Published: October 30, 2009 09:37 am      

Looking back at surviving the Great Depression

How did everyone survive the Depression? It scarred lives, but established a strong generation. There are few people living today whose lives spanned the whole era of 1930-1945 and beyond. Some of us only spent a few years there in the ’40s.

In the Depression, people sometimes did strange things. A story from the 1930s shows this, as told by Hortense Blake, “When the man who went through the country buying chickens wouldn’t pay what Dad wanted for those he had to sell, he kept them and we had ‘chicken this way and that way’ — every recipe Mom knew. And I still can eat chicken.”

Don Stuedemann wrote in that, “I had an uncle who told about rich people’s ice boxes which had doors on the outside for the iceman to put ice in without dripping through the house. People would put their perishables into the ice box to make sure they were well preserved. He happened to know where several of these iceboxes were located and would, on some dark evenings, help himself to food in order to feed his family. One particular evening when he reached in for the milk, the door on the other side opened and someone reached in for the milk at the same time. The only thing my uncle could think of to do was to shake hands with the person reaching in, close the door, and run like hell.”

Mary Winn emphasized that, “Barter should be mentioned, as it was fairly common. In our family, my mother washed and ironed white shirts for a professional man, in return for which his wife gave my sister violin lessons. It was well-known that two men’s shirts could make a nice blouse for a girl.”

Social Security began in the ’30s, Norma Hammer remembers, “You never knew when checks would come. It wasn’t like now, knowing your check will be in your bank account the third of the month. By month’s end, there was nothing to eat, but hominy.…we had many meals of just hominy. There was no furnace, just a coal stove that only gave off heat when you were close to it. So every evening, the four of us sat around the stove and listened to the radio.” (Radio and movies were big “saviors” during those days.) “It was bad. But when the four of us were sitting together, and I was in the lap of my mother, grandmother, or grandfather…I felt safe.

“I remember one evening when I was only about 4 years old, in an upstairs apartment; there was no money to pay the rent. The landlady came upstairs and she and my mother got into it, and the landlady called the police. I was screaming, afraid they would take my mother away. We had to leave the apartment. My uncle took us in for a few days until we could find another place to live.

“My mother finally got a WPA (Works Progress Administration) job where she worked at a recreation center for young people. She was a wonderful piano player, and they loved to hear her play. I’d go with her on evenings when they had something special.”

One girl recalls putting eggs up to the light to see if they were fresh. Little things like this saved pennies. Those who didn’t have enough to eat often sent a family member to stand in line for a bucket of soup. There were shanty towns called “Hoovervilles” in big cities, and that’s when hoboes began touring the country by the thousands.

Bud Frimoth related this story. “It was during the late ’20s and early ’30s that Dad had our house built on Thorwaldsen Place (top of the hill) using a good Danish contractor. That area of Clinton was noted for the number of Danes living there.

“In the midst of the depression, my father’s business experienced a horrible thing. The pasteurizing equipment and the butter churn were on a cement floor that was laid on a wooden floor underneath. Somehow the basement beams gave way and the whole floor collapsed. I suspect the weight of the churner was a major cause. Being an entrepreneur, he took his loss, shut down the upstairs bakery and got rid of the creamery part of the business, and shut off the back of the building. Then he opened the front end of the store on Second Street as a grocery. I was in Franklin grade school then. I’ve no idea how Father survived financially, but the grocery store was a big downturn in his finances, about which I knew nothing. His most important asset, though, included his inner drive for success — to maintain his home and family.” Ironically, at least one onlooker believed the family had money.

And so the Depression began to subside and melt into the Second World War. America rolled up her sleeves and prepared for more sacrifice. It was a relatively easy transition…compared to how it might have been, if it had been a sudden shift from affluence. Next week, we’ll compare the Depression years to the Second World War years through the eyes of some who lived it.



Gary Herrity is the Clinton Herald’s historical columnist. His column appears on page 5A on Fridays.