Nearly Four Score Ago...

[Leftist Agitator]

For some reason, the title on the Greatest Page still says "Eight Score Years Ago."

Please Amend that to "Four Score Years Ago"

That being said, please, pay attention:

Unmitigated avarice nearly destroyed the Western world... And considering the horrible aftermath as embodied in the Second World War, avarice might as well have finished the job without the unprecedented death, destruction and suffering that followed.

But it didn't.

I am in my late twenties. My grandparents are still alive. In fact, today was my Grandfather's 87th birthday, and my Grandmother will be 85 on the 232nd anniversary of this nation's founding, July 4th.

For as long as I can remember, my grandparents told me of the horribly lean years that they endured when they were young. My Grandfather has told me, time and again, of the miraculous day when he found a twenty-dollar bill on the street. It fed his family (all ten of them!) for a MONTH. He was even able to buy his mother a small gift with the few cents that she gave him for bringing home such a windfall. He used to unload 100 pound sacks of flour, dozens of them every day, in exchange for a few loaves of bread a week.

My Grandmother has told me of the games that she and her sisters used to play, with grasses and seeds, pretending to play shopkeeper, because they had no toys. One of her earliest, and vividest memories was of she and her four sisters each getting a new Easter dress when my Great-Grandfather unexpectedly came into some money on a horse race.

When my Grandfather was 16 or 17, he left Ohio for the Civilian Conservation Corps. To this day, he speaks fondly of his time in the "3C camps", as he calls them, not so much because he enjoyed his tenure, though he did, but because he had a warm place to sleep every night, and knew that he'd get to eat a decent meal three times a day.

My Grandmother left school at the age of 14 in order to try to find work to help support her family. She found work as a seamstress at first, and as a secretary for a steel mill soon after. She's smart as a whip, even still, in her later years. I've always wondered what sort of pioneering things she might have done had she been given the opportunity to finish her education.





These are only a select few of the memories of two people who were young when the greatest economic crisis that the world has ever known came down with full force.

We are in for even more dire times than those days of long ago. I thought a bit of historical perspective might be in order.

Take from this what you will.

ON EDIT: This is not meant to be gloom-n-doom. Rather, I draw hope from their fortitude. May we of this modern age be so resourceful as our progenitors...

2ND EDIT: Will younger generations live as they (my Grandparents) did, with nothing (as we would denote their situation), never knowing, never truly understanding this marvelous age in which we have found ourselves for the last fifty years? I sincerely hope not, but I fear that the "cloud of the future" has a dark lining, with no hint of silver.

[Leftist Agitator]

1. Kick..

For a mathmatical error.

[bananas]

2. I'm plastered

but will kick for the whateveritisnessofit...

[Leftist Agitator]

3. Nothing wrong with being plastered.

And thanks much for the kick.

No one will listen, but fuck it. I've done my part.

"May you live in interesting times"... Ancient Chinese Proverb.

We sure as fuck do, no?

:shrug:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My dear skypuddle!

You have provided us with an excellent history lesson!

Well written, too...

K&R

Thank you!

:patriot:

[Leftist Agitator]

5. You flatter me, Madam.

:blush:

Please, take these anecdotes as seriously as you can, because I fear that our dire situation is about to get much, MUCH worse...

Interesting times, indeed.

[1Hippiechick]

6. "On this day" is a wonderful website if you have not already stumbled across something like this..

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html


Also,"This Fabulous Century" by Time-Life Books (published in 1969!) beginning with 1900--each volume spanning a decade--is wonderful fun to pull out on birthdays. It is full of photos of ppl, events, and copies of newspaper frontpages and stories - popular music of the decade, sports, etc. Wonderful fun.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Fabulous-Century-1910-1920-Books/dp/B000UE0SGM
(Unfortunately, we loaned our 1940-1950 volume out and never got it back, so I will have to scrounge eBay and find a replacement.)

I can identify w/your story: My 101 y.o. grandmother and her 99 y.o. sister are still in excellent health and have wonderful stories to tell of their childhood and growing up years. Always at Christmas when the family is gathered 'round, I ask, "Granny, tell us what Christmas was like when you were a little girl." Her face lights up recalling their meager Christmas and the thrill of finding oranges and nuts in their stockings. Would you believe how thrilled they were to get fruit for Christmas because that was such a rarity? God, I choke up even recalling this.

This year I hope to capture that on video, and I hope you have captured your grandparents stories for future generations.

[Leftist Agitator]

12. Oh my God!

"Her face lights up recalling their meager Christmas and the thrill of finding oranges and nuts in their stockings."

My Grandmother has told me the EXACT same thing. That when she was a little girl, she would get an orange and her mother's (who lived to be 98, by the way) homemade Italian candy in her Christmas stocking.

She has always told me how during prohibition, one of her sisters was gravely ill, and when the health worker came by, they'd have to hide all of the home-made wine or they'd get in trouble... At least we won't have to deal with that bullshit this time around!

:)

[SheilaT]

7. Times do change,

and as each generation passes, we lose the living memory of an era.

When I first moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1962, I met several people, then in their 80's, who'd traveled there in covered wagons about 75 ears earlier, and who had memories of coming across wagon trains that had been a day or two ahead of them, now dead from Indian attacks. I recall one old woman who vividly described the bodies as still warm, with blood still flowing from arrow wounds.

