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16 Comments

  1. As amazing as our families stories all are, it’s even more striking to me how the ‘passed down’ stories of generations shape the thinking and direction of future generations. What you said about – history not repeating itself, but it rhymes – is the proverbial Spiritual ripple of life we see when the water is disturbed.

  2. Fascinating. Looking forward to tomorrow’s installment.

    Thank you for sharing. I’m praying for your mother as well as for you and other family members who care for her. I’m sure you are cherishing every moment with her.

    My dad was born in 29, Mom in 33. Think of all the changes societal changes our parents experienced. From outhouses to multi-bathroom homes. From party lines to individual ‘smart’ phones. From (generally) working together as a country during the war to today’s divisions and disdain for authority. Kind of mind boggling.

  3. Thank you, JWR! So enjoy the shared stories, and especially loved the Victory Gardens planted right to the curb. People understood the importance of providing for themselves in every way possible, and the urgency of the times in which they lived.

    Prayers continue for your Mom, and for all the family.

  4. Thoroughly enjoying this dissertation. I also remember taking the small plastic bags of white “butter” with the small yellow button of coloring and kneading it till it looked like the real thing.

    1. Me too! As the oldest child, kneading the oleo was my job. Later, our neighbors made clandestine “oleo runs” to Upper Michigan to get margarine, returning with their car’s trunk full of the stuff. It was illegal to sell colored margarine in Wisconsin then. But butter was $.32 a pound, and oleo was $.11 cents a pound.

  5. I have enjoyed hearing about the way people made do, during trying times. I know of a couple in my Boise neighborhood who have been using their front and back yards for gardens for about 10 years to save money spent on groceries.

  6. I remember the white “butter”. One day it came without the yellow dye. Mom used what she had. Blue dye. Dad was the only one in the family that would eat it. Lasted longer.

    I also remember our victory garden and walking down the rows picking peas. Mom warning me not to eat too many. My cousin had died from eating too many green peas that resulted in a blocked intestinal tract.

    When we moved dad I had to leave @ 20 cases of mason jars of old vegatables that were left over. Mom had continued to can .

  7. My mother was born in 1925. She would tell stories of the depression years which included moving west during the dust bowl and the odd jobs my grandfather took to squeak by. Mother and her family spent time in Jantzen Beach, Oregon down near the river. This area was rows and rows of a tent city for families with no money and no place to go.

    My husband’s parents also came out west during the dust bowl and took odd jobs to squeak by. Some of the jobs included gathering and candling eggs. Working packing fruit at a cannery and picking. They lived in an old converted chicken coup with two of their three kids for a period of time.

    Both my mother and mother-in-law learned to can and preserve food. My mother-in-law was especially frugal and could stretch a penny father than anyone I met. Gardens were prevalent unlike the yards today and sewing, cooking and repair skills were required.

    Both women have long passed and the mistake I made was to not record their oral histories. I applaud you for recording your mother’s experiences. Cherish your time with her and we will pray for her.

  8. More great stories. I don’t think this country has seen the last of rationing and new generations of Americans will learn to “Use it up, wear it out; Make do, or do without.”

    Her fig tree story reminds me of my own grandparents. I have two ‘Chicago Hardy’ trees which die back to the ground every winter so I only get 100 figs on a really good year, but they taste great and are a connection with my grandparents and great grandparents who also moved to California when times were hard and found a better life there.

    Her story is also a testament to what people can do when they pull together, and a reminder that people were tougher back then (IMO) and very few people considered themselves too good to do this job or that. I wonder how that will play out this next time around?

    I hope more people are getting their parents’ and grandparents’ stories down on paper for the younger generations to learn and profit from, and if nothing else, just to get to know them in a more personal way instead of them just being a face in a photograph.

  9. Enjoying the story! My family moved to Caruthers, California (from Arkansas) in 1962 when I was 9 years old. Dinuba is 10 miles away. My father farmed. I have lived in North Carolina now for 25 years, but I grew up in the central valley and still consider it my home. My friends and I worked in the vineyards and tomato fields as that was about the only work for a teenager. My mother grew a huge garden and canned everything. I still crave the delicious tree ripened fruits and wonderful vegetables there. Impossible to find in a grocery store! Thanks for the memories!

  10. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
    It makes me sad in many ways, but not for the hardworking people you described.
    It makes me sad for a generation of children who feel “stressed” if they can’t get a custom made Starbucks coffee.

