The Challenge

As you read the article based on my reflections of the Great Depression of the 1930s here is the challenge....

Given our global society, how do we empower the local communities to take its role in the world?

Circle the Wagons - My Memories of the Great Depression

As a child, I loved those movies where many gathered in their wagons to make the great trip west. The Wagon Trains had a Wagon Master and one or two Scouts. The Scouts rode out ahead, behind and around the train to make sure the train was safe from Indians and outlaws. They were the eyes and ears of the train. At some point, we would see the Scouts riding furiously back, waving and shouting, “Indians, Indians.” The Wagon Master took over, ordering, “Circle the Wagons, Circle the Wagons.” Within seconds the long train of Conestoga Wagons had made a circle. The wagons had been turned over with their wheels facing the enemy, armed wagon drivers with rifles were ready on every side, with the men shooting, the women reloading the ammunition and the children hiding. The Indians rode round and round with their bows and arrows and spears. But they were fighters depending on surprise to win and didn’t like long term battles. That didn’t mean people didn’t get hurt. They did. In some ways I was always reminded of the Great Depression from those movies. The depressions don’t last forever and people get hurt, but bad times finally go away and good economic times return. And the survival tool is to circle the wagons.

I am still wallowing in the last election and all the glorious pictures that I have saved in my mind. First, among them is “Obama is Irish.” The scene is an Irish Pub. With their usual joy, these Irish have discovered Obama is an Irishman and are singing, dancing and shouting. I love it, and it only reminds me of the spirit of the Irish during good times and bad. Their uniqueness lies in making good times out of bad. And that is another way you survive.

I was addressing my usual cards to all of you, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” and suddenly threw most of them away. That old message and trite sayings sickened me. We were in a depression, not a minor one, but a major one. One that could affect us all drastically and one for which we were unprepared. I’m eighty-two this next December, and I remember the Great Depression of the thirties. And I remember what got us out of it was Roosevelt and a Global War.

The season and task of making contact with all of you had suddenly become pointless. I realized--finally--it wasn’t that the contact was unimportant, it was that I needed to send a message that was important. When you’re eighty-one years old, looking at eighty two, you’ve lived a lot and you should be putting some meaning into the happenings of all these years. Here we are in another economic mess - but maybe bigger and greater than the collapses that preceded this one. I was born in the roaring twenties, two years before the collapse of 1929. Just as I came into the world things got really tough. What followed was the Great Depression.

The economic model of the time was local economics. The banks were owned by local citizens. The two car companies that created and manufactured cars in our city were owned by local men. The piano company was locally owned. The stores were locally owned. (That began to change when Sears and Montgomery Ward opened stores in the thirties.) The eating places were all locally started and locally owned. The National and State Political administrations made no move to interfere or guide the local autonomy of the Economic. The political was there to take care of political problems. And then came the 1929 crash. The President, Herbert Hoover, made no attempt to do anything as this was a business problem not a political issue, and it was up to each locality to take care of its own.

My great Uncle Walter saw his company in Chicago crash. His partner jumped to his death out of his office window. He and my Great Aunt came home to our town. There were no jobs. He finally got a job sweeping floors in the County Building. By the time he died many years later, he had recouped his wealth.

I remember my father getting me at my Grandmother’s house when I was almost five in 1932, and taking me with him to vote in the Roosevelt-Hoover election. My mother was working at the polls. The voting booths were fully curtained and I stood clinging to the curtain of the booth where Daddy was voting. There were many people waiting to vote. The lines were long outside. There was the same air in that election that there was in the Obama election. People brought their children this time as they did in 1932.

I signed up to work this election. Voters wanted the young ones to see how the system worked. I ended up showing young children how today’s voting machine worked as I’d been shown how to fill out a paper ballot those many years ago. I had also brought candy because I thought there would be children. The lines were long, the youth were out like I’ve not seen them, I guess, since 1932. It was an historic occasion. When the word came through about nine O’clock that Obama had won, I started crying along with the other workers. I had been working for this day since the 1960’s. George, my husband, I remembered, had been actively helping me since 1970 and he didn’t get to see this day.

Holly, my daughter, has worked for twenty years as an inspector in a plastics plant, in Elgin, Illinois. She recently lost her job. Some 60% of the employees were laid off. I have told her to come to California. She has agreed to move in with me after her lease on her apartment is up in July. Her company gave her three months pay. She was here for Christmas. We made tentative arrangements to get her furniture here. Jana lives up the Coast in Los Gatos Mountains between Santa Cruz and the city of Los Gatos. Their home has just been enlarged from three bedrooms to a six bedroom place – if we convert her husband’s office into a bedroom. That is the final retreat.

