No Promises In The Wind

“That afternoon we were practicing something I had composed. It was a fluid, changing tone-story, a theme that I improvised upon according to my mood, an outpouring of feelings that were inside me and changed with the quality of sunlight or the lack of it, with the dreams that sometimes seemed to be possible, with the despair that was a part of the times.”

Throughout the story, Josh uses his music to express his emotions and to lift his spirits when he’s down. At this point, his dream of making a living from his music seems a remote fantasy, but as the novel progresses, it becomes a reality.

“It was strange what poverty and fear of hunger could do to a sense of decency.”

After scolding Joey for using a nickel to buy milk for a starving alley cat, Josh reflects on how hard times have affected his sense of compassion for helpless creatures. Josh and Joey soon learn that while some people are generous and share what little food they have, others, like the mob of angry men with pitchforks in one town, treat them and the other hungry people like unwelcome alley cats.

“She had always been so pretty, so young, until the past two years. Now she looked old, although actually she was only thirty-six. […] Mom no longer had the music she loved—just an ironing board all day and a husband who made life miserable for his family when he came home at night.”

Besides the psychological traumas, the Depression also has physical effects on people. This portrait of Josh’s Depression-worn mother is just one of several scenes where the economic crisis is visible in people’s faces and bodies.

“I asked a cautious question or two whenever I saw a face that looked friendly. There weren’t many such. Men’s faces seemed to be much alike that year—lean, scowling, and angry.”

The author clearly depicts men as being angrier over the Depression than the women, possibly because they were expected to be the main breadwinners in families during this era. The women seem more stoic and just go about doing what they can to help support their families.

“‘We’ve enough of your kind to feed already. Take another step and we’ll club you down like dogs.’ […] There were snarls and yells of rage from our side. A man cried out, ‘What do you want us to do—throw ourselves under the wheels?’ and there was a loud chorus of ‘Yes! That’s right! Do that!’”

The Depression sparks anger and selfishness in some people. The hostile reaction of the townspeople to the arrival of the train riders indirectly leads to the death of Josh’s friend Howie. Since they aren’t welcome in the town, Josh, Joey, and Howie decide that they have no choice but to try to hop back on the train as it begins to move. As they’re boarding, a train on the opposite track hits Howie and kills him.

“[…] the banjo had no sooner left my hands than I saw Howie’s body lifted by the express train and thrown down the tracks as if it had been an empty crate, a worthless piece of junk.”

In Chapter 2, Josh’s friend Howie dies when he tries to hop a freight train and a passenger train traveling in the opposite direction hits him. Trains are a lifeline for starving people seeking to move around to find work or food. However, many people suffered crippling injuries or died during their dangerous attempts to secure a free ride. The way the author writes the scene shows how the Depression cheapened life.

“I noticed that as the man watched Joey sing, his face grew quieter and less angry-looking. After a while he laid his arm on the back of his wife’s chair, and his hand touched her shoulder. When Joey grew tired, they thanked him, and before we left, the man gave him a bag containing a half dozen large potatoes.”

Music and entertainment may seem like impractical luxuries at a time when people can barely afford to eat. However, as this man’s reaction shows, the stress and personal losses of the Depression created a demand for the therapeutic benefits of music. Josh and Joey cash in on people’s need for a diversion from the dreariness of everyday life.

“Joey ate it gratefully, but each bite sickened me as I remembered the garbage cans and the rats and the shamed people who couldn’t look at one another.”

After a group of older boys steals their bag of potatoes, Josh and Joey hit rock bottom, reduced to scrounging for food in garbage dumpsters. The shame their fellow dumpster divers feel was a common emotion among the era’s hungry masses; it was part of the Depression’s psychological toll.

“I feel so ashamed that I have food when the times force boys like you to go hungry.”

The Depression produced a variety of emotions. Besides fear and selfishness, some people experienced guilt. The girl who answers the door when Josh and Joey come begging feels guilty that her family has food while so many children are going hungry. Her father agrees to give the boys some of their roast.

“We wished that we could stay with her, but we knew the rules: one night, one meal. Two meals at the most. After that we must move on. It was understandable.”

Josh and Joey are lucky to get two meals from this kind woman. One meal is the typical donation, which is what they got earlier at a soup kitchen, where they were fed watery soup and told, “Just one meal. One meal is all we have for tramp-kids. We’ve got our own to feed” (48). Compassion, where it existed, was rationed during the Great Depression.

“‘You don’t forgive easily, do you Josh?’ […] I knew he was thinking of Dad. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I guess I don’t.’”

In this scene, Lonnie challenges Josh’s unforgiving attitude regarding his father. He tells Josh the painful story of when he made the mistake of not taking his son’s illness seriously. Josh eventually forgives his father, and the lesson he receives from Lonnie about parents feeling remorse for their mistakes is a factor in his change of heart.

“All at once, Joey at ten and I at fifteen, had the right to be boys again. It was Lonnie who made the correct turns on the long road; it was Lonnie who was taking the responsibility of finding Pete Harris and the carnival for us; it was Lonnie who said, ‘Toast and three eggs, over easy, please. Milk for the boys, coffee for me,’ when we stopped for breakfast, a decently cooked breakfast unspoiled by begging.”

Lonnie, a truck driver, becomes a father figure to Josh and Joey. While their real father is bitter and angry, Lonnie is helpful and encouraging. Lonnie provides an alternative adult perspective that helps Josh in his coming-of-age journey. Lonnie is the one who convinces Josh to forgive his father.

