THE REAL DEPRESSION OF THE 30's

At a dinner with a program series that I belong to at our local museum the other night, the theme was The Great Depresssion of the the 1930's. After a dinner of delicious tho very unpretentious stew and jello, we assembled in the small auditorium for a program by the Heritage Singers with songs and little vignettes about the Great Depression.

They had dialogue and songs like, "Brother, can you spare a dime," the Veteran's March on Washington because they never got paid and run out of town by General MacArthur and his troops no less. The poor lives they lived at home and school, the Hooverville "towns," the election of FDR and pretty much covered the whole period showing that they endured. But the people who lived through it had some fun doing it singing songs and dancing and in the coming of radio shows like Amos and Andy and some movies if they could scrape up the nickel to go.

Many of you have stated in your comments that you like hearing about the "old days" from someone who was there and that is why I am telling you about a little of what I remember of the depression years.

I really could enjoy relating to some of these things as I remembered living through some of them. I remember my dad hated FDR with a passion as all good Republicans did and how he laughed at Amos and Andy. I remember how he would polish our shoes every Saturday night and glue on those rubber soles and heels to keep us going another week.

This is a picture of either my kindergarten class or my first grade. From the left side front row, I am the girl (circle on left) with the flimsy skirt and an old sweater at the end of the front row. It might interest some of you to know that actress Barbara Hale was also in that class down the row from me with the envied Shirley Temple curls (on the right in other object). She later was Della Street on all the Perry Mason shows.

I remember in second grade, when we all went to the lavatory at one time--girls and boys separately, of course. There were no doors on the individual booths. Why, I don't know but I had come to school that day wearing an old pair of panties with the elastic all stretched out and I had apparently taken a safety pin and pinned it together to stay on. Well, it broke. I didn't know what to do. I had a man teacher and so I just stayed in the bathroom after everyone else left. A couple of kids were sent in to tell me to come back to the room but I was too embarrassed to tell them my problem. Finally, a woman teacher came in, saw the problem, got me another safety pin and I could go back to class.

I remember my dad going down to the relief center to get a basket of food for people in the congregation who were too proud to go get it themselves and he delivered it to them and kept many a member from starving.

Later on when times got a little better, I am including a picture of my best friend and I with our new Shirley Temple hats which we got for Easter. Everyone had one and we prized them highly. I'm the one on the left. I was probably about 9.

Many of you may have members of your family out of work or be out of work yourself, but you can be glad things are not as bad as they were then. Unemployment insurance helps and so do so many agencies that give food and clothing and yet the number of people who are homeless is large and many children go to bed hungry. So maybe we don't have it so bad.