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The Giant Overalls
Dec. 28th, 2009 11:04 amHere's a delightful story from The Worst Hard Time, a book about survivors of the Dust Bowl. This is just like something I would do, and I bet ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
men_in_full finds it sexy as hell too:
Women were scarce in No Man's Land, so much so that a newspaper advertisement was placed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by sixty-five "lonely men with dugouts and a willingness to work." One of the bachelors, Will Crawford, lived alone in his hole in the ground outside Boise City. He had come west from Missouri on the free train, but he had never found a bride and did not do much to prove up his land. Crawford was a rare sight: a fat man on the prairie. He was fatter than any man in three states, it was said. When children tried to guess his weight, he would never reveal the exact amount - somewhere between 300 and 700 pounds, he said. A farmhand, Will worked for all the food he could eat.
The fat man sat for lunch at the table of his neighbors one day, consuming a meal of sausages, potato soup, and canned tomatoes. When he was done, he reached in to the front pocket of his bib overalls and produced a slip of paper.
What to think of this? He showed them the note:
Wanted, a real man. Sadie White, 419 Locust, Wichita, Kansas.
Crawford's overalls were so big they had to be ordered special through the general store, which received them from the clothing factory in Wichita. Sadie worked in the factory and had been taken by the size of the garment. Will was curious about the note but afraid to write back; the postmaster's office was in the general store, and they might intercept the letter and tease him. He summoned all his courage and wrote to Sadie White, sending the letter from another location, in Texhoma. Months passed. Then during the wheat harvest, the big man was spitting watermelon seeds through his moustache after an enormous dinner, when he mentioned that he might build a house next to his dugout. It seemed odd; he had never before shown much ambition beyond what to have for lunch. Will complained that his dirt-floored hole just wasn't comfortable. Over the fall months, he built a basement with cement walls, and two rooms aboveground. He shingled the roof and painted the outside walls a bright color. Then Will disappeared for a week. When he returned, all of Cimarron County was clucking at the news: Big Will crawford was married. He had taken a train to Wichita, and there he met and married Sadie White, the woman who had sewn the note in the biggest pair of overalls she ever made in the factory. They took up in the fat man's new house and made a go of it until the land dried up in the 1930s and the death dusters came and stilled the lives of people in No Man's Land.
My head swims with all that is left unsaid here. I can just see Sadie on the line, staring at disbelief at the order. Then, in sewing the garment, she would have a good sense of how his body would fill it. The enormous gut, here. His great, beefy ass, there. Legs like telephone poles. Would all his parts be larger in proportion, she might have asked?
Perhaps, after finishing the piece, she set it aside and smuggled it out of the factory for the night - feeling it, running her hands through the cavernous space inside, laying it on top of herself. She might have thought about what it would be like to be pounded by this giant, like a little piece of veal on a butcher's table. She would have to rely on nothing but her imagination, having never set eyes on anything like the man who had ordered up this huge swath of canvas.
I can see her trembling hands as she wrote the note, hastily stuffing it in the pocket and sending it down the line before she changed her mind. What was it like when they first met - when she opened a door to find a man completely filling its frame? And for him - I know exactly what was going through his head. That he was a freak, that he would never find love, that his life would never be anything but hard work. That behind that door was his one chance, the single moment that would set the course for the rest of his life.
I hope she was beautiful, and that they were alone, and that they completely lost control of themselves right away. Because that would be the most wonderful love story ever.
men_in_full finds it sexy as hell too:Women were scarce in No Man's Land, so much so that a newspaper advertisement was placed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by sixty-five "lonely men with dugouts and a willingness to work." One of the bachelors, Will Crawford, lived alone in his hole in the ground outside Boise City. He had come west from Missouri on the free train, but he had never found a bride and did not do much to prove up his land. Crawford was a rare sight: a fat man on the prairie. He was fatter than any man in three states, it was said. When children tried to guess his weight, he would never reveal the exact amount - somewhere between 300 and 700 pounds, he said. A farmhand, Will worked for all the food he could eat.
The fat man sat for lunch at the table of his neighbors one day, consuming a meal of sausages, potato soup, and canned tomatoes. When he was done, he reached in to the front pocket of his bib overalls and produced a slip of paper.
What to think of this? He showed them the note:
Wanted, a real man. Sadie White, 419 Locust, Wichita, Kansas.
Crawford's overalls were so big they had to be ordered special through the general store, which received them from the clothing factory in Wichita. Sadie worked in the factory and had been taken by the size of the garment. Will was curious about the note but afraid to write back; the postmaster's office was in the general store, and they might intercept the letter and tease him. He summoned all his courage and wrote to Sadie White, sending the letter from another location, in Texhoma. Months passed. Then during the wheat harvest, the big man was spitting watermelon seeds through his moustache after an enormous dinner, when he mentioned that he might build a house next to his dugout. It seemed odd; he had never before shown much ambition beyond what to have for lunch. Will complained that his dirt-floored hole just wasn't comfortable. Over the fall months, he built a basement with cement walls, and two rooms aboveground. He shingled the roof and painted the outside walls a bright color. Then Will disappeared for a week. When he returned, all of Cimarron County was clucking at the news: Big Will crawford was married. He had taken a train to Wichita, and there he met and married Sadie White, the woman who had sewn the note in the biggest pair of overalls she ever made in the factory. They took up in the fat man's new house and made a go of it until the land dried up in the 1930s and the death dusters came and stilled the lives of people in No Man's Land.
My head swims with all that is left unsaid here. I can just see Sadie on the line, staring at disbelief at the order. Then, in sewing the garment, she would have a good sense of how his body would fill it. The enormous gut, here. His great, beefy ass, there. Legs like telephone poles. Would all his parts be larger in proportion, she might have asked?
Perhaps, after finishing the piece, she set it aside and smuggled it out of the factory for the night - feeling it, running her hands through the cavernous space inside, laying it on top of herself. She might have thought about what it would be like to be pounded by this giant, like a little piece of veal on a butcher's table. She would have to rely on nothing but her imagination, having never set eyes on anything like the man who had ordered up this huge swath of canvas.
I can see her trembling hands as she wrote the note, hastily stuffing it in the pocket and sending it down the line before she changed her mind. What was it like when they first met - when she opened a door to find a man completely filling its frame? And for him - I know exactly what was going through his head. That he was a freak, that he would never find love, that his life would never be anything but hard work. That behind that door was his one chance, the single moment that would set the course for the rest of his life.
I hope she was beautiful, and that they were alone, and that they completely lost control of themselves right away. Because that would be the most wonderful love story ever.
