The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?



Myra May turned up the Philco radio on the shelf behind the counter. The Saturday afternoon local news roundup had ended, and WODX in Mobile was playing Rudy Vallée singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The week before, he had sung the same song on The Fleishmann Hour. It was a sad song in a minor key, dirgelike, even, but it fitted Myra May’s mood. She thought about it as she listened and swabbed the counter.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead. Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

But it wasn’t just bread that people were waiting for, Myra May thought gloomily. Sure, there had been a flurry of exhilaration over Roosevelt’s inauguration the month before. People were sick of the status quo and any change was as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot July day. But the excitement had dried up in a hurry when FDR put the national banks on holiday. And then he had signed an order that said that everybody had to turn in their gold, which resulted in a chorus of grousing. From now on, it was illegal for citizens to have any gold, except for jewelry and dental gold (you could keep your fillings) and coins you might have collected. Myra May’s jewelry was cheap stuff and she didn’t have any gold fillings or coins, but it was the principle of the thing, far as she was concerned. The government shouldn’t be allowed to confiscate your gold, for pity’s sake.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

“Turn that goldurned thing off, Myra May,” J.D. Henderson growled from his regular seat at the counter, where he was hunched over a plate of meat loaf, corn, and mashed potatoes. “Bad ’nuff to be broke without havin’ to listen to some damn fool idjut singin’ about it.”

Myra May turned off the radio. When the diner was full, the way it usually was at lunchtime, she didn’t listen to WODX. Most of her customers preferred to have the Philco tuned to WSM, a clear-channel station out of Nashville. Its call sign was abbreviated from “We Shield Millions,” which was the slogan of the station’s owner, National Life and Accident Insurance Company. (Mr. Musgrove at the hardware store had had unsatisfactory dealings with National Life and said the call letters really referred to “We Swindle Millions.”) When WSM wasn’t broadcasting the farm and market reports, their studio musicians were playing the country music the diner’s customers heard—and liked—on Saturday night on the Grand Ole Opry radio show.