My Memory of the Great Depression
by Betty J. Morrison
|
Baby "Betty" |
Calvin Coolidge was president the year I was born–1923, in Dayton, Iowa.
Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1929 and promised prosperity for all. In October 1929, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Thousands of people lost their jobs–my Dad was one of them, a World War 1 veteran. He had been a common laborer picking up any job that he could after the war. He disliked Hoover intensely because of the Vets bonus war.
Granddad Paul, his father, was in real estate and had made quite a lot of money but that disappeared because of a crooked partner and the Depression. With a little money that he had managed to save, he started a restaurant in Dayton, Iowa. The family ran that for a time–Grandma Paul did the cooking and all the kids in the family helped. That’s where my dad met my mom (your Grandma Paul) when she got a job as a waitress there. They were married and things kept getting worse.
The family gave up the restaurant business and Granddad decided to try farming. At least, that would put food on the table. Dad and he went into farming together because Granddad couldn’t go it alone. We lived on several rented farms. One farm had two houses on it. My grandparents lived in one and my folks in the other. It was hard going and Dad and Granddad worked hard. Mom and Grandma had a large garden and food for the table was grown and canned and preserved for the winter. There was very little cash on hand. What there was what little they got for trading cream and eggs to the grocery in town for such staple items as flour, sugar, etc.
Grandma and Mom even made their own soap for washing clothes. I can still see that big iron kettle in the barnyard, under which they had a fire going. I remember helping stir the liquid–I didn’t like the strong smell it made. Afterward, it was poured into large, heavy pans and eventually became solid and was cut into bars. Very strong soap but it got the clothes clean.
After about 4 years on this farm our lease ran out and Granddad and Dad rented farms near Jefferson, Iowa. This time the farms were about two miles apart. The house we lived in was a ramshackle two-room house with a screened in porch around two sides of it.
 |
Betty with her mom and dad |
The only method of heating it was a kitchen cooking stove (wood burning) and a heating stove within the kitchen. We all slept on the screened in porch both winter and summer. In the winter, there was no way of heating it. I can remember waking up to frost covered blankets. We slept with heavy pajamas and caps on our heads.
 |
Brother Jerry Paul, Betty's mom, and brother Dick |
We only had the food that we raised to eat, which was pretty good most of the time. We had an apple orchard that gave us all the apples we wanted. We had 2 milk cows for milk and chickens for eggs. The winters of 1930-31 were bad. We were snowed in for weeks at a time. We couldn’t get to town for cornmeal and flour and I remember Mom cracking kernels of field corn with a hammer in order to make cornmeal for cornbread. We ate lots of navy bean soup, etc. Meat was very scarce-we butchered a hog once in awhile for meat which was smoked or canned for we had no electricity and no refrigeration. Dad also hunted pheasants, squirrels, and rabbits for meat.
We kids, my brothers and I attended country school. We had to walk two miles to school each day. This was fine during warm weather but awful in the winter. I can remember making a shortcut through a cemetery and having to carry Uncle Don for he was only four years old (too young to start school) and his legs were so short he would get stuck in the snow. We didn’t have warm clothes like you can get now and we would be mighty cold when we arrived at school. Our teacher had a warm fire going and we soon got thawed out. We didn’t have many clothes-most were second-hand me downs. I remember wanting a "store bought" dress so badly. All my dresses were made from dresses Aunt Myrtle gave Mom. Myrtle was teaching country school then and had more than we did. Aunt Maude also contributed items of clothing for we kids. That’s the way it went. But we kids didn’t realize just how poor we were.
We had to give up farming when Dad, who was never too strong after being gassed in W.W.I, became more ill. We moved to Jefferson and the Vet’s bonus finally went through after Franklin Roosevelt became president. Dad took his bonus money and moved us all to Sacramento, California. Things went from bad to worse. Dad had a heart attack and Mom had to go to work as a lady who cleaned hotel rooms. She kept us going until Dad insisted on returning to Iowa. Dad had a stroke the day after we arrived in Iowa and had to be in the Veteran’s Hospital in Des Moines for many months. He was granted a disability pension of $100 a month and that was all the money we had to live on-not much for six people.
On your Dad’s side of the family, Grandpa Morrison painted houses for a living and Clarence lost his job at the Post Office during the Depression and worked at a gas station pumping gas for some time. Aunt Dora and Uncle Floyd had many difficulties at that time too. Floyd had inherited a farm, which was heavily mortgaged when his Dad died. They worked hard scratching out a living while trying to pay off the mortgage. Cousin Beverly tells of a time then when she longed to have more than one pair of shoes. Everyone had a difficult time during the Depression.
These are the things I remember. There are probably others but I can’t think of any more right now.
Betty J. Morrison, May 28, 2000
