Snoopypuss Mysteries

I came across a picture of a class at Beale School in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago during the 1930s. The teacher struck me as a champion. I don’t know her name. I think of her as Nettie Wisdom. No idea how many other Black teachers there were. I’ve heard stories of nationalities migrating to Englewood for jobs. Census records show blocks of multi-cultural families, but streets were also sometimes segregated. Family tells me that diversity was sometimes stressful and violent. We know what happens when trust becomes raw.

A fictional character, Eleanor Mossberg, collects the Lost Voices experiences of Sam Harkleroad (an out of work coal miner), Sheila (his wife), and Dorothy Quick (their upstairs neighbor). Eleanor is their historian but allows the characters to tell their own story that begins in 1930. Sam has moved his family of daughters to Englewood when mines closed. Then comes the Crash and times become hard for the old coal miner. I imagine the youngest daughter Ellen as becoming a school friend of Eleanor Mossberg and both girls being in the class picture I found. Either I’ll post chapters here or the whole text of the novel. We’ll see what happens.