“They never heard the clown speak; words didn’t matter. […] The kids loved it, because, as Emily explained to me, they saw Edward C. and the Blegans as being little like themselves, and seeing a grown-up clown outwitted by the childish-looking dwarf men was not only funny but satisfying to the young.”

Emily plays a male clown for her act with the “dwarfs” because audiences in the 1930s didn’t expect to see a woman clown. Only the carnival workers know she’s a woman. Emily is the most popular performer in the carnival, possibly because the Depression made everyone feel small, so the act is a metaphor for their taking on the Goliath of the Depression.

“And then, I knew, I’d remember a time when love was new and bewildering—and bitterly sweet.”

At the carnival, Josh learns a lesson about love when he develops a crush on a woman twice his age. He eventually accepts the fact that they can never be anything but friends. Later in the story, he has a healthier relationship with a girl his own age.

“God didn’t create this unemployment and hunger—throw it in their teeth if they tell you that. This misery has been created by men. And the men who made this are going to be faced with their work—you wait—they’re going to be faced with their evil.”

Josh and Joey meet many angry people on the road. Some of them rant against the government or societal power structure, which they see as responsible for or indifferent to their suffering.

“No, it’s not milk, my young friend. It’s hooch. The finest, most expensive hooch to make its way into the States down at New Orleans. And you want to know something else? Under that upholstery on the doors there are flat containers—nice big flat containers—and they don’t hold milk either.”

The baby-faced man in a fancy Cadillac who gives Josh and Joey a ride is transporting bootleg liquor. He brags about his illegal business to the boys and drops some notorious names in the illegal liquor business. Josh and Joey are neither alarmed nor surprised as they’re familiar with gangsters from growing up in Chicago. Because of the desperate economic conditions during the Depression, people were more willing to look the other way regarding illegal business activities.

“We got to Nebraska the last week in February, exhausted, penniless, and hungry. Joey tried to pick up a few coins by singing and accompanying his songs on the banjo, but icy winds made his fingers numb and the problems of people in general made them hurry past him without paying much attention to the plea that promoted his singing.”

After the carnival fire costs Josh his piano gig, he and Joey fall on hard times again on their way to Omaha to try to meet up with Lonnie. Here, the author evokes the chilly wind. In many of the more desperate moments in the novel, the wind appears as a symbol of the natural world’s cold indifference toward the Depression’s “wild children of the road” (150).

“Joey didn’t know how sick I was. […] If he had only known, he would have handled me differently. […] I struck Joey. It was the first time in my life I’d ever struck him. […] The fever, the feeling of desperation, the red rage—all these things got the better of me.”

The Depression takes a physical toll as well as a psychological one on the characters in the novel. In this scene, Josh is struggling with a cough and fever after being exposed to the cold and undernourished for days. The illness causes him to lash out at Joey because his brother has given away half a loaf of bread. He immediately regrets his actions.

“Your mother is getting mixed up with some of the ruder elements of Chicago, dear boy. I answered an ad in the paper, and I am now giving music lessons to the wife of one of the city’s west side gangsters.”

The desperation of the Depression has altered the moral compasses of people like Josh’s mother. She not only tells her son that she’s teaching a gangster’s wife but even jokes about it. People in desperate times will bend the ethical rules and do what’s necessary to survive, although most still abide by the basic principle of not hurting others.

“A man was talking, and he had just mentioned ‘the wild children of the road.’ […] ‘There are hundreds of them on the roads this winter; most of them are boys in their teens. They come from the cities where the unemployment of a father often means too little food for too many mouths. They come from the farms where the incredibly low prices of produce have been as tragic for the farm family. They don’t know where they’re going or why. […] They hop freights, and in so doing dozens of them are killed or crippled. They hitchhike; they beg and steal and fight one another. […] They are raiding garbage cans; they are burning anything they can find in an effort to keep warm.’”

The editorial on the radio describes the world Josh and Joey experienced. However, it also provides a broader perspective of the effects of a severe economic downturn on a country with no social safety net.

“The bread of charity choked me a little now and then; I felt the proudest moment of my life would come when I could begin to repay Lonnie for what he’d done for us.”

At age 15, Josh has a strong work ethic and takes pride in repaying people who have helped him. After he and Joey earn money performing at the restaurant, Josh does repay Lonnie. However, Lonnie keeps only a small amount of the money because he understands that it’s about the boys’ self-respect, and he returns most of it to Josh.

“Mr. Ericsson had placed a printed page titled ‘Our Wild Boys of the Road’ inside the menu covers. There the diners could read about Joey and me, about the fact that we left home because our family didn’t have enough to eat. There was a detailed account of the begging, of the freezing and starving we had endured.”

The restaurant’s manager uses the boys’ ordeal as a drawing card. At first, this exploitation of their personal troubles bothers Josh, but he decides not to say anything about it because he’s so thankful for the job. At least he doesn’t have to play in the flamboyant “ballyhoo” style of the carnival.

“‘You people here in Omaha have been kind to us; we’ll never forget you. But now we have to go. The ‘Wild Boys of the Road’ have been gone a long time, and tonight they’re homesick.’ Then Joey and I sang Dad’s song, and people applauded us as they never had before.”

Despite their successful music gig at the restaurant, Josh and Joey take the advice of Lonnie, Janey, and Emily and return to their family in Chicago. Their final song signifies Josh’s making peace in his mind with his father.