<p>We were visiting my parents over the weekend. The conversation went from home values in the tank to relatives who can’t find a job to the Great Depression. Here is the story my mom told:</p>
<p>Her mom’s brother married one of her mom’s best friends, which means my grandma was close to her SIL. The SIL was living in the north, and owned a house, as was another brother. Grandma and Grandpa and their brood of 5 were living in the south, literally on the verge of starvation. The 4th sibling was in similar dire straits somewhere else. The SIL moved her family into the brother’s house, freeing up her house…then she went on long road trips to gather up my mom’s family and the other brother’s family, who then shared the SIL’s original house. They lived like that for a few years. She truly saved them from death.</p>
<p>The thing is, this would have been around 1940 or 1941…so more than a decade after the stock market crash, normal (formerly hardworking) families were truly about to starve. I don’t want to get political, but I think we should be grateful that we didn’t sink into another great depression…it’s only been three years since 2008 and we could have more hard times to come…hopefully we will dig out without the “help” of a world war.</p>
<p>Have your parents told you stories of hard times?</p>
<p>My mother not only told us stories but she lived them in her lifestyle - we could see her values in what she spent money on. What you say is important but what you do has a greater impact on others.</p>
<p>My wife grew up in a third-world country so she knows about being frugal.</p>
<p>When my H’s grandparents moved out of their house into a retirement home, they left behind LOTS of canned and boxed food. LOTS…sort of like Scarlett O’Hara…“I’ll never be hungry again.”</p>
<p>My grandfather got his master’s degree back in 1920 or so. He married late and had two young children during the Depression. He couldn’t find work, so he raised chickens and sold eggs door-to-door. After that experience, he would never spend money on anything “fun.” He saved and saved and saved. I think that’s one reason my mom doesn’t mind spending money on travel and leisure!</p>
<p>D was recently introduced to fried cornmeal mush. A rare treat to her (and to me!), she was so intrigued to learn it was a meal of necessity for my mother growing up.</p>
<p>To her further amazement, my mom recently told her stories of moving west as a small child and living in a converted chicken coop while my grandfather worked for peanuts…literally.</p>
<p>My dad used to tell us about living through the Depression. He was born in 1924, so most of his growing up years were the Depression. His family lived in Detroit, with many relatives living nearby. His father had family living on farms a few hours away who brought eggs, milk, and meat to my dad’s family and to his aunt and uncle who lived next door. They brought the meat and butchered it in the basement! (Not sure what kind of meat.)</p>
<p>When his parents had their electricity shut off due to nonpayment, they would string up extension cords to the aunt and uncle’s house. His parents had a rental house (the previous house they had lived in) but they “lost it” during the Depression because they couldn’t always rent it.</p>
<p>My father’s sister had her own room in the upstairs of their house (there were three brothers in the boys’ room). As a way of making money, their parents turned the upstairs into a little apartment to rent out, so my aunt didn’t have a room any more and had to sleep on the couch. She had just started nursing school and had nowhere to study, and so she dropped out of school. She was such an intelligent woman, but wasn’t able to go to college at all. She had a good career as an executive secretary.</p>
<p>I don’t think my dad had enough to eat as a child. He was always very focused on food, and we had to have an abundance of food at dinner, too much really. I think he was making up for slim meals as a child.</p>
<p>My father tells of an uncle who managed to have a good job all during the Depression. He supported not only his own family, but my dad’s family and another family and had an older aunt and uncle living with his family.</p>
<p>I think there was a whole generation of food insecurity. H says that after a particularly good meal (Sunday dinner, Thanksgiving, etc.) his grandfather would lean back in his chair and say “We sure do eat well.” It was his ultimate expression of contentment.</p>
<p>My dad loves to tell stories about the suffering during the Great Depression. About eating only cornmeal mush or crumbed bread with sugar and milk. </p>
<p>His family lost the family farm and moved to Oklahoma to work the oil fields so he saw the great dustbowl also. But family pulled together to help each other.</p>
<p>It does seem like the farm families did better (I guess unless they were part of the Dust Bowl.) One year we went in search of the graves of members of H’s family. The old cemetary where the farm folks were buried was filled with neat, nice headstones. Those who died during the Depression still had nice, neat headstones. The relatives who lived in the city and died during the Depression were buried in unmarked graves. (The cemetary had records, so we could find the vicinity of the graves, but no headstones were purchased. I’ve always thought that if I ever had a lot of extra money, I’d buy headstones for those folks.)</p>
<p>My mother started teaching about the time of the Great Depression. She married secretly in order to keep her job as the school district didn’t hire married women due to the financial times. My father worked in a nearby town so the secret was easily kept - from my father’s other girlfriends too - or so I’ve heard … but I digress. The second year my mother taught, the state cut teacher salaries in half, but she still had a job and at least a bit of money coming in. Her third year the state had no money for teacher salaries so gave an IOU - a voucher that could hopefully be honored in the future … and at some later date the state did pay up. Hard to imagine … holding a job and lucky to have it at all … but with no money coming in and only trusting that at some point you would be paid for the work.</p>
<p>I know we’re by no means in a Great Depression, but there are lots of folks right now who are “holding a job and lucky to have it” but earning considerably less than they were before.</p>
<p>My parents lived in NYC during the Depression. My mother told stories about grown men trying to sell apples on the street corner in order to support their families.</p>
<p>Before their move, my mom’s family lived on the Ohio River and the kids would be sent down to fish. My mom said she hated it when she caught eels, but that there was a guy down the block who would buy them for a dime a piece. What I can’t figure out is how the kids discovered that someone would buy eels…I am picturing these urchins with an eel on a line, going from door to door, saying “Do you want to buy this eel?” My mom said yes, that is what they did.</p>
<p>Several years ago my husband and I compiled a family cookbook/reminiscence.
