Great Depression holds lessons for surviving tough economy
Posted by: Rose in General, tags: Great Depression, news, preparednessThis is worth reading… Hopefully many people have learned from their family history, or will learn from these people’s memories… Prepare, people !
Via: CNN.com
Memories of salvaging and stealing to avoid going hungry are part of the legacy of the Great Depression. Some iReporters say they can’t help but look at the current economy and feel the past holds lessons for the present.
“Even ladies didn’t shy away from hard work,” says Sheila Elrod. Her grandmother is shown at a cotton loom.
Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg says her grandfather tried to steal chickens after being laid off from coal mining.
Donna LeBlanc of Waxia, Louisiana, says she carries no credit to this day as a result of the frugality and self-reliance instilled in her by her family. Her husband keeps the couple’s credit card and maintains a zero balance.
The Great Depression meant scary times for many households as a period of economic downturn spread throughout the world. Historians trace its start to the “Black Tuesday” stock crash on October 29, 1929, and argue that the resulting global desperation set the stage for World War II.
LeBlanc said her grandparents were fortunate that they didn’t have investments and could grow — or catch — their own food during the Depression years.
Her grandfather Lester was a “Cajun cowboy” often seen wearing a cowboy hat, and her grandmother Ida was a resourceful woman who spent much of the 1930s working as a store clerk. LeBlanc, always told never to keep credit card debt, heard frightful stories from Ida. iReport.com: See a photo of the happy couple together after all these years
“She remembered vividly the barrels of flour, the bolts of cloth and the hunger in the faces of people as they begged for store credit,” LeBlanc said. “The store must have been at least marginally successful, because my grandmother was able to purchase, a piece at a time, a complete six-person setting of Gorham Chantilly silverware for her trousseau, linens and even a Lane cedar chest to house her treasures.”
The couple would catch wild hogs, feed them corn for a year and eat them once the wild taste was out of the scavenging animals. They also took advantage of available squirrel meat, a common food in the South at that time.
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