Wall Street Crashes and the Great Depression

I look at my mother's picture and remember that I thought she was a beautiful lady. She told me about her life, and how she had won an award and never got to go to her honors. She had entered a design competition on designing dresses in a high school competition. The company that gave high school students the ability to compete for savings bonds, a watch and a trip for them and their sponsoring teacher to Atlanta to meet the company and be honored. The company made 10 of her dresses into their sales line, and mother felt very honored for that reason. However she got this letter that the company was sorry because of gas rationing that she would not come to Atlanta, Georgia for this honor.

I thought about mother and for years how she was never honored . I finally after many years contacted the company in Atlanta, and they offered a dinner in their cafeteria, but somehow it was not the same. When you are a teenager and get an award , and then you are told you cannot go to that. How did she feel? I know that it touched my heart. Mother was a farm raised girl, and she would tell me what it was like when she grew up.

My mother Emma and grandmother Ruth would tell me about the life in the Great Depression. It makes me reflect on my memories of both of them. They both have gone on to eternal life in heaven. I think of them, and how they made me a better woman, but part of being a better woman is to know how they grew up. Ruth, my grandmother was a farmer, and all her children worked on the farm and attended school. They grew up with a kerosene lantern for light in their house. They had a fire place for heating in the winter, and used hand held fans for cooling. That is how it was, when I visited as a small girl at the farm, then you saw everyone with a paper fan in their hand. It was the way of it. In the times of the depression the wages for a days work was fifty cents a day, and farm labor was not thought of at that time by my grandmother. She later in better times was able to employ workers for her crops to be harvested and actually had a little money coming in from the farm. That was the good times, but not during the depression. My mother would tell me about what they ate for food during those times. She said they made biscuits, and dipped it in a syrup made of coffee and sugar. That was their meal. Often my mom would tell me how her mother did without to feed her children during the depression. She was known to get a helper and go to the woods at night with a burlap sack and her shot gun and hunt wild animals like rabbit , raccoon, and possum. I know myself in my younger years we sometimes would eat squirrel or rabbit, quail and catfish from her fish pond. Chickens were for eggs, and rarely on occasion did we get to eat one. If you did, then she might ask you to go and grab a chicken and ring its neck. I never could get myself to do those things, but my mother grew up doing that. They grew up in a community called Decatur County and Grady County, Georgia. That is where my family came from. I have a lot of relatives in those counties ,because both my parents and both sets of my grandparents came from there. So I got to hear about what life was really like in those days. I am thankful that they shared it with me.

Both these ladies taught me one lesson in life, that when life throws you a curve ball that you do not give up, but fight harder. I think back on the Great Depression, and life was hard. Life is still hard now a days and maybe a lot more complicated, but I guess in a way they were lucky they had a farm to raise their food. Life did improve somewhat in that community, but it was and still is tough to make a living as a farmer. My grandmother raised crops like peanuts, tobacco, soy beans, corn, and cut grass for hay. Then she raised live stock also for meat on the table and to sell at the market.

We are as a people and country in crisis. We are sitting with a possible wall street crash, because Congress cannot make up their mind on a budget, and it is causing panic in wall street, and also with this countries senior citizens, disabled Americans, and not to mention veterans that get checks for support. No one at this time knows what is going to happen to our government. Are we letting our people down? My mother's let down was a big one for her, but even bigger when you think of what a fall in the market crash could do to us and our government already in crisis. I do not want to know that my husband might not be able to buy his medicine to keep him alive or be able to pay the rent, food, or for utilities not to mention everything else.


Talk to your elders!

If you have an older senior citizen in their 80's then ask them, if you can about the Great Depression, because I am sure you can find out about a threat of crisis that is hitting us right in the face once more, when you hear their stories.