The Great Depression Stories

John Schaub

My father and grandfather made their money in the 1920s when they sold a city block of property in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Warner Brothers Studio. In 1928 they invested most of this money in the stock market and lost everything in the Wall Street Crash the following year. With the remaining little money they had, my father bought a farm in upstate New York and it was here that I was raised during the 1930s Depression years. Our family survived by selling eggs and broiler chickens and some milk, too, from their one cow.

Later, my father became a radio operator for RCA and I followed in his footsteps working for RCA as a chief rigger, erecting high-frequency radio antennas. It was my father, who was the radio operator on duty, when the reply of the Japan’s surrender at the end of the Second World War came back by radio transmission.

Phyllis Bryant

In 1929 I turned six and remember growing up during the Great Depression years. My father was a farmer, but also did carpentry jobs to earn more money. I remember my Dad making a deal with a man who owned a cow in our village. In return for feeding, milking and cleaning out her stall, my father received two quarts of milk each day. My mother had a garden and was very good at canning. A farmer friend gave us beans and we ate beans often, along with homemade bread. We only had a small wood-burning stove and my mother would spend hours cooking on it. In the summer months she would use a kerosene stove, and it would be my job to walk to the gas station to buy ten cents worth of the strong-smelling kerosene. Visiting family who served “store bought” cookies was a real treat!

I remember Christmases, even though there were not many gifts. One Christmas I received a doll and a doll bed. It was only years later that I realized that my Dad had made the doll bed himself. We enjoyed the homemade popcorn balls and candy. The Christmas tree lights were always a problem because if one bulb burned out, the whole string would not work. Because we couldn’t afford to buy new bulbs for the Christmas tree, if one burned out we used a good bulb to find the broken bulb. Then we would break the burned out bulb, twist the wires and then screw the bulb back in its socket so that the whole string could light up again.

I remember losing what little pocket money I had in the bank. When our bank closed all the money we had there was lost. A few years later the bank did pay back some of our money and I got a check for 11 cents!