#thedepression

[theunderperformicist]

(via The Kept and the Killed – The Public Domain Review)

[jennifersarahashley]

My Nana, Little Micky, a dancer during the depression. 1. In her back yard 2. 1st day of school 09/09/29 Age 6 yrs + 4 no. 3. In her dancing outfit before going on stage in 1930. Nana was a fargin badass. She performed daily. She literally danced for her supper. Her skills at dancing fed her family during the depression in Cleveland, Ohio. #family #thedepression #dance #dancingtoearmmylunch #dancing #dancingtolive #livetodance #kingsburywine #youngdrunkandhip #truthbomb #bebest #nana #mynana #badass (at Cleveland, Ohio) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9L2xA8JzJY/?igshid=1a8qkqmujo86s

[tocanycvintage]

#ThrowBackThursday Monica's grandparents on her paternal Powell side of the family. Vernon Kent and Katie Lee Bernard Powell. #Farmers during #TheDepression in Colorado. #FamilyTree #FamilyHistory #PowerCouple #entrepreneurs #vintagePhotography #blackAndWhite #Gentleman #TrueLove #Colorado #1930s #1930sfashion #Dapper #antique #vintage (at Littleton, Colorado)

[bostonmemoirproject]

Mary Dorion: The Morgan Horse

One Family’s Experience on the Depression, 1926 - 1929

My father died when I was three and in November 1924 my mother remarried. My stepfather, Edward Wilhelm was a handsome, blue-eyed man about five foot eight and well tanned. He had a pleasant singing voice and I recall sitting in his lap with my brother Joe rocking in my grandmother’s oak rocker while he sang a song that had the words, “You can’t play in my yard, you can’t slide down my cellar door . . . if you won’t be nice to me.” 

In the spring of 1924, Eddie and Mama bought a large house at 99 Baxter Street, with plenty of room at the side to keep his Model A Ford touring car, and at the back for children to play. Inside there was room enough for his new ready-made family and for his widowed mother.

Eddie had his own business as a produce dealer (peddler as they were called) that he had inherited from his father, a German immigrant. He delivered to small grocery stores and restaurants, and had a regular route selling to housewives in Dorchester and South Boston. I was very young but I do remember the talks after dinner, when Mama and Eddie counted up the day’s receipts and decided what he needed for the market the next day. I remember the concern and worry about his customers who were running up bills they couldn’t pay. Gradually, the business went down until he had to make a choice between paying the stable bills for his horse, Tom, or having enough money to go to the market to buy produce to sell the next day.

Eventually he had to give the title for Tom and the wagon to the stable owner to satisfy the feed and stable bills. Tom was a thoroughbred blue-ribbon Morgan horse, a breed noted for the heavy loads they could pull. Eddie’s father had bought him for his son shortly before his death, and Eddie considered him to be part of the family. However, the arrangement allowed Eddie to take the team out on a daily basis in exchange for work around the stable and a payment for feed.

Winter was coming on. During these months, Eddie customarily went out only on days when there was no ice or snow, and delivered only “keepers” — potatoes, onions, etc. — and bags of kindling and coal. On such a day, delivering a load of wood, he was pulled aside by a policeman who asked to search the wagon. Finding two bottles of bootleg whiskey under the driver’s seat, the policeman escorted Eddie to the stable with the team, confiscating his peddler’s and teamster’s licenses.

My memory includes the quarrels that ensued, the “how could you” and “you must have known better” and “what are we going to do now?” Eddie went out every day to look for work, but there were thousands of men looking. Mama found part-time work with the telephone company as a kitchen worker in the employee cafeteria. This caused more quarrels, for Eddie did not want his wife to work. A man of his generation considered it a disgrace, a black mark on his manhood, a testimony that he did not have the ability to support his family. This disagreement was solved when the steam table at the cafeteria malfunctioned, and Mama was badly burned on both arms.

My brother Joe and I did not realize the seriousness of the situation, but we knew something was wrong. We were aware of the quarrels and harsh words, and we knew it had to do with Mama working and Eddie drinking. At some point the gas was turned off for non-payment, and we started using kerosene lamps for lighting. My grandparents moved from downstairs to the house next door and Grandma still came every day when Mama worked. The bank foreclosed, the water was turned off, and we had to move.

Eddie took Joe to visit Tom at the stables sometimes on Sundays for a while, but then the stable owner had to sell out. Business had been bad, and many peddlers went out of business; Tom was sold to a new owner.

From then on I recall a series of cold-water flats. We moved at least once a year, usually because my parents got behind on the rent, and my grandparents had to bail us out. Sometimes Eddie found work, and we could move to a better flat, one with a copper boiler holding water heated by a pipe built into the firebox of the stove, or a flat that had electric lights.

