Folks think times are tough today......

My Dad passed last November at the age of 92. He had a great long term memory but didn't know his children sitting beside him talking to him.
About 1934, Dad was 6 yrs old. That was during the Depression, and there was a bad drought at the time to boot. Apparently the wells were hand-dug and not very deep. There probly weren't any ponds and the creeks were dry.
Anyway, one of Dad's most vivid memories was the cows that had no water or grass. Some guys cut down trees so they could eat the leaves. Eventually the cows were shot and buried in a pit. 86 years later, Dad said he could still hear those cows bawling for water and food. The Govt paid a small amount for each animal. Folks today don't know what bad times are! Yet.

Puts it into perspective

I remember some of my grandparents stories about the depression era. Tough times for sure. Most folks today couldn't survive it.

My dad said, him and my grandpa, used to go and empty septic tanks, with a bucket and put it in barrels on a sled pulled by a horse. My dad held the barrels. While they went to go dump them. He told me all kinds of ways they had to make money and food. Those are real heroes!!! Not! What we have today!

My dad and granddad did the same task for the better off folks. They called themselves "Honey dippers" and also during the depression. I remember the stories vividly. I think it was so bad they felt obligated to tell them stories as they felt if it could happen once....

My dad was born in 1909 and started farming on his own in 1932. Broke horses to harness, to do his farming.

I asked him once about having good broke horses, and he said he never had 'good broke horses'.

What? I said, I thought you were a 'horse breaker'. He said he was, when he got them broke good, he sold them and started over.

I asked why he didn't keep the good broke teams, and he said "Ya can't make money that way."

Any time I mentioned 'upgrading' to 'more efficient' equipment, he said that takes money we didn't have, and the stuff we had took more work, but we had plenty of that.

He and Mom put 720 acres together with HARD WORK, and being frugal with what they had.

Dad passed away in 1990, and he is still getting smarter.


Charlie

Charlie I really like that story of your dad. That really showed some true wisdom right there

... that’s tough Gary

Gary, same around here. GGF picked up grasshoppers to feed the chickens so they could eat. Granny my grandmother kept wet towels on the babies faces so they didn’t get dust pneumonia. She was in charge at the age of 11 because her mom had died.

I was lucky enough to sit my mother (Born 1917) down and record a bunch of her old timey stuff. One little story she told about during the Depression was about my father hauling down $15 a week at a forge he worked in about 1937. My mother was a penny pincher that was in charge of the family finances. She said she had it figured out to the penny, and if my dad would just bring home $2 more a week they'd be living on Easy Street! He wasn't able to get those "high" type of wages until after WW2 had begun.

Thanks, Pete.

Dad was a trapper too. at one time. He said he had 50 or so skunks all skinned and on boards hanging up in the top of the grainery, and when he came back from a RARE trip to town, someone had stolen the whole works.

One time Mother stopped and picked up a 'dead' badger and put in the trunk of the car. She was so proud until Dad opened the trunk and the badger had 'revived'.

Knowing Dad's 'way with words', I'm sure it got pretty 'colorful' about then. He did however get it dispatched, skun, boarded, and sold.


Charlie

My dad came home one day with a story about WPA workers. It seems not all of them worked hard.

A rattlesnake came crawling by a WPA worker who was leaning on a shovel. The worker said to the snake "You so and so, if I had another shovel I would kill you."

my grandfather told me they used to shoot rabbits and sold those to folks in town for food. Sometimes he'd trade rabbits for .22 shells. Grandma would ration him shells.
He drank a lot in his later years. Always had a good story for me though.

My grandpa grew cotton and my grandma raised the labor force. My dad's childhood consisted of a lot of cotton pickin' and sawmill workin'.

My grandfather was in Nebraska when the dust bowl hit and the family lost the farm. He said the ground cracked from being dry so bad that he was afraid the horses would break a leg in the crevasses.

