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An interesting read on how folks made it through some difficult times.

A lot of good advice in here.

Great Depression Story Project

I'm an optimist, but I can't help but think that self-sufficiency is a dying skill in the world today. It'll never be extinct, but it may qualify as an endangered species.

my family survived the great depression by doing what they had been doing for some 175 years. Subsistence farming, frugality, thrift and hard work.
Not only did they hold onto their farms, they managed to buy up other land, and increase their holdings.

Both my parents were children of the great depression, both fathers died during that time and the mothers carried on never re-marrying. The motto they lived by was "use it up, wear it out, make do" and by golly they did and they survived. Everyone worked at something and contributed, my dad worked in a filling station and chaufered a well to do family around in their big Packard V 12 automobile. When WW II broke out he and his mother moved from their home in Pennsylvania to New Jersey to take well paying jobs in the defense plants.

My dad was the youngest of 5 boys who lost their father during the depression while living in the bootheel of southeastern Missouri.

They survived by pickin' cotton.

He turned 17 in August of 1941 and got his mother to sign for him to join the Army so he could escape the cotton fields.

He was living the good life until December 7th of that year came around. Then it was off to New Guinea and the Phillipines for 4+ years.

He has been in combat for almost 3 years before he reached legal drinking age.

Those were some hard times for a lot of people.

He used to chuckle and say, "The main difference between us and Okies was,...we didn't have enough money to get to California."

Yep, those folks were tough, now days millions would sit and whine.

Part of my family being Kansas hicks and another part Okie, I used to think they toughed it out here and were somehow better than those that moved to Cali. No offense to my ancestors, but I often wonder about that now.

Both sides of the family were farmers and ate well but were cash poor.

my great grandfather thrived during the depression, comparatively speaking to his neighbors, wish I knew more about how he did so.

but my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother had it pretty tough, it shaped their outlook for the rest of their lives.

my mom and dad as kids spent their formative years during the big D and the years thereafter.


I spent an inordinate amount of time around my maternal grandparents and their philosophies and habits have truly been a benefit in my life. Wish'd I'd paid even more attention and asked more questions.

still just with their influence I've managed a pretty good life, I've enjoyed the prosperity and opportunity my generation has enjoyed without living beyond my means, using debt sparingly and paying it off quickly and saving up for a rainy day.

fortunately my wife is from poor folks as well, so we're pretty much on the same page, as to living well, but hedging your bets.

I got many opportunities and used them to thank my grandparents for the difference they made in my life, especially my maternal grandmother, my grandpa died as I was just getting started in biz, so he never got to see my success from a worldly perspective.

Even today they shape the lives of me and my children, I've always got a pretty well stocked pantry, a generator to pump water and keep furnace and freezers on etc., getting two wood stoves installed here in the next week or two etc.

and there might even be a rusty .22 and a shell or two left laying around....grin

I've enjoyed the tastes I've had of the high life, but truth be known, the same things that made my grandparents happy bring me the most contentment as well.

God bless them for their love, care and concern for us, and thank you God, for giving me the outstanding loving grandparents you did.

that's a great link Armen


really appreciate you posting it! thank you

How many good ole hard working and self sufficient Americans will be required to bail out the whining liberal no loads in the cities?

I believe my wife and I are of the same mind as well, the only debt we ever had was a fixed rate mortgage and a couple of small car loans. We always save to buy stuff and have never used credit cards for "credit", we use them as "charge cards" and pay them off monthly. Our Idea of time payments are the savings account, by the time we have saved enough to pay for something we buy it.

Wife still cans much of the garden as does my daughter in coop with us. Life is good when you can say you owe no one. If they SHTF we and the rest of the family will survive on what we have and can grow/raise.

And I bet I can find a rusty ol gun or two laying around and a few shells to feed em for huntin' meat!

New Guinea and the Phillippines? 34th Infantry Regiment by chance? "Leyte Dragons?"

That was my dad's Regiment, I have his Presidential Unit Citation for the Battle of Breakneck and Kilay Ridges hanging on my wall. My brother saw some heavy fighting in Vietnam but according to him, nothing even close to what's described in the Citation.

My dad grew up as a tenant farmer in a depressed part of eastern VA, picked all kinds of stuff including midget cucumbers for the local pickle plant, by the bushel.

