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2003-05-01 - 8:21 p.m.

The Great Depression--An Entry for the Alchera Writing Project

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the Great Depression. My mother was born in 1932, right during the height of it--or maybe depth would be a better choice of words-- and recently she has written the story of her childhood years. I offered to illustrate the book for her with pencil drawings, to expand upon the few family photographs of those days. Pictures cost money and there was little enough of that to feed six children, much less take their picture. As I look through my source material, examining the few photos that do exist with a magnifying glass, analyzing the details, I can almost feel myself pulled into the world of the depression era Midwest.

I've always romanticized the depression a little bit. Maybe because my mother talked and wrote about her rural childhood as secure and happy, despite the fact that her parents struggled mightily to keep everyone fed and hang on to the farm. And maybe because so many people who lived through it, older by the time I knew them, spoke of those days fondly and chuckled over the hardships they faced. Some part of me always felt that I would have been good at surviving the depression. I could have made dresses from flour sacks and lined my shoes with cardboard, and canned my own garden produce. A part of me has always wished I lived in a time when there was less stuff. Even as a child, when I read the stories about pioneer children who had some one prized possession-a china doll, a blue ribbon, a book of poems, a heart shaped locket�-I would look around my room full of toys and realize that nothing meant that much to me. Mother and her siblings each had a cardboard box under their bed that held all their toys and personal possessions, and sometimes I used to try and pick out what I would have in my box, if all else were to disappear.

But of course the fallacy of my fantasy is that you cannot set yourself up perfectly to weather hard times. They happen when they happen and leave you scrambling to make do with what you have left, make the best of a bad situation. More than likely, if I lived during the depression, I would have been struggling to cope with too many pregnancies like my grandmother, or doing backbreaking labor for a dollar a day like my grandfather. And surely, if I were just coming of age at that time, as my former in-laws were, I would have gone to work at sixteen to help support the family instead of going to college.

The depression was a huge, life-changing event in the existence of anyone who was alive during that time. People went hungry and lost their homes and possessions, families split up. Money was so scarce and precious that no one considered whether a job was fulfilling or satisfying or menial or backbreaking. If you could get it and it paid, you were happy. Our insistence on doing something for a living that doesn't destroy our health or spirit is, comparatively, a luxury. I have noticed that nobody old enough to remember the depression was ever able to take prosperity for granted. Many, many people recovered financially and lived long lives in comfort, but few of them quit watching price tags and saving�. Just in case. Saving the old coat that could be pressed into service, wearing the old shoes to "keep the good ones nice," collecting wire hangers, and butter containers and clean jars�. You never know.

Years ago, when I was married to my son's father and we were struggling newlyweds, we used to visit his grandmother frequently. She was a retired widow, moved from the country into a small apartment in town. She had made a good amount of money selling their large farm, and she was generous, sometimes offering to help us out with expenses. But she lived just as though she had nothing, and every time we visited, she presented us with a couple of cans of food�. Peaches, or soup or tomatoes. She would carefully wrap the cans up in paper and put them in a bag and place the bag in a box if she had one. The gift of food. She somehow still felt that she was incredibly privileged, living so close to a supermarket and being able to buy all the canned goods she needed. Barry and I, who had never faced any shortage of food in our lives, used to wonder what all the fuss was about peaches�. But after listening to so many depression stories, I figured it out.

I keep hearing the terrible economic news--the plummeting stocks, the bankruptcies, the rising unemployment--and wonder what would happen if another great depression were to happen. I know most of us are not as well prepared to do "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" as our elders were. We have defined so many more things as needs, and created lives for ourselves that have to be sustained by cars and the services of others. It seems harder somehow, to think about living this life, without the things I enjoy, than it would be to just go back in time and live a simpler life. That's where my fantasy breaks down, because I know nobody has perspective on their own time, nobody thinks of their own time as simple. Still, I like to think I would be a survivor-- I have a streak of thrift and resourcefulness in my character. But I hope, I really hope, I never have to find out for sure.

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