Depression Days
"Know Your Heritage"
by Leila B. LaGroneNote: Article found in the files of Ona Lee Hill Martin
Much has been said in recent months about a possible massive depression as bad as the one that hit this country in the 1920's and 1930's. Several people have spoken to me about how little today's generation knows about what it means to have such a "Depression".
I have decided to reminisce a bit and I request that older readers join me in relating to young people how their lives could be affected. Those who were adults in 1929 have not forgotten what it was like.
Panola County was fortunate at that time for this was an agricultural area. People, even in the towns, grew their own produce; and very few failed to have necessary food for the family. Grocery stores had never sold "fancy groceries"; shoppers, as a whole, bought staples only.
Hogs and chickens were grown by each family; so meat and eggs were assured. Milk cows grazed on every grassy plot; so milk products were available. Fields of corn, peas and beans grown for both people and stock were picked dry, shelled and preserved for winter use. Vegetables were canned in each home. Fall gardens of turnip greens and collard greens helped to supply vitamins to the diet.
Sugar cane patches and syrup mills were realities in every community; and the town-people had, at that time, room for growing gardens.
Families could do right well for sweets with syrup and honey, but those have to be bought today. A limited amount of sugar could be afforded by the usual family. Flour, salt, pepper, a little coffee, and a few other minor items had to be bought then. Corn meal was homeground from locally grown corn. Beef clubs were formed and calves were slaughtered and canned. Grady became a supervisor of that canning process and received pay in cans of the beef.
So far as food was concerned, the Depression prepared East Texas for World War II, which followed it, because most things (be they food or clothes) were rationed; and money could buy only a limited supply.
Clothes during the Depression were another matter. People made-out with out-of-date and often thread-bare garments.
Grady and I began our life together in 1927, just when dark clouds of joblessness and poverty faced the nation. We were able to keep teaching jobs; but checks were seventy to eighty dollars per month for seven or eight months of school; and pay was in County Script that had to be held indefinitely or cashed at a discount of 10 to 20 percent. Few teachers could wait for the Script to become valid. They barely existed from one pay-day to the next.
How well I remember that, in 1929 to 1932, Grady had to have good shirts and the hard rubbing on an old-fashioned rub-board soon frayed the collars and cuffs. When new ones were bought, the shirt tails were preserved to make dresses for our little daughter. The material was usually beautiful and with a little hand-work could be converted into very festive toddler's clothes. I wonder today how many children's garments could be made from throw-away clothes.
Large cities like New York were not so lucky about absolute necessities as we were in East Texas. Stock markets crashed; financial magnets committed suicide; banks closed (even near us); and those who had money deposited lost it or got only portions of it several years later. Starving people by the thousands joined soup lines where government and charities worked to feed them.
Field work jobs in East Texas paid fifty cents to one dollar per day during the busy farming seasons. There was no such thing as a "drive-in-food-establishment", for one could not survive with so little patronage.
People did learn to "do without or make-do" and somehow we came through those dark days. But since that time, we have become an urban society and we could not be personally capable to put food on the table. With no jobs, we could not pay today's utility bills; so lights, heating and air-conditioning would go "down the drain". Let us pray that we are not put to that test.