Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Way, way back...

BS - Before Seatbelts

Mom started out life in Williamson county Tx in a sharecroppers shack. Said there were no deer in their area. They had all been shot. She didn’t see her first deer until she was an adult. Said that her dad might get a rabbit or a squirrel if lucky. But the mainstay of their meat diet was the chickens they raised. They had it better than most.

Dad had it better. Same type two room batt & board shack. But in the blackjacks of Atascosa county. Lots of deer. And they ate em year round. They had to haul water from Galvan creek in the wagon for the garden. No well. Hand watered everything. Grandpaw would hitch hike to San Antonio for work. Many times he took several dozen home made tamales that grandmaw made and he would sell them for a dime a dozen. When he was on the road crew building bridges out around Sonora and Ozona he ended up with a small wood stove for their tent and grandmaw started baking pies and selling them. That was around 1926. She was still baking pies and selling them to cafes in San Antonio 2 years before she died. She dies in 1999

3 cents for a pop bottle.

Open range in E Texas

Before calculators, had to do all your figuring with pencil & paper. I remember when we bought dad a 4 function calculator back in the late 60's or early 70's. Was over $100 if I remember correctly.

Making Change!! Easiest thing in the world to do! But if you wanna stump the cashier,,,,,,,,🤣🤣🤣🤣

It was said for a while a lot in Corrigan would have starved in the depression had it not been for my Grandad letting folks raid his crops at night. Corn, tomatoes, watermelon, okra, purple hull peas, cucumbers....

They even ate the watermelon rinds.

He was a mechanic at the Ford house then and farmed on the side and fed his 30 cows with chopped corn on the cob in the winter.

Jag, there was a lot of that went on!!! Grandmaw said that the local game warden would chase grandpaw all night during the week. But would always show up about 11:45 on Sundays to eat lunch with them! LOL!

I'm old enough to have had several family members who lived through the depression. They didn't waste anything, esp food. We'd visit the grandparents and could eat as much as we wanted, but God help you if you didn't clean your plate off. Now that I'm older I find that I am the same way. with my grand kids. In some respects, the effects of the depression are still felt 100 yrs later.

Feed sack clothes.

Oh yes!!! 100%.

My mom’s dad fought in WW1 I still have pictures. My dad’s dad drove a stage coach far a brief time.

My wife was a school teacher. She used a mimeograph machine to make multiple copies of tests, etc.

Pay toilets, and not a penny to my name.

Does that include the Abacus?

Newspapers, not paper towels to drain food on.

...and a floor mounted starter pedal next to the gas pedal.

In college in the late 60's, a friend was studying engineering. He bought one of the 1st engineering calculators for about $400. That was a lot of money in those days when the minimum wage was about $1.25/hr.

The after market turn signals.

Openers for beer cans.

SuperCub and Kaywoodie;
Good morning to you both, I hope that you're both doing well this fine warm December morning.

I believe that the effects of the Depression are absolutely still felt today or at least in us kids of the people who survived it.

My Dad's family was somewhat unique in that all of the kids lived to adulthood, not the case in Mom's family for instance.

Dad's family were quite poor, but he related that they didn't feel that way because the kids all had rubber boots to wear, which some families did not. Imagine Saskatchewan winter without overshoes of any kind for a moment.

Mom's family were like the Waltons in that they were quite well off, but there was very little cash available for extras. My father in law said that they never went hungry, but cash even for repairs was hard to come by.

A cousin however related to me that he recalled eating "Brot und schmaltz" for days on end because that's all there was. Interestingly he became a fairly large contractor down at the coast and was a multi millionaire back when that was actually a big number. Harry never, ever left food on his plate that I recall though, leading me to believe some lessons in life stick.

Thanks to you both and all really for the discussion, it's interesting to me for sure.

All the best.

Dwayne

My wife's grandmother moved from Colorado to MT in a Conestoga, and took her first airplane ride, ever, on a jet to our wedding in Anchorage in 1978 at the age of 82.

A friend went to one of his neighbor's place to watch Armstrong walk on the moon. Frank had the only color TV in town, the other two being B&W. Frank blew up, claiming it was "Another government lie- that guy is just walking around in Arizona someplace, so they can raise our taxes! It's a GD Government Lie!"

His wife, quietly knitting nearby said, "That's what you said about television, Dear".