I heard more and more Depression stories about no work, and families breaking up and going to live with relatives.

I recall hearing about landlords allowing otherwise good tenants to stay in their apartments over the winter in spite of being behind on the rent because the pipes would freeze and burst in the empty unheated flats. Banks were foreclosing, but there were no buyers and banks were failing. The Federal National Bank on Broadway near Perkins Square failed, and both Aunt Mary and Grandma lost some of their savings.

Aunt Mary operated the small lunchroom at the Czech club next to her house and kept us going with day-old bread and other leftovers from which Mama, a creative cook, could make a hearty meal. In spite of growing up in a household of plenty, she had inherited skills handed down from generations of country people as practiced by Grandma — make it do, make it last, or make it over.

All kinds of strategies were practiced to stay afloat. Houses built before the twentieth century were drafty and uninsulated with windows that rattled and no central heat. To conserve heat, all doors leading off the kitchen were closed. Bedroom doors were opened about an hour before bedtime to allow a little heat in. Sidewalk bricks or flatirons were heated in the oven and wrapped in towels to put at the foot of the bed. Rugs were rolled and placed against the outside doors to stop the drafts.

Nothing was wasted. Grandma saved the string with which most parcels were tied (before Scotch tape). She rolled it into balls according to thickness and used it to crochet hot plate mats. She taught me how to make cat’s tail cord using a thread spool with small brads nailed in the top, with her balls of string. Then she made chair pads from the cording. We saved paper. Tissue paper was a substitute for the toilet roll, as was crumpled newspaper if nothing else was available. Brown paper was used to drain bacon, fried potatoes, fish cakes, etc., and the cooking grease became laundry soap.

Mama was a skilled seamstress and had always made our clothes, but now she made over discarded items, and if she absolutely had to buy something, Filene’s Basement was the place to go. In those days you could buy a pair of kids’ shoes for as little as twenty-five cents.

Food was the big problem. Trying to keep the family fed for next to nothing was the challenge. Breakfast was oatmeal with evaporated milk cut half-and-half with water. To drink, we had cocoa with evaporated milk. Toast was made on top of the stove and spread with oleomargarine. Margarine was in its infancy then, consisting of a one-pound block of lard and a small packet of powdered carotene. To use it, the housewife worked the block until it was softened, sprinkled the orange powder over the top, and then kneaded the whole until it was a uniform color. Voila! Ersatz butter.

Lunch might be a cheese or peanut butter sandwich or a ketchup sandwich. To satisfy the sweet tooth, bread and butter was sprinkled with sugar. In winter it was soup for lunch. During cold weather there was always a fire in the stove, and Mama had a pot going all the time with water drained from vegetables, soaking yellow peas and ham bones, or whatever scraps she thought would make a good soup. As I recall, the only thing my mother cooked that I couldn’t swallow was kidney stew.

Mama had a rule that we couldn’t leave the table until we had finished everything on our plates. On kidney stew night I sat and sat while the kidney stew got colder and more unpalatable. We always had a cat, and I surreptitiously fed the meat to the cat while I forced the broth and vegetables down. Strangely, fifty years later I remember sitting in the National Museum restaurant in Dublin savoring a plate of kidney stew soup and wishing I had the recipe.

In 1926, Eddie was admitted to the tuberculosis sanitarium, and Mama became eligible for public assistance. Although the amount was small it was enough to rent a decent flat with electricity and hot water. Mama’s pride and self-respect were constantly battered through all of this. She cried a lot, especially after my sister Helen became ill. Helen had caught cold and was sent to what was called a fresh air camp for frail children, where she stayed for six months.

In early spring 1929, Eddie died. Since we had no telephone, a policeman came with the news. I was in the kitchen when Mama came to tell me. I recall that she was very pale, and she started to cry. I don’t recall feeling any emotion, not even sorrow. In retrospect, it had been little more than four years since our family started on this downhill slide, having reached bottom when Eddie was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was fixed in my eight-year-old mind through all the quarrels, abuse, and cruel recriminations, that Eddie was the cause of it all — the fear, worry, and privation. I didn’t understand Mama’s sorrow. Strangely I did understand her distress when she said, “How am I going to tell his mother?”

Later Helen came home chubby and healthy with rosy cheeks and my mother seemed to recover her equilibrium. I started sixth grade at the Gaston School. In October the papers were full of headlines about the stock market crash and suddenly everyone was reading about the Depression that we had been living through for the past five years

[tsunamiallstarz-blog]

Just like that briefcase in #pulpfiction huh?? @spill_gates #thedepression #video #minimovie #cinema #cinematic film by @scottbrodee #cinematographers #vision #brooklyn #crownheights #franlinave #nyc #trendsetters

[alwaysadreamer26]

Haven't seen so much saddness since pretty little liars mid-season finale

[ds2n]