Recession may feel like Depression, but ‘taint?
Early in everybody’s growing up years they’ve heard the expression: ‘The first liar doesn’t have a chance.? Well, listen to this one.
Economists and other fabricators, like Democrats and Republicans, say the current economic slowdown has been going on for over 10 months.
Then comes an up-beater who says the average recession lasts under two years. And, in late ?09 employment will rise, sales increase and we can look forward to stopping inflation.
Wonder if that averager ever considered the Depression (that’s as in the ultimate recession) of 1929-1939.
The only thing that brought us back to prosperity was WWII. We can’t expect another war to make things look rosy again, else we’d be rosy since we’ve been in some kind of war for decades.
But, that’s not my point. My point is few people are left who can remember what a real, maxed-out slowdown is. It’s my obligation to tell you nonbelievers that what economic troubles you’re experiencing now is trivial.
You ain’t seen nothing yet, and hopefully you won’t. My daddy got a job on the Grand Trunk Railroad in Durand in 1926. So, he had a job all through the Depression. Yet, I can still hear him telling us, ‘I wouldn’t even try to live through another.?
In our country school, no student ever had new clothes to wear. Maybe church, but maybe not. My 2-years-older sister (and this is where the ‘first liar? slogan starts) told me recently she never had a new dress until she started high school.
She always had cousin-hand-me-downs, flour sacks or mended dresses.
No one came to school who didn’t have cardboard insoles in their shoes or half-soled and dad-installed heels.
Every house we had, and we had a different one every two years, was cold in every room but the kitchen. We upstairs sleepers would hug the stove pipe going through our room for warmth in the winter.
While we lived near Bancroft I’d sometimes go to the elevator and into its basement, to load a sack with corncobs, then go door-to-door to try to sell them for kindling.
That’s no lie.
Another thing about those days: We lived just off state highway M-78. We occasionally had hobos knocking. One Thanksgiving mother made meals for two who came by. Later, I learned hobos would mark houses for fellow travelers.
There were no bikes or trikes. Being farm-raised, we seldom even had friends to play with. One game I remember vividly was pretending I was riding a horse, chasing train robbers. No, not the Grand Trunk.
The previous owners of this farm had horses that were kept apart in their stalls by a half-walls. I’d sit on this wall with a willow switch in hand and beat the devil out of those stanchions while pulling on a rope rein and yelling.
And, so it was. Baths in a tub on the kitchen linoleum; water heated in the range reservoir. Making burr baskets, swinging on a rope between mows in the barn, and carrying pails of water from the windmill to the house (several hundred feet).
The one exciting experience came along in about 1935. Several men who had airplanes in those days would land in a farmer’s field and wait for the curious.
Then he’d ask if anyone would like a plane ride for $3. If there were enough promises he’d tell them when he’d be back. And, he would. My sister remembers such an incident south of the railroad tracks in Vernon, but there’s no one to confirm it.
Of course, my sister wouldn’t lie.