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The great depression and it's impact
Economic impacts of the great depression
Economic impacts of the great depression
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I interviewed my grandmother, Faye Gledhill, about her life during and after the Great Depression. She was born in 1930 in Alabama. She lived with her parents and three siblings, two sisters and one brother, in a very small house in a mill town. How old were you when you first knew about the Great Depression? My grandmother was 10 years old when she first knew about it. How did the Great Depression affect your life? Her dad worked in a mill, but he only got to work two days a week so they had very little money. She went to the school owned by the mill her father worked for, so they didn’t have to pay for school. What was your family life like at the time? All the children slept in one room, three girls and one boy. Her mom cooked on a kerosene stove and they had an icebox. Walked two miles to school everyday and had to run home for lunch. …show more content…
What did you do for entertainment then?
They listened to the radio, played ball or checkers. They also played with paper dolls and marbles, or played pick up sticks. They played a lot of Cowboys and Indians and or games they made up. The children also played a game called Root the Peg where they would stick a peg in the ground and you had to get it out with your mouth. My grandmother said that they also had a pocket knife, and they made up challenges you had to do with it. Did your family have to move from one place to another during the Depression? They moved from Alabama to Macon, GA because the mill cut her dad’s hours to only two days a week and they couldn’t live on that alone. He moved them here so he could get a job in Warner Robins. What were some of the typical foods your family ate during the Depression? They ate a lot of biscuits and syrup and beans. Her mother would can everything she could get. They picked blackberries for their mom to can. They also had a persimmon tree in the yard, but they weren’t very good to
eat. What sort of clothing did you wear, and where did you get it? She sold candy on a punch board to get money to buy cotton material for her mom to make clothes. They managed to get elastic for their underwear and buttons for the dresses which was all the girls ever wore. Her mom made everything the children wore except for shoes and coats. They only got one coat a year, even if it got holes in it, and they mostly went barefoot. Where did you live, and what was your home like? In Alabama, the family had one bedroom, a kitchen, and a living room. The parents slept in the bed room while the children slept on a pull out bed in the kitchen. Every morning they had to put the bed back up. The porch had steep stairs going to the back yard where the outhouse was. They had to bathe in a wash basin. Under the house, her dad had a work shop and that’s where they had a place to boil water and wash the clothes. Once they moved to Georgia, they had a washing machine, a real bathroom, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. Did you ever know of hoboes or tramps that came around where you lived? What did they do? She never saw any hoboes or tramps because she lived in a mill town. Everyone there worked in the mill and lived in mill housing. Did you listen to the radio in those years? Why, or why not? She listened to the radio a lot because her dad always had the president’s speeches on any time he spoke. They also listened to music on it. What kinds of toys did children play with back then? They played with paper dolls, marbles, sticks, jump ropes, and pocket knives. At the recreation center, they had a pole with a sting and a ball tied to the end of it. One person would be trying to wrap the ball around the pole and someone else would be trying to stop it. Did you grow any of your own food? If so, what kind? When my grandmother’s family came to Macon, they had a garden in the back yard. They grew tomatoes, peas, beans, and carrots. They bought milk from a neighbor who had a cow, and they got eggs from her aunt who had chickens. Did your family preserve food in any way? How? Her mom cooked the food in an open pot and can it. She also made jelly. They would churn milk at her grandpa’s house to make butter. What kind of furniture did you have, and where did you get it? In Alabama, they had a fold away bed for the four children to sleep on and a bed for the parents to sleep on. They had a sofa, a table and dining room chairs that her dad ordered from Sears. Her father made her a little red rocking chair and a little table with chairs for Christmas one year. Did you know of any movie stars or musicians who were famous at the time? Who? Tell me about them and their work as well as your interest in them. My grandmother knew of Shirley Temple who was a child movie star, and Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry who were cowboys. A talent scout came to their town one time and wanted to make my grandmother’s sister, Shirley, into a movie star. Their mother refused to let her go to Hollywood no matter how much money he offered them. How did life change for you after the Depression? Things changed for them when her father got a job in Warner Robins and moved their family to Macon. It took all of their money to move, so they only got to eat the canned food until her dad got paid. They had more to eat, and her mom stopped making their clothes because they were able to buy them. The family got a little bit bigger house that had indoor plumbing. The kids started to get to go to the movies. My grandmother also got to catch the bus to school instead of having to walk there. When she turned 13, my grandmother started working on Fridays after she got out of school and all day Saturday, so she got to have a little money of her own. During the summers, she would work at the peach packing shed all summer. Are there any lessons or fears you learned during the Depression that you keep with you to today? She said the only lesson she really learned was that “you had better be prepared for life, no matter what it brings, good or bad.”
Maggie was born in Woodland, Mississippi. Her parents were Jim and Maude. Her father was a sharecropper, even though he was more educated that the man he worked for. He was the leader of the farm, other than the fact that the white owner got all the money.
