Depression-era wisdom: How they survived

[mikandmari]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ession28m.html

My inner frugal person has always loved Depression-era stories. They inspire me to live a more simple, thankful life. We have a lot to learn from this older generation; we'd better listen carefully, they won't be around much longer.

[MRAHoffman]

and think I am going to start collecting them...it gives me hope

[Milly]

Here's a story or two handed down by my mom.

She was 9 years old in 1929, which was also the year her mother died of TB. Mom went to live with her grandparents on the farm, since her dad couldn't find work and at least on the farm she could eat and be taken care of while her dad looked for work.

He traveled around selling flowers he made from tin cans, using tin snips and enamel. (I still have some and they're beautiful! I guess these days it would be called 'tramp art').

At any rate, during the Great Depression, Sears Roebuck sold fabric by the pound through the mail. You didn't have any say in the patterns, since they were all remnants, but you could buy one or two (or whatever) pounds of fabric.

Mom's grandmother saved all year to buy a box of fabric for mom's school clothes. Like most older people in those days, she was a wonderful seamstress who never used a pattern.

At any rate, mom said that the day the fabric came was just like Christmas.

When her mom died, nobody had any money for a gravestone (mercifully, the family plot was alresdy paid for) so one of mom's uncles, who was working building Road 20 through Indiana, found a HUGE rock - a least 3 feet tall - that he brought home to place on her grave. Somebody else in the family was a stone-cutter, so he inscribed it. The stone still stands on my grandmother's grave.

[Trishagirl]

Wow neat story Milly yes we need to preserve and learn from those time or we will & are to repeat them. It gives you a diff perspective on life.

[Milly]

Everybody is going to hate you, Trishagirl, for encouraging me, since I can ramble on about this stuff forever.

Naturally, way back when, kids didn't have a lot of toys. So great-granny used to save all her old catalogs, magazines and empty boxes for the girls (she had 8 grand-daughters close together in age) and the girls would cut out pictures of drapes, furniture, people and so forth and make their own dollhouses by pasting the pictures in the boxes with wallpaper paste.

The kids also used wallpaper cleaner like silly putty. You could model with it like clay, or use it to lift cartoons from the Sunday funnies. Actually, I believe wallpaper cleaner WAS the inspiration for silly putty. I don't know, in this age of vinyl wallpaper, if they even make the cleaner any more.

[pryor208]

I love hearing these kind of stories. Makes you appreciate what you have today and try to get by with what you have more often.

[peanut]

My mother in law is my inspiration for getting by in hard times. She was born in 1920. Her early married life was post-WW2. She lived with her parents while her DH was overseas fighting the war. And she had her baby with her. When her DH came back, he lived with his in-laws too. She talks a lot about how they just had to because there wasn't a lot of money.

She saves everything... She waits for everyone else to finish eating, and then she eats the leftovers right off their plate! Kinda grossed me out at first, until I realized her rationale. I still won't do that though. She washes baggies to reuse, keeps tin foil to reuse, and plastic wrap. Simply amazing! She cooks everything in one pot...usually the fry pan...with lots of butter. My nutritionist would have a bird! She processed food she found anywhere. Supports friends and neighbors whenever possible because "you never know when you might need their help". Saves envelopes that come in the mail to reuse. Used to type letters to her mother on the back of her children's artwork.

Yep, my mil is a real tightwad.

[nancycg56]

I have a couple of cookbooks that are depression era recipes and stories (they were printed in the 70s or 80s). I think I'll go get them out and have a look since I haven't read them in awhile.

[redhead68]

Used to type letters to her mother on the back of her children's artwork.

Now that's brilliant and not just because it's frugal.

[HomeschoolMom]

This thread is very inspiring! Love the stories. Would like to hear more too!

[checks]

It's amazing what some women had to do to run a household. When I start feeling sorry for myself and about how much I have to do, I'll read a Little House on the Prairie story and it reminds me of how rich I am. My mother was raised during the depression, but was fortunate because her father worked for Westinghouse. There were 8 siblings and she says they all shared one bathroom and doesn't remember having any problems.....6 or those kids were girls too! They had a scheduled time to take a bath and they were not allowed to fill the tub with more than a few inches of water. I remember, in my youth, getting yelled at alot for filling the tub up to the brim! lol

My father's father worked in a coal mine near Pittsburg. He was very poor, but his mother was a good cook so he remembers eating well. Just said they always had to move when they couldn't afford the rent anymore. He was a very frugal man all his life.

[cab54]

My grandmother used to tell me the story about how she and her parents and 10 siblings lived on the farm (she was #4) and how they had a hard winter one year when they mainly ate bisquits and sorghum. They had very little meat.

Her littlest sister died (15 mos.) of pneumonia that winter, although her mother was still nursing her.

They made a lot of sauerkraut in crocks from the last of the fall cabbage. (They were German). And all of the older kids went out and tried to find jobs. My grandmother felt lucky because she found a job as a maid for some wealthy folks in a big house.

Later, I remember grandma never wasted anything.

[HomeschoolMom]

I remember my grandfather telling me that when he was 8 years old he worked nights in a bakery and then came home and took his younger brothers to school.

Apparently my grandpa fell asleep at his desk a lot!

This was before the depression but they were very poor because their father had abandoned them. My great-grandmother had 8 children to take care of.

My fil was also abandoned by his father. His mother cleaned houses and took in laundry. He remembers not having enough oil to light the lamp to do their homework by. They had to sit around the fire and use the light from the fire instead.

As I sit in my comfy chair at my computer these are very humbling thoughts. Whether this recession turns into a depression or not, I doubt we'll ever know the suffering that our grandparents went through.

[gardening momma]

They made a lot of sauerkraut in crocks from the last of the fall cabbage. (They were German).

My great grandparents were German too, and my great grandmother made sauerkraut in a crock. My mom has her crock & masher. My great grandfather built their house out of stone. He was a farmer, and very strong. They had a sink in the kitchen near the door for washing hands...they had a house fire and in his haste to save something, anything, from the fire, he ripped the sink off the wall and carried it out. In his last few years, when he had to live in a nursing home because of senility, it took 4 male orderlies to handle him because he was so strong. In his younger days on the farm, he used to walk on his hands along the peak of the barn roof. My mom has a picture of it.

[pat in east texas]

Back then everything was relatively more expensive. Pennies were "pinched" because a penny would buy something worth while. Mom about died when she saw her first $20 grocery bill (for 6 people). And that was after the "postwar inflation".