He briefly worked on a WPA project building roads. He got a dollar a day and an extra dollar a day because he had a mule that he worked on the project. He was in his early 20's and heard through his church that there was work in NJ. He road his motorcycle to NJ. Said the motorcycle was too big for him and he fell off at every stop street. Fortunately there weren't may stop streets between Nebraska and NJ. He sent a letter home to let the family know there was work available and my great grandfather and the rest of the family followed.

When he got here he rented some farm land and worked it with a team of horses. He said that most of the farmers had a tractor. Farming with horses was a thing of the past but he didn't have the money for tractor.

He got married, built a house, bought a farm, had 5 sons, was a deacon in our church, taught me how to sharpen a saw, and took me hunting every deer season since I was 10. A few times, when I was little, he and I walked to church service through the woods instead of driving. It was an adventure and felt like 100 miles of wilderness. I now know that there are about 3 miles of woods between his farm and our church.

He passed away 18 years ago.

My parents married in 1926. It was custom for Dad to drop Mom off at the grocery store (Depression). One day she walked to the car and my father said what are those yellow things. He had never seen bananas. He asked how much did they cost? Mom replied.05. He said take them back and get your money back.
A nickel was a nickel!

My mom used to say they could only go to school one day a week with five siblings sharing one pair of shoes.

They were for sure tougher than us. When I'd come back to the house with a single shot 22 and a squirrel or rabbit, Granny told me to skin it and she'd cook it for me. I'd offer to share, she said she lived on those critters and beans all through her childhood, she wasn't eating them anymore lol. I was probably 10 or so. She was born in 1919. I've got her lantern she carried with her Dad coon hunting, and his traps and one of his guns. She's been gone 5 years, I miss her every day

Great stories. My Dad caught a skunk and his Mother skinned it for him. That's love!
Back in those days when a man earned $1 a day, a great mink would bring $30.

Sears and Roebuck used to buy furs. Just wrap them up and send them in. They would grade them and send you a fair price. Imagine that!

Different times, for sure

Maintenance Guy, would you know what part of Nebraska that was? My Dad talks about being in school during the dust bowl and they asked the teacher to light the lamps, but it didn't help any.

Thanks Chas. That is an accomplishment!

My Great Grandpa walked 5 miles to town with shoes but no socks. Got a blister, it got infection, spent 5 weeks in the hospital and died.

I do not think times are tough today and I also do not think people are tough today, bunch of pansies is what most folks are.......obviously trappers are pretty tough....

Good times = soft people.

My folks would 99 and 98 today if they were still alive. They told me stories of the hard times growing up also. That generation knows what tough is. We don't have a clue what tough times are IMO.

You mention a dug well in your post. I have a dug well on my camp’s property. It was dug in 1888 by my Great- Great Grandfather. It’s 18 feet deep, stone lined. Maybe 3 1/2 feet in diameter. Today there’s a cement pad poured on top, with a steel trap door. The water level stays about 6-7 feet below the surface of the ground. Makes a lot of water. Can’t imagine how hard it must have been to dig that hole by hand.

I store all my potatoes and flower bulbs in sacks in the well every fall. I suspend them in sacks a few feet above the water surface. The humidity is just right, it’s cool, but nothing will ever freeze. I pull sacks of taters out the next June and the are still sprout free.

That's novel!

North Loup

Father and brothers broke from the family bonds and dispersed throughout the local farming communities during the thirties,.."common" to work on neighboring farms.
What it is not spoken of so much is the resilience of those that perservierenced and worked through those turbulent times and afforded their offspring the understanding and determination to carry on and in essence further,..and get this,..a determination to succeed!

I have letters from my grandfather to his brother that talked about the government buying the cows. And agent came over to over see the operation after the pit was dug to make sure that all the cattle where shot and buried properly. My grandfather loved his cows and took extremely good care of them and you can feel the heartfelt sorrow in his words when you read the letter. I can't imagine having to do something like.

