It may seem odd that my top articles include those about the Great Depression, but it seems we are all a bit nostalgic, but also wanting to learn how our grandparents and great-grandparents survived supremely difficult times in the 1930’s. In honor of National Preparedness Month and my September vacation weeks, enjoy this top article, read by 315,000 people!
It was the best of times, it was the very worst of times. America’s Great Depression of the 1930s was for many families. Decades later, many survivors of those years hold on to the survival lessons they learned, from hoarding pieces of aluminum foil to eating lettuce leaves with a sprinkle of sugar. Frugality meant survival.
them in any way possible.
- Thousands and thousands of entire families were displaced. Very often, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins ended up living in one house, or one vehicle, as the case may be.
- Desperate people would sometimes beg outside of restaurants, and yes, there were those who could still afford a restaurant meal.
- Many kindhearted farmers kept workers on the payroll as long as they possibly could, even if meant paying them with produce.
- Some families ended up living in tents or lean-tos.
- Many became migrant farm workers, traveling from harvest to harvest in order to stay alive.
- Anything that could be freely collected and sold, was. Driftwood was collected, split and sold as firewood.
- Many men joined one of the government programs that were part of the New Deal. One group, the , built dams, roads, campgrounds, and were trained in fire fighting in national forests.
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