03 - The Depression Years

The Depression Years

I was ten years old when the stock market crashed on October 29 1929. I had little, or no, concept of what that would mean to my family or country or world. But I would soon learn all about it as I began to recognize the fear, doubt and anxiety that reached to all of us. It was then that I became familiar with the word, Depression. “Great Depression” would come later…

In September of 1929 we moved from Massillon, Ohio to join my grandparents in Los Angeles. My grandfather had made his living buying and selling used cable. He did quite well until that business also was affected by the Wall Street crash. Sellers eagerly sold, buyers no longer bought, and “depression” became a household word.

I believe that my father left for California before us to find work. My mother, brother Marshall, and I followed later in a very old automobile driven by an equally old gentleman. He had offered a trip to California, at a rate we could afford, but little did we know that the trip would take 14 days. Mother sat in the front seat, with my brother and I playing games in back. It was somewhere mid-way that something happened to the car’s steering-column. It was repaired with one of the large hairpins that held up my mother’s long black hair. Other hairpins were used several times so when we reached dangerous mountain roads, Mother would take Marshall and my hands as we walked down the mountain to safety. It was on that trip that I saw desperate families hitch-hiking and old people sitting in rickety chairs hoping that someone would stop and take them somewhere. It was so sad. Mother’s with tiny babies in their arms, young and old clinging to each other in despair, saying nothing…just waiting.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, we moved in with our family. It was common and expected in those days for families to live together. Dad found work in a shoe store for $20.00 a week and was lucky to have a job. Mother eventually was employed at the May Company for $15.00 a week. These were poor, but acceptable wages. They brought their paychecks home and gave them to my grandmother. She returned enough for them to get to work and the rest ran the household. Many families had no wage earner. Anyone, who was able to earn money, worked however they could. This included children selling apples and newspaper on a corner. It meant women taking in laundry or helping with housework. Men may have found it harder to find work. Though pride no longer mattered, there were just no jobs available. We were lucky with two wage earners.

As a family we were close and dependant on each other. There were my parents, grandparents and four young children including three boys and me. They were Marvin, Marshall, Bobby and I. Occasionally two of the older boys would arrive, Leo and Fritz, and that would round out our wonderful family. But we four younger ones had a life of our own. It had a lot to do with Saturday. Most Saturdays we were given a dime. With that we could go to the movie for 5 cents and buy a lot of candy with the other nickel. There was always a double feature, a cliff-hanging serial that would surely bring us back next week and a newsreel hat told us what was happening in our world. It was there that I learned more about bread lines and bank closures and hungry people. Not starving, as so many today, just hungry.

Shortly after we arrived, our family moved into a different home in Boyle Heights, a heavily populated Jewish community where many immigrants settled. There were clothing stores with garments hanging on racks set on the sidewalks, delicatessens with wonderful food and drug stores with soda fountains. It was fun having Papa walk me down to the drug store for a chocolate soda. When I graduated for Jr. High School, my grandfather took me to one of the clothing stores and I found, on a sidewalk rack, a white eyelet dress that I just loved. He paid $2.00 for it and that was a pretty extravagant thing to do. We must have been desperately poor, but I didn’t know it. No one ever talked about it. We all just lived with respect for each other, with faith in our God, and with love. That’s the way families lived then.

When I was 12 years old we moved to an Adams Avenue location in Los Angeles. It was there that my grandfather died. He was a broken man who was deeply depressed by his inability to provide for his family. Another casualty of the depression.

Shortly after his death we returned to Boyle Heights so grandmother would be close to her many friends. I remember, during that period, there was a price war on groceries. That was the time my grandmother gave me two pennies and sent me to the market saying, “One is for a bottle of milk, the other for a loaf of that bread you like.” That was a real bargain since the average cost of a quart of milk was about ten cents and a loaf of bread about the same.

We moved to Long Beach in 1933, in the aftermath of the March 10, 1933 earthquake. Fortunately, the 6.4 quake occurred at 5:45 in the evening, long after children were no longer in school. It was extremely violent and severely damaged many buildings including several schools and government buildings. Another aftershock registering 5.5 added to the destruction. That is why I attended Hoover High School in tents. It was great. On rainy days the tents leaked and we didn’t go to school. We wore uniforms that made my need to compete with other girl’s wardrobes none existent. A white shirt was always washed and clean. I could put it on over a black, navy or brown skirt and be as well dressed as anyone. We all wore saddle oxfords and bobby sox and felt pretty darned cute.

I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16 but Marvin (was three years older) brought young people into the house and they were all welcome. When I reached 16 it became a time of fun and of learning about friends. Mother and Grandma were wonderful at having so many young people around, and it was a rare dinner that did not have a young guest at our table. For all our friends Saturday night was special. There was a radio program, “Witches Tales,” that became a standard for being together. It was always scary and wonderful, with the sound of creaking doors at the beginning and end. All the lights would be turned off so only the embers at the end of the cigarettes were seen. Because some of our friends worked until none o’clock, they would enter the dark house, drop down on the floor with the rest of us, light a cigarette and listen. We never knew who came in until the lights were turned on. We didn’t expect the drunken sailor boy we found sitting in a corner one night enjoying the program with us.

After the radio program most of us were hungry. There always were two things available. A watermelon (it was cheap) and the chocolate pudding that Mom always had waiting in the refrigerator (it was cheap, too). Then the boys would push the dining room table over against a wall and roll up the carpet so we could jitterbug to the music being played by 78 records on our phonograph. Occasionally, they would play a few games of ping-pong on the table before the dancing began. That is when the girls would sit on the front steps and talk. Everyone smoked, so we shared our cigarettes then and our lives.

Morally, it was a very different world. The worst that happened was that someone might drink a little too much. No drugs were heard of in the world I lived in, no gangs, no locked doors at night, and no disrespect for elders or educators. I never heard of a girl becoming pregnant before marriage, though it probably happened. If it did it would be such a disgrace that it would be well hidden by the family. Of course, it may not have been a perfect life. But it was a safer, cleaner and simpler existence. It was different then and I, like many others, found the changes in the 50’s and 60’s difficult to accept.

I think that what has occurred to me about that time is simply this. Most families were not more than a generation or two from Europe and brought with them the mores and standards of their background. I many cases it was with high ethics. They all were struggling at the same time. Money was scarce and luxuries not affordable. What you really had during this time of financial lack was your family and friends…and they were your security. My friends and I never seemed to mind that we didn’t all have cars or the ability to go to expensive places. We loved our lives because we were safe in our world. We know our limitations concerning our behavior and we all practiced much of the same standards with no negative interference. We never had to go in search of who we were….we already knew. The breakdown of family structure has brought about the many problems our youth face today. Can we get it back? Will we ever again be able to safely sleep behind an unlocked door? Will our children…and our children’s children, ever again live in a safe environment? Unfortunately, I don’t know if there is an answer. I do know that when I reminisce about the days of the great depression, I feel more gentle and secure than any other time of my life. This may not be true for everyone. There are those who will remember only the separation and despair, but the strength that my family provided for me then, is the strength that I still carry within me today. So you see, for me, the “Great Depression Years” were years of learning to adjust, being willing to accept and the wonder of having timeless friends and family.