Memories of Post-Depression Days
In a few
days I will be 76 years old. Other than
my Aunt Mildred I am the oldest surviving member of my mother’s family and four
years older than the next in line. My parents
and grandparents lived through the depression of the late twenties and early
thirties and I saw the effects of the depression in each of them. Since my relatives were not around at that
time I felt that I should record a few observations which hopefully will help
them have some insight into what their ancestors went through and how it
affected them.
I do not
recall my exact age when I first began remembering things however it was much
earlier than four years of age. My
oldest brother was born before I was four and then and I vividly remember the
day he was born. I recall being excited
that I would have a brother and we could pull each other in one of those red
Ryder wagons.
We attended
a one room church/Sunday school/and community meeting place. Occasionally we had preaching on some Sundays
which were delivered by a circuit riding preacher. The church was heated by a coal stove which
stood in the middle of the church and the heat from it was not ample to provide
warmth during the cold winters. We had
prayer service every Wednesday and in those post depression days we would
frequently “pound” members of the community who were in need. Mother usually took a pound of butter as we
had a cow and usually had extra butter.
Another neighbor would take a pound of pinto beans, another a pound of
corn meal or perhaps a pound of flour.
Hence the name “pounding.”
Frequently a
beggar, often a veteran of WWI or the Civil War, would knock on our door
begging for food. He was never
refused. Most of our food came from food
that my mother canned out of our summer gardens or from dried fruit. We always raised a pig and killed and dressed
it after the first frost then salted it down to provide meat during the winter. A Native American neighbor would occasionally
sell us a turtle, or a hunter would give us a squirrel. As far back as I can remember I trapped
rabbits for food and usually caught several each winter. Another neighbor had a small fish pond which
he loaded during the summer and he too would sell us a fish occasionally. Most of our fish came from my grandfather’s
store out of a 30 gallon barrel of salt herring.
Mother was a
wonderful pie maker. Every Monday was
wash day and she always made a “lazy woman’s pie.” This pie consisted of biscuits left over from
Sunday and a dried fruit filling. Along
with this we had corn bread, pinto beans and all the sweet milk one wanted as
long as our cow was producing. There
would be a period before she had her next calf when she no longer produced milk
and we did without.
My earliest
memories of wash days were of my mother and grandmother washing clothes in a
large black pot which held about 30 gallons of water and was heated with fire
wood in my grandparents back yard. Soap
was made from animal fat, Red Devil Lye (sodium hydroxide) and ashes. Clothes were dried on a line in the
backyard.
When washing
machines came out my grandfather bought my grandmother a Bendix front
loader. The machine had to be bolted to
a concrete block since the vibration could cause the machine to “walk off” if
it were not anchored. The day the
machine was delivered all the family came to the house to watch the first
wash. That provided more amusement than
the first television.
Every family
had an out house and usually a Sears Catalog inside for needed paper. Every few years the need would arise to dig a
new hole for the out house. I always
wanted to help during the day when the men were at work. I would visualize that I might be able to dig
right through to China. It never
happened.
Games were
simple in those days. We played hide and
seek, kick the can and later post office
or spin the bottle. I was not old enough
to play either of the latter two and always wondered what the boy and girl did
when they exited to an adjoining room and always came back blushing. Since our front porch faced a major United
States highway we played a game of counting car colors and each person would
hope that the color he or she picked would win.
Christmas
was an exciting time. We would go to my
grandfather’s farm and cut a scrub pine, nail a board to the bottom and this
would be our Christmas tree. Some years
later we decorated it with aluminum foil icicles and maybe strings of popcorn.
My brother
and I each received a baseball glove and one ball between us for Christmas one
year. This was our biggest gift from
Santa ever. At home all our gifts came
from Santa, never from our parents. I
think that that was a mistake. I
remember how much more I appreciated my father and mother when I found out that
they were the source of Santa’s gifts.
The church always gave us a bag containing one orange, one apple, two or
three nuts and a piece or two of candy.
This was usually our big gift until years later when my Aunt Bernice
began giving all her nieces and nephews gifts.
She was generous to a fault and loved by us all.
Saturday
night was always a big time. We moved a
No. 3 wash tub into the bed room where the only fire place was active, filled
the tub with water and took turns bathing.
The fire place was usually fueled with coal and on winter nights we
would stand in front of the fire place just before bedtime then rush to the
cold bed. Mother and Dad had the only
heated room and I and later my brothers moved to another bed room for the
night.
Dad bought our
first radio sometime before the Joe Louis and Max Smelling fight. He moved the radio to one of the windows and
men from all over the neighborhood stood around outside listening to the fight. We did have a 78 rpm record player (Victrola)
and a few records however the needles and records were so old we could hardly
make out the songs and certainly not the tunes.
