Teebsy-86

The close of 1931 had brought winter to Crucible City, and with it came the usual symptoms of the season: days that might be sallow and gray or clear and bright, temperatures low enough to freeze a man’s nuts off, and snow that sometimes came in driving blizzards, and which at other times just lay down soft and heavy like a smothering blanket. But the city did not let the cold or the snow slow it down. Even amidst the Depression, what shops were still open bustled, Christmas decorations glistened, and the skyline climbed ever-upward like a grove of iron trees, scraping the sky with scaffold tendrils. Far below their lofty peaks, destitute families huddled cheek-by-jowl in shantytown Hoovervilles that sprung up in parks and vacant blocks. The echoes of foundries and factories still at work echoed amidst derelict warehouses, shaking the boards of shut-up business facades, while Cauldron Harbour was thronged with ocean liners, cargo steamers, fishing smacks, ferries, barges, yachts and