Compare the stories above to a reality we witness today,..I think the disconnect resides in the fact that main stream media chooses to dismiss the former
and accent the present .

My grandpa was a farmer. He used teams of mules instead of horses, he said mules would out work them easily. When I asked about the good old days, he always said there wasn't a d&$# thing good about it. People worked themselves into an early grave. My other grandpa left South Dakota for Washington state to work in the apple orchards picking apples.: He kept just enough money to live on and sent the rest home. Most people don't realize how easy they it.

One of my grandfathers started to homestead a piece in Pueblo CO after WW I, said they had to haul water 6 miles with a team and a water wagon. Never had the money for a well to be drilled, and gave up on that, started to work for some big ranch out in Pueblo, spent a bit of time building wing dams for the guy, I assume to divert water for irrigation. He came back to WI mid 1920's and worked building hammer mills he designed till he lost that in the depression. I got my first couple traps from him and have one on the wall right now. He trapped before WW I in northern WI by Butternut, $40 wolf bounty and $6 for bobcats, said he trapped two bears before that was made illegal, people were setting in trails, poaching deer I think he said. He died in 1966, wish I had him longer, he put my first muskrat up for me, planed a roof ceder shingle into a stretcher.

People in North America today have it ridiculously good these days and take it all for granted. People should be thanking their lucky stars everyday instead of seeing themselves as the victims of all victims. A little off topic because it's not a comparison to years gone by but a military acquaintance suffering serious PTSD who served in Ruanda and witnessed horrible atrocities used to say, "people complain here about heavy traffic or a day of bad weather. Complain to me when your family members severed heads are mounted on stakes in front of your house."

Called the greatest generation for a reason....

I've heard it said there was a time a logger in the bush would quit and leave the camp to follow a set of fisher tracks. A fisher would pay more then the whole winters work in a lumber camp.

My Dads Dad hunted mountain lions in Colorado for the bounty on them. They did pretty good. Had cattle and sheep also. Raised summer wheat.

My moms Dad died when my Mom was only 12. They were just getting by before he died. My Mom talks about going with Gramma to buy chicken feed. The bags were cloth and her and my Aunts picked out the bags they wanted to make clothes out of. Said they got by. Said she went to school with kids who often had a biscuit for lunch. Biscuit had lard on it and if they were lucky they had a little sugar to sprinkle on the lard.

My Dads mom talked about feeding people as best she could. They would jump off freight trains and come to the house wanting to work for a meal.

It dont sound good. I hope it never happens again.

Most people can't comprehend times before they were born. It's just a mildly interesting movie to them.i don't anyone my generation or after could even fathom saving and straightening nails.

The stories I remember are about the guys that loaded train cars full of grain.... with shovels. Looking at Grandpa's hands when I was little it seemed like he could not straighten his fingers all the way out unless he flattened them against the table top. He said something about they grew that way wrapped around a shovel handle loading wheat.

Our lives are tough in a different way because we have to endure societal dealings my grandpa would have pounded his fist on the table about.

My grand father died at 92 and his father died in a mine cave in at 72. His father lived to be 102. My grand mother said when the mine siren went off, people went into their back yards where the RR tracks ran and prayed the flat car did not stop at your house. People has no money and the funeral was at the house. Neighbor brought food and passed the hat for the burial costs. Family and friends dug the grave which was part of the grieving process.

I spent summers haying in Nebraska for my grandparents. They were the most frugal people ever, Grandma traded eggs for groceries at the local stores. We rethreaded many a bolt to get the size we needed to keep the haying equipment running from all the old cans of nuts and bolts in the shop. Huge garden that she canned out of all summer. And the coolest old under ground root cellar. Those were simple times.

These stories are all great and depict people who made America great. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these heroes anymore; too many spoiled brats.

My Great Gramps was born in 1898, his fondest Christmas as a kid he received a pair of wool socks and 2 oranges. His eyes lit up describing how juicy those oranges were.