On almost
all Sundays that we had preaching services grandmother and mother and later my
aunts would prepare the Sunday meal.
Preparation for this meant that the front yard had to be swept with a
straw broom. There would be patches of
grass so we had to sweep around these.
Since my uncle and grandfather operated the local grocery store and
market we seemed to always have plenty to eat.
Grandmother would cook a ham, or chicken, or maybe rabbits or squirrels,
always plenty of vegetables, pickles and relishes and always pies and
cakes. Opossum was a favorite of my
grandmother and was always placed on the table at Thanksgiving. She fed it with sweet potatoes and buttermilk
starting about six weeks before the holiday.
If we had a
visiting preacher Dad would always invite him to have lunch at our house after
the service. This meant that if I were
lucky I would get a leg of the fried chicken.
The minister would always be served first and he would always get the
largest piece of the breast and maybe two pieces. Mother always ate the back and Dad always ate
the neck and gizzard. For years I
thought that they really liked these pieces of the fried chicken but as I grew
older I realized that they were just being generous with our company.
Of course
all the children went barefooted all summer, fall and sometimes into early
winter. We did wear shoes to church and
always wore them until they were too small.
Each fall just before school started we would get two pair of overalls
and two shirts and two pair of long underwear.
By spring we had worn holes in the knees from shooting pea marbles so
they were patched and we continued wearing them until we out grew them.
I started
milking the cow when I was five and was excited to do so. But soon I could not wait until my next
brother, Glenn, was five so he could relieve me. Unfortunately or fortunately for him he
developed hay fever and never had the pleasure of milking. Too bad Glenn. You will never know what you missed.
The years
leading to WWII and the war itself were tough years for everyone. Everyone it seemed was engaged in the war
effort. I was eight years old when the
war started. Everyone had to grow a “victory garden” and every one
still at home had to help collect scrap metal to be used in the effort. All the young men went to war and my Dad
along with others had to leave home and engage in defense work. Those left at home had to do what they could
to help.
Every night
at 9:00 PM my family would gather at grandfather’s and listen over the radio to
Gabriel Heater sell Kremel hair tonic and deliver the “good news
tonight.”. Many nights we would hear
truck loads of boys singing war songs as they were driven to Fort Bragg. Soon sugar, tires, gasoline, shoes, meats,
etc. were rationed. We practiced black
out drills and one evening a military plane in distress crashed near our
home. All night other planes with search
lights lit up the sky. It was some time
before we knew what had really happened.
During those
years my grandfather would saw slabs of lumber into fire wood and we would
peddle it to our neighbors. With many of
the men gone to war those at home would gather in the fall and have corn
shuckings and fill the corn cribs for the winter.
For a period
of time I had a paper route and would rise in the morning before daylight and
start delivering 80 papers. I would earn
$ 4.00 a week doing this provided I was able to collect. Collection became a problem since most
paydays in our area were on Friday and I would be busy at the store until late
Friday night. Soon I was losing almost
as much as I was profiting. I quit the
paper route.
I started
working at my grandfather’s store when I was eleven. At first my job was to sweep the aisles and
carry groceries. We delivered groceries
to customers sometimes until after mid-night.
It was my job to collect the ration coupons and stamps, unload the
groceries and if necessary pour up the 100 pound bags of feed for the women
whose husbands and older children had left to support the war effort. I continued in this job on weekends until my
junior year in high school. My senior
year I worked every weekday afternoon and all day Saturday until I left for
college in the summer of 1951.
My
grandfather was a cow trader and he would buy the old cows and sell new young
cows to the neighbors. This meant that I
would go with him, round up the cows on foot and herd them into his pickup
truck. During the week it was my job to
go by his feed barn and feed all the cows and horses after I had milked our cow
and before I went to school. Frequently
I was late for school however our feed barn lot was adjacent to the school lot and
never did one of my teachers complain or count me late for school. They knew why I was late.
Every
Saturday night after work it was my job to clean up the meat market, wash all
the tools and secure all the meat products.
On Saturdays my job started between eight and nine in the morning and
extended until nine or later that night.
I had two bosses, my uncle and my aunt who both worked at the
store. I learned a good lesson there
which has followed me all my life. Never
should a person be required to answer to but one boss. They were both task masters. Only once did I receive a “good job” or a
compliment until the very night that I left to go to college. That night they gave me $ 100.00 and wished
me well. I had never seen that much
money at one time in my life. This I
will say, neither of them ever said much when I came in at 9:00 am instead of
8:00am on Saturday morning however they both knew that I was often delivering
groceries on Friday night long after when had turned in.
