In spite of the fact that many people live longer these days, I don’t know too many who can say they actually lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s and remember enough to tell about it. It’s instructive when someone can tell about it and draw parallels to what we experience today.
The January/February 2009 issue of “Backwoods Home Magazine” has an article from an elderly couple that shares their experience of living through that first Great Depression. Here’s an excerpt. Click the link below to read the whole piece.
The Great Depression
By Alice B. Yeager and James O. Yeager
Frugal folks often bragged about how many jars of beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, pickles, fruit, etc. they had put away. In addition, they often scoured the local countryside for blackberries, wild plums, muscadines, native pecans, hickory nuts, and anything else considered edible.
Times have changed and, in some ways, our lives have improved since the Great Depression, but there is still a close similarity to our present economic time and the years of “forced frugality.” Loss of jobs and cuts in working hours and pay are very reminiscent of the 1930s. Even my father’s hours were cut back along with those of many other government employees to help employ some of the jobless. Everyone blamed the Republicans and President Herbert C. Hoover for the whole mess just as the past administration caught flak.
Read the whole article here: http://www.backwoodshome.com/the-great-depression/
Excerpt used with permission of Backwoods Home Magazine.