Some of my fondest memories were deer camp. We'd sit around and reminisce about past year's hunts. Most of the hunters over the years are gone now. But, their legacies and memories live on as we continue to share their stories as they would have told them.

My first trade out of high school i was a bricklayer, i heard from the old timers during the depression if there was a job going on at all laying brick all the masons from around would gather at the jobsite and get in line. They would start laying brick from the end and whoever got to the middle first got to stay for the next course. The other guy went to the back of the line. I wish i could remember what they said it paid but i can’t.

Straightened many a nail in my youth. I was probably 5 or 6 before I knew you could buy new nails. My father grew up in East Central Kansas and had great stories about ration coupons and other wartime memories. His family also farmed with horses.

My Mom also talked about getting oranges for Christmas and what a treat she considered it.

Talking about being frugal when I was little I would go to grandma and grandpas for a week in the summer. One day I peeked in the pot that was cooking on the stove, it was full of chicken feet. the next night we had chicken and noodles, boy it was good. It took quite a few years before I realized I had chicken feet and noodles. Grandpa ran a small country store in southern Iowa when mom was growing up. She said he would pay a nickel a rabbit, they would go in a wooden barrel on the porch of the store. A layer of rabbits then a layer of salt . When the barrel was full he would put a lid on it and ship it to Chicago. Think about doing that now days.

Most old farms around my area have fairly large stashes of rabbit box traps. Most of the old farmers ran box traps and sold the cottontails to the local buyer. I know a few people who ran hundreds of box traps for cottontails.

Oddly enough, I was born in '81 and grew up straightening nails. My grandfather didn't even live through the depression, but he still saved nails LOL

One thing I'll always remember my grandpa telling me about the depression is that they had a good well and a milk cow and they lived better than some because of those two things. What he thought was a blessing would be a curse to most these days.

My dad was born in 1901 and mom in 1908. Dad was 28 when they married, and both lived till in the nintys. First kid, my sister was born in 32, and they never forgot the dirty thirtys. You always shut off the light when you left the room and water was a precious thing. You used and reused everything. I was the last of five, and had to wear flour sack shirts that mom sewed until about the fifth grade. We ate squirrel a lot, and rabbits and bullfrogs in the summer. We butchered every fall, and mom raised lots of chickens, both for eggs and the meat. Big garden, and all we all did was work! I remember one vacation in all those years growing up, untill Dad sold the farm and we moved closer to town. Wouldn't have wanted a life any different growing up, nothing but good memories!

I forgot to add, beside the chickens that mom kept for a cash crop, dad always milked a half dozen or so holsteins and one old obstinate Jersey cow. They run a route and picked up milk in cream cans, and that was the biggest share of their spending money. They had 67 years together, and all five kids are still going strong. In 2022, my oldest sis will be 90!

My father had a bolt box also and a scrap lumber pile. When I got older I thought those 2 things were a terrible waste of time.

Dad was born in 1909 he talked about working WPA in Poplar Bluff Mo, building cabins for some lake project. Also about getting a coupon book for tires and such and trading with others.
He always said there was always work for those that wanted to work HARD.
Wish I had listened more to the stories when I was a young man.

Hey now! We have a dozen bolt containers and a scrap lumber pile!

LOL. I said I thought they were a terrible waste of time, back then. Not so sure now.

My Dad was born in 1926, somewhere in the middle of a pack of 11 kids on a pee poor
hillside farm in Wisconsin. He only finished 6th grade and went to working on the farm,
and on his birthday on March 18th, 1944 got an all expense paid ticket to Fort Hood Texas and then an
interesting tour of Europe. When he was done killing Germans he came back to Wisconsin and became
a master carpenter and ran his own business. Stopped to see him yesterday afternoon and he had just
finished digging out a stump and hauling it down to his lower pond. Asked me if I could come by in the winter
when there was ice and help get it out to sink for a fish crib.
My old man is tough.

