The Great Depression

There was one comment to my Great Depression posting on October 10, that inferred a “rose-colored glasses” look back at those times. I beg to differ. While I don’t remember all of the stories I heard while working on the oral history project, I remember the ones about men riding the rails up and down the west coast looking for work, and of drifters who knocked on back doors and offered to chop wood in exchange for a meal.

I heard my own mother’s story too. She lived on the Oregon coast during those years, and mostly ate what they could catch from the sea. The clothes she wore were from the Salvation Army. They joined other families in seasonal farm work at the hop or bean fields, while my grandfather did common labor on WPA projects. It became necessary for my mother to drop out of high school because her family couldn’t afford to pay the school bus fee for two teenagers. Her younger brother continued his education while she took on a job caring for an elderly man.

Yes those were hard times, they all tell of it, and yet my mother and others found much that was good. Like my own cancer, the tragedies that confront us can often clear our eyes to see anew what really gives our life meaning… it is not money or material things. It is friends and family and community working together for the common good; giving to those less fortunate, treating them with dignity, and when necessary, learning to accept the charity of others yourself… not always an easy thing to do. That was the discovery made by those touched by the Great Depression, and why there are so many good memories.

... PLM