Remembering the Great Depression - What Would You Do if it Happened Again?

I wrote and posted this article two years ago, but Heather M. asked me to post it to her group so here it is again. I think the word 'if' could come out of the title now that unemployment keeps rising higher and higher into double digits. The feared depression seems to be upon us. I have edited this article to try to improve it and bring it up to date since I moved in with my daughter Jane last Christmas.

I was born in 1922 on my family's 65 acre dairy farm in Bethel, Connecticut seven years before of the ‘Crash of ‘29’, so I remember it. Some of my father’s friends were wiped out. My mother’s best friend, Catherine Smith. died during the first year of the crash, and her husband, Gib Smith, lost most of his investment property, as well as what he had in the stock market. He had one property in Miami, Florida that was paid for free and clear. It was an apartment building with eight units and after he buried his wife in Connecticut, he moved with his three small children into one of those apartments. They survived, but Gib was a sad nab who never married again.  

On our farm in Bethel CT, of course my father felt the pinch, but actually we never lacked necessities. We had our own beef, chickens, ducks, one pig, an orchard of apples, peaches, plums, and pears, and a rented freezer locker. When soup kitchens had haggard and hopeless people lined up for blocks in New York City, men would come north to work for my father for $30 a month three meals a day and a bed to sleep in. We had a big old farmhouse and they each had their own room. My mother loved to cook and put three good meals a day on the table. Breakfast would be fruit, hot cereal, and any number of pancakes with honey, or three to four eggs however they wanted them cooked. Lunch might be a casserole with home made pie or cake for dessert, and supper was anything from roast beef, ham or sometimes spaghetti, with pudding and cookies. In summer there was enough sweet corn that most of the men had at least four big ears slathered with butter. Mother also made all our bread, and it was delicious. We churned our own butter to spread on it. She also kept the men’s bedrooms clean, sheets changed once a week and did their laundry. Every summer Mother would 'can' about a thousand Mason jars of fruits and vegetables for winter use. Eventually when  my father started home delivery our Jersey milk, Mother was needed for office work and collecting, so my father hired a woman to help her with cooking and the housework. Mother also had chickens who laid enough eggs for the family, and also for sale, along with home made cottage cheese, to the milk customers.

We had a  Philco radio placed on a mahogany library table where we all sat around together listening  - the news first with all the bad news about how the depression and the dust storms in Oklahoma were affecting the rest of the country. And we would hear a lot of sad stories about hunger in the country. I also remember all the hoopla over Lindberg when he soloed across the Atlantic, and when his baby son was kidnapped. And I remember hearing about the crash and burning of the Hindenberg. We didn’t hear Orson Wells broadcast of the “The War of the Worlds”, but we heard news reports of all the frightened people who took flight because of it. We listened, as a family, to shows with entertainers like Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Burns and Allen. There were other shows like The Green Hornet, and Mercury Theater. Prizefighting was popular with my father and the hired men. The highlights were when heavyweight prizefights were broadcast. I can still remember the excitement of listening to the Dempsy / Schmeling fights. We had a German guy working for us who jumped ship in New York City, followed the railroad tracks to Scranton, PA where he went to work for my grandfather right after WWI. Then he threw in his lot with my father and worked for him for many years. Of course he would always bet on the German fighter.

 My father sold his milk retail in glass quart bottles, and the in the '30s the price was forced down as low as 15 to18 cents a quart. Some farmers, who sold their milk wholesale, dumped the milk in ditches rather than sell at a price that was less than it cost them to produce it. It was not required to pasteurize milk in those days and we sold raw milk from purebred Jersey cows, and the creamline was about one quarter of the the way down the bottle. You could whip that cream.  A government inspector came once a month to test our dairy for cleanliness, and the cows for Bangs Disease and Tuberculosis. Our dairy always got a 99% rating, and none of our  cows were ever found to have Bangs Disease or Tuberculosis.

As a child, I didn’t feel effects of the depression at all. We girls were trained to not expect much. When I wanted a certain new coat and didn’t get it, it was because it was red and had a fake fur collar, not the cost involved. My father's family were Quakers until my great grandfather married out of the church. Even as a professed atheist my father still had modest Quaker beliefs, and would not allow us girls to wear loud colors. So I just had to settle for a plain blue coat. (I still wear more blue clothes than any other color). My parents really struggled keep their finances afloat, but it was my father’s drinking that caused hardship more than the depression.

What would I do now in case of a bad depression? I always thought I would try to buy a small house with 10 acres, a goat and a flock of chickens, but that didn't happen. This rented house my daughter Jane and I live in has at least an extra acre we could plant to a garden. Jane had a good garden last year and is working on it again this year.  She also has 14 chickens now that keep us in organic eggs. She buys organic food for them.

With the weather becoming more severe and unpredictable, this seems to me to be a safer area than most. We have a good water table and are on the lea side of the mountain range. And we can always eat ground acorns and rabbits if we have to! I had better check Amazon for a book on how to process acorns and catch rabbits.