The thirties depression was horrible and very vivid in my mind. So much hunger – so many tramps and beggars - obesity was no problem. So many men losing jobs – children not coming to school because they didn’t have clothes fit to wear.

Holly has a 401 of some sort opened by her company – has a good sized sum saved. My concern is if it is safe. I also heard that you can withdraw from these funds more easily now. The one thing I don’t know much about after you circle the wagons is how you protect the money. For Holly as well as for myself is our money safe in these 401 funds? I have a 401k and my personal funds with Northern Trust. Fortunately, I had it all put into bonds and money markets when things began to go to pieces. Should I be with some other organization or out digging a hole in the ground? People did that in the 30’s depression.

There were lots of stories of people who forgot where they buried their money. W.C. Fields who travelled quite a bit would stop and open an account of ten dollars in a Peter Rabbit account every performance stop. Later when it was safe, he couldn’t remember all the places he’d opened accounts in fictitious names.

The great treat in the depression if you were a kid was meeting the iceman’s truck. The iceman would chop off a block just right for our ice box and in doing so leave slivers of ice over the bed of the truck. All the kids would rush to get the slivers of ice. How good they tasted in the heat of the summer. And then the milkman in his horse drawn wagon…. we all loved to pet the horse. The coal man laid down planks from his truck to the sidewalk to the window into the cellar. His aim was to keep the sidewalks and property clean. At first, my dad had to go into the basement every day to load the furnace. At some point they invented and we got an automatic feeder which fed the furnace. I used to spend a lot of time in the furnace room trying to see the machine feeding the furnace. I never caught it. I remember wanting to stay in the furnace room all night to catch the feeder feeding the furnace. Dad said no but took the time to take me through the whole procedure and illustrate the happenings.

Reading was special. There was no TV. Radio was a luxury. Movies were available – mostly cowboy and musicals. Then came Gone with the Wind, and none of us were ever the same. (1934 or was it 1936.) I keep telling Jana, my daughter to let her second book do for these hard times what Scarlet O’Hara did for the citizens of the Great Depression. Scarlet, as irritating and self-centered as she was, was determined to face the new reality, while her friends were trying to re-establish the old South. And because she vowed she would never go hungry again, she clearly saw the South would never be the same again. She was adjusting to the new reality much to the dismay of her Southern friends. People of the 1930’s were forced to adjust to a new reality.

When I was eight or nine, my father got me permission to take out books from the adult section of the library. I checked out a book called The Fruit of the Family Tree. It was about genetics and covered two families, the Jutes and the Kalikacks, families that inter-married within their own clan. My best friend’s father saw my book, picked it up, and asked me what it was about. I told him. He then forbade his daughter from ever playing with me again. I guess I was the only eight- or nine-year-old permitted to use the adult library.

The thirties were crowded with tramps, beggars and hobo’s. Hobo was short for a wanderer who had left home to get money and was Homeward Bound. Too many never made it home. Heaven knows what happened to their families. In the nation, some half of the wage earners were out of work. Women were not allowed to work unless they were widows or single, and thus children and families were hungry and begging.
Most of the families in the country experienced hunger. Some families experienced it every day. I remember eating mush once a week. I hated it. One family had only skimmed milk and crackers for dinner. Others didn’t have much more. Skimmed milk cost 10 cents a gallon, but you had to carry your gallon jug to the dairy to get it filled. I did this often because I loved skimmed milk. We somehow managed to have feasts of a sort at Christmas and Thanksgiving.

What did I do to play? We played Kick the Can in the street since nothing much was moving there anyway. I remember this because at sunset my father would call me in. He would turn on the radio and we would all listen to FDRs fireside chats while the rest of my friends continued playing. Daddy said this was history being made. What’s history compared to Kick the Can?

I’m so grateful my father made me listen to these talks. To have heard them was a priceless gift. And as for Kick the Can, at eighty one I find I seldom even think of playing it.

We had good yard space and my father who always had a beautiful garden decided to teach me how to grow food. I wanted to grow carrots – loved them. So in our twenty-foot-square garden next to the garage, we planted carrots which I was to sprinkle with water periodically. When the little green spouts showed above ground, I pulled one up, mouth watering, only to find nothing except a small scraggly root. Daddy said, “No. They’re not ready yet.” I waited a couple days and, mouth watering, tried again. Daddy said, “Leave them alone.” I soon had them all pulled up. Thus, my gardening career ended.

