Memories

Last year when my family got together for the holidays my great-grandmother sat at the table like she always did and just watched all of us. She never really says much to anyone, but I could tell when she began to get irritated at some of the things and conversations going on around her. When my cousins started complaining about how they did not get the exact new model of phone they wanted for Christmas she just shook her head, sighed and stared off into the distance. One of my cousins saw her shake her head at them and asked why she did it. Why didn’t she want them to have the best phones if they wanted them? My grandma just looked at him and reminded him that he did not actually need a new phone every year and as someone who grew up without such luxuries, she believed that if what you had worked and was still in good condition it should be good enough for them. They quickly lost interest in what she was saying and walked back to the other room rolling their eyes and not wanting to listen.

I was curious about what she had said, and I asked her if she would mind telling me about her life back then. She looked at me and smiled and began to tell me how she was born in 1925. She was four years old when The Great Depression started because of the stock market crash in 1929. Investors at the time lost something like $30 billion dollars (the equivalent today would be near $396 billion). She told me that at that time, the country was classified as industries, such as the banking industry, railroad industry, lumber industry and other types. All the industries soon began to decline, and many were nearly going bankrupt. Banks all over the country began closing rapidly. Soon the businesses followed their example and because of this a lot of people lost their jobs. She said for a while it seemed like the whole country was out of work.

It seemed so hard to believe how the whole country could have been out of work and I asked where her family lived and how they made do. She told me her family lived in a small town on a farm and pretty much just lived off the land. Her mother had a large garden and fruit trees that gave them plenty of fruits and vegetables. They even had chickens, pigs and goats for a while, too. She told me that her mother canned everything she grew, as well as the any meat they had. Her mother taught her and her siblings how to do these things as well while she was growing up. Money was very tight for the family and it was hard to come by. Her father would go to town and stand in line for hours just trying to get a job to bring in any extra money he could for the family, often if he got a job it would be hours of work for just pennies. She said he never complained much because he taught them that any money coming in helps. There were no steady jobs to be found anywhere and bartering with friends and neighbors for things you needed was quite common. She told me that no one had charge accounts, or credit cards. If you could not afford it, you did not buy it. They had a small farmhouse that did have running water, which came from a pump outside. They had a coal stove that they needed to heat up just so they could cook things. She told me that she and her siblings would walk along the railroad picking up any extra coal they could find just to bring it home to help some with the stove. Their house did not have a bathroom inside, so they had an outhouse they used instead.

She told me how even though her family did not have much they considered themselves lucky just to still have a home. Many people had lost theirs due to not having money and ended up living in shantytowns in nothing more than shelters made from salvageable materials they had found including cardboard. These places were called Hooverville’s after President Hoover and they were all over the country. Some had a couple hundred people living in them and others had thousands. Even though her family did not have too much extra they still tried to share with some of the even less fortunate people in town. Her parents taught her that it was important to be kind to everyone.

I asked her if she used any of the things she had learned through those years in her life as she was growing up or even if she still used them today and she told me why she does a few things people always look at her a bit strange for. While I was growing up it was normal to use jelly jars for drinking cups at grandma’s house because that is what she always had in the cup cabinet. She would always wash her used tin foil and Ziploc bags just so she could reuse them as much as possible before throwing them out. She told me that she was always taught to re-use, repurpose and recycle everything because you never knew when you would be able to get those items again. She asked, what was the point in throwing away something that was still useful? A few more tips she had for me were to save money for a rainy day and to never trust all my money to my bank. Always keep cash somewhere at home. She told me her parents often said they wished they had done the same before the depression hit. She said if you needed new clothes it was always better to go to thrift stores because not only are the clothes cheaper, but they are also often of better quality. She is convinced the clothing at sold at stores now fall apart to easily because they are so quickly made.

She hugged me as I told her how much I appreciated everything she told me. She taught me a few lessons that day that I will use in my own life and pass down to my future children as well. I can not believe everything she lived through at that time in her life. I can understand why she is so smart and strong though. I am so used to the luxuries we have in the world today even with things going on that I do not know if I would be able to live the way they did during the Great Depression. I do know however, thanks to my great grandmothers’ story, that if our world ever gets to that point again, I may be able to figure things out. I could not believe it when she told me that it had been an exceptionally long time since she had talked to anyone about that period of her life. Apparently not many people in the family had asked her about it very often. I will always be grateful I took the time to learn about her life and let her teach me the skills of sewing, gardening and canning as I was growing up. I will always cherish those memories with my amazing grandma.