Angela Wall, researcher and author.
When I studied the Great Depression, I got the impression those were hard, difficult times. The drought, the dust, the grasshoppers, the mormon crickets and the stock market crash combined to form a plague. I wondered what effects those events had on people. Were families torn apart by the plague or were they brought together? When I began interviewing people from that era, I expected to find grim memories. I was surprised to hear these people explain, that for them, it was a happy time.
Wayne Shuck explained, ``We didn`t realize the full extent of the Stock Market Crash, the Dust Bowl days or the grasshoppers. Gradually farm prices improved and rainfall was much more satisfactory. I grew up in a family of five children. I liked school. There weren`t as many things to do, and there weren`t as many things distracting us from our studies.``
Most of the people I interviewed felt they were more fortunate than others. They thought that the mid-west people were better off than the eastern people in the United States. They could raise a garden, they grew pumpkins, squash, turnips and cabbage. In the east all they had were soup kitchens.
Katherine Wallace recalled, ``Well, we would wash by hand with a wash board. I never made the soap but my mother and mother-in-law did. We had to put the boiler on the stove, fill the buckets and heat the water, put the soap in the water and stir it.``
People became more self sufficient. People did what they had to, in order to survive. In the words of Ruth Fishel, ``We made do with what we had. We raised the garden the best we could; we canned as much food as we could, fried and smoked our hams when we butchered hogs. We did our own butchering, beef once in a while, canning a lot of beef. We cooked up the bones so that we could get all the goody out of the bone marrow. That was for adding to the soup meat. We used to take a crate of eggs to town to buy groceries, we sold cream and butter. I churned butter.``
Families didn`t have television at this time, they relied on their imagination and creativity to have fun. In that way the family had a greater unity.
Edwin and Alice Petranek recalled, ``There were four or five of us families that used to get together on Sunday`s. Our main way of transportation was horseback, and we were probably four to five mile neighbors in the surrounding community. We`d play cards. Hearts was the main game. Sometimes on Saturday evenings we`d play yard games and later in time we had dances in the various areas. There was an older fellow and I that teamed up. I played the guitar and he played the fiddle, we were the music for the dances.``
Edith Jarvi, Katherine Wallace and Edythe Wood were thrilled at the progress of technology of the gasoline lamps, lanterns and irons. ``We could to town with our gasoline irons, white gas was always on our grocery lists,`` they recalled.
Back then teachers received a warrant as pay. It was something like a check. It promised that the bank would pay interest. There wasn`t any money in the bank to pay the teacher so the bank would buy the warrants and take the interest, that way they`d make money too. Edythe Wood remembered, ``When I taught I got $45 dollars a month. When I took my warrants to the bank, they said, `I`m sorry, we are not buying warrants. Your school hasn`t taken up a warrant in four years.` They had towns people who would buy the warrants, but they paid ninety cents on the dollar.``
Nobody had any money, the dollar wasn`t worth anything, especially if you didn`t have any.
``General Motors and Ford Motor Company cut way way back on the manufacturing of cars. People didn`t have the money to buy cars and so those who were working for GM and Ford Motor Company lost their jobs. Farmers lost their farms, because they couldn`t afford to pay their mortgages or pay for the feed. Feed was so high, they couldn`t raise anything, but the banks primarily failed because of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. There was an over aggression among the banks. I know they intended to have a good stock market,`` Wayne Shuck explained, ``but, the prices went downward anyway.``
The people took out loans that they couldn`t pay back and the farmers couldn`t feed their cattle. The farmers raised the cattle and because they couldn`t feed them they couldn`t sell them to other people cause they couldn`t afford to keep them either. They were forced to sell them to the government at $20 a head. After the animals were sold they were shot. This didn`t make any sense to Wayne or I either, people didn`t have any food, couldn`t afford anything yet the government shoots thousands of head of cattle.
Then came the dust storms and the grasshoppers. Sometimes as I was told, the dust storm would be so bad that the street lights would come on because it was so dark out.
``My mother would go get a table cloth and cover everything, and no matter how tight the house was, the dust would come right through anyway. It was just like a blizzard. You couldn`t see anything,`` said Alice Petranek.
``Millions of acres of soil were blown away, building up eight to ten feet high,`` added Edwin Petranek.
``We had grasshoppers climbing walls and literally eating the laundry off the line, there wasn`t any food left for them. They came in hordes and just like a cyclone moving on the ground, they crawled across the highway, it was almost greasy, from both mormon crickets and grasshoppers,`` remarked Wayne Shuck.
Edwin Petranek remembered, ``The grasshoppers ate the fence posts and the paint off of buildings.``
``Most people didn`t have dryers, we had to hang clothes up on the line to dry. The grasshoppers were so bad that they would eat the nylons and clothing off the line. They were so thick that when you went on the road you`d squash them. They would just pile up into huge piles,`` concluded Edythe Wood.
After speaking to Ruth Fishel, Wayne Shuck, Edwin and Alice Petranek, Edythe Wood, Edith Jarvi and Katherine Wallace, I realized that my previous views of the Depression were only a fraction of the whole story. Katherine Wallace stated it best, ``It was doing without and making do with what you had.`` None of the people I interviewed would go back and change anything. These people took each day as it came and did not dwell on what tomorrow would bring. They didn`t have all the latest technology but they made do with what they did have. They all seemed very happy; no one was really depressed. I believe they learned the true value of family. Family was very important. Today we take advantage of what we have instead of enjoying it. We always want more.
I think this has been my greatest lesson yet. I have learned--don`t dwell in the minutes past; we have the moment to live for life; cherish what we have; always give; in the end we will all have what we are entitled to have.