Campgrounds
To play (MIDI), click here The Young Man's Dream
How the hell did they do it?
I've lived alone in a trailer that's bigger than any my relatives had when I was a kid, and crowded myself out, even though most of my possessions were still in my home in New Jersey. How the Travellers ever raised three, four or even six kids on the road is completely beyond me. There was only one small room intended for a bedroom in their trailers, and the kids were stacked like firewood at night wherever there was an inch of room.
In my time with them, the men would be away all day trying to, and usually succeeding at, making a living. The normal occupation then was the painting of barn roofs and sometimes silo caps, which were especially dangerous. Every family had one or more pick-ups driven by the husband or older sons, each pick-up truck mounting a compressor and the necessary spraying equipment, as well as a trailer hitch for moving on.
To play (MIDI), click here Dawning Of The Day
The men would sometimes joke about having to leave the county before the next rainfall, but in the main, their work was at least okay. After all, they traveled the same general routes year after year, and, in the years before recreational vehicles, a caravan of travel trailers was not difficult for the Law to track down.
As often as not, if an offense was committed, the offender was the farmer whose barns or silos were being painted. Money was often tight for both Travellers and farmers in those days, and it was usually impossible to get a significant payment in advance for the work to be done. There were many times when their completed work went unpaid by the customer, with the cooperation of a local deputy sheriff.
It didn't take much: A lie or the wink of an eye, and the Traveller family, along with any others found, would be hustled out of the county, often broke and desperate, with the deck stacked against them just as badly across the line. It is one thing to be on my own, free as a bird, with plenty of bucks, "glonth, munya stammers". It is quite another to have been on the road, poor as a church-mouse, with a family to feed. When a sentence to a term in the workhouse was the probable answer to any protest, Travellers have sometimes had to find different ways to maintain their self-esteem and feed their kids at the same time.
To play (MIDI), click here Derry Tune
"Beg, borrow or steal" was not always just a cliche to us. It has also been a life-style raised to the level of an art-form when no other choices presented themselves.
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