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.
Lets hear it.
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
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.