Among other stories about what she ate as a child growing up in the 30’s and 40’s, my mother told this (possibly apocryphal) story about her father’s small grocery store during WWII. </p>
<p>“During the war, shoes were rationed just like meat, sugar, and gasoline. A lot of people in Tennessee and Alabama didn’t wear shoes but they did canning, or boot-legging, both of which use a lot of sugar. So Dad would give them the sugar coupons they needed-- in exchange for their shoe coupons. That helped keep our family in shoes.”</p>
<p>(and apparently, kept the other kids barefoot)</p>
<p>missypie: I really like your idea for a thread and I love your family story. For the last few years I’ve been collecting Great Depressions stories from family and friends who still remember. My grandparents were born in the late 1890’s and right after the turn of the century, my parents in the late 1920’s. I have a couple of 90 year old great aunts. Both my mother’s and father’s families, landowners in the rural south, lived in extended and multi-generational family groups. The family shared income and expenses. They raised cattle. They kept chickens. They grew their own food. They were very fortunate to own their property outright. They were very fortunate to have college degrees. ( If they hadn’t, I might not exist. They very purposefully limited the number of children they had during the 30’s and most of the 40’s. My grandparents on one side decided they could afford two children. The second one is my father. That grandmother didn’t have children till she was in her 30’s and taught school before and after her children were born. My other grandparents had only one child.) Still, coming up with the cash for the property taxes was an issue. A few of the men had state jobs with the extension service. The women all taught school. I have been told that some southern states cut all state workers salaries 50% during the 30’s. I have an ancient aluminum fruitcake container full of silver dollars in my freezer that once belonged to my grandmother, who kept it in her freezer her whole adult life. These coins are not collectors items. Their main value is sentimental.</p>
<p>edit: I have WWII coupon books, too. And they are in the desk where they were left.</p>
<p>My grandmother was born in 1911 - she died last year at the age of 99. She was one of 11 children, only one of whom graduated from middle school - everyone else (including my grandmother) quit school at age 12 or 13 to work in a textile mill in the Carolinas. In their spare time - spare time! - they tended a family farm. My grandmother used to laugh that they couldn’t tell when the Depression came - they were poor before it, during it and afterwards.</p>
<p>She and her sisters/brothers were amazingly resourceful. They could sew any clothing (they would’ve cleaned up on “Project Runway”) and repair any motor. I think my grandmother could prepare an entire week’s worth of meals with one chicken , some flour, and stuff she grew “out back” – and the results would taste FANTASTIC. She was still canning and putting up jams well into her eighties.</p>
<p>They were gritty, determined, down-to-earth people who did enjoy life but never collected “things.”</p>
<p>LOL Alh, did they learn about birth control in college? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My parents’ families were also large (7 and 6 kids) but truly not intentionally. My mom was the first girl after two boys. She grew up knowing that all of the kids after Boy #1 and Boy #2 were neither planned nor wanted.</p>
<p>(As an aside, my MIL, who was having her kids in the late 50s, reports of married friends dissolving into tears when they found out they were pregnant again…they didn’t want any more kids, but didn’t have the means to stop them from coming.)</p>
<p>missypie: good one!!! LOL, too. What I was trying to write: they were fortunate, really just plain lucky, and especially lucky for me to be in a position to have enough resources to feel they could afford another child. </p>
<p>my great-grandparents had has many children as they could produce
my grandparents limited their childbearing to one or two
my parents’ generation had four or five children each
my own generation varies widely, but I don’t think it is really financially based</p>
<p>This is sad. As a very small child in the 50’s, I was well aware that even women with largish families had the means to limit them. I was kind of a snoop. Which is not to say these methods are 100% effective. I have a woman friend who claims to have gotten pregnant on every bc known to man (and woman).</p>
<p>My grandmother came from a land-owning family in NC. Before the crash, she led a Scarlet O’Hara lifestyle. When times got hard, her father left the farm and headed back to France. As the oldest child, my grandmother was left to find a job, support her mother and 3 brothers. </p>
<p>When grandmother started earning a wage, her dad arranged for it to go him. Apparently, at the time, men could take control of the their wives’ or daughters’ income…even from across the Atlantic. </p>
<p>One of grandmother’s best friends was a young man. When he heard that her father was garnishing all wages, he stepped in to help. What did he do? He married her, platonically. Now grandmother could keep her wages. The marriage was annulled later, when times got better and each party found their true loves. </p>
<p>Here’s the best part - grandmother’s platonic husband was heir to Cannon Mills. Because of this, she always encouraged us to buy Cannon sheets and towels. We did, of course, until the company went out of business a few years ago.</p>
The second year my mother taught, the state cut teacher salaries in half, but she still had a job and at least a bit of money coming in. Her third year the state had no money for teacher salaries so gave an IOU - a voucher that could hopefully be honored in the future … and at some later date the state did pay up. Hard to imagine … holding a job and lucky to have it at all … but with no money coming in and only trusting that at some point you would be paid for the work.</p>
to be in a position to have enough resources to feel they could afford another child. </p>