The Great Depression
 

I thought it might be interesting to note what lingering effect the great depression had on your parents.

I remember my mom still straightening out aluminum foil to be reused.

When I asked why she was doing this as we weren't poor, she replied, "shut-up, you didn't have to stand out in the cold for four hours to get a block of cheese".

What memories do you have?

If something was "fixable", my dad would take a stab at it. When the pockets in his trousers would eventually wear thin on the inside, he'd patch them up with some tape. When the soles of his shoes would wear through, he'd go to Woolworth's and buy some stick-on shoe soles.

First car I ever had......first day I had it...............................I got in a wreck. Nice. The entire left side of the car got banged up. The at-fault party's insurance paid $60 for the claim - old car.....that we'd only paid $50 for. :) But it definitely needed fixed. Body shop? "We don't need no stinkin' body shop"!!! Lots of hammering, pounding, and Bondo later and the thing looked like - - - - - - - well - - - - it looked like my dad hammered and pounded and Bondo'd the car all up! Then he painted the entire car with enamel using.......(wait for it).........a brush! :shocked: Actually, the paint job looked pretty good. He and I always joked that the side of the car looked like a waffle after it was all said and done.

Not being critical at all of my father - he was a great person and my best friend once I grew into adulthood. He was my Best Man when Sandy and I got married. But experiences in his past - The Great Depression, WWII, etc. - drove a lot of his mentality about being frugal.

Bill :)

GREAT STORY
Thank you Bill.

About the only thing that carried over to our generation was "the clean-plate club." We weren't allowed to leave anything on our plates.

I like "the clean plate club". I wish I belong to "I wish I had a hundred dollars for every time I heard club", you know how many people are starving in the world?, when you tried to leave food on your plate.

When I was a kid we lived on a farm raised our oun food only had meat on sunday and that was chicken. Couldnt kill off the chickens to fast wouldnt have any eggs and for get the cows no milk so we eat a lot of vegs. Went to work in the garden at 5 years old. (5 acer garden) My parents didnt have much and held on to everything they got. My dad would tell stories of emptying a coal rail car for a dollar just to help buy food,him and another man.Wonder if it could go back to that, if our money becomes waste paper. Read about what happened in Germany after the first world war that would scare anyone. The young people today have never seen hard hard times and dont understand what could happen. I hope some how the world gets it back together. We sure are lucky today. So far

My father never talked about it ,but my grandfather had told me stories of his life during the BIG D ! Growing there own vegetables , shareing food with neighbors, mending there clothes, going without dinner so the kids could eat, medicine was unheard of except for home remedies, walking down the railroad tracks picking up coal that fell off so they could cook and maybe heat the house a little....but till the day he died he never had another bank account....

I was born just before World War II. My father owned a general store in rural Virginia. He still had "due bills" in ledgers from the Depression and he never tried to collect on them or cut those people off because they were still poor as dirt. I remember the ration books during the war and my thrifty Mom became even thriftier. Everything was recycled to make do - paper bags, aluminum foil (they called it tinfoil), clothing was patched up or made into quilts, Bell canning jars were used over and over again.

My Mom mixed bread crumbs with hamburger to make it go further. She said thats what they had to do during the depression. She said they had many meals without any meat and lots of beans and potatoes. One of my favorite meals, is ham & beans with fried corn bread. I was an older teenager before I had a burger without bread mixed in it. I thought that was the way a burger was suppose to taste. Mom & Dad always had a big garden with lots of vegetables. I remember my grandmother growing and cultivating a big garden way into her 80's and she "canned" so she had vegetables during the winter months. When my wife and I went to visit, she loaded us up with fresh vegetables during the summer and canned "stuff" during the winter. Those were the good ol' days!

I heard that a lot also.
My father said they would move to a different house if they could save 50 cents per month on rent.
My Grandfather on Mother's side did a lot of hunting so meat and fowl was plentiful for them.

When my father was in high school during the Depression, he trapped muskrats and sold the pelts for 25 cents each. This was in southeastern Massachusetts, not the wilderness woods someplace. But during the 50s, I can remember smoothing out and saving Christmas paper wrap and ribbon, and we weren't poor so that probably was a carry-over from their younger years.

...............use it up, dang nab it........
 

......I remember being told.......( In the Early 50's )

.............................Use it up...
..................................Wear it out...
.......................................Make it do...
...........................................Or do without....

Carryover from WWII............

Bill txs for sharing that with us.

Not depression stories, but we left Cuba in the 1960's and we went without a lot for a while.....my grandmother would not throw away plastic egg containers because they could store luttle things....our first xmas out of Cuba our dining table was a door dad unhinched from a room, and the xmas tree was a small tree cut from the yard.
In communist Cuba dad spent a day in jail for having bought food for us in the black market.
I could tell stories...

The Great Depression
 

I still "paste" what is left of a bar of soap together, so it will be completely used. Soap is harder these days. Remember the "soap saver" we used in the dishpan. And we hung out our clothes to dry. Can you imagine the furror that would cause in TV.

My dad would have the coal dumped in the ditch, by the house. The coal man, Wes Wandell, would leave the chute for us to shovel the coal in the bin. When we were done, we would carry the chute a block and leave it at Wes' house. As I recall it cost $.25/ton to have it shoveled in the bin and we saved $.50.

My dad was principal of a grade school in Curtisville, PA (Allegheny County) and was required to return part of his salary to the board. Think this was circa 1936. (Can you imagine what the teachers union would do today). He understood the need and was glad to have the job. In the summer he worked on a farm or sold Hoover vacuum cleaners.