My point is that living memory, the memory of those who lied through an era or event, is vivid and important. Now we are losing those who lived through the Great Depression and WWII. Even fifty years from now, the events of September 11, 2001, will only belong to those who are in their elderhood. Archival film footage will exist, which will help to make those events more immediate, but eventually all who lived through that day will be gone.There is something precious about living memory, the memory of those still alive. I'm so sorry that I didn't know to talk to my grandparents (who were born in the 1880's) about more of their lives before they passed on. They had memories and knowledge that are now gone forever, and there's no way of recapturing what's lost.

[H2O Man]

8. CCC

My late father often said it was one of the single best programs the US government has ever run. He said that the country would benefit from having a similar program again.

[Art_from_Ark]

17. I had a friend who was also in the CCC

and he also used to talk about how glad he was that it existed.

Three meals and 50 cents a day, and a place to sleep.

[Leftist Agitator]

9. kick

[mdmc]

10. I remember my grandparents had this used rake

My grandparents rake was "recycled" from the garbage. The metal rake part was still usable, but the wooden handle was broken in half.

My grandfather used two sets of nuts & bolts and two pieces of a 2"x4" to fix the handle.

The rake was nearly unusable, because you needed to hold the handle which was actually two pieces of 2"x4".

We would go to a strip mall nearly every day that had a hardware store in it. I never understood why we didn't buy a new rake.

Now I understand history, and I understand how the great depression shaped my grandparents.

That rake has become a symbol not of the past, but of my future.

[Leftist Agitator]

11. My Grandparents keep EVERYTHING...

I caught hell once for throwing out a long piece of string. I got a lecture on how many things you could use that piece of string to fix. My Grandfather has a collection of jars, coffee cans, and wooden crates, some of which are older than my mother. My Grandmother might be the last woman in America who will replace a zipper on a garment, or patch up an old threadbare sheet. They aren't like that because they're cheap, they're just unbelievably frugal and practical.

My Grandparents also stockpile food like you wouldn't believe (as does everyone else from their generation that I know) which is one trait that I've happily inherited, what with grocery prices skyrocketing and all. Their pantry has a year's supply of food at any given time.

It never ceases to amaze me how the Great Depression has indelibly colored the lives of those who came of age in that impoverished era. I greatly fear that the coming years will make their hardships seem trivial by comparison.

:scared:

[mdmc]

13. I just wished I learned how to bake bread before they all passed

My grandparents and their siblings always gave fresh bread (packaged in used recycled bread bags) as gifts.

That was some great bread.

My girlfriend can bake "Brown Irish Bread". I will learn how to do that.

[MadHound]

14. Both my parents went through the Great Depression,

And have stories similar to yours, including the joy of getting oranges at Christmas(we also got them when we were kids in the sixties, but somehow it just wasn't the same). Both my parents families came through relatively well, but that was because my grandparents had established a good situation. My mother's parents had a grocery/dry goods store in St. Louis and my father and his family lived on a farm in rural Missouri.

It would be tough to be a grocer these days, but it is still possible to farm out in the country, and all the experts agree that it is easier to get through tough economic times in rural areas than in urban ones. Not only can you grow your own food, but you become part of network of people that help each other out.

I live out in the country now, and have already saved a lot of money by not living in the city. I certainly wouldn't want to be in a city when the economy finally crashes down, it will be ugly.

[1Hippiechick]

15. "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without!" I grew up in one house with one bathroom. The

people who suffered through the Depression have a different set of values, and one that is sorely missing from successive generations. They stayed in their jobs with the goal of paying off their house, and would not have dreamed of "moving up." I'm 60, and was reared by my great aunt (parents both killed in auto accident when I was 3), so I was actually reared by someone who as an adult struggled through the Great Depression. That generation learned to live frugally, to appreciate everything, and to take nothing for granted, IMHO. We wore hand-me-downs (no one had coined the term 'recycle')We didn't have credit cards - we saved our money until we could pay cash or, in my case, when I became a teenager, I went to work part-time in a clothing store to purchase clothes on layaway (anyone remember that?) because there were a few clothes that I wanted that were not hand-made--remember that feeling of needing to "fit in" with peers, and clothes were the way to do it? There was more respect for parents and teachers. Getting into trouble at school was not an option because the punishment at home would have been far worse than anything the teacher would have inflicted, and back then, teachers could still paddle students. Church attendance was not optional. I had an 11:00 curfew that my friends made fun of (this was 1962) and tried only once to skip church on Sunday, feigning sleepiness. I was told, "If you can't get up to go to church on Sunday a.m., you can quit going out on Saturday night." Needless to say, I got up and went to church. In the early 60s, our family of 4 was fed on $20/week, and that included grilling steaks on Saturday evenings sometimes. Gas was 39 cents a gallon. We planted a garden every summer, we washed our clothes in an old wringer washer and hung them on the clothesline to dry. Anyone ever take frozen clothes off a clothesline? To this day, there is not a smell in this world that makes me feel more safe and secure than the fragrance of sheets that have been line dried. I had hubby put a clothesline in the side of the backyard so I could line-dry my sheets. It saves a few pennies in electricity, but that is not the payoff for me. Preserving a fragrance that helps me recall when life was safer and simpler is.

[mdmc]

16. kick