    Today, two teenage brothers, who are neighbors of mine, came over to help me. One worked all day at splitting and stacking firewood. The other worked clearing out weeds and discussed with me what I had in mind for a large garden. They were so mature and so hard working, so polite, and both had a great sense of humor. I was humbled and impressed. There aren’t many young boys these days with that kind of a work ethic. I always try to over pay them and thank their parents. These boys will do well in life.

    re: butter. NOW I understand why my grandmother said, “Never use margarine. Only use real butter!! That margarine will make you sick!” She would always peek into my refrigerator to make sure I only used real butter. LOL. The things you learn in SurvivalBlog!!

  11. O’ how things are so intertwined. I also remember the white butter with the red dot, the canning of literally hundreds of quarts of fruit and vegetables. We also canned young cockerels ( I think they were 6-9 months old) they fit perfectly in half gallon jars. My father worked at an egg ranch where they hatched out their own hens and just killed off the cockerels. He used to pick up a hundred or so in the spring and by fall they were ready to butcher.

    It reinforces my notion that you can NEVER store enough food! You had better be in the position to produce your own.

  12. My mother was born in 1918 and grew up on her parents farm as the youngest of three girls. I remember the stories of how my grandfather farmed with a mule and a plow and managed with my grandmother’s help to raise a family of three girls. My grandfather once started a sawmill but it did not prosper because he never made even poorer people pay him. At his funeral many of the children of those workers came to pay respects and all had a story how my grandfather had helped them, loaned (gave) them money for emergencies and help them along the way. My mother said she remembered him coming into the kitchen and asking my grandmother is she had any money saved back because someone working for him had a sick child or a child who needed shoes. My grandmother always reached back and got what little she had saved by raising chickens, selling eggs and butter in town and gave it to him for others. My grandmother and a helper had a long chicken house and daily worked with eggs and made butter. She sewed for herself and their three girls on a tredle sewing machinge late into night eventhough she suffered from heart problems even as a young woman. She gardened and canned food, cooked over wood stove, sewed by hand and with the old sewing machine, crocheted and tatted and made quilts. My mother remembered getting up and milking the cow at 5 A.M. before getting ready for school at a local country school. Children walked literally miles to the school in all types of weather. Mondays were wash days and occasionally the girls would miss school on those days when wash was done in the yard in large, iron kettles which I still have. Warmth was from fireplaces. Transportation was a mule and a wagon until the late 1940’s when they had an old truck. A local teacher needed a place to stay during the summer when school was out as there had been a small house where the teachers were given a place to live during the school year but not during the summer, so my grandfather who was chm of the local school board told them the teacher could come stay with his family of girls during that summer. My mother said the teacher felt like she should earn her keep so for that summer all three girls attended “summer school” at their house and she remembered hearing all the summer sounds of the farm outside while they were inside having school. All three girls were good students but got an extra summer of school due to the teacher moving in with them. My mother says they were poor and did not have money for their wants, but they had food and all their relatives and neighbors were in the same situation so they did not know they were poor. Their home was always open to a cousin who needed a place to stay when their own mother was sick and died. The attended church regularly and my grandmother’s beautiful flower garden was often used for someone who needed to supply flowers for the church. When a doctor was needed in the night, usually for my grandmother’s heart condition, the oldest sister who was about 12 years old got to ride the mule in the dark for 5 miles to the nearest relative’s house who had a telephone to call the doctor. These were hard times of people doing without in many cases, but the children all grew up to value education and hard work. These same people were the ones who several years later struggled with the effects of World War II. The women lived together and worked while the men in the family were away in the military. We owe them respect and admiration for their faith, hard work, and sacrifices that helped us endure. These were children of the depression who grew up to face world war II. They were the greatest generation. Their stories need to be remembered.

  13. It’s good to read all of this about morally better times when people had community values but not Communist values. There is such a big difference. These days we are bombarded by attacks on American values, and in the face of that warfare we need reminders of when people had it tough and yet bonded with others.
    There is value in what JWR is capturing and I look forward to seeing more of it. It’s encouraging to hear life stories of people who are decent at heart, and not so much in news of savages pulling down statues such as the latest news of someone campaigning against statues of Christ. We need more of moral enheartenment and less of self-centered whiners.

  15. I was just missing my mom today. She died seven years ago, June 28. I regret that I was too self-centered to help tend to her in her final days. Sigh.

    My sweet sisters took the burden and sw her to the end.

    Carry on in grace

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