The 1930’s were not the good old days. The Dust Bowl sickened countless Americans with dust pneumonia, as it drove thousands from their beloved family farms. City folk didn’t exactly have it easy either, as unemployment plagued the formerly thriving working-force.
So why are we looking to the depression era as a source of inspiration?
Is it nostalgia for simpler times, before electronics became both a need and a nuisance?
Or are we seeing the diehard frugality of our parents and grandparents through new eyes?
Knitting, quilting, and backyard chickens have reached the pinnacle of hip. Even cobblers are experiencing an unforeseen rise in business.
So I ask, what can we learn by the menders, fixers and savers of those who survived the great depression? Those who learned how not to waste?
The NY Times recently published a moving article titled, Making Ends Meet in The Great Depression that gleaned the memories of those who lived through the great depression:
“Back then there was little money for food, let alone new curtains, but people found ways to cope. Backyard gardens were cultivated not because of a sudden itch to eat locally grown produce, but out of necessity; homeowners did their own repairs and found ingenious ways to make their homes functional and attractive.”
Hmm . . . sounds familiar.
Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. (A 2006 National Book Award Winner) chronicles the background and hidden stories of the people behind the environmental disaster that was the dirty thirties. Egan neither romanticizes nor sensationalizes this era. Instead, the author follows a few families in the hardest hit counties of Texas and Oklahoma to humanize the experience. Egan skillfully outlines the events that led to the dust bowl, making this one of the few book purchases I’ve made since joining The Compact, (buy nothing new) in 2007.
I have written previously about this book on The Non-Consumer Advocate, and had asked readers to share their family’s depression era stories on the blog. The subsequent comments were incredibly moving and inspirational; and brought tears to my eyes.
I think there is much to learn from the lessons learned by those who survived the great depression. An appreciation for food on the table, money put aside and the health of loved ones can get away from us in our go, go, go world.
These lessons are worth saving.
Did your family struggle through the great depression? Did your grandparents continue with the skills learned during lean times? Please share your stories in the comments section below.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
both of my parents lived through the great depression. My father was a teenager and my mom was very young 2-5 years old. But both of them remember how jobs were hard to find. my mom’s family had a large productive farm and had hired hands work for food only. My father finished eight th grade and then had to go work with the rest of his family as migrant farm workers. So needless to say, they didn’t have much but they did have their family and their beliefs. If they didn’t have it, they did without. They just worried were there next meal came from. I guess that, is why my mom was a pack rat ( you might need it someday) and my dad liked living on bare minimum ( couldn’t take it all with you when you moved place to place). I grew up having a large garden, learning how to can, sew, cook from scratch, and use what you have. I never had electronic games or stereo, But we did have radio, and t.v. with just local channels. When everyone else starting to get cable t.v. They kept up thier vehicles until they wouldn’t run no more. My dad had a 1956 chevy truck that he bought new with cash and kept it until 1988, but it was still running great but his eye sight got to bad he couldn’t drive it. I could go on and on. but this column would get to long.
Hi: Two stories from my mother: # 1 She was one of 5 children and they went to as many houses as possible at Hallowe’en because the apples and nuts they were given was what Granny used to make the Christmas cakes and puddings.
#2 If she went to play with a certain friend and saw the girl’s underwear on the line she knew her friend couldn’t come out because she had only one pair and of course wasn’t allowed outside without any underpants!
One pair of underwear- the poor thing! That’s something that we’ll never experience again- a shortage of clothing. We have an abundance from all the cheap labor so even if nobody bought anything new for a decade, there would be plenty of used clothes for everyone to dress decently.
My grandmother was recently married during the Depression, and she never saw a leftover that was too small to save. She used to wrap up the equivalent of a single bite of food as late as the 1970s.
My great-grandmother raised my mother. Great-gran was a skilled baker and the people who did have money in those days, gave the money to her to buy flour and sugar. She would then bake a whole table full of pies and cakes. When my mother came home from school she would try to steal a piece of crumb topping or such from the pies cooling on the table. Great-gran knew she did that and didn’t scold her. When the 10 of them sat down to their own dinner after the baked goods were delivered, they would often have only mashed potatoes and flour and water “gravy” for supper.
On Sunday’s Great-gran would roast two chickens with the money she had earned baking. When they came out of the oven, she would take one of the chickens and wrap it up carefully and go to one of the neighbors homes and say, “we were expecting company for dinner and they couldn’t come, so we have extra, can you use it?” And then she would go home and the family of 10 would share the one chicken.
She died when I was 3. I so wish I could have known her.
So we’re pretty sure 2009 is the start of the New Great Depression. And we’re not feeling terribly prepared for years of hardship. We’ve never had to pick up coal off the railroad tracks or work in a silk factory or eat corn mush, and we’re not sure that we’d learn real fast, either. But in addition to our real anxiety about all the people who are losing their jobs right now and the multitude who will really suffer if this thing drags on, we can’t help but feel a little excited. In fact, ever since we noticed the giant economic disaster we will persist here in calling the New Great Depression, we have secretly thrilled. When we read our morning (free, online) newspaper, we feel hopeful. We feel a little guilty about that. But it is exciting to think that things might be changing, and changing much more rapidly than we could have hoped for a couple years ago. For the first time in our lifetime, people are really starting to talk about the things we have thought for some time must be good ideas: sustainable technology, entrepreneurship, a reliance on community, and the end of unthinking over-consumption. We suspect that for many people who were, like we were, born into a culture in which CEOs make million dollar bonuses, people in all sorts of professions are expected to work seventy-hour weeks to get ahead, and teenagers routinely get stabbed for their sneakers, a New Great Depression would be an enormous relief.
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I just watched a doc on the dust bowl….wow…that is crazy…I too wish we would go back to the good old days….My grandma and grandpa went through the depression and I heard all the stories too. I myself helped my granparents with our garden every year. We canned, had chickens and hogs and cows. And I loved it. I so wish I lived back in Little House on the Praire days…and the men back then were so manly….and Good to their women. I am ready to Get back to basics…
God Bless You All,
Ang
My grandfather would eat onion/ or radish sandwiches, in his 70’s. My grandmother would can and would tell stories about life on the farm. If she were still alive she would be 95. In the 70’s when people were going back to basics, she said she loved that she had a faucet that she could turn the knob for water, as opposed to walking to the well to get it. She loven modern bathrooms, having used an outhouse for many years in her youth. She would sew on an old fashioned trundle machine. I learned how to cook from her and how to raise my children to be responsible adults. She raised my father by herself, after divorcing her first husband., this in a time when divorce was uncommon. She and her mother, father and brother, and my dad moved to the city the city when the farm was no longer able to support them. She worked as a secretary and supported them all when my great uncle served in the Navy. We had a dictionary on the living room table, and everytime I asked what a word meant, she would help me look it up. She and her second husband, took their lunchs to work everyday and had a kitchen garden. I learned so much about being frugal from them
My grandfather would eat onion/ or radish sandwiches, in his 70’s. My grandmother would can and would tell stories about life on the farm. If she were still alive she would be 95. In the 70’s when people were going back to basics, she said she loved that she had a faucet that she could turn the knob for water, as opposed to walking to the well to get it. She loven modern bathrooms, having used an outhouse for many years in her youth. She would sew on an old fashioned trundle machine. I learned how to cook from her and how to raise my children to be responsible adults. She raised my father by herself, after divorcing her first husband., this in a time when divorce was uncommon. She and her mother, father and brother, and my dad moved to the city the city when the farm was no longer able to support them. She worked as a secretary and supported them all when my great uncle served in the Navy. We had a dictionary on the living room table, and everytime I asked what a word meant, she would help me look it up. She and her second husband, took their lunchs to work everyday and had a kitchen garden. I learned so much about being frugal from them