Mouths to feed and bills to pay. It didn’t matter that the McGintys hadn’t had any money invested. The stock market crash just knocked the first domino right into the rest of them. The crash sent everyone across America scrambling for ways to do things cheaper. Everybody loved the novelty of the automobile, but it cut right into the business of the railroad lines. With the automobiles came the trucks, and with the trucks came cheaper shipping, and the railroads started cutting jobs. Paddy McGinty’s job was cut, and that was where they were in 1931.

The McGinty Come-On Inn suggestion had been swiftly slapped down by Vivian’s mother, who was more worried that those strange men who needed room and board were part of the criminal element that was seeping into central Ohio during that time. Like a mudslide flowing from New England and New York State, itinerant men of all ages oozed into Pennsylvania and Ohio, riding the rails and following the rumors of cheap rent and fair wages.

“It’s becoming a safe haven for criminals,” Mrs. McGinty grumbled, as she shooed her children out the door to look for work themselves, while at the same time grumbling that they’d probably all just end up starving anyway.

Instead of starving, Violet and Will ended up pulling wagons full of discarded ashes from the coal-burning stoves up and down the streets and alleys of Wooster. They’d show up at the dinner table still smudged all over with soot, and then there’d be Henry and Pawpy, covered in paint splatters from sprucing up the houses on the north side of town, and Vera’d be covered in whatever the Dean and Thompson kids had wiped or thrown up on her when she took care of them that day. Turned out four-flusher kids were just as messy as any other kids. Vivian and her mother were the only ones in the house who showed up to dinner about as clean as they had for breakfast. Just after her birthday in June of that year Vivian had gotten herself a job at the switchboards at Ohio Bell, and there was no comparing a glass pressed against a wall to a headset plugged into the switchboard.

Years of being told what to do and when to do it, by father, mother, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, and now, at just seventeen, she had a grown-up job with regular hours and steady wages and only had to answer to one person, and her supervisor, Leona, was more of a watcher than a lecturer. She watched the operators, and you’d only hear from her if you messed something up. Vivian’s job at Bell puffed her right up with importance. She was part of something certain, in a world suddenly full of uncertainty. Flashing lights, plug-in cords, flip switches, and total strangers counting on her to connect them to one another. She had responsibilities outside the McGinty household, and those responsibilities allowed her to help provide for the household. She’d never felt prouder than the day she handed her Pawpy a small stack of bills with a beaming smile. She’d faltered when she’d seen the tears shining in his eyes, and her heartbeat caught a bit when he rasped, “Proud of you, Vivy.” The emotion made her uncomfortable, but the warmth of it felt good.