Stories from the Great Depression of the 1930s

On my bootlegger side of the family, my great grandpa's brothers were known for coming up with money making "schemes", not money making but just money making schemes.

One time for a while they had stored up a bunch of broom making materials. They were going to get rich making and selling brooms since they both learned a new skill while they were IN PRISON.

Never heard any stories about the brooms, just the big pile of broom material.

Daddy told a story about his grandpa and cotton value lost in the crash of 1929.

Great Grandpa was a thrifty old fellow that would bring bales of cotton back home from the gin and store it waiting on prices to go up. Upon an increase in value he would load bale(s) onto the wagon and take it to sell. I guess having 5 grandsons on the farm made material handling not a concern.

He was caught with some cotton in the barn when the stock market crashed. If I remember correctly Daddy said cotton went from a value of about 20 cents to a value of 5 cents a pound. So Great Grandpa lost lots of money on the cotton he had squirreled away.

Had an Uncle that road the rails around the country looking for work during the Depression. He told the story of going into the hobo camps and how you would, if you had any change in your pockets , you would separate it so it wouldn't rattle. He said people would rob you if they heard the money jingle in your pockets.

Good stories guys...
I've got to turn the Thermostat down now and check my Smart phone for E Mails.
My how we have changed , and in some ways...not for the best.

Farmer friend of mine back in Michigan, told how they heard a lot of noise out at the chicken coop one night and his father grabbed the shotgun and went to take a look, and a man came out of the coop with a burlap bag full of chickens and he told him to stop but the man took off running so he shot him dead. Guess food was scarce back then.

Those folks didn't waste much. My grandmother still had a "water shelf" on the back porch when I was a kid. A tin lined home made sink was next to it. By the time I could remember they had piped water from the well and there was a faucet there, but the soap by the sink was an amalgamation of small pieces of different colored soap that were left over from used up bars. She would heat them and mold them together. An old flour sack hung from a nail by the sink for a towel.

My granddaddy was born in 1909. Never heard him talk much of the depression other than to say they were poor when it hit and they were poor when it left. Like most from that era, he never threw anything away. My childhood was spent rummaging through his sheds finding all sorts of "treasures". I'd run to him to show what I had and he would nod like he knew it was there all along and would say "put it back!"

I had a aunt that had the peculiar habit of rinsing out the tin cans and jars of food she cooked. She would swirl the water around the can and drink it. I was always told it was because she lived through the depression and wasted nothing.

I got one.

I have a story, one my dad would tell every time the subject of the great depression came up. Not sure of his actual age at the time, but he was the fifth son among twelve kids…ten of which still lived at home. Of course granddaddy had a farm but most of the folding money was made cutting and hauling logs.
Being the depression, not a lot of folks were building anything, so nobody much needed lumber, so again nobody much was buying logs. Granddaddy’s logging income soon dried up. They turned their attentions to farming so they were still getting by. Then came a long dry spell at about the worst time. What table fare they were able to harvest went almost exclusively to day to day living with very little left for putting up and canning. They thinned the hogs and chickens as much as they dared. Things were not looking good for the coming winter.
Despite the lack of rain seems they had a bumper crop of sorghum. Dad said he had never put up so much sorghum syrup in his young life. So much they were having to get creative for suitable containers to put it in. What seemed like a huge bother at the time was actually a saving grace.
They were able to make it fairly well through Christmas that year. Of course Christmas morning was pretty much just a special service at church. Soon after that feeding ten kids took its toll on the pantry and meat house. They were down to pretty much just all that sorghum syrup and some flour, so that became the staple of the day. Pretty much breakfast, lunch, and diner became biscuits and sorghum syrup. Occasionally they were able to trade off some syrup for some put up garden stuff or some streak-a-lean, and they kept in flour by trading off some eggs when they had to.
Dad said spring seemed to be forever away as they subsisted on mostly sorghum and biscuits but subsist they did. Spring finally came and granddaddy got a couple of big jobs hauling railroad ties. Spring was kind to them and they put in a good productive garden and the money granddaddy made helped them recover. By the time things started looking up for them they only had few jars of syrup left.
Now you might think that my dad would have been slightly sick of sorghum syrup by then. Not the case at all. Right up until his last days my dad loved him some catheads with butter and sorghum syrup.

