Hard Times: Growing Up in the Great Depression

Few of us can remember when there were no radios, computers, or television sets. Radios were noisy toys for a few of the technically minded, airplanes were exciting enough so the sound of one brought everyone outdoors to see the strange contraption flying like a huge bird, and automobiles were scaring horses on Main Street. Times were good after the end of the Great War in 1925. Dad ran the small-town newspaper, Mom was a nurse, but retired to the role of housewife and homemaker when she married my father. Dad was making good money and we even had the luxury of a Model T Ford. I had a brother, one year old when I was born. Everything was going fine. Another brother came along it 1928. It was the next year that it happened: the stock market crashed. I was four that year and had little idea what all the excitement was about, but I knew something was wrong. We sold our car, we didn’t have any money and I heard them say the bank was going to take our house. We were having something called a “Depression,” whatever that was.