Community Chat

[qualitygal]

Got a book at last weeks books sale. It's a book about the depression. It's quite interesting and my parents at the start were about 6 & 4. This was one of the quotes (above) in the book that talks about it. I remember hearing about mom having one dress to wear and one to wash. Just wondering who else had folks that told stories of their growing up during those days.

To read how they stretched meals is astonishing, and how they got through it is amazing too. Some said, they were happy and didn't realize as children just how bad off they were.

Do you have any stories to share you heard?

[DoneTryin]

My parents didn't dwell on the past, though my mother did say that as a young girl she really, really wanted a Shirley Temple doll at the time.

[ROMARY]

Just yesterday talked with a fire fighter........said his dad is over 100 years young, uses the computer, etc. I asked, how do folks happily adjust to life now-a-days? He said, well, after going through the Great Depression, everything else has been easy, in comparison. Well said.

[Mj12]

Hi Qualitygal -

My parents were born after the Depression, and my grandparents didn't talk about it (that I can remember). What is the title of the book? I'd like to read it. thanks!

[LilacTree]

I was born a year after the Great Depression ended and then there came WW II. My father was never drafted because he had children and held what was considered a necessary civil job. However, we were very poor and even had to stay in a children's home for many months because of a housing shortage after the war, and a distinct bias against Italian families with multiple children. There were no laws against discrimination then.

Things got slowly better, but my parents never owned a home until we were all grown, and weren't able to keep it very long because of certain circumstances. As children we didn't know we were poor, we were living pretty much like every other family did. My father didn't get his first car until I was 13, and it was an old Ford with a running board and a rumble seat in the back. We were thrilled. That was in 1951.

There was a grocer across the street and my mom used to send us over there to pick up bread, meat and potatoes for dinner. We picked vegetables out of our great aunt's garden (and she charged us for them). We had a milkman and an "ice box" in the kitchen, so we had an "ice man" too, who came every couple of days with a huge block of ice. My little tiny mom had to empty a basin of water at the bottom of the ice box every day so it wouldn't flood the house.

It was when we started the later grades in school and high school that we realized how poor we had always been. But we survived, and here I am, at 76, still surviving.

[151949]

My Mom's family did very well in comparison to many others - they owned a bakery and my grandparents worked there plus my great grandfather worked for the city water authority all the way through the depression and a my Mom's uncle was an engineer in the army corp of engineers and he was assigned to the Pittsburgh locks and dams so he made a good income and lived in that same home with them.

However, my Dad was one of 16 children and his father was a police officer and was killed on the job. My grandmother remarried an alcoholic man who took all the kids out of school and put them to work in a factory - then he would collect their pays and spend it on drinking. My Dad and his brothers were eventually taken from the home and placed with the CCC - a program where teens and adults were put to work building National parks. My dad says it was the only part of his childhood he could remember being happy.

[MickD]

I remember stories my dad told of being dirt poor. His parents were from Poland and his dad worked in the coal mines in PA...then moved west to MI and farmed. My dad became adept at taping his shoes from the inside and polishing them daily. ""You can always tell how poor a man is by looking at his shoes....."" He still polishes his shoes quite a bit..

[NoelSeven]

My father remained frugal. If you left a room, you turned off the lights, even if you were coming back in a few minutes. But when he bought a new suit or wallet, he bought only the best so it would last. They expected things to last in those days, I don't think he would have been comfortable with the poor quality of so many things today.

[Cakers1]

Mom's family (7 kids) was split up including being sent out of state; grandmother died during Depression and grandfather couldn't care for them.

Dad was a citizen of US but back in the ""old country"" during that time. Came back here before our involvement in WWII. He had his own horror stories about Europe at that time.

[Linders Back]

My Mother still talks about her folks having to burn her whole childhood bedroom set in the stove to stay warm one winter.

My Dad was working as a doctor with his own practice in Newark NJ. when the Depression hit. Most of his patients pay him in ""goods"" rather than cash. Some things he held onto and returned later (sort of like a pawn shop).