Sunday, Nov. 06, 2011

The Depression left impressions to last a lifetime

I was 5 years old, and I had $8 in the bank. I don't know how I knew this. It was one of the facts that made me me - like being pigeon-toed and having blue eyes. I had never seen the bank. I did not know where the $8 came from, never knew if my sisters and brother had money in the bank. I never told anyone about my $8; I just knew I had it.

Then one day I didn't.

The shock of the banks closing, money gone and no recourse for the savers was staggering. Adults discussed the news in disbelief. They had always known their savings in a bank were safe. Banks took care of your money. You didn't have to worry about it being lost or stolen. You could count on that. You always could. It was discussed everywhere by everybody. No thought was ever given to keeping this unbelievable information from the children.

Only very small changes happened in our family. We had livestock and a garden, so we were never hungry or cold. We children went door to door selling ears of corn from our little red wagon. Sweet corn brought 15 cents for a dozen ears. The grocer bought our eggs for 10 cents a dozen. Those were the sources of our family's actual cash. Hand-me-down clothes were the fashion of the day, and the adults decided what our most pressing needs were. We children learned to ask for nothing. The town people were going on welfare, one family after another. Some did so gladly, some reluctantly. My dad refused to apply, and my mother cried.

The hole in the bottom of my left shoe got bigger. I said nothing about it, but one day Mom noticed, and, somehow, the next week I had a new pair. Month after month we got by. News of city folks lining up for blocks to get a free apple and Mr. Rockefeller throwing dimes to mobs of hungry people chilled our souls and made us grateful for all we had.

In early 1932 or 1933, my dad layered on all the clothes he had to start walking west to Montana, hoping to get work helping to build the Fort Peck dam. No news came for the many weeks he was gone. Then one sunny day, he stumbled into our yard, unshaven and sad. We gathered around and loved him so.

Once, we saw a man walking about in our pasture, driving white stakes into the ground every few yards. As soon as Dad got home, we reported this. Fury overtook him. He hitched up his team of horses, and with the whole family in the wagon, we went racing up and down the hills and valleys, crushing the stakes into the ground. It was an exhilarating adventure for us kids, but Mom was frightened. Dad was out of control. Furiously cursing and yelling, finally exhausted, he drove us home, unharnessed his horses and then stumbled into his bed and slept. The government's intention to reclaim the land for unpaid taxes never materialized, and the land is still owned by family members.

Dad got a job with the Workmen's Progress Association and had something to do, somewhere to go and people to talk to. Some of the tension went out of our home. The job was hauling rocks, gathered from the uncultivated hills to the site where a dam was to be built. He came home each night tired and hopeful that things were "looking up." Mom managed the children, the home, the animals and the garden. Being poor and busy was better than being poor and idle.

Our world was really shaken the day we children came home from school to find my father moaning and pacing in the kitchen. Mom had a fire burning in the kitchen stove, but still he was shivering and moaning in pain. He had been working with his WPA crew loading rocks from the hills. The middle finger on his right hand was crushed between two rocks.

The excruciating pain my father suffered for the next several days finally forced him to go to a doctor in our nearest city. All of the bones were crushed beyond repair; the doctor amputated the finger.

When my brother was 14, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, and his small salary helped out at home. Applicants were supposed to be 18, but the admitting officer knew our family and our grievous situation.

Remembering the Depression, I believe the most sorrowful thing about it was the fact that there was no end in sight. Sharing that fear with others all over our country, even throughout the world, made it truly a grim experience.

Many years later, when I started my first nursing job in a large Chicago hospital in 1968, I overheard some interns deciding where to go for lunch. One said that he would go as usual to the cafeteria. The other retorted, "You truly have a Depression mentality. It never changes."

As I heard that, I realized I have a Depression mentality, too. I will never see a penny on the street and not pick it up. I will never discard half a bowl of cereal and milk, even if I'm no longer hungry. And I'm sure I will always cringe, glancing in a store window, when I observe that the jeans with holes in the knees and frayed pockets cost the most.