Simplicity in Kansas: Memories from the Depression – First Hand Account

Simplicity in Kansas: Memories from the Depression – First Hand Account

1. No one ever ate out……
2. Food…Depression Cookbooks to make the most of the food…..
3. 1 pound of round steak – .15 cents, 1 pound of sugar – .10 Day old break .05 and people did not have money for that at times.
4. Made their own lunchmeat from scratch..Pickle load, salami from the leftovers from the butcher shop where her father worked.
5. Made a lot of their own food and canned a great deal from the garden.
   
6. At
   her grandmothers house (five rooms total with bedroom in living room)
   with two families living in that house and a total of seven people.
7. This was typical in the section of the city where they lived.
8. Worked any job…$1 a day was solid wage.
9. Grandfather fished the river for dinner and grandmother baked every load of bread they ever ate.
10. The pantry was off limits…funny how things change now it is the playstation…
11. All
    utilities were shut off except the water (no electric) as they used
    coal oil lamps (.05 a can) to avoid the costs…No money….Just a
    water bill as they did this for five year, yes FIVE YEARS
12. Heat
    was a cookstove with coal or wood….Winter time provided heat and this
    was used for cooking. The other stove was a kerosene stove for baking
    except in winter.
13. For
    .25 you could buy enough bacon for an entire week to cook the food -
    boiled bean. Soup many a time was boiled beans, bacon and onion with
    cornbread and that was all for dinner.
14. Entertainment happen at church.
15. Cardboard
    in shoes to make them go longer. Grandfather repaired shoes for extra
    money with tacks and leftover scraps. Nothing was wasted or discarded.
    
16. Gardens
    everywhere in the yard..Chickens in the backyard for eggs. When winter
    came they canned the chickens (like the veggies). A complete cycle.
17. “Quote – We were hungry many times”
18. “My
    cousins walked in the winter-time in their old clothes a good mile to
    eat once a day since they did not have any food in the house”
19. Reused the envelops and refolded them to reuse the paper. Clever….
20. Nothing
    was wasted – bread wrappers were lunch bags/sandwich bag. Things were
    packaged differently and was durable. Burlap bags from beans were
    turned into insulation over the windows, curtains, fish carry bag, coal
    bags, tote bag, shopping bags, rugs in the wintertime, etc.
21. Recycled
    everything…If you had a ‘mess of corn’ they put the corncobs in the
    shed and used it to start fires in the stove. This save .05 a month of
    kindle wood.
22. Many things came in crates and they stores would be used from the trash pile and used as wood for the stove.
23. Also, the children would pick up coal from the railroad tracks that dropped from the cars and bring it home.
24. The
    family was on relief and got a bag of flour, oatmeal dried applies,
    oil, cheese and other staples to survive and whatever was surplus. This
    was a ‘godsend’…
25. The better cook you where the more you extend the food and be better off.
26. Doctor
    and medical care was provided at a clinic in the city. Most medicine
    was made at home. If you had the ‘runs’ as baby they would take a piece
    of chalk and make power(chalk was from school) and take and apple and
    scrap it and mix with water….
27. A lot of cod liver oil for everything…
28. The visiting nurse came to the house to help care for the people in times of need. Home health care.
29. Hand me downs….much of the clothing came from the ‘clothing room’ at church were you could get items.
30. Not
    much was wasted..When a man person in the neighborhood the women wore
    his clothes to keep warm that winter as she did not have anything else.
    
31. Steetcar walk….No
    cars at the high school..not one. Most people walked around town, rode
    a bike or tool the streetcar. Oil was .10 a quart and the gas-station
    was in the neighbors back yard as a part time job. Mr. Cohen..a very
    religious man and respected owned the oil station.
32. Cousins
    lived with us to help watch the kids and her family had 10 children and
    the father was sick and they were starving to death – really starving.
    All kids were farmed out to the family – extended until the family
    recovered ten year later. Ten Years….Hard to believe.
    
33. As time went by, things got worse for all during the height of the depression.
34. We
    made quilts at grandmothers (one was at the worlds fair in Chicago) to
    sell for extra money. You thought of ways to make money and make due
    and make a living to keep feeding the family.

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