on twenty acres nearer Lorman.  It
was the first house in rural Mississippi to have electric lights and
running water.  These were provided by a kerosene-powered generator beneath
the back porch, which looks like a miniature steam engine.  The generator
has long ceased to function; so the house is now lit by kerosene lamps like
all the other houses in the county, and water comes from a cistern that
rises onto the back porch as well.  Ezra and his wife still live there.

Lorman does have two small grocery stores, one also containing the post
office.  There's a two-room school house and a Baptist Church served by a
circuit-riding preacher, who comes one Sunday a month.  The preacher takes
Sunday dinner with various congregants, including the Cromwells.  Although
they are not Baptists, they attend the services more often than not.

Back at the "home place," as Timothy's wedding present is now called, there
is a negro cook, a housekeeper, a helper or two, and several field hands
who work for Luke and his second wife.

The help live in shacks scattered here and there, get medical care, such as
it is, and have "totin' privileges," which ensures that their families have
enough to eat, but they receive precious little money for wages.  Still,
they are surviving in the worst economy the modern world has ever seen, and
they do better than a lot of whites living in places like Jackson.

Jason's Uncle Luke's first wife died in childbirth, and he later married a
well-born old maid.  Luke and Mary have been together for twenty-five
years, but are still childless.

Jason has been coming to Cromwell Plantation since before he can remember.
Sometimes he would be brought by both his parents; sometimes only by his
mother.  They would visit for a week or two.  Since he was twelve, he has
been allowed to come by himself on the Greyhound bus.  From now on he will
spend six or more weeks each summer helping with the work.  He has older
cousins, but as the member of the younger generation who lives nearest and
is most likely to be interested, it's more or less assumed that he will one
day become the executor of the estate.

His father, William Cromwell, has three brothers.  In addition to Luke
there is Matthew, who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He is an executive with
the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and has at least six children.
There is also Ernest, who moved to Birmingham and became a successful real
estate broker.  Once the depression hit, Ernest was appointed by the
Roosevelt Administration to head the Homeowners Loan Corporation in
Alabama.  He has one daughter, destined to be presented at the Redstone
Ball, where Alabama's most sought after debutantes come out.

Jason had met Rebecca, Earnest's daughter, on a visit to Birmingham three
years ago.  Found her to be a stuck up ass.  One of Matthew's sons is
coming to visit while Jason is at the plantation this year.  Interestingly,
Jason is completely unaware of the future that is being planned for him.

Actually, as much as Jason enjoys coming to Cromwell Plantation, his first
real memory of being there goes back to when he was six—or maybe
seven—and he was wandering about the pasture between the home place
manor house and the barns.  He came upon Mose, a negro field hand, who was
relaxing near a barn door.

"How's you, Massa Jason?"

"Good, thank you."

Even at that tender age Jason never understood why, if he were walking down
a road, an eighty year old negro would step aside, remove his hat, and say,
"Howdy, Massa Jason."  Or why, if a negro came up to the plantation house,
he could never set foot even on a front step, but wait on the ground to
state his business, usually some sort of petition, until "Massa Luke" came
out and stood on the portico.

On the occasion that Jason met Mose at the barn, however, he sat down and
they talked.  At one point, without any preparation, Mose just casually
opened the fly of his bib overalls and said, "Would you like to play this
thing?"

Jason was taken aback, but he was curious.  He finally reached over and
grasped the black dick, but he was uncomfortable and pulled back.

"I don't want to," he said.

"Yo don't like my peter?" Mose asked.  "That's o.k."

Jason wandered back to the plantation house.

Being the boy that he was, upon seeing his father he spat out what had
happened.

"Daddy, I met Mose over at the barn, and he asked me to play with his
weenie, and I did.  Was that all right?"

William's reaction was like a volcano exploding. "That nigger did what?!"
he yelled.

Jason had never heard any member of the family use that word.  His mother
had always said that only "white trash" said that.  In fact, a few years
later, when Jason in a fury used that appellation on a servant, his father
beat his behind until it was almost bloody.  But here his own father said
it.

"Tell your Uncle Luke what happened!" his father demanded.

Uncle Luke was just as furious as his father had been.  He said he would
take care of the matter.

Jason has never laid eyes on Mose again, but he never comes to the
plantation that he doesn't think about what happened those seven or eight
years ago.  Knowing what he knows now, he wonders whether his elders were
madder that he was "abused" or that it was a negro that did it.

Now at fourteen one of Jason's weekly tasks is to accompany Uncle Luke to
Port Gibson, twelve or so miles away, to get ice from the ice house there.
A burly negro uses tongs to swing a five hundred pound block onto the front
bumper of his uncle's Chevrolet, where it sits until they arrive back at
the plantation house.  Usually, before going to get the ice, there are
other chores.

They may go to the lawyer's office or to the bank, very rarely to the dry
goods store.  Dedra, the cook, may need some grocery item not stocked at
the tiny stores in Lorman, or his Aunt Mary may want a beef roast for a
change.  The plantation is remarkably self-sustaining.  It raises all its
own vegetables, except rice.  Enough chickens to have fried chicken more
than just on Sunday.  It butchers and cures its own pork.  But although it
has a small herd of cattle, their sale is what mainly keeps the plantation
solvent these days.  They are too valuable to slaughter.

When they return to the plantation, one of the hands is waiting to hoist
the ice up, take it up the steps to the kitchen and place it in the ice box
in the pantry.  Enough has melted that the car's bumper will have dug an
inch or two into the block, but enough remains to provide needed
refrigeration and ice for tea and water for another week.

Most of Jason's days are spent working around the farm.  The cattle need
salt.  There are fences to mend.  The vegetable garden, which takes up
about a quarter acre behind the plantation house, needs tending.  Wood must
be chopped for the huge wood range that cooks the most marvelous food Jason
has ever tasted and for fireplaces in the winter ahead.

Most of the work is done in the mornings.  "The heat of the day," as the
locals call it, is for napping.  Jason doesn't nap.  The domestic help
finishes their work shortly after dinner, which occurs at noon.  Supper is
usually cold.

After supper Jason sits with his aunt and uncle in rocking chairs on the
veranda as the sun sets.  They listen to the night sounds of the
countryside, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, while the aircraft beacon
to the west swings right to left.  Jason is always the first to excuse
himself.  He'd love to jack off, but more often than not the effects of
fresh air and the physical activity immediately coax him "into the arms of
Morpheus."