In an effort to research Colorado for a novel and the Denver Cereal, I've been reading "Western Voices, 125 years of Colorado Writing." The book is a compilation of essays about Colorado collected by the Colorado HIstorical Society magazine.
I read this essay yesterday and knew I needed share some of it with you:
"I was ten months old when the stock market crashed in 1929, the start of the Great Depression, followed by the Drought and then the Dust Bowl. I called them the three Big Ds. There were suicides related to one or all of the Big Ds. Men did abandon their families when they could not find work. Families did disappear overnight, never heard from again. Women did have nervous breakdowns due to the wind, the constant never-ending wind. Do you know what it's like to be in the wind that never, ever stops?

"Young boys did a man's work and our generation learned the value of a penny - disregard a dollar. People were hungry but proud, and one cannot eat pride. Banks went broke; ours did in Sharon Springs. We had one dollar and forty-seven cents to last two weeks.
"How did the Depression affect us, trying to survive?
"My dad was out of a job. Our local bank in Sharon Springs went broke. There was no money. Even the schoolteachers were paid by warrants pledging that if there were ever money again, they would get some. The principal real property taxes that were being
collected in eastern Colorado and western Kansas were from the Union Pacific. The few banks still open refused to loan. When my uncle moved to Cheyenne County in Colorado there were thirty-three famillies on his mail route; this was in 1922. When he sold out in 1965 there were three. Where did these people go? I don't know. I remember children in my first grade class in Sharon Springs who were in school on Friday and gone on Monday; the year was 1934. They simply disappeared. There were no food stamps and a lot of people were on relief. That meant they could get food staples free but many were too proud. In Sharon Springs, when our hometown physician Doc Nelson passed away, his daughter found over $100,000 in accounts receivable in his large rolltop desk." --Keith A Cook, A Whiskey Train and a Doughnut day: Coming of Age on the Colorado Plains
This was only one generation ago - a little less than 80 years ago.
My father was two when the stock market crashed. When asked about the Depression, he mostly shrugged. When I pressed him, he said that everyone was poor. No one thought they'd get rich and no one knew a rich person. Everyone you knew was as poor as you were.
My grandfather would only say, "There wasn't anything Great about the Great Depression."
While I've been broke, and very poor, I've never lived without money. I remember the first money I earned baby sitting at eight years old. I was eleven years old when someone said, "Can I write you a check?" for the first time. I received my first credit card when I was seventeen years old and bought my first house when I was thirty-two years old.
I have been tremendously, incredibly, unbelievably lucky live in such incredibly prosperous time.
As people around me talk of coming Depressions and economic downturns, I know that they, like me, have no idea what that means.
I'd love to hear your stories, memories or your families story from the Great Depession. Leave them in the comments and I'll add them to the post with a link.
In remembering, we learn to appreciate all that we still have.
- "My mother was forced to quit school at 14 to help support her family. The next year, when her parents wanted her sister to do so as well, my mother stood up to them and all her siblings were allowed to finish school, eventually becoming a college professor and two medical doctors. My mother finally got her GED and went to college in her 70’s, getting her degree at 79.
"My father put himself through night law school, working as an interpreter on the NYC docks in several languages he had taught himself. Many of his early clients paid him in home grown chickens, eggs and vegetables because nobody had any money.
"My older brother was very sick and there was no medical insurance, so my birth when he was six was unplanned. Somehow they always managed to take care of us and provide what we needed." --Heart in San Francisco
"My grandfather having been a street urchin in Edinburgh before emigrating to Canada had know privation. Orphaned at an early age he learned what it took to feed his belly. Work.
"As the depression kicked into high gear, the plant foremen in charge of hiring day labor at the Detroit auto plants were willing to overlook his union affiliation button and bring him in regularly because he knew how to work.
"He gave my grandmother ten dollars with the instruction that if any of the neighbors came looking for a loan to tide them over she was to give it them out of the ten. He told her never to look at it as a loan but rather when necessary they would find a way to replenish it out of his wages."As expected the neighbors did come looking for a quarter or a dollar because there was no milk or beans on the table. Granny would quietly hand out what they asked for.
"From what my mom told me, that ten never had to be replaced. Every single time some was lent out it was repaid. People knew, it seemed that everyone would make it through if they worked together."
--the Walking Man Mark