My dad was born n 1915 around Talking Rock Ga. His dad was a farmer and they moved to Colquitt County during the depression. He tells about riding on a train with the mules on the trip down. My granddad never had much money. But they had a huge vegetable garden, milked cows, raised chickens and had a smoke house that was well stocked, with hams and Bacon from the hogs he raised. I can still remember the soap they made out of lard and pot ash. When my Granddad died in 1980, he still had mules and a milk cow. I spent a lot of my younger years on that farm and looking back now I realize it was a window to the past. My aunt, lived there too and to this day, I have never had as good a fried chicken, biscuits with churned butter, and fresh vegetables out of the garden in the summer, and the ones canned for the winter. I would crawl under the house and get potatoes that were kept there during the winter.

My father was born in 1929 on a farm and like Nic, he said he didn't have it that bad. He said they bartered for what they didn't have.

His first job was hitting the cows in the head with the sledgehammer as the came down the chute. He wired their house for electricity and was the only electric farm in Fayette Iowa at the time. A one bulber.

My mom was born 1939 a polish/German and went thru the holocaust. She won't say a word, so I have no clue about what she went thru.

My Grandparents, born in 1902, lost one of their 2 farms they had during the Depression. The farm that they were able to keep was on a river, which flowed down stream from a moderate sized city about 10 miles away.

They didn't have 2 nickles to rub together, but they always had food ... food that they raised. My Grandmother would talk about the times people would come down river from the city, looking for work, where there was none to be had. She said that they would come to their house, which was usually late in the day and she'd feed them with whatever she had and put them up in the hay mow, for the evening.

Many years later a few who had stopped by had come back and brought her a small token of their appreciation. Just something simple, but it meant a lot to my Grandmother.

She was a modest, Scottish woman, no bigger than 5 feet tall, but I always looked up to her.

My mothers parents were both dead by the time she reached 12 years old and she wound up in an orphanage. She never really got into detail but I guess it was pretty horrible. She spent time in foster care which she said was a way to procure free labor and most of them were not much better than the orphanage. She did mention one foster home that treated her well. Towards the end of summer the woman would take my mother and go around asking for tomatoes that were past ripe. She said after a day of collecting tomatoes the woman would take them home and make chili sauce and turn around and sell it. My mother said the woman was nice to her but it didn't last that long and it was back to the orphanage. When her older sister got married they were able to get her out of the orphanage and come live with them. Of the few stories she told about the orphanage it was pretty depressing and I could tell it was tough for her to talk about. RIP Mom miss you.

NE GA Pappy said:

my dad was born in 37, so he doesn't remember any of the depression, but he has ration stamps my granny had left over that has his name on them. Mostly because my Pappy was a poor dirt farmer and didn't have the cash to buy the shoes, sugar and such.

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We're these ration stamps from the war or something else? We have ration books from the war.

If another Great Depression hit today there would be a civilian war break out with the class of people that has been created by your political parties. The generation that lived in the 1920-1950 were amazing.

one of my great grandads never threw anything away, especially food. He'd eat leftovers till they were gone. Said that was habit from the depression. My other great grandad was exactly the opposite. Threw the leftovers out every night to the dogs. He said he ate many leftovers/scraps and dang near rotten food to make it through the depression that if he ever made it through and had money he'd never eat another leftover again and didn't. I remember them well. 2 different perspectives. Both were smart old men that a taught me a lot when I was young and they were still alive.

My great-grandmother born in 1918 in what is modern day Dixie County Florida (south of steinhatchee for you ga boys).

I remember her telling me that manatee was one of the best meats she had ever tasted in her life. granted living 2 miles from the mouth of a river probably helped during the tough times as seafood was a staple. im sure they probably didn't feel the effects of the crash way out yonder as most people did here in the city.

Bump. I'm late and I can add nothing. But have enjoyed this and figured there may be more. Thank yal.

bump....
Thanks for sharing these stories.
My parents and grandparents are all gone.
Wish I would have listened more to their stories.

This is a little before the depression.

My mother was born in July 1928. She said they told her Papa loaded up the doctor with stuff from the garden as payment for delivering the baby.

Man o man, these depression stories are making me miss my grand parents. When I was a kid, both sets of grandparents were friends and would all get together at farm when we'd come to visit in summers. The depression and life's challenges was always a huge part of the conversation. I miss those people. It's easy to see why they were called our greatest generation.