Family stories about Recession/Depression

[Lancer]

My mother told me about the great depression where she grew up in Chicago. She worked when she could at a White Castle burger place. The chain took to mixing the stuff the pickles came in with ketchup to extend it. Perhaps in a related story she told me she and the other workers would bring home ketchup to make tomato soup for their familes. Some days that's all they had.

I lived through Carter's recession. I ran a roofing crew at the time for my step father. The year before the recession hit we started the summer with 17 jobs. The next year we had none. I managed to get a job as a busboy at a local eatery, grim. That's all there was and I was lucky to find the work. Savings were being eaten by 17% inflation iirc. Nobody knew what the future held, everyone was worried. The president was discussing possible solutions for the nation's ills with his preschool daughter.

Anyone got any such stories? Seems like they might be helpful soon.

[SlowwHand]

Re: Family stories about Recession/Depression

Originally posted by Lancer
discussing possible solutions for the nation's ills with his preschool daughter.

Anyone got any such stories? Seems like they might be helpful soon.

THAT is what I remember Carter for, more than anything. I've said it before, excellent in the years after, worthless as a president. Nice guy.

[Lancer]

Yeah, that and him telling us the problem with the country was we weren't happy or some such. My feeling was I wasn't happy because the problems with the country. But...what did I know, I wasn't a president, I was a busboy.

[Aeson]

I was born while Carter was in office. I think I still have a bit of recession in a scrap book or something (and my bank account).

My Dad grew up in rural Utah about 20 years after the great depression. That area really hadn't been affected by the great depression because that's how it always had been, and it was that way for a good while longer too. They had a farm/orchard, and ate the food they grew/shot for a lot of years. I don't think such a life is necessarily bad. As long as you have land (even marginal land like they had there) you have a living.

It would really suck in a city though.

[Lancer]

Aeson, that's EXACTLY why I want to pick up some rice fields in Mabini.

[Aeson]

Do they raise fish in the rice patties?

[Lancer]

They do have fish farms and shrimp farms but not in among the rice hat I know of...?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Aeson
I was born while Carter was in office. I think I still have a bit of recession in a scrap book or something (and my bank account).

My Dad grew up in rural Utah about 20 years after the great depression. That area really hadn't been affected by the great depression because that's how it always had been, and it was that way for a good while longer too. They had a farm/orchard, and ate the food they grew/shot for a lot of years. I don't think such a life is necessarily bad. As long as you have land (even marginal land like they had there) you have a living.

It would really suck in a city though.

That's my family's experience too.

Life in rural Alberta was a little tougher, but not a whole lot different before or after (until a long while after) but then my mother wasn't born until '32. I think her older sister and brother would have told it a bit differently.

Of course, there were some areas affected by droughts at the same time. For them it really sucked. Worse suckage than in the cities.

[Theben]

My great-grandfather owned some land and a big house in Owensboro, KY. While I never knew him my grandmother and my mom told me some bits about him- during the hard times he would lend out money to most anyone who asked and sometimes gave free food from his cart. When he died most of the town turned out for his funeral.
My grandfather grew up in Chicago and felt enough of the depression to become a packrat. I don't think he ever threw ANYthing away after 1950. He passed away almost 10 years ago and we still haven't been able to finish going thru all his stuff.

[One_more_turn]

Inflation is coming back. Commodity shortage is everywhere, while collapsing real estate prices prevents the Fed from tightening the money supply. Americans are now faced with a deflationary-inflation: things they hold the most (homes, US Dollar, stocks) are going down the toilett, while things they must buy (food and energy) are shooting for the moon.

[Arrian]

My maternal grandfather only made it to 8th grade before he had to go work. Things were tough on that side of the family (which was then here in the USA).

My father's side... not so much. Dad was born in 1925 in the UK, had 5 siblings and didn't know there was a depression during the 30s. He remembers hearing odd things about a depression, but not really understanding. Of course, he was a little kid.

Both parents remember the late 70s and basically blame it all on Carter/Democrats in general, and hate them for it.

-Arrian

[Zkribbler]

My mom told be that, during the Great Depression, my grandad would walk along the railroad tracks to pick up fallen pieces of coal. That make about $1/day.

I had a jr. high school teacher tell me of debates his family had about whether to eat the chickens or to wait for the eggs.

[snoopy369]

Bah, everyone knows that Eggs > chicken. I'd rather have an omelette any day over a chicken sandwich...

[Lancer]

Zkrib, that big drawbridge we watched open was built by the WPA during the depression as was so much of the infrastructure here on the coast.

Nobody here had folks that worked under the WPA banner yet. Let's get the country working again!

[Barnabas]

Argentina had a 5 years recession from 1998 till 2002. It was worse for Argentina than the 1929 crisis for the USA.

Argentina had been following bad economic policies all the 90´s, they had an overvalued currency pegged to the dollar, because of that they had budget and export deficits.
To sustain the currency they would indebt themselves, or privatize some public company to get a few billion dollars. Of course it would collapse at the end. Funnily, the IMF saw Argentina as a model country all those years.


The recession began in 1998 with the South East Asian crisis, it got worse with the Brazilian crisis (Brazil davaluated and Argentina lost competitivity), and everything finally collapsed in december of 2001, the president had to resign, mega-devaluation, there were riots on the streets, and working class people from the suburbs (here the rich live in the city and the poor in the suburbs) started to loot the supermarkets of their neighbourhoods.

There is a supermarket owned by chinese immigrants near my house, and once at night, like 50 people from a shanty town near my house tried to break into the supermarket, but the police stopped them, repressed them, and it was quite bad for me because altough I was in my apartment, the air was full of riot control agent. It is quite nasty to the eyes.

Because people had lost trust in the currency, a lot of provincial currencies started to appear. And clubs where people could get services without money started to pop-up. The so called "Clubs del trueque" "Barter Club" Instead of paying for a haircut, you would get a haircut for five cans of tomato soup for example.

The thing I most remember about those five years is thinking, "we have hit bottom, things cant get worse" and being wrong a lot of times, things always can get worse.