Jones, Dorothy. "Sharing Memories: 1930's Life on the Farm During the Great Depression." MrDonn.Org. 28 Oct. 2007. 13 Mar. 2008 .
The Bragg family grew up with virtually nothing. The father left the family a number of times, offering no financial assistance and stealing whatever he could before he left. When he was there, he was usually drunk and physically abusive to the mother. He rarely went after the children, but when he did the mother was always there to offer protection. Mr. Bragg's mother's life consisted of working herself to exhaustion and using whatever money she had on the children.
Family life was hard and time-consuming, during the 1930’s. Loretta Lynn, born the first child of her seven siblings in 1932. Her parents, Ted and Clara Webb, raised the family in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. During this time, Loretta and her family budgeted tightly, sharing the countries financial crisis. Centered around Butcher Holler, Kentucky, the movie depicted insights what coal mining families experienced do the little they had. The movie showed many houses made of wood and mud. This parallel Loretta states “it was a very nice and insolated house, but annual repairs were mandatory” (Loretta Lynn 34). This financial struggle pointed to the “coal mining operation; affected by the British companies invested coal in the Unites States companies” (European Union para. 1). Not receiving a higher pay due the massive production of coal mining, families were tight resource users. Even the film portrayed a scene shows the Webb family getting brand new pairs of shoes and the excitement they had. One song that Loretta wrote, she said they only got one pair of shoes a year. Kids went the summer without shoes, and getting new ones when winter approached. However, even though the Webb...
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
While Bessie was young, and her older brothers and sisters started to work in the fields, Bessie took on some new responsibilities. She would now look after her sisters, and sometimes even help her mother in the garden. Bessie started school when she was six years old and walked four miles to school everyday. In school, she was very intelligent and excelled at math. Then, in 1901, when Bessie was nine, her life changed dramatically, her father George Coleman left his family. It was said that he was tired of the racial barriers that existed, and so he returned to Oklahoma (Indian Territory as it was called then) to search for better opportunities. When he was unable to convince his family to come with him, he left Susan and his family. Shortly thereafter, her older brothers also moved out, leaving Susan with four girls under the age of nine. This caused Susan to have to get a job, which she found very soon. She became a housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who allowed Susan to still live at home, and they would also give her food and other handed-down clothing. Since her mother was now at work, Bessie took on the responsibility of acting as a mother and a housekeeper. Every year at the cotton harvest, Bessie’s routine was changed because she now had to go out into the field and pick cotton for her family to be able to survive. This continued on until Bessie was twelve, and this was when she was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church, where she completed all of her eight grades.
detail separated the grandmother from the rest of her family who seemed to be living in a
Narrator 2: They lived in a old cottage in front of an old overgrown woods. There was a mother that lived with her two children.
In both the North and South children found clever ways to entertain themselves with the little free time they had. In the North it was very common to attend farm fairs in the country, that actually showed different types of guns and weapons along with the standard fruits and vegetables. The common events that took place at these farm fairs were swimming, fishing, foot races, horse races, and even shooting matches. Children in the North also had toys like guns and drums. In the South there was even less free time due to chores. This is why simple games like "Hi Spy," "Blind Mans Bluff," and "Fox and Geese" we're extremely popular in the South. Although the overall favorite game to play was "War." Toys most commonly used in the South were whittled flutes, and corn shuck
Her father had burned down their house and she “had no place to go” (T. Morrison 1970) therefore she had to live with the MacTeers.
Soon after relocating to the camp her husband was killed in a mining explosion when he drilled into a “missed hole” and struck dynamite. She was now a widow and had children to support. To support herself and children she accepted an offer to open a boarding house for miners. The owner of the mine allowed her to live in/own a home in the mining camp. In return she would house miners and cook and clean for them. As the mining company moved locations, so did she. While living in these small boarding boarding homes, she details how her house was only one small room, was commonly filled with fifteen miners and had a dirt floor. These conditions made it very difficult for her to care for her children. She lived very poorly and often could only feed her children rice and
The story begins with Kit. She is a little girl who learns how to live the poor life. Her life takes place in 1886, she moves to Weathersfield, Connecticut.That place is a small Town.
Jess's dad works in Washington ans so he is gone during the day a lot. It is up to Jess to milk their cow Miss Bessie everyday. His dad isn't affectionate to him and seems only to be nice to the girls, the same goes for his mom. They try to treat him too much like a man. One day, a new family moves into the old Perkin's farmhouse. There are usually families moving in and out of it all the time.
They say she lived there alone with her husband. One day her husband had to go away for a while, he left but before he did he got her a dog to remember him. A year goes by she takes care of the dog and it has gotten older. One day her husband comes back but he is different then when he left. A month goes by and things are trouble her husband decides to leave her with no reason why. She cries and begs him to come back but he just keeps walking away.
She used to work in the factory as a line and worked as a waiter in a restaurant. After getting married to my dad, both of them also worked together to open a shop selling auto parts and car repairs. In my impression, our family also operates a small sale shop,