Maybe if everyone put on the rattiest clothes, the gov't would finally clue in
Clifford Firmin hated "the sweater test."
Growing up in St. Thomas, Ont., during the 1930s, he needed handouts.
His father, James, a laid-off railway worker, was a single parent raising two boys on pocket change earned from cutting grass or shovelling dirt for the city.
It wasn't enough that the family was flat broke. To get clothes from the relief counter at city hall, you had to look flat broke.
Necessity was judged by a clerk's hard stare.
"If the shirt you were wearing didn't look well-worn enough, they'd turn you back," says Firmin, 88, a soft-spoken retir
ed chemist who put himself through the University of Western Ontario after World War II.
Before presenting himself at the counter, Firmin, who was about 10 at the time, had to work at looking worse than he felt. He would rub the fabric of his sweater between his palms like a Boy Scout lighting a fire. After a few minutes, a patch of his white belly would show through.
That's what the clerk liked to see. Give the poor boy a prize. Firmin would walk out of city hall with a new sweater from the neatly folded pile stacked against the wall behind the relief counter.
Firmin's mother Hilda, a native of Norfolk, England, was only 30 when she died in 1927. Clifford and his younger brother Aubrey had just started elementary school. Three years later, the Depression hit their father hard.
Laid off from Pere Marquette railway, James Firmin opened his three-bedroom, wood-frame home at 16 Mabel St. to a couple with two children in exchange for rent money.
The front room became something of a battle zone with the two families arguing over who would clean the mess that week.
"It was an awkward situation," Firmin recalls.
"We sort of all lived together, which wasn't easy when you have young kids. They don't like to be tied down like that."
When he started high school in 1934, Firmin spent his Saturdays as an assistant to the man who ran Jackson's Bread, a small company that sold loaves of rye and pastries from a horse-drawn wagon.
For three summers, he picked tobacco leaves, his body covered in the sticky, black gum that oozed from the plant.
"It was a dirty place to work, tobacco farms," he says.
"As I recall, the most I ever got was $1.75 a day. A lot of men wouldn't do it because it was such a messy job. You don't get rich quick, no. You got covered in black tar head to toe. The farmers put out buckets of water so you could wash up before you went home."
James Firmin rewarded his son with the only pleasure he could afford. One of the odd jobs his father picked up during the Great Depression involved looking after parklands for the London Port Stanley Railway.
"We got to ride on the train down to Port Stanley for nothing!" Firmin says, still excited by the memory.
"You could fish in Lake Erie off the pier. You don't appreciate how clear the water was.
"I could stand on the sandbars out into the lake up to here," he says, motioning to his waist. "I could put my head in the water and look at my feet."
He sighs, his blue eyes sparkling.
"As clear as a bell."
Clifford Firmin hated "the sweater test."
Growing up in St. Thomas, Ont., during the 1930s, he needed handouts.
His father, James, a laid-off railway worker, was a single parent raising two boys on pocket change earned from cutting grass or shovelling dirt for the city.
It wasn't enough that the family was flat broke. To get clothes from the relief counter at city hall, you had to look flat broke.
Necessity was judged by a clerk's hard stare.
"If the shirt you were wearing didn't look well-worn enough, they'd turn you back," says Firmin, 88, a soft-spoken retir
ed chemist who put himself through the University of Western Ontario after World War II.
Before presenting himself at the counter, Firmin, who was about 10 at the time, had to work at looking worse than he felt. He would rub the fabric of his sweater between his palms like a Boy Scout lighting a fire. After a few minutes, a patch of his white belly would show through.
That's what the clerk liked to see. Give the poor boy a prize. Firmin would walk out of city hall with a new sweater from the neatly folded pile stacked against the wall behind the relief counter.
Firmin's mother Hilda, a native of Norfolk, England, was only 30 when she died in 1927. Clifford and his younger brother Aubrey had just started elementary school. Three years later, the Depression hit their father hard.
Laid off from Pere Marquette railway, James Firmin opened his three-bedroom, wood-frame home at 16 Mabel St. to a couple with two children in exchange for rent money.
The front room became something of a battle zone with the two families arguing over who would clean the mess that week.
"It was an awkward situation," Firmin recalls.
"We sort of all lived together, which wasn't easy when you have young kids. They don't like to be tied down like that."
When he started high school in 1934, Firmin spent his Saturdays as an assistant to the man who ran Jackson's Bread, a small company that sold loaves of rye and pastries from a horse-drawn wagon.
For three summers, he picked tobacco leaves, his body covered in the sticky, black gum that oozed from the plant.
"It was a dirty place to work, tobacco farms," he says.
"As I recall, the most I ever got was $1.75 a day. A lot of men wouldn't do it because it was such a messy job. You don't get rich quick, no. You got covered in black tar head to toe. The farmers put out buckets of water so you could wash up before you went home."
James Firmin rewarded his son with the only pleasure he could afford. One of the odd jobs his father picked up during the Great Depression involved looking after parklands for the London Port Stanley Railway.
"We got to ride on the train down to Port Stanley for nothing!" Firmin says, still excited by the memory.
"You could fish in Lake Erie off the pier. You don't appreciate how clear the water was.
"I could stand on the sandbars out into the lake up to here," he says, motioning to his waist. "I could put my head in the water and look at my feet."
He sighs, his blue eyes sparkling.
"As clear as a bell."
