Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

“Look!” Mr. Birdseye shouts to the railroad bulls, pointing to draw their eyes away. The moment they turn, he tells me and Kit to run. We dash for freedom with Buddy on our heels, sprinting across a stubby field and through a little orchard, not sure where we’re headed, only that it’s away from the boxcar and the bulls.

After a while I look back and see no one chasing us. Kit slows down, too, and we walk into a little town. A sign reads “Welcome to Lewis Falls.” I ask how we’re going to get home. Kit squares her shoulders and says we’ll have to earn our train fare back to Cincinnati. She’s as tired and worried as I am, but she doesn’t let it show.

We pass a general store with a lunch counter inside, and the smell of coffee and apple pie pulls us in even though we have no money. The woman behind the counter, kind but hesitant, asks if she can help. Kit cheerily asks if we can do chores for train fare. The only job she has, the woman admits, is scrubbing the frying pans, so greasy she wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. I’m ready to leave, but Kit insists this might be our only chance, and we should take it.

Kit tells the woman we’re grateful and will scrub the pans well. She leads us to a sink behind the counter, near a cracked-open back door, our backs to the room but still within earshot of everything. Buddy lies down nearby while Kit fills the sink, scrapes grease into the trash, and stacks the dirty pans. I pick up a filthy scrub cloth and get to work.

As I scrub, I think that anyone who romanticizes “the olden days” clearly has never scrubbed a greasy pan. Kit finds a slice of bacon stuck to one pan and is about to give it to Buddy when we spot a boy peeking through the back door, clearly hungrier than the dog is. Kit hands him the bacon, and I bring him a cup of water. He eats, drinks, smiles shyly, and slips away.

Slimy hands aside, I like being tucked behind the counter, where we can watch and hear everything going on in the store: customers buying sugar, nails, apples, pickles, buttons, shoe polish, and eyeing the wall of fabric that looks vintage to me, but is just ordinary cloth in 1933. A young woman is trying to decide what material to sew into a suit.

The store owner, Mrs. Finch, asks what the suit is for. I nudge Kit and whisper that the woman looks just like Ginger Rogers. Kit agrees. “Ginger Rogers” coos over Buddy while explaining that she’s just landed a job in Cincinnati and needs something tailored and businesslike. She’s torn between a floaty, flowered chiffon and a navy serge. Thanks to my experience remaking secondhand clothes, I know fabric, so I speak up. The chiffon is too frilly for business, and she should choose the navy. She agrees.

While Mrs. Finch cuts the cloth, Ginger Rogers carries Buddy to the counter and mentions that her job starts next week. I elbow Kit. It’s her turn to seize an opportunity. Kit offers her family’s boardinghouse, clean, safe, affordable, good food, and Buddy has already made friends with one of the boarders. Ginger Rogers is charmed by the dog and does need somewhere to stay. Kit gives her the Kittredges’ address and a neighbor’s phone number, since their own line is shut off. Grateful, Ginger Rogers offers to buy us sandwiches and pie.

We finish the pots, dry our hands, and sit at the counter. Hungry as I’ve ever been, the sandwich and pie taste like the best meal of my life.

After Ginger Rogers leaves, Mrs. Finch pays us two nickels each for scrubbing, enough for our train fare home. Holding the nickels, I feel proud of earning them and want to keep them. But I can’t stop thinking about the hungry boy’s face, and about how kind Mrs. Finch and Ginger Rogers have been to us. I feel torn.