The tramps and Hobo population would leave signs and messages in front of all the houses which were left as signals for the next tramp or Hobo as to whether this was a good place to get a hand out. We fed so many when we had any extra food, that ours was a favorite stop. One of our food advantages was a grape vine that covered the lattice work extending over the back side of the house and giving us a shaded back porch. When the grapes grew ripe, it was a source of pleasure to friends, neighbors and our hungry visitors. My mother had no desire to make grape jelly. My Aunts did, and then gave us enough to enjoy until the next season. Meanwhile, I had discovered how good the Bing cherries in the yard next door were and how much my neighbors loved the grapes. I would climb their cherry tree, gorge on black cherries, spit out the seeds and lie back in the bow of one of the limbs observing the world and even snoozing a bit. Mother liked it because she always knew where I was during cherry time. And of course those unfortunate hungry loved the grapes, with a sandwich or some of mother’s soup.

All my clothes were made from clothing owned by my relatives. I don’t remember during the thirties, wearing “off the rack” clothing. If someone in the family had a coat that was fraying or threatened with large holes, it was never thrown away but re-used. In my close family, my cousin and I were the only children. Various aunts, uncles, and cousins gave us what they couldn’t use. My mother, who didn’t like to cook, loved to sew and design clothes. She and her treadle machine became known throughout our town. So I was always pretty well dressed. That was not true of most children.

Some children didn’t go to school because they didn’t have shoes or clothing to wear. When I was in fourth grade, my teacher asked if I would be a desk partner with a new girl. She wanted me to help her learn to read and write. Eva was three years older, taller and bigger than I. Her shoes were run down and her dress worn. She told me this was the first time she had been to school. “Why?” I asked. “Because I didn’t have any clothes to wear or shoes to wear. My mother taught me what I know at home. These are my sister’s clothes and shoes. She grew out of them and I got them and could come to school.” She and I worked together for two years. She learned very fast. I don’t know what happened to her. One day she just didn’t show up. How many bright girls like Eva didn’t get an education? For that matter, how many bright boys had their futures denied into ignorance and backbreaking hard labor jobs. This was the cost of Depression to this country.

When I was six my Aunt and Uncle came to visit one evening, and he fell over with what the Doctor diagnosed as a heart attack. Now from the time he fell over until the doctor arrived was two hours. It took another hour for the diagnosis and the getting me out of my bed and him into it. And he stayed there for six weeks waited on hand and foot by Mother and me and my Aunt.

Oh, yes there was a hospital. Mainly it was for the dying, so sick people didn’t want to go there, and for rich people who just wanted a rest and to be left alone from wives, family and work. If you were taken to the hospital the whole community knew you were a goner or filthy rich tired. The heart attack treatment was - put in the nearest bed, and don’t move for six to eight weeks at which time you were either well or dead. The doctor carried a little medicine bag which had six or seven different vials of medicine there to cure everything. That was the extent of medication. I don’t remember a lot of prescriptions being written.

Well, Uncle Daryl and I became close buddies during his illness. Though he recovered from this attack, he died of another heart attack two years later and I missed him very much. That was what medicine was like in the Depression of the thirties. My Aunt Mattie, who let me help her make quilts, lived far into her 80’s, a ripe old age for the 1930’s. There was no Social Security. Thus it fell to the family to take care of its own.

My grandmother decided she wanted to be the one to introduce me to all the exciting things in life, which irritated my father no end. She decided to take me on an airplane ride when I was five. A barnstormer had landed in a farmyard – the word got out, and for fifty cents per person you got a ride. We two, and one dollar, got into this small craft and took off. It was an open pit plane and I kept leaning further and further out to see, while my grandmother tried harder and harder to pull me back in. I wanted to go again, but she just shook her head and muttered, “not in my lifetime.” By the time the plane landed, my grandmother was white and shaking, and the pilot was breathing sighs of relief. I remember it as one of the great events of my life.

These barnstormers were the flyers that kept aviation alive and advancing in the years between World War I and World War II. It was an occupation of love to keep these planes in the air, and they were constantly evolving the design. In later years when my husband represented The Official Airline Guide, he got to meet the presidents of many of the airline companies. Many of them were barnstormers that helped develop flying and who served in Britain’s RAF holding off a German take-over of England. America was prepared with a base from which to create an air force that could truly defend her. So that barnstormer became one of the favorite adventures in my young life. Thank you, grandmother.

My grandfather had an old Motel T. He and his brother had owned one of the finest grocery stores in the area. His brother was the practical account book oriented partner, and Grandaddy George was the one whose dreams made this a specialty store that captured the hearts of customers. After his brother died it wasn’t long before Grandaddy George was over his head in debt and suffering from a heart attack. I was with him a lot. I remember one time he took grandmother and me for a ride in his Model T. As we traveled along the state highway outside of town, Grandaddy George lowered the car window. A bee flew in and landed near the stick shift on my side. I was sitting in Grandmother’s lap. Grandaddy George whispered, “Anna, a bee flew in near the stick shift.” I remember thinking that he was afraid so I stuck out my foot and crushed it, saying, “Daddy George, it won’t hurt you now!”

Cars were emerging slowly but were considered edge science that offered experimental opportunity for young entrepreneurs. The car most memorable in my young life was an electric car belonging to our neighbor two doors down. The car looked a bit like a predecessor of the Model T Coupe but far more elegant – a carriage set on wheels. My neighbor would dress appropriately in a long black dress and gloves, her hair elegantly swept up, capped with a pillbox hat and veil. She looked as if she had emerged from a bygone age. On several occasions still memorable to me, she would come to my house to invite me to be her guest for that day’s adventure ride. The electric car was luxurious. The interior was black quilted velvet. It seated two and there was no brake or gas or shift stick. In the center was a lever stick emerging from the dash. Mrs. Seekman drove by lifting the stick up and down controlling fast or slow. A turn Right or Left to control right and left turns and stop. We didn’t go very far or very fast. But I felt like a princess.

At the end of our trip she invited me to her home for hot chocolate. I was five years old. All over her house were pictures of Mrs. Seekman riding camels in the great deserts of Egypt and the North African deserts. At that time, ladies rode only side-saddle. The Seekmans and another couple explored together. The other couple, the Johnsons, wrote books of African exploration for grammar school children. Much later in my adult life, I rode a camel in Egypt but not side-saddle. Thank heavens!
One of my friends in depression days was named Dona. Her mother opened an ice cream parlor which was located in her garage, opening onto the Alley. The ice cream was delicious. Dona’s mother started this venture in order to support Dona and herself. Dona’s father was a soldier in the god awful trench warfare of WW I, landing with General Blackjack Pershing who declared on setting foot on French soil. “Lafayette, we are here!” The Lafayette he referred to had helped the colonists in America to win freedom from the English in the 1700 hundreds. And when Lafayette returned to France it was to a country in revolt against the King, and the nobility.

Dona’s father, like so many others, was shattered by the poison gas used in trench warfare. It was so bad that the countries that would fight each other again in World War II agreed to ban its use. Too late for Dona’s Dad! He spent the rest of his life pushing a cart in the alleys of our town, rummaging through trashcans and trash bins for food and what his destroyed mind saw as valuables. Dona was afraid and ashamed of him. I wasn’t. I encountered him in my alley once and approached him saying, “I am a friend of your daughter, Dona.” He aimed his cart toward me and growled, and began to chase me. I learned fear immediately, and took off at top speed toward our alley gate, into the house, and locked the door. I watched through the curtain, while Mother ran out into the alley and told him to never bother me again. Her anger must have frightened him for he did not turn on her.
There were people like Dona’s father everywhere and no adequate care for any of them. There were hoboes, tramps and hungry families behind closed doors and friends being evicted from homes by banks and owners. Banks were not a sure thing either. Most small town banks were privately owned and went out of business. That was how the McBurney Family lost their 1,000 acre farm. The Bank was run by a relative whose bank went broke and he foreclosed on the farm. The family never lost their bitterness against their relative. In some parts of Iowa, neighbors would all appear when a farm was put up for sale to the highest bidder and a neighbor would bid one or two dollars. And no-one else bid if they valued their life. But that kind of neighbor valuing neighbor was far too rare.

Movies were ten cents to see a good cowboy movie or a musical. Both types tended to give relief from the tragedy of the present and ended with the good people winning. And hamburgers were six regular sized burgers for a quarter in all the fast burger places. If you only wanted one it was five cents each. A meal in the town restaurant cost thirty-five cents.

I went to the neighborhood grocer to pick up groceries my mother had phoned in. I was eager to go because the grocer added to the package my choice of penny candy. He had a big case of penny candy. Some items you got two for a penny and sometimes little different colored and flavored beans were in a tiny penny package. There must have been thirty or forty different kinds of penny candy and while the grocer finished putting Mother’s order together, I went through all kinds of decision­ making, mouth watering agony. Was it better to go for volume in the package of beans or a roll of small flavored mints, a surprise in a What-Not, a small chocolate bar, or a licorice stick? Oh, on and on it went until my mother called the store. “Oh yes, she is trying to decide. Your order is ready. Is there anything else you need before she starts home? I’ll get it for you and charge it and get her started home.” At that point I knew my time was up and I’d better decide fast. This store owner was one great merchandiser and he and his candy for kids stayed in business throughout the depression.

My town had three movie houses and they were always crowded. We all sought relief from the tragedy of the times. And then that movie was introduced, a jewel that captured everyone: Gone With The Wind. Movies normally lasted an hour. This one was at least twice as long so the movie houses showed it like a play with an intermission. And what made it so acclaimed, this Civil War Movie? It was the story of a city, Atlanta, which had been devastated by the Union General, Sherman.

And when Sherman left, the southern leadership expected life to return to normal. But the heroine, Scarlet O’Hara who had declared, “I’ll never go hungry again” knew that to make that come true it demanded a whole change of her life style, her circle of acquaintances, her business relationships, while her confederate family and friends hung on to the old ways, determined that the South would rise again. Scarlet was right in knowing she had to come to grips with a new reality if she was to survive. That was exactly the message the people in this depression needed to hear. The people who heard it like the grocer with his candy merchandising had the best chance of survival.

My greatest days in the Depression were Easter and Christmas. The whole family gathered. I looked forward to Easter and Christmas as did my dog Patsy. At Easter I always got either a baby chicken or a rabbit. It was a time of basket hunts, dyed eggs, candy and the little new animal. Patsy, the dog, loved Easter most of all and immediately adopted the new animal as a pup. After one Patsy bath, a rabbit wouldn’t go near her. The one little chick that survived Patsy’s mothering grew up to be a rooster and was relegated to the basement, living a free life on the basement pipes and attacking anyone who came down to the basement. My father fed Peep Peep. Peep Peep was a fair sized rooster and began to attack my father. One night I came home and my parents were having chicken on mush night. I immediately ran to the basement to see if Peep Peep was there. He wasn’t. I ran upstairs and cried, “You’re eating Peep, Peep.” I knew because it was mush night.

Christmas was my favorite day. My Aunts and Uncles came to stay and relatives and friends dropped in during Christmas Day. I didn’t like dolls and never knew what I would get as a present. The dull gifts were clothes. The exciting gifts I remember to this day. One was a badminton set, and we all hurried out in the snow to put up the net. We played that game all day. The neighbors joined us. Marking the lines to the court came later after the snow had melted. Or the Christmas I got a pool table. While I hated dolls, I didn’t know that I wanted a pool table. But after all the instruction I received, and the excitement of the family tournaments, I was convinced it was what I had always wanted. Having the family all there competing with one another around my gifts made Christmas a stand out time in my memory. Most of the rest of the presents were practical needs wrapped up to look festive. Another great Christmas, I received a bicycle and a stop watch. The race was around the block and the time was recorded on each participant. The winner got a double scoop of the ice cream which we all loved, while the losers had to be happy with one scoop.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt, the new president, did something that hadn’t been done before. He used the resources of the political government to create economic jobs in order to jump start the economy again. Up till that time, the political government dealt only with government issues and left economic issues alone. The most effective and famous government economic plan was the W.P.A. Bridges, roads, dams much of the infrastructure of this country was built during this time. It was the most massive initiative of government ever conceived to jumpstart an economy and put men back to work. We knew the country’s infrastructure needed building, replacing, upgrading, and inventing, just as it does today.

My father was active in most of the business groups in town. His dream of being a doctor had collapsed in the depression and he became an undertaker-funeral director and a totally dedicated citizen involved in all the activities going on in our small town.

By 1936, Hitler had begun to invade European countries and one of my father’s friends was visiting in Austria. He met the director of the Vienna State Theater backstage who asked help to get to the US as he was being questioned by the German Police. As soon as Harry got back, the group convened and the plan evolved. Now getting the attention of state or national senators and representatives was no problem in a small State particularly if you were active politically as this group was. They met at our house and I would crawl into Daddy’s lap and listen until my Mother noted I was missing from my bed and came to retrieve me. The group knew that just saying this man was being harassed by the Nazi’s wouldn’t work. So they conceived a plan to create the finest small town community theater in the country and what a coincidence, they had met just the director they had to have. He was willing to leave the Austrian theater and come to the United States to pioneer Community Theater in Indiana.

Well, this carefully crafted plan worked and within six or eight months, Norbert Silberger arrived. And our town soon had the finest community theater in the state and it became well known. When he arrived, he had wounds on his hands made by cigarettes from the Nazi interrogators. I took his hands in mine and told him I would never let anyone hurt him again. I’m sure it was my flair for the dramatic contained in that gesture that put me on his list of likely acting parts in the plays. The whole city got involved. And the venture was an amazing success and we all benefited. From that I learned that there are many ways to get others to help you. Some of those methods were more effective than being direct. Norbert and I were close friends until his death when I was in college.

By that time, World II was over and wartime prosperity had supplanted depression. And another era was with us. From an age in which most of the economy was local, we had entered an age in the thirties in which most of the economic model became the national economic plan. Local economics meant banks were individually owned as were businesses and industries and stores. Towns were self sufficient. The collapse started at the local and destroyed the local. An economy that was owned by local citizens, whose businesses were locally run, and served the needs of the local, financed by locally owned banks had proven itself unable to exist in a society that had become national. It took a National Economic System to supply the Allies and prepare the U.S. to successfully participate in the winning of World War II.

World War II demanded a national manufacturing capacity, a national inter-related banking system, a national marketing capacity, and a production capacity that could serve the whole country as well as create and equip armed forces. The War demanded national integration of the economic. There were no longer little towns producing local cars. The economy called for huge car companies serving the whole country - everything became national in scope. We became a very wealthy economic nation serving the world and a refuge to the world. There was great political power in that.

And when the veterans came home, they were cared for by schooling through the GI Bill of Rights. The ones who didn’t go to college entered the society with a new brand of determination and maturity. Our society grew with the many from abroad who came before the war and stayed and those who joined us after the war – and we became, in our multiplicity, a reflection of the world. The days of the National Economic Time would soon draw to an end. The role of the local economy was gone. The power of the national business and manufacturing companies and their lobbyists in Washington took over the power of the local. And guess what, those circuit riding politicians who used to visit us every year grew less visible every year. The politicians spent their time wooing the great economic giants, many of whom were international.

And we stand on the edge of another great change which challenges us everyday – that change demands a worked out Global Economic and Political Plan. The time is already upon us and we cannot afford to just let it happen willy – nilly. Now how do I know it is here? I know when I call ATT by using the number on my bill, and the charming person who answers the phone lives in India. That’s just the beginning. Auto motors for European cars are being made for some European cars in Mexico. It’s hard to find a totally American product anymore.

The Global Economy needs to be inclusive of all and carefully planned. This may be our last chance to harness the tumultuous economic and political forces that left untamed could destroy the planet.

And now the period we are in is a collapsed national economy turned into an international economic framework. What does this new international economic and political world demand? Products and communication, created, sold and controlled from all over the world. A whole new time is upon us. How it is to be controlled and effective is yet to be worked out. How is the whole world to be served and how does the whole world participate in this new economic plan in an integrated way will be the measure of how successful it will be. This time let the International Economic System be created knowingly in conjunction with the World Political Systems. The participation of most of the World Players is required. We are now a Global Political and Economic Society. It is past time to start building the Global Framework.

I was a child during the Great Depression. All my close family knew what life had been and now what it was in depression. I didn’t know anything but depression and the love with which I was surrounded. Even my Great Uncle, whose partner had jumped out of a Chicago high rise, made it a point to teach me card games and spent hours playing these games with me. I was cared for with love if not with things.

It was Circling the Family Wagons which included the friends that made life bearable. My family had the gift of making life at its worst an adventure. They were fighters. We shared what we had and sometimes that wasn’t much. I know that they felt great fear at times which they never shared with me. But the Great Depression was like the Indians attacking the Wagon Trains. If you could stay together, and had the faith and strength and initiative to hold out long enough, the bad times would transform into good times. We will prevail through this time also.

MAY YOU CIRCLE YOUR WAGONS WELL!
Georgianna McBurney