PJM: Mama and Daddy have been gone many years now. I miss them every day. They grew up during America’s “Great Depression” of the 1930’s and were part of what we now call “the Greatest Generation.” Daddy was born in 1924 near Birmingham, Ala. Mama was born in 1928 in Greenville, Miss. From the time I could remember, I knew they were “Depression babies” (as Mama called herself). They didn’t tell me their stories to nag me or to exalt themselves. They just wanted to teach me valuable lessons that books could never tell. And they wanted me to pass these lessons on to my family in due time.
Here are a few things I learned from them:
1. Be frugal.
Not cheap. Not a tightwad. There is a huge difference. My parents taught me that money does not grow on trees, because they grew up poor. My father was probably a lot more poor than my mother; he had only one pair of shoes for the whole year (he wore them in the winter) and his mother made his underwear out of a flour sack a time or two. Mama was more of a “city girl” and actually had indoor plumbing. But her mother made ALL of her dresses and playclothes for her, too. (My mother did not have a store-bought dress until she was a teenager.)
Daddy’s mother became an elementary school teacher at the age of 19, and went to college at night to get her degree so she could continue to be a school teacher. His mother earned the only income for him and his brother and her elderly and sickly parents. (She had divorced her husband at age 19 and was a single parent.) So, you learned how to stretch a dollar. No one “gave” you any money.
Tonight’s John Steinbeck post…
This mentality has been lost, sadly. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. Our generations may have been of meager beginnings, but we didn’t starve either. Americans of our age have never lived under really harsh conditions for the most part and we are not as grateful as we should be.
More of this. This is what a couple of generations are missing. Can you imagine if people were more like this. What a country it would be.
Thanks for posting this MJA. Hey, This stuff will enable you to put your hands on $2000 if you need to. Two thirds of Amerikkkans can’t even do that!
A couple of years ago, the twin grandsons came to visit. They were just out of high school.
We asked what their next step was — college?
They said, “We were hoping you and Granddad would buy us a house.”
WHOA!
The article forgot the part about tying nooses, in case “n&&&as” happen along. Damn racists.
Grandma washed and reused tin foil . grandpa burried cash in jars 1920 1930. if you did not turn over metals for ww2 it was a social crime today me me me they will just walk into the lake before helping the country and then say oohh we must have a collective
My mothers favorite saying, Waste not, want not.
One more my grandparents hated potatoe because that was what they ate primarily for years and fed the livestock so they could have milk and protine after the field froze
sowry bawt the spellin
I would kill for some of those flour sacks. lol
I have some vintage burlap sacks MJA, but they’re gonna be scratchy….
“I would kill for some of those flour sacks.”
Jeez, my mothers favorite dish towel. Right up until she died the dish washer was seldom used. It costs money to run those things.
Igrew up in poverty wehad bags of corn puffs grandma said if there is a hole in the bag there is mouse poop down there same with the oatmeal and dried milk ps ifyou dont keep spinningthe milk it settles into sludge in your cup good times
If my old Mennonite Grandma ever caught me throwing out a Ziploc sammich baggie that had only been used four times, she would have made me sleep in the chicken coop.
Out door john my dads side where menonite paint the chrome on the car too flshy .moms side killed in the black donelly war lucan ont
My parents born in the 40’s were not much different,
so it carried a little farther.
My Grandparents who were farmers bought a brand new camper for their International pickup truck from a dealer In Yakima, Wa. in the late 50’s. When asked how they were going to pay for it my Grandmother dropped a large bag of silver dollars on the counter, the guy about crapped his pants since he was expecting them to finance it. She also buried thousands of silver dollars in the root cellar underneath the farm house and forgot to tell anybody it because she was afraid of another Depression. We only found out about it after the farm had sold after they died in the mid 60’s. Unfortunately it was finders keepers. And my wife grandparents in Kentucky did the same thing except that when my father in law went to settle the estate and was looking through the house he found thousands of dollars in cash stashed everywhere inside the house, inside books, and jars and nooks and crannies etc. And they all did a darned good job of raising their kids on very little money during the Depression, they knew the value of what money they had.
In fact my Dad tells me (he turns 88 today) that since they had a large garden and grew their own food and sold the surplus at a roadside stand they ate well. And they also had chickens and a few pigs and some cows. When they went to butcher the pigs my dad tells me they used everything on the pig but the squeal. I can’t even begin to imagine the process of making head cheese from all the leftover parts of the pig, but they did it.
If you find large balls of old string or dried up rubber bands in a house
you can be sure that they were
there since the depression.
Both my parents grew up in the 30s, both families were poor, mom’s more so. The frugal habits they learned as kids carried over into adult life, and drove me nuts when I was young. I carry many of the same habits still today.
And we grew from ‘there’ to being the richest, greatest country on earth and now some Democrat Marxist wannabees want to put us back ‘there’ again!
YOGURT???
Dad (born in ’23) and his brother killed the birds which were dumb enough to fly over their hovel. Had a picture of him with his .22 pistol and a crow he killed for dinner. Got a night job at A&P stocking shelves for 0.10/hr. Signed up for the Army when the War broke out (after the Marines let him go for being underage) and the Sergeant told him he’d get “3 75 a day” which Dad thought was great, until after he signed and the Sergeant said “3 meals and 75 cents” – LESS money than he was getting at A&P!
izlamo delenda est …
Dad came home from the shop and gave the paycheck to mum. She had a folder made up of many envelopes for fuel oil, taxes, groceries, etc. But upon cashing that check the first envelope filled with 10% of the check was labeled, ‘The Lord’. We never had a new car, never ate potatoes 6 days a week and never crossed the street to avoid a bill collector. Oddly enough, there were plenty of moral absolutes then – and now in my own family. We lack for nothing living with an eternal perspective. We take some grief for honoring God in our every day lives but that pales in comparison to what Christ went through on the cross.