I remember one time I complained about our school lunches (they were pretty crappy) and he set me straight, said sometimes all he had for lunch was half a biscuit left over from dinner the night before, he was ashamed to let the other kids see what he had for lunch so he'd eat by himself.

I never complained about the school lunches again.

In a lot of ways, the were (and still are) the Greatest Generation.

Armen: A good read, and I wish we could get these people in front of today's kids at school. I really doubt this country could pass through similar times without a rash of rioting, looting, and killing.

Now days a cell phone, apartment, cable, and color TV are basic rights. Yesterday, as we passed through a neighboring town, I noticed an intersection panhandler texting as he waited on the curb for the next redlight so he could venture out into traffic.

I recall many stories from my parents and uncles that endured those times. My grandmother on my father's side lost her husband to tetnus and went through the depression with 5 kids in the coal towns of Pa. When all were capable of some work, they were sent to large farms where each labored for room, board, and small bit of cash during the summer months. I have no idea how, but she managed to secure a college education for each child.

In the brief years that my grandmother was around (early 1950's), she still absolutely insisted that nothing be wasted, and I remember being chewed out for wasting gas when I left a lawn mower running and dashed to the kitchen door for a glass of water. If memory is correct, gas was 29 cents a gallon then.

Our post-depression family was not rich by any means, as we always had food and a roof. One of my darkest memories though was when I made my mother cry by pleading for a pair of snow boots. My oldest sister had just left for college at the time, and there was not a spare dime to be had. Out of the many down moments I created for her, I still feel that one was the worst.

My wife and I came from low places, mostly did without if we could not pay, and only borrowed to purchase our home. That was paid off 15 years early, and we've been debt free for near 20 years now. Even in retirement, I bring in 10 times more cash than my dad ever did. Can't really say though that we've known tough times.

Most Americans have no concept of hard times. If we had another real drepression (not the democrat made up one to get Obama elected), I'm afraid it will have a lot more impact that the "Great Depression". And I'm afraid the true nature of many Americans will be loud an clear. Many good people will do whatever they can to team together and survive. And the entitlement generations will likely resort to stealing and protesting for a hand out.

There is an old ledger page from my Dad's books. On it is the record of ten steers that he saved out of the pasture and fattened on corn (grown) and cotton seed (grown) in a pen behind his house. This was 1935 the year my mom and dad married.

He hauled them to FtWorth stockyards and sold them. He neted $75.00 or $7.50 a head. No charge for his own labor.

He told me that he though he was rich at the time. And in the days of nickel hamburgers I guess he was.


He hated and feared debt as did mom. I guess some of that rubbed off on me because I am in a sweat until any debt I owe is paid.

BCR

grew up listening to stories of my fathers father traveling all over the western US finding work where he could and sending anything extra home to help feed his younger brothers.....if you aint willing to up-root and go to where there is work then you dont have things to bad....

my mothers father did more than a lil poaching to keep food on the table to feed his wife and children......

having grown up listening to all this i really dont think we have it all that bad compared to what it would be if we were in a real Depression.....

Dad grew up on a farm in Washingtonville, Ohio. The depression was hard on folks out there, but to Dad and his kin, it was just another part of life. They were lucky enough to be self-sufficient. Butchered beef, pigs, raised chickens, if they were out of meat and none was ready, they just went out and shot a deer. They fished, hunted and trapped to help feed themselves and others. When times were really tight, they even ran a little still. Folks back then just did what they could, and what they had to to survive.

My father worked in my grandad's bakery shop at the start of the Depression. My grandad couldn't sell his bakery because nobody had money, so he baked up everything he had and gave it away. He rented out rooms to whole families, and everybody ate meals together at a big table in what used to be the bakery. Only those who worked got what little meat could be procured, because they needed the strength to work hard labor jobs. When my dad was older, he couldn't stand the sight of oatmeal or neckbones and saurekraut for obvious reasons.

Things were bad enough that my Mother's and Father's sides of the family didn't even know there was a depression. Nothing changed for them.

My Dad's side of the family did fine during the Depression farming and mechanics on the lands we still have today. Mom's folks went to California after the war broke out and worked there for a few years. Mom said she hated it (San Diego). Came back and finished school in Oklahoma then as the youngest child of six the rest of the family pitched in and she went to college, the only child to do so. She said she still had flour sack dresses in college but got a degree and taught school. Lots of hard work learned from both sides...