"I knew one family there in Oklahoma city, a man and a woman and seven children lived in a hole in the ground. You'd be suprised how nice it was , how nice they kept it. They had chairs and tables and beds back in that hole. And they had the dirt all braced up there, just like a cave" (Terkel 138).
Just think about that... If you had to take your family, who had lived in a nice home your entire life, and you had to go out west and live between walls of dirt filled with who-knows-what. Just imagine someone taking away everything that you once had and having to essentially live in a dump. Even worse, imagine living the way that you live right now but without enough money for any luxuries. Jane Yoder, for example, had to go to school in one of the ugliest winters jackets anyone had ever seen, but it was the only one she had and it kept her warm. It is almost just as depressing hearing about these stories as the depression itself was. I can't imagine living like that.
To go off on a tangent, I had dinner with my grandfather tonight. He was born in 1930 and I started to ask him about life back in the day. He explained to me about how in his neighborhood, they hadn't really been hit that hard by the depression, but they obviously still felt it. When he was a really young boy, he worked in a factory putting washing machines together after school and was paid weekly for his hours. He also explained to me that everyone in his neighborhood was relatively democratic and they all thought that FDR was "God". People worshipped him, and at the time, they convinced themselves that he was, and always will be, the greatest president that America had ever/will ever have. After watching a few episodes of "The Century: featuring Peter Jennings" I think that I am starting to understand this whole situation, along with WWII even better.
However, going back to the point of the post, the ultimate question here is, "If the depression hit you so bad, just as it hit Peggy and her family, what would you have done?"
No comments:
Post a Comment