That’s remarkable considering I was born in 1951.
But my grandparents, aunts and uncles all lived as young adults in the grim 1930s when banks failed and the unemployment lines grew longer and longer – and no one had heard of safety nets.
They shared their memories with me, and though all are now
ensconced in heaven their memories are snug and comfortable inside my head.
What got me thinking about my loved ones and some very bad
times they struggled through was a news release about Homestead Day on April 28,
the commemoration that honors Penderlea Homestead Project’s Depression-era
settlers. Penderlea Homestead Farms was the first of 152 homestead projects
developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. They provided
penniless tenant farmers, bankrupt farm owners and unemployed ex-farmers with a
means of making a living.
The stories told to me came from my mother’s side of the
family. I presume my father’s side persevered better. My Great-Grandfather
Louis Iuppenlatz and Grandpa Bud Staton were depot masters in Indiana and Ohio and
trains continued to run during the Depression years.
On my mother’s side of the family, a great-uncle lost an arm
in the 1930s in a train accident. We’ve all heard stories of hobos hitching
rides aboard freight trains and the company bulls who tried to catch them in
the act. Well, Uncle Georgie Kurtz tried to board a train; he slipped and a
wheel ran over his arm.
I’ve a photograph on my hard drive of Georgie standing in a
martial pose … he’s wearing his World War I uniform. He looks quite handsome. I
remember a much older Georgie sitting in a chair in his sister Ethel’s front
room, his shirtsleeve tucked in where an arm should have been. Georgie liked to
look out the front window at the doings on Rittman’s Main Street.
As the 1930s began, the small Ohio town of Rittman depended
on two factories, a plant that made salt and a plant that manufactured
cardboard boxes. When the Depression forced them to close, it left the town’s
breadwinners without a livelihood. Back in those dark days, 25 percent of the
work force were without jobs.
Grandma Mid told me hobos would come up to the back porch
and ask for handouts. Just before the stock market crash in ’29 grandma had
bought some stuff on credit and Grandpa Frog spent years working odd jobs to
pay off the debt. It left a lasting impression…he never used credit cards. He
even paid cash for new cars.
Grandpa Frog gained a lifelong respect for the union
movement thanks to the Great Depression. He knew workers had to look out for
themselves and not depend on the largess of factory owners. He was a union
leader at the local salt company and even served as union president at the
state level. When Grandma Mid died in 1995, I went through their walk-in closet
and found the textbooks grandpa studied to become a boiler man at the salt
company.
Grandpa Frog knew that only through hard work and perseverance could a man improve his lot in life. That’s what he taught me and that’s where I got my memories of the Great Depression.
