Well??

Well here we go again as someone recently said!!! I lived through the "Great Depression" as it was called! I think I wrote before that Dad lost two homes to it and somehow we managed to pull through! Mother, God love her, did a lot of praying but also she had a family to take care of and while Dad worked first of all as a farmer, by the actual sweat of his brow! Mother did a lot of things like being sure we had enough to eat, and clothes on our backs. After F.D.R. was elected into office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt for those who need to be told what some initials mean, (that'll be the day!)As I told you before Dad made $60.00 a month because he qualified as a head carpenter for the W.P.A. And of course things weren't so expensive then but I remember that F.D.R. shut down all the banks and wow! Everybody was scared and wondered what would happen but then he put all these different programs to work, W.P.A. was one of them. People were being hired and were working and with the work there was the Relief program. People were paid to make over clothes that had been donated to the program and for a long time that is what we wore! Of course we had an Aunt Josie, who was a marvelous seamstress so she could make over a lot of things that this one or that one had outgrown! The best part about it all was that everybody was in the same boat! Mother would go down to the Relief office and get whatever we needed, be it food or clothing, fuel, (wood, that lasted us through the winter!) It must have been terribly embarrassing for her to "beg" so to speak, but she was one of many!!! And it wasn't only us that had large families but you didn't just get rid of a child if it cramped your life style!!! We sure ate a lot of beans I remember but since Mother was such a gardner and knew how to "put up" food as they used to say, we did all right. I remember one bad time with my father. After the banks got the second house, I can remember him threatening to kill himself! We were all huddled behind their bedroom door and Mother talked him out of that Thank Heavens! A lot of people, particularly those who had lost all they had money-wise did take what was described as the "easy way out" No guts! And WE knew how to pray!!! Aaamen!!!