These were
hard times and I learned so many wonderful lessons during this period of my
life. Lessons that I think have made me
a better person. Lessons that I may have tried to pass on to my children to a
fault. They must be the judge of
that. My grandfather passed along one
lesson that remains to this day. He once
told me that if I were working for a person to be sure that I was at the job
before he got there. A simple lesson but
one that has served me well. Once my
uncle raked me over the coals for not writing a legible figure on a patients
charge slip. My father happened to be in
the store at that time and heard him. I
had to plead with my father to let me continue working after that lecture. I am glad that he allowed me to stay. To this day you will find that though my
writing is often illegible my figures are clear. To the customer who called and complained
that I had filled her order with a bad cabbage (it was the best we had at the
time) and asked that I now wait on her in the future the hurt from that incident
still lingers. Perhaps I should be thankful
knowing that years later she became a wonderful patient of mine and never
complained about my care. What wonderful
lessons and what a wonderful life. I
have had so many wonderful patients, friends, and employees. I have had a wife and two children who for
years never knew when I would arrive for supper. For many years their only vacation trips were
while I was attending a medical meeting.
They have often sacrificed so that I might serve others and my wish is
that they too can feel some comfort in the success that I have enjoyed with
them through the years.
Finally I am
writing this because we are all experiencing some difficult and threatening
times. Hopefully our nation and the
nations of the world will be able to survive the greed that has placed us in
this position. I am not much older than
some of you and not as old as Aunt Mildred however I have lived already long
enough to know that what we are experiencing now will stay with us for the rest
of our lives. The lessons of the
depression in the late twenties lingered with our parents and grandparents all
their lives. Better times will come so
take the time to spend more time with your family and love those around
you. You will be better for it and so
will your children.
Love to all,
Dale Simmons
*Dr. Simmons was born in 1933 in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. He received his undergraduate education at Wake Forest University in 1954 and his medical
education at Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Wake Forest in 1957. After his residency and military service, he practiced medicine with a specialty
in Ophthalmology and community medicine. He retired
to Lake Wales, Florida. This essay/letter was published in April, 2009.
The Historical Text Archive publishes this essay in order for people to understand how some Americans coped with the Great Depression and its aftermath.
In a few
days I will be 76 years old. Other than
my Aunt Mildred I am the oldest surviving member of my mother’s family and four
years older than the next in line. My parents
and grandparents lived through the depression of the late twenties and early
thirties and I saw the effects of the depression in each of them. Since my relatives were not around at that
time I felt that I should record a few observations which hopefully will help
them have some insight into what their ancestors went through and how it
affected them.
I do not
recall my exact age when I first began remembering things however it was much
earlier than four years of age. My
oldest brother was born before I was four and then and I vividly remember the
day he was born. I recall being excited
that I would have a brother and we could pull each other in one of those red
Ryder wagons.
We attended
a one room church/Sunday school/and community meeting place. Occasionally we had preaching on some Sundays
which were delivered by a circuit riding preacher. The church was heated by a coal stove which
stood in the middle of the church and the heat from it was not ample to provide
warmth during the cold winters. We had
prayer service every Wednesday and in those post depression days we would
frequently “pound” members of the community who were in need. Mother usually took a pound of butter as we
had a cow and usually had extra butter.
Another neighbor would take a pound of pinto beans, another a pound of
corn meal or perhaps a pound of flour.
Hence the name “pounding.”
Frequently a
beggar, often a veteran of WWI or the Civil War, would knock on our door
begging for food. He was never
refused. Most of our food came from food
that my mother canned out of our summer gardens or from dried fruit. We always raised a pig and killed and dressed
it after the first frost then salted it down to provide meat during the winter. A Native American neighbor would occasionally
sell us a turtle, or a hunter would give us a squirrel. As far back as I can remember I trapped
rabbits for food and usually caught several each winter. Another neighbor had a small fish pond which
he loaded during the summer and he too would sell us a fish occasionally. Most of our fish came from my grandfather’s
store out of a 30 gallon barrel of salt herring.
Mother was a
wonderful pie maker. Every Monday was
wash day and she always made a “lazy woman’s pie.” This pie consisted of biscuits left over from
Sunday and a dried fruit filling. Along
with this we had corn bread, pinto beans and all the sweet milk one wanted as
long as our cow was producing. There
would be a period before she had her next calf when she no longer produced milk
and we did without.
My earliest
memories of wash days were of my mother and grandmother washing clothes in a
large black pot which held about 30 gallons of water and was heated with fire
wood in my grandparents back yard. Soap
was made from animal fat, Red Devil Lye (sodium hydroxide) and ashes. Clothes were dried on a line in the
backyard.
When washing
machines came out my grandfather bought my grandmother a Bendix front
loader. The machine had to be bolted to
a concrete block since the vibration could cause the machine to “walk off” if
it were not anchored. The day the
machine was delivered all the family came to the house to watch the first
wash. That provided more amusement than
the first television.
Every family
had an out house and usually a Sears Catalog inside for needed paper. Every few years the need would arise to dig a
new hole for the out house. I always
wanted to help during the day when the men were at work. I would visualize that I might be able to dig
right through to China. It never
happened.
Games were
simple in those days. We played hide and
seek, kick the can and later post office
or spin the bottle. I was not old enough
to play either of the latter two and always wondered what the boy and girl did
when they exited to an adjoining room and always came back blushing. Since our front porch faced a major United
States highway we played a game of counting car colors and each person would
hope that the color he or she picked would win.
Christmas
was an exciting time. We would go to my
grandfather’s farm and cut a scrub pine, nail a board to the bottom and this
would be our Christmas tree. Some years
later we decorated it with aluminum foil icicles and maybe strings of popcorn.
My brother
and I each received a baseball glove and one ball between us for Christmas one
year. This was our biggest gift from
Santa ever. At home all our gifts came
from Santa, never from our parents. I
think that that was a mistake. I
remember how much more I appreciated my father and mother when I found out that
they were the source of Santa’s gifts.
The church always gave us a bag containing one orange, one apple, two or
three nuts and a piece or two of candy.
This was usually our big gift until years later when my Aunt Bernice
began giving all her nieces and nephews gifts.
She was generous to a fault and loved by us all.
Saturday
night was always a big time. We moved a
No. 3 wash tub into the bed room where the only fire place was active, filled
the tub with water and took turns bathing.
The fire place was usually fueled with coal and on winter nights we
would stand in front of the fire place just before bedtime then rush to the
cold bed. Mother and Dad had the only
heated room and I and later my brothers moved to another bed room for the
night.
Dad bought our
first radio sometime before the Joe Louis and Max Smelling fight. He moved the radio to one of the windows and
men from all over the neighborhood stood around outside listening to the fight. We did have a 78 rpm record player (Victrola)
and a few records however the needles and records were so old we could hardly
make out the songs and certainly not the tunes.
On almost
all Sundays that we had preaching services grandmother and mother and later my
aunts would prepare the Sunday meal.
Preparation for this meant that the front yard had to be swept with a
straw broom. There would be patches of
grass so we had to sweep around these.
Since my uncle and grandfather operated the local grocery store and
market we seemed to always have plenty to eat.
Grandmother would cook a ham, or chicken, or maybe rabbits or squirrels,
always plenty of vegetables, pickles and relishes and always pies and
cakes. Opossum was a favorite of my
grandmother and was always placed on the table at Thanksgiving. She fed it with sweet potatoes and buttermilk
starting about six weeks before the holiday.
If we had a
visiting preacher Dad would always invite him to have lunch at our house after
the service. This meant that if I were
lucky I would get a leg of the fried chicken.
The minister would always be served first and he would always get the
largest piece of the breast and maybe two pieces. Mother always ate the back and Dad always ate
the neck and gizzard. For years I
thought that they really liked these pieces of the fried chicken but as I grew
older I realized that they were just being generous with our company.
Of course
all the children went barefooted all summer, fall and sometimes into early
winter. We did wear shoes to church and
always wore them until they were too small.
Each fall just before school started we would get two pair of overalls
and two shirts and two pair of long underwear.
By spring we had worn holes in the knees from shooting pea marbles so
they were patched and we continued wearing them until we out grew them.
I started
milking the cow when I was five and was excited to do so. But soon I could not wait until my next
brother, Glenn, was five so he could relieve me. Unfortunately or fortunately for him he
developed hay fever and never had the pleasure of milking. Too bad Glenn. You will never know what you missed.
The years
leading to WWII and the war itself were tough years for everyone. Everyone it seemed was engaged in the war
effort. I was eight years old when the
war started. Everyone had to grow a “victory garden” and every one
still at home had to help collect scrap metal to be used in the effort. All the young men went to war and my Dad
along with others had to leave home and engage in defense work. Those left at home had to do what they could
to help.
Every night
at 9:00 PM my family would gather at grandfather’s and listen over the radio to
Gabriel Heater sell Kremel hair tonic and deliver the “good news
tonight.”. Many nights we would hear
truck loads of boys singing war songs as they were driven to Fort Bragg. Soon sugar, tires, gasoline, shoes, meats,
etc. were rationed. We practiced black
out drills and one evening a military plane in distress crashed near our
home. All night other planes with search
lights lit up the sky. It was some time
before we knew what had really happened.
During those
years my grandfather would saw slabs of lumber into fire wood and we would
peddle it to our neighbors. With many of
the men gone to war those at home would gather in the fall and have corn
shuckings and fill the corn cribs for the winter.
For a period
of time I had a paper route and would rise in the morning before daylight and
start delivering 80 papers. I would earn
$ 4.00 a week doing this provided I was able to collect. Collection became a problem since most
paydays in our area were on Friday and I would be busy at the store until late
Friday night. Soon I was losing almost
as much as I was profiting. I quit the
paper route.
I started
working at my grandfather’s store when I was eleven. At first my job was to sweep the aisles and
carry groceries. We delivered groceries
to customers sometimes until after mid-night.
It was my job to collect the ration coupons and stamps, unload the
groceries and if necessary pour up the 100 pound bags of feed for the women
whose husbands and older children had left to support the war effort. I continued in this job on weekends until my
junior year in high school. My senior
year I worked every weekday afternoon and all day Saturday until I left for
college in the summer of 1951.
My
grandfather was a cow trader and he would buy the old cows and sell new young
cows to the neighbors. This meant that I
would go with him, round up the cows on foot and herd them into his pickup
truck. During the week it was my job to
go by his feed barn and feed all the cows and horses after I had milked our cow
and before I went to school. Frequently
I was late for school however our feed barn lot was adjacent to the school lot and
never did one of my teachers complain or count me late for school. They knew why I was late.
Every
Saturday night after work it was my job to clean up the meat market, wash all
the tools and secure all the meat products.
On Saturdays my job started between eight and nine in the morning and
extended until nine or later that night.
I had two bosses, my uncle and my aunt who both worked at the
store. I learned a good lesson there
which has followed me all my life. Never
should a person be required to answer to but one boss. They were both task masters. Only once did I receive a “good job” or a
compliment until the very night that I left to go to college. That night they gave me $ 100.00 and wished
me well. I had never seen that much
money at one time in my life. This I
will say, neither of them ever said much when I came in at 9:00 am instead of
8:00am on Saturday morning however they both knew that I was often delivering
groceries on Friday night long after when had turned in.
These were
hard times and I learned so many wonderful lessons during this period of my
life. Lessons that I think have made me
a better person. Lessons that I may have tried to pass on to my children to a
fault. They must be the judge of
that. My grandfather passed along one
lesson that remains to this day. He once
told me that if I were working for a person to be sure that I was at the job
before he got there. A simple lesson but
one that has served me well. Once my
uncle raked me over the coals for not writing a legible figure on a patients
charge slip. My father happened to be in
the store at that time and heard him. I
had to plead with my father to let me continue working after that lecture. I am glad that he allowed me to stay. To this day you will find that though my
writing is often illegible my figures are clear. To the customer who called and complained
that I had filled her order with a bad cabbage (it was the best we had at the
time) and asked that I now wait on her in the future the hurt from that incident
still lingers. Perhaps I should be thankful
knowing that years later she became a wonderful patient of mine and never
complained about my care. What wonderful
lessons and what a wonderful life. I
have had so many wonderful patients, friends, and employees. I have had a wife and two children who for
years never knew when I would arrive for supper. For many years their only vacation trips were
while I was attending a medical meeting.
They have often sacrificed so that I might serve others and my wish is
that they too can feel some comfort in the success that I have enjoyed with
them through the years.
Finally I am
writing this because we are all experiencing some difficult and threatening
times. Hopefully our nation and the
nations of the world will be able to survive the greed that has placed us in
this position. I am not much older than
some of you and not as old as Aunt Mildred however I have lived already long
enough to know that what we are experiencing now will stay with us for the rest
of our lives. The lessons of the
depression in the late twenties lingered with our parents and grandparents all
their lives. Better times will come so
take the time to spend more time with your family and love those around
you. You will be better for it and so
will your children.
Love to all,
Dale Simmons
*Dr. Simmons was born in 1933 in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. He received his undergraduate education at Wake Forest University in 1954 and his medical
education at Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Wake Forest in 1957. After his residency and military service, he practiced medicine with a specialty
in Ophthalmology and community medicine. He retired
to Lake Wales, Florida. This eassay/letter was published in April, 2009.
The Historical Text Archive publishes this essay in order for people to understand how some Americans coped with the Great Depression and its aftermath.
