As I remember

Unknown

A photo that was published during the Great Depression, showing the suffering that familys went through.

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Many of my students, including my thirty old son, has said to me you should write down your many experiences, because you are a living history book – I am. I am 81 years old, I was born in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression. So I have lived through the depression, Second World War, and many changes in our world history. Let me start with the Great Depression. Today's depression was nothing like the Depression of 1929, But I am going to tell it as I experienced, as a boy growing up during that time. My family was lucky in many ways. I remember a period of time that we lived on very little food. My family would pick up dried beans from the government (there were probably agencies,but as a three year old I would not know of that) and cook them for our meal. What I do remember is that my family (me, my mother and father) lived with and elderly man. In retrospect, I believe my mother took care of him in exchange for “room-and-board.” There I had a pet rooster, who used to crow a lot. It must have disturbed the neighbors for one evening we had chicken for dinner and I never could find my rooster – it made me very sad that no one discussed this with me. In my adult life I resolved to never have secrets from my children. Later, things must have improved for we moved into a house. In the mean time, my mother must have had a baby, for I shared the dinning room (which was used as a bed room) with my sister. We both were in our own crib. The situation changed for I remember moving into my mother's father house, though he did not live with us. I know that his wife had died, for I had discovered her dead, sitting in an arm chair by her favorite window. I went to school just across the street from her house and would go to her house to have lunch . I know that my father worked for awhile for the WPA, a works program designed to put people to work on government projects. About this time, my father formed a small band; saxophone, drum and piano, and was earning money playing for various functions. In those days, people preferred live music to recorded music – there were no D.J.'s. It made life much easier . Later my father got a regular job and he gave up the music business and never ever played in a band again.