# Stories from the Great Depression of the 1930s



## Milkman

I doubt we have many members old enough to share a personal story. But do  you have a story your parent or grandparent told you about the great depression era?

Lets hear it.


----------



## Milkman

I will post one up.  My father was born in 1919 so he was 10 years old when the depression started. He was the oldest of 5 brothers all born in the years before 1929. 

One story he told was that he and his brothers would gather muscadines to sell for money. One ingenious way they had was to place a seine of some sort in a creek and go upstream to find muscadine vines. They would climb trees, shake trees, etc. and get the muscadines into the creek someway.  Then go to the seine and gather the fruit. 

When they got enough to sell they would walk carrying the muscadines 4 miles to town to try and sell them for a whopping 10 cents a gallon.


----------



## Nicodemus

Daddy told me the only way he could tell there was a depression was that there was very little cash money to be made. My folks were subsistence farmers, and he trapped in the winter and also sold a few catfish from time to time. Money crops were cotton and tobacco. Corn was grown for their use and for the stock, and he had two big vegetable gardens a year. No electricity was available in rural Wheeler County during those times, so they got very little news anyway. He said that during the Depression he depended on money from his fur trapping to pay the land taxes, and buy the very few staples they needed, flour, rice, salt, sugar, coffee, vinegar, shotgun shells and 22 bullets. Everything else was produced on the farm. They saved their seed from year to year, so that wasn`t a problem other than cotton and tobacco seed. To this day I still have some seed corn that they used every year. This was passed down from my Great Great Grandfather.

So they really didn`t have any hardship at all. He only had a third grade education, but had as much common sense as anybody I`ve ever known, and relied on no one but himself. Him and Mama were nearly totally independent. They taught me a lot about self reliance. I hope it took.


----------



## Milkman

Daddy told another about one time his Uncle who lived on the same farm was selling eggs.  He walked the four miles to town to sell the eggs. 
 While there he spoke to someone who told him that eggs were bringing 5 cents a dozen more at Athens (18 miles further)  Upon learning this Uncle Walt who was a hard working man walked to Athens carrying his basket of eggs to sell. 

There just was no money to be had and they needed every penny they could get.


----------



## Walker44

Up North my Father said he and his brother would go to the freight yards where they would load the locomotives with coal    It was done through a huge shoot and when the train pulled away there was always a pile left on the ground   They would scoop it up and go back to town and sell it to people who needed heat their stoves


----------



## NE GA Pappy

my dad was born in 37, so he doesn't remember any of the depression, but he has ration stamps my granny had left over that has his name on them.  Mostly because my Pappy was a poor dirt farmer and didn't have the cash to buy the shoes, sugar and such.


----------



## Milkman

My mother was born in 1928 and was a young child during the "Hoover Days"  My grandparents were sharecroppers. 

When she started school around 1934 they lived in a place that the school bus transported her and her siblings for school.  When she was 9 years old around 1937 they moved to a place that required them to walk about 1 mile to school.  She said they couldn't afford shoes so they went to school barefoot during warmer weather.  During colder weather they had to find and cut cardboard to put in their worn out shoes to cover the holes in the soles.


----------



## Jack Ryan

Walker44 said:


> Up North my Father said he and his brother would go to the freight yards where they would load the locomotives with coal    It was done through a huge shoot and when the train pulled away there was always a pile left on the ground   They would scoop it up and go back to town and sell it to people who needed heat their stoves



Tracks run east and west right in front of my house where I live now so I hear a lot of train stories from people in the area. There is ONE story that every single person has told so far.

During the depression some one, or two, would jump on the train in the big rail crossing yards in the town to the east and roll coal off the cars all the way to the little town to the west of me. Then they would load it in a wagon on the way back to town as the road ran right next to the tracks.

My pop was born in '30 so "depression" was just another day with a Y in it. His dad and all his uncles were all boot leggers and moonshiners and real life outlaws ain't nothing like that hunky dory TV show crap. It was ruff and poor was just every day.

They called a little town "the city" and lived in the next wide spot over so they would walk the RR tracks when they went to town. No adult cared a crap what any kids were doing so they were walking 5 miles on a RR track coming home when they came home. They had sling shots and used fence staples for amo. When they got hungry they would shoot pigeons in a barn roof on the way and pick field corn .


----------



## Jack Ryan

When the circus came to "town" they would set up on the side of town nearest the river and my dad and his buddy walked to town and got a job packing water from the river to the animals. They were probably 8 or so, no more than 10, and they watered those animals all week. It came the last they were suppose to get paid and the carnies told 'em to kiss off. They weren't going to pay to orphan kids they'd never even seen with any one as tall as my belt.  Well dad and his buddy walked home that day and told grand dad what happen and they wouldn't pay. Grandpa got out his pistol and go dad's buddy's dad and they drove in to the circus. All dad said was when they got back they had the money.

Grampa's name was Harley and never listed in the census as anything more than hired farm labor but a couple things he did was run the steam thressing machines during harvest and he blew stumps. Apparently had a reputation with dynamite.

Dad and his brother would climb through the window in to the shed and they would steal a stick of dynamite. Then they would take off away from the house and they would open the dynamite and fill soda straws with the granules from the dynamite and he said when you lit those they would fly up in the air like we use bottle rockets now.

Another time while they were in the "shed" they got in to the moonshine and that was not pretty, even if Harley hadn't caught 'em, they were in sad shape on their own and it only got worse when they got caught. 

All this had to go on before dad was 10 years old because he was raised in the Solders and Sailors orphan home from the time he was 10 until 15. His older sister came and finally gave in to his begging to get out. She signed his papers and outside on the steps says, "Well you got it. There ya go." and off he goes on his own, raised his self from there.


----------



## Duff

Nicodemus said:


> Daddy told me the only way he could tell there was a depression was that there was very little cash money to be made. My folks were subsistence farmers, and he trapped in the winter and also sold a few catfish from time to time. Money crops were cotton and tobacco. Corn was grown for their use and for the stock, and he had two big vegetable gardens a year. No electricity was available in rural Wheeler County during those times, so they got very little news anyway. He said that during the Depression he depended on money from his fur trapping to pay the land taxes, and buy the very few staples they needed, flour, rice, salt, sugar, coffee, vinegar, shotgun shells and 22 bullets. Everything else was produced on the farm. They saved their seed from year to year, so that wasn`t a problem other than cotton and tobacco seed. To this day I still have some seed corn that they used every year. This was passed down from my Great Great Grandfather.
> 
> So they really didn`t have any hardship at all. He only had a third grade education, but had as much common sense as anybody I`ve ever known, and relied on no one but himself. Him and Mama were nearly totally independent. They taught me a lot about self reliance. I hope it took.



That's pretty much what my grandmother told me about it. They were so poor, they didn't notice, nor did it affect them much. She said she remembered people talking about it though. 

She told me once during that time a woman she had never seen before knocked on their door begging for food. She gave her a jar of beans from the cellar. When her dad came in from the fields, my grandmother's sister told her dad about it. Granny said that was the worst whippin she ever got. 

One more. Granny had to quit school in the 3rd grade because her mother died. She had to quit to take care of her dad, 4 brothers and sister. She said her summer routine went like this:

Wake up before daylight and cook breakfast for the family. 

Clean up and wake up her younger sister. 

Go to the field with her sister and hoe a row of corn. (She said she didn't know how long the rows were, but looked a mile long when your 10 yrs old). 

Back to the house to fix lunch

Back to the field to hoe another row

Then fix supper and get her sister ready for bed. 

Toughest woman I ever met. She was 104 when she passed away a few years ago.


----------



## Mr Warren

My mother told this story. 
  She was born in 1910 and her mother ran a boarding house for some of the railroad workers. Their house was about 2 blocks from the tracks, and Mom and her brother would walk down the tracks and pick up lumps of coal that fell off of the trains that went through, and they used them to heat and cook with because there was no money to buy coal. Mom & Dad both had lots of depression stories but I have forgot most of them now. 
  My Dads father was a farmer who bought up abandoned farms for very little money and built them back to being productive and then sold them at a good profit. He had become quite well off for those days and  put his money in the stock market, and lost everything in the crash of 29. He never recovered from that and died a hateful bitter old man without a friend in the world.


----------



## Milkman

I remember my Daddy saying that they had it much better being in the country and being self sufficient. The folks who lived in town and were dependent on jobs for livelihood suffered more than country folks with farms.


----------



## Jack Ryan

My mother was I think 2nd or 3rd youngest of 13 kids in their family. They lived at the end of a street on the edge of town. Their house was was an old railroad station/shack her father got/bought when he first married. "Gotta have a house if you got a wife ya know." LOL.

Being out there they had ground equal to about 4 normal city lots or so and "Hodges Branch" ran through the edge of it. They always had a huge garden. Their oldest son would keep the garden as big as they had room for and he would push a  vegetable wagon through town selling vegetables for a little extra cash.

When I first started a regular job was in the early '70s and I rode to work about 50 miles away in a carpool with some other guys. They were all pretty old and a couple could retire then just as I was starting.

One of those guys lived on the same end of town as my mother's family, a fellow West ender.  Well he told us how he always got handme downs but even worse, all he had was sisters. ROTFL. So one year he wound up wearing a pair of his sister's old shoes to school every day.

He said he had to fight one or more of my uncles every **** day over making fun of his shoes. 

That was funny as all get out and I was cracking up in the back seat of that car, and he was riding shotgun. Then when he turned around and I saw his face, it wasn't a bit funny all of a sudden. I swear I thought the car would stop any minute the next two days and I'd have to fight that old CensoredCensoredCensoredCensored on the side of the road.

Old people don't have much of a sense of humor about some things.


----------



## JustUs4All

Dad was born in 1912.  His stories were similar.  They were subsistence farmers and he was the oldest boy, there were three others.  All helped work the farm until they were married or went into the service.  Dad had to lay out of school his 10th grade year to insure the crop was made due to an injury to his father.  

He said they had next to no money but life did not change much for them.  They grew almost all that they needed but purchased flour, salt, sugar, pepper, & coffee.  The flour sacks provided material for most of their underwear and some shirts and dresses.  

A grist mill was 1/2 mile away where everyone had their corn ground.  For what little money they had Grandmother sold butter and eggs.  Grandad had a cane mill and a syrup shed.  He would cook syrup for a 10% toll and took some of that to town on market day (Saturday) to sell along with the occasional bar-b-qued pig. The boys all had rabbit boxes and did the occasional rabbit drive through a head of woods.  When the rabbits came out they were brought down with rabbit sticks, 2 foot long sticks that were thrown at the legs.  A portion of the rabbit money was allowed to be spent on .22 shorts and 12 ga. shells.  They also picked and sold blackberries and muscadines in season.


----------



## Milkman

My grandmother was born in 1893. She was the one raising the 5 boys including my Dad during the depression years. 
She was a very staunch Christian who didn't believe in any of the "vices" of that day. These included smoking, drinking, cursing, etc.  My grandpa (her husband) smoked. She told me she didn't know he smoked until after they were married. (maybe they never kissed) 

Anyhow during the depression one of the "essentials" the family had to buy was smoking tobacco. I remember hearing that Grandma was especially riled that she and the boys had to have less available money due to Grandpas smoking habit. 

All 5 of the boys were non smokers as an adult.


----------



## westcobbdog

Great thread Milkman.


----------



## krawlin5

My father was the youngest boy of nine children born in1933 in Lincoln county Ga . My Grandfather was born and 1896 he was a sharecropper never owned a piece of property his whole life. My dad told me stories of how they made ends meet like catching rabbits to sell and my father raised chickens to sell. My Grandfather also had odd jobs like mechanic and running a ice house and driving soliders to back then Camp Gorden .The house my father was born in was abandoned and my Grandmother had picked cotton that day and had my Dad and got up and fixed the doctor that delivered my Dad dinner. People were a lot tougher back then.


----------



## Jack Ryan

This isn't quite the depression era, I was born in '55. My maternal grampa died about 1960 or so, but one memory I have of him was him sitting outside under their cherry tree chewing and a BB gun on his lap. Usually after supper it seems. He would sit out there until dark shooting bird off HIS cherry tree.

But one thing was he had a pet crow. It sure must have not been cherry season when he got friendly with that bird. It knew him and it could even say a few words. Some times if no one else was around out there it would land on his shoulder and he'd feed it something. Probably the same candy corn he kept in his pocket for me back then.

I only remember seeing it a few times, heck I may even just remember it because hearing the rest of the family talk about it. It's a family story, you remember how....  Supposedly that bird hung around there for several years and it would show up when grampa had reason to sit out side for long, he was the only one it would get close to.


----------



## Redbow

My Grandpa was born in 1892 and my Grandma in 1898, both of them used to tell us grandkids about the depression and how bad it was for many folks, especially the town people..My Grandparents lived on and ran the family farm so they could raise what they needed to eat, veggies, Hogs and Chickens..Grandma sold eggs in town for a few cents a dozen and at times bartered for her coffee, flour and sugar. They also sold a ham or shoulder every once in a while for a few dollars. Even after I came along in 1946 my Grandparents still talked about how hard times were during the great depression...Grandpa never would put a dime in any bank, he knew a few folks back then who lost everything they had when the banks were closed during that era..We always grew tobacco, cotton and corn for the livestock. Grandpa and Grandma finally got electric lights in 1955...Grandpa didn't enjoy that for long, he passed on in 1958, I still miss that old man today..


----------



## CAnderson

Both my grandpas worked together in Centre, Alabama on the highway crew for the county on the tar wagon. It was a job where they had to spray hot tar on the highway out of a mule drawn boiler. I was told they would quit the job to pick crops when it was harvest time for cotton or beans, but the job was always there when they went back because no one else would take it. Only one was still around when I was born and I still remember the scars he had all over his arms and back from the tar, along with a wide deep scar on the top of his head from when the tar bubbled out of the boiler. The one that passed before I was born had more scars from when the boiler exploded and covered him in tar from head to waist on his back. My mom said it happened on a Thursday and he had to lay on his stomach for days until they could slowly peel it all off, but he was back on the job on Monday.
I have pictures of the house my dad grew up in that showed it as a two story with one big room on the second floor that all 8 kids slept in. But when the house needed new siding they could only afford to do the first floor so they cut the second floor off and dropped the roof down. I always thought they were joking until I helped redo the siding when I was a teenager and found the saw marks and cut down wall studs.
My great grandmother, born in 1910, lived to 96 and had 13 kids. She ate bacon every morning, had fatback in every green or bean she cooked, dipped snuff until 94, and hadn't been to the doctor in 50+ years until a neighbors dog jumped up on her when she was in her 2 acre garden that she planted every year, by hand, and broke both her hips at 92. We would go to her house a few weeks every year around the holidays and she would work me and my brother harder then I'd ever worked and we still couldn't keep up with her. She outlived half her kids, and few grand kids.


----------



## Jack Ryan

On my bootlegger side of the family, my great grandpa's brothers were known for coming up with money making "schemes", not money making but just money making schemes.

One time for a while they had stored up a bunch of broom making materials. They were going to get rich making and selling brooms since they both learned a new skill while they were IN PRISON.

Never heard any stories about the brooms, just the big pile of broom material.


----------



## Milkman

Daddy told a story about his grandpa and cotton value lost in the crash of 1929.

Great Grandpa was a thrifty old fellow that would bring bales of cotton back home from the gin and store it waiting on prices to go up. Upon an increase in value he would load bale(s) onto the wagon and take it to sell. I guess having 5 grandsons on the farm made material handling not a concern. 

He was caught with some cotton in the barn when the stock market crashed.  If I remember correctly Daddy said cotton went from a value of about 20 cents to a value of 5 cents a pound.  So Great Grandpa lost lots of money on the cotton he had squirreled away.


----------



## turkeykirk

Had an Uncle that road the rails around the country looking for work during the Depression. He told the story of going into the hobo camps and how you would, if you had any change in your pockets , you would separate it so it wouldn't rattle. He said people would rob you if they heard the money jingle  in your pockets.


----------



## swamp hunter

Good stories guys...
I've got to turn the Thermostat down now and check my Smart phone for E Mails.
My how we have changed , and in some ways...not for the best.


----------



## Mr Warren

Farmer friend of mine back in Michigan, told how they heard a lot of noise out at the chicken coop one night and his father grabbed the shotgun and went to take a look, and a man came out of the coop with a burlap bag full of chickens and he told him to stop but the man took off running so he shot him dead. Guess food was scarce back then.


----------



## JustUs4All

Those folks didn't waste much.  My grandmother still had a "water shelf" on the back porch when I was a kid.  A tin lined home made sink was next to it.  By the time I could remember they had piped water from the well and there was a faucet there, but the soap by the sink was an amalgamation of small pieces of different colored soap that were left over from used up bars. She would heat them and mold them together.  An old flour sack hung from a nail by the sink for a towel.


----------



## drippin' rock

My granddaddy was born in 1909. Never heard him talk much of the depression other than to say they were poor when it hit and they were poor when it left.  Like most from that era, he never threw anything away. My childhood was spent rummaging through his sheds finding all sorts of "treasures". I'd run to him to show what I had and he would nod like he knew it was there all along and would say "put it back!"  

I had a aunt that had the peculiar habit of rinsing out the tin cans and jars of food she cooked. She would swirl the water around the can and drink it. I was always told it was because she lived through the depression and wasted nothing.


----------



## thomasr

*I got one.*

I have a story, one my dad would tell every time the subject of the great depression came up.  Not sure of his actual age at the time, but he was the fifth son among twelve kids…ten of which still lived at home.  Of course granddaddy had a farm but most of the folding money was made cutting and hauling logs.  
     Being the depression, not a lot of folks were building anything, so nobody much needed lumber, so again nobody much was buying logs.  Granddaddy’s logging income soon dried up.  They turned their attentions to farming so they were still getting by.  Then came a long dry spell at about the worst time.  What table fare they were able to harvest went almost exclusively to day to day living with very little left for putting up and canning.  They thinned the hogs and chickens as much as they dared.  Things were not looking good for the coming winter.
     Despite the lack of rain seems they had a bumper crop of sorghum.  Dad said he had never put up so much sorghum syrup in his young life.  So much they were having to get creative for suitable containers to put it in.  What seemed like a huge bother at the time was actually a saving grace.  
     They were able to make it fairly well through Christmas that year.  Of course Christmas morning was pretty much just a special service at church.  Soon after that feeding ten kids took its toll on the pantry and meat house.  They were down to pretty much just all that sorghum syrup and some flour, so that became the staple of the day.  Pretty much breakfast, lunch, and diner became biscuits and sorghum syrup.  Occasionally they were able to trade off some syrup for some put up garden stuff or some streak-a-lean, and they kept in flour by trading off some eggs when they had to.  
     Dad said spring seemed to be forever away as they subsisted on mostly sorghum and biscuits but subsist they did.  Spring finally came and granddaddy got a couple of big jobs hauling railroad ties.  Spring was kind to them and they put in a good productive garden and the money granddaddy made helped them recover.  By the time things started looking up for them they only had few jars of syrup left.
     Now you might think that my dad would have been slightly sick of sorghum syrup by then.  Not the case at all.  Right up until his last days my dad loved him some catheads with butter and sorghum syrup.


----------



## KyDawg

My dad was born n 1915 around Talking Rock Ga. His dad was a farmer and they moved to Colquitt County during the depression. He tells about riding on a train with the mules on the trip down. My granddad never had much money. But they had a huge vegetable garden, milked cows, raised chickens and had a smoke house that was well stocked, with hams and Bacon from the hogs he raised. I can still remember the soap they made out of lard and pot ash. When my Granddad died in 1980, he still had mules and a milk cow. I spent a lot of my younger years on that farm and looking back now I realize it was a window to the past. My aunt, lived there too and to this day, I have never had as good a fried chicken, biscuits with churned butter, and fresh vegetables out of the garden in the summer, and the ones canned for the winter. I would crawl under the house and get potatoes that were kept there during the winter.


----------



## sinclair1

My father was born in 1929 on a farm and like Nic, he said he didn't have it that bad. He said they bartered for what they didn't have. 

His first job was hitting the cows in the head with the sledgehammer as the came down the chute. He wired their house for electricity and was the only electric farm in Fayette Iowa at the time. A one bulber.

My mom was born 1939 a polish/German  and went thru the holocaust. She won't say a word, so I have no clue about what she went thru.


----------



## Canuck5

My Grandparents, born in 1902, lost one of their 2 farms they had during the Depression.  The farm that they were able to keep was on a river, which flowed down stream from a moderate sized city about 10 miles away. 

They didn't have 2 nickles to rub together, but they always had food ... food that they raised.  My Grandmother would talk about the times people would come down river from the city, looking for work, where there was none to be had.  She said that they would come to their house, which was usually late in the day and she'd feed them with whatever she had and put them up in the hay mow, for the evening.

Many years later a few who had stopped by had come back and brought her a small token of their appreciation.  Just something simple, but it meant a lot to my Grandmother.  

She was a modest, Scottish woman, no bigger than 5 feet tall, but I always looked up to her.


----------



## TJay

My mothers parents were both dead by the time she reached 12 years old and she wound up in an orphanage.  She never really got into detail but I guess it was pretty horrible.  She spent time in foster care which she said was a way to procure free labor and most of them were not much better than the orphanage.  She did mention one foster home that treated her well.  Towards the end of summer the woman would take my mother and go around asking for tomatoes that were past ripe.  She said after a day of collecting tomatoes the woman would take them home and make chili sauce and turn around and sell it.  My mother said the woman was nice to her but it didn't last that long and it was back to the orphanage.  When her older sister got married they were able to get her out of the orphanage and come live with them.  Of the few stories she told about the orphanage it was pretty depressing and I could tell it was tough for her to talk about.  RIP Mom miss you.


----------



## rvick

NE GA Pappy said:


> my dad was born in 37, so he doesn't remember any of the depression, but he has ration stamps my granny had left over that has his name on them.  Mostly because my Pappy was a poor dirt farmer and didn't have the cash to buy the shoes, sugar and such.


  We're these ration stamps from the war or something else? We have ration books from the war.


----------



## LTZ25

If another Great Depression hit today there would be a civilian war break out with the class of people that has been created by your political parties. The generation that lived in the 1920-1950 were amazing.


----------



## arrendale8105

one of my great grandads never threw anything away, especially food. He'd eat leftovers till they were gone. Said that was habit from the depression. My other great grandad was exactly the opposite. Threw the leftovers out every night to the dogs. He said he ate many leftovers/scraps and dang near rotten food to make it through the depression that if he ever made it through and had money he'd never eat another leftover again and didn't. I remember them well. 2 different perspectives. Both were smart old men that a taught me a lot when I was young and they were still alive.


----------



## AMobley

My great-grandmother born in 1918 in what is modern day Dixie County Florida (south of steinhatchee for you ga boys).

I remember her telling me that manatee was one of the best meats she had ever tasted in her life.  granted living 2 miles from the mouth of a river probably helped during the tough times as seafood was a staple. im sure they probably didn't feel the effects of the crash way out yonder as most people did here in the city.


----------



## dixiecutter

Bump. I'm late and I can add nothing. But have enjoyed this and figured there may be more. Thank yal.


----------



## 95g atl

bump....
Thanks for sharing these stories.  
My parents and grandparents are all gone.  
Wish I would have listened more to their stories.


----------



## Milkman

This is a little before the depression. 

My mother was born in July 1928. She said they told her   Papa loaded up the doctor with stuff from the garden as payment for delivering the baby.


----------



## GeorgiaGlockMan

Man o man, these depression stories are making me miss my grand parents.  When I was a kid, both sets of grandparents were friends and would all get together at farm when we'd come to visit in summers.  The depression and life's challenges was always a huge part of the conversation.  I miss those people.  It's easy to see why they were called our greatest generation.


----------



## Ruger#3

One of the stories my Pap enjoyed telling was getting a tongue lashing by my Ma to be sure and look for a certain pattern on a feed sack. She needed the sack to finish a dress.

There was little those two didn't know how to do themselves. I cherish my memories of life around them.


----------



## Milkman

This story isnt really related to the depression but it speaks to the times then vs now.

My Daddy used to tell about the "convict camp" that was on his grandfathers farm.  In those days the dirt road maintenance was done by prisoners.  The county had remote camps around the county so the road crew could spend the night(s) while working in a remote community away from the County prison farm.

Daddy and his brothers were under strict rules to stay away from the convict camp. But as any young boys they didnt always mind. They would sneak and watch the action at the camp. He said they had cages of sorts that they locked some of the convicts in at night. The others were shackled to trees and together. 
Much of the road grading equipment in the 1920s was horse drawn.  Some of the prisoners were assigned to caring for the horses and mules. 

When I came along in the 1950s our family still owned the land. The only thing remaining of the camp was a well.


----------



## Ruger#3

The habits that generation developed stuck with them for a lifetime. My Ma used stop us kids (50s & 60s), and hand out little buckets as we went to play. "You be sure and pick the berries when your on the hill playing" ,she would say. Everything that was edible went to the table or in a jar.


----------



## Milkman

Bump for more stories


----------



## Crakajak

My granddad had a rolling store outside of Centre Ala. He had a customer that owed him .50 cents and couldn't pay.Customer gave him a H&R single shot 12 gauge full choke, and a box of shells.Granddad said only reason the man traded was he was moving to town and didn't need the gun anymore.My dad killed his first deer with that gun in 1964.


----------



## Milkman

The thread in the gardening forum about A family being self sufficient reminded me of something. 

My dad told me the during the depression his family would root 3000 sweet potato slips. He said that they gave some to neighbors but they planted the majority for themselves I wish I could remember how many acres it was.  When I was into gardening 50 was more than I wanted to mess with. 

My daddy passed away 24 years ago today and I still wish I could get some of that sage advice and memories.


----------



## Artfuldodger

I think many people survived off of sweet potatoes in the 20's and 30's. My Dad talked about going over their tater banks again and again looking for a few more taters towards the end of winter.


----------



## Artfuldodger

Probably towards the end of the depression but my Dad sold fish. He would order a barrel of fish from Savannah packed in ice. It would come by train to Uvalda and he would load it up in the back of his truck and haul it all through the countryside to sell. He had scales and sold it by the pound. It would always be a little of whatever was caught off the cost. 
I asked him what did he do with the fish that didn't sell? He said they ate them.


----------



## Artfuldodger

Link to a discussion on the prison farms doing road work, etc.,

http://forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=805152&highlight=convicts


----------



## olcop

My Uncle Sylvester was old enough to remember it well, young boy and early teens. he called it "The Compression" but he told me of building a "Hoover Wagon, and of building a wooden body on a car frame and engine, one of his friends even mentioned the car to me, many years later----he said that basically, they didn't notice "The Compression" they didn't have much when it started, and had most of it left when it was over.....they grew most of what they ate, raised cows, hogs and chickens, my grandmother canned vegetables, they smoked their own meat, made sausage and generally ate well...said he didn't know they were poor and  didn't have much, all the neighbors were in the same boat.


----------



## someguyintraffic

My granddad ( dads side ) was the youngest of 6, born in 1922. He was a lot younger than his siblings, a surprise baby. They did pretty well for 6 kids. GG was a surveyor and farmer and they had a country store. They all worked the fields. Raising cotton,tobacco, cattle. It was no life of luxury though. They all worked, and hard. Each got a pair of shoes once a year. To take cotton and tobacco to sell to the gin and tobacco buyers took all day from sun up to sundown by wagon and mule. My granddads uncle had made a fortune in New York in the stock market and lost it all in the crash. Came home and helped run the farm and store. I have the store ledger from early early 1900s through 30s.
He used to tell me stories about him and his friends riding calfs for fun and set hooking creeks and rabbit hunting. Used to help his Uncles pull cows stuck in the creek out with the mule team.

They raised big gardens, hogs, cattle, made everything they could, did plenty of backyard smithing,  and were self sufficient.

I miss my ol granddad.

Granddad and Great Granddad. 1930s

Its amazing how much I looked like him as a young boy and how much he looked like his daddy when he grew old.


----------



## 4HAND

My Granddaddy Butler was born in 1905 & lived to be 104. He had a ton of good stories.


----------



## tad1

4HAND said:


> My Granddaddy Butler was born in 1905 & lived to be 104. He had a ton of good stories.



We're listening.......


----------



## 4HAND

One of my favorites. Great granddaddy had a little country store at one time. He was also a circuit riding preacher. He left Papa Butler in charge of the store one time while off preaching. Papa was just a grown boy. They sold 2 brands of coffee. One in a barrel that everyone liked & bought & the other kind was in some other type of container. Well the "good" coffee ran low so Papa poured the other coffee into the good coffee barrel. Folks were buying it left & right & bragging on it.
When Great Granddaddy returned & learned what Papa did he made him go to everyone he could remember had bought it & apologize. 
I'll never forget what Papa said his daddy told him - "son that's deceitful, I wouldn't have had you do that for anything in this world."


----------



## ugajay

My papa was born in 1922 and remembered it well. He said shotgun shells were precious back then, and were used only when you could make the most of it. He said when they could spare a bit of corn, they would lay it in a row down a hedge row, and Pa instructed him and his brother to only shoot when enough birds feeding were "lined up enough to stop the family stomach growl" Like many have said, they were poor when it started and poor when it ended. My dad didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until 1970, if that will let you know of their hard times.


----------



## Ruger#3

Coal mines were shutdown so cash just didn’t exist. Barter was used to get what you needed. Pap had a dairy cow and Ma churned butter and skimmed cream. Fresh dairy brought poultry and pork to the table through barter. This practice carried on with the older folks in the area through my early years.


----------



## Gary Mercer

Both my parents grew up in the LA basin in California during the depression.  They also tended gardens in their backyards. My Grandpa had a victory garden in the same spot during WW 2.  (I don't think the garden ever went away with the end of the depression.) He taught me all he knew about gardening when I was old enough to go with him to the garden, which was at the end of the war.
We lived in Glendale, CA at the time, and he would swap produce with other neighbors.  We would also pick fruit from the oranges, lemons and avocados in the back yard. ( I also got to go with him to the dairy, where he got buckets of fertilizer for free.)
There was a pomegranate tree on an abandoned lot that I used to pilfer.  Not to mention the vineyard that I used to walk thru on the way to school. 
Glendale was pretty rural in spots in the 40s. We lived with my Mom's parents during the war, and that was up in the foothills above Glendale and Burbank.
Gramps would take me for a walk up the street to Mountain Street, the left about a block to a cliff alongside the road.  ( kinda like today's "Scenic overlook.)
We would sit there and watch the fighter planes take off from Lockheed in Burbank.  (Couldn't see the plant, just the planes coming out of the camouflage netting.  They built them on an assembly line, then they took off and test flew them to their staging area to go to the war zones.
You guys know how to get and old Geezer rambling...sorry.


----------



## Artfuldodger

Gary Mercer said:


> Both my parents grew up in the LA basin in California during the depression.  They also tended gardens in their backyards. My Grandpa had a victory garden in the same spot during WW 2.  (I don't think the garden ever went away with the end of the depression.) He taught me all he knew about gardening when I was old enough to go with him to the garden, which was at the end of the war.
> We lived in Glendale, CA at the time, and he would swap produce with other neighbors.  We would also pick fruit from the oranges, lemons and avocados in the back yard. ( I also got to go with him to the dairy, where he got buckets of fertilizer for free.)
> There was a pomegranate tree on an abandoned lot that I used to pilfer.  Not to mention the vineyard that I used to walk thru on the way to school.
> Glendale was pretty rural in spots in the 40s. We lived with my Mom's parents during the war, and that was up in the foothills above Glendale and Burbank.
> Gramps would take me for a walk up the street to Mountain Street, the left about a block to a cliff alongside the road.  ( kinda like today's "Scenic overlook.)
> We would sit there and watch the fighter planes take off from Lockheed in Burbank.  (Couldn't see the plant, just the planes coming out of the camouflage netting.  They built them on an assembly line, then they took off and test flew them to their staging area to go to the war zones.
> You guys know how to get and old Geezer rambling...sorry.



Interesting story. It would be cool to have fresh avocados, etc. Did ya'll grow mangos? We had a pomegranate bush, a quince bush, kumquat, and a couple of orange trees. The orange trees never did anything. Just a bit too cold in South Georgia.

A few years back Dad dug it all up because he couldn't get the young people to eat any of it. They get too much candy.

We would eat almost any kind of fruit, grape, or berry when I was young. Plums, hog haws, blackberries, figs, etc.

I would love to of had avocados. I never even had one until I joined the Navy.


----------



## Gary Mercer

Artfuldodger said:


> Interesting story. It would be cool to have fresh avocados, etc. Did ya'll grow mangos? We had a pomegranate bush, a quince bush, kumquat, and a couple of orange trees. The orange trees never did anything. Just a bit too cold in South Georgia.
> 
> A few years back Dad dug it all up because he couldn't get the young people to eat any of it. They get too much candy.
> 
> We would eat almost any kind of fruit, grape, or berry when I was young. Plums, hog haws, blackberries, figs, etc.
> 
> I would love to of had avocados. I never even had one until I joined the Navy.


Grandma would slice up the avocados and put a real lite vinegar dressing on them.  Boy they were good.  I used to climb the trees to get the high ones.  I was a little sucker at the time, and Grandma would encourage me to "get that one."  Then it was "be careful and don't fall."
The country was at war, and every thing was rationed.  We lived in the city, but we had yard birds, and ate a lot from the garden.  In Calif. we had several growing seasons.
I remember the hardware store carried scratch feed for the chickens.  Grandma grew up in a wealthy family, but she could wring a chicken's neck with the best of them. I guess if you went thru the depression, you learned how to survive.
Sorry, Guys, I didn't mean to hi-jack this thread.
Gary


----------



## Milkman

Gary 
It’s my thread and you haven’t jacked anything. You keep on posting your memories please. ? 
MM


----------



## strothershwacker

My granddad left sharecroppin and went to Cleveland Ohio to learn to weld with the Lincoln Electric Company (Lincoln Welders) in 1935. Mr.Lincoln had started the company but couldn't hardly sale the welding machines because folks couldn't hardly use them and where not convinced in the process. A salesman that worked for him by the name of A.F. Davis began the welding school. Granddad received his Arc Welding Certificate on April 25th 1936. Wasn't long and he had made and saved the $ that he went after. Bought a good car, moved back to North GA and bought a lil peice of ground. I love hearing stories about how different folks carved their way through hard times. I still have granddad's welding certificate signed by A.F. Davis himself. Its the oldest one that I know to be in existence.


----------



## strothershwacker

While Granddad was welding, dad was learning to trap,skin,hunt, fish & haul liquor from my great uncle. These stories and the huntin, fishin, trappin stuff has been a huge part of my life. Loved reading yalls stuff. Hope you find this interesting. Yall keep em coming.


----------



## Gary Mercer

Thanks, MM


----------



## joepuppy

I love to read these stories. Folks don't realize these times may come again. I knew a man that owned a local steel company that grew up in the hard times. He said his parents would send them to the alley behind the stores to rummage for thrown away meats from the store. They would dig the maggots out with a knife and boil the meat with some rice. He later started a welding shop in my town, and his across town competitor sent word that the town wasn't big enough for 2 welding shops.So he sent word back that if someone had to go, it would have to be him, because he couldn't afford to go anywhere. The man died with more money than I will ever see, but still lived in the same block shotgun house that he grew up in. Didn't believe in banks, either.


----------



## Twiggbuster

Dad was born in 27 and is 91 now. Seen it all . Said getting a sack of oranges was a big Christmas. The man never spends a dime and keeps everything. He and the other younguns out in country would run to the dirt road when a old model A would come by. A big event. Tough times made some tough folks.


----------