Zim

Saving nails and old lumber I thought I was the only one did that stuff. .

My Grandfather was born in 1903, near Snow Shoe, Pa. He was the second oldest of 18 children. Imagine raising 18 kids with no electricity, running water, with only a wood cook stove and pot belly coal burner for heat. He went into the mines with his dad at the age of 12, handloading in a 42” coal seam. Fall and winter months were spent in the mines, spring and summer time ,he worked the logging camps along the West Branch of the Susquehanna, cutting timber with crosscut saws and axes. They had a narrow gauge railroad with a steam Climax engine to get the timber to the river. Mining was tough, but he said the logging was more dangerous.

I spent a lot of time with him as a kid in the 60s and he was full of stories. One I recall the most was a mining story about a misfired shot back in the 1930s. He and his buddy were the last ones to leave the mine one day, wanting to shoot down coal so they could shovel it out the next morning. They pushed an empty mine car up the tracks to the face, and had undercut a scarf at the face with picks and then drilled their shot holes with a breast auger. ( a big hand drill brace with a scroll auger....one man rotated the auger while your buddy pushed your shoulder blades from behind). When the holes were laid, about 4 feet deep, they were loaded with black powder and a squib was lit to ignite the powder. This particular shot misfired, which wasn’t common, but not unheard of. When a shot misfired , you waited a couple minutes, and one of the two miners in a working place would go and dig out the stemming in the hole and redo the shot. When my grandfather’s buddy started to clean out the shot hole, it went off. His buddy was badly injured, and my grandfather loaded him into the mine car and pushed him a mile out of the mine. Alone outside, he had to run a mile and a half to get to a telephone to call for help. His buddy survived, but lost a leg and had coal imbedded in him all though his body. I met the man back in the 70s, before he died.

When I was a kid, Pap always commented on that I would make a great coal miner, being that I could work on my knees for hours at a time. I never dreamed I would spend 37 years working the same 42” seams he did.

Love these old stories! Great read especially in this time of listening to a bunch spoiled punks complaining about how unfair life is in the city.

X2

I'm 55 years old , my dad was borne in 1919 , my dad didn't talk much about when he grew up or when he served in the war . But my mom told me the stories about him , he had it pretty ruff , his mother made hard tack biscuits and had him and his brothers and sisters eat them ,then they drunk a cup of water to make them swell in their stomach. There's a lot more stories I could tell , like about the food cache people would dig after the fall harvest of root vegetables and cabbage. It was a different time , people had morals and helped each other. My dad did tell me about eating hawk , robin's and such , he said you either did it or starved. I heard my mom say , if you didn't put up food and stuff for winter you went hungry or starved , they didn't have welfare , we ought to have that now , you either worked or starve.

If we brought back these old ways, the woke crowd would just burn the cellars and steal the few things people had. We would need to bring back public execution.

Many have stated they had to go back to grand parents to find hard times and tough conditions. Being born in 1947 and due to a lot of family dysfunction our family lived much like the 30s depression and we made it through. I saw land being broke with a breaking plow and team and saw the day the hitch was changed to be pulled by a tractor. We really did not think that much about it because during the 50s many remembered the strict rationing for 4-6 years of the war and sacrifice was considered quite the norm. It is absolutely amazing and now later in life I find reassuring to know how well one can enjoy life with little to no money. I also believe in the statement that hard times don't build character, hard times reveals character.

Bryce

Great thread!

My grandfather was born in 1902, his brother Bill in 1900. When Gramp was 12 and Bill was 14 they walked 20 miles to Andover (NJ) each Sunday afternoon and worked until Saturday night for the railroad throwing big rocks off of rail cars to make a raised rail bed almost 75 feet high. They were paid 25 cents a day. Slept in barns along the rail bed that the railroad rented from farmers for that purpose. Walked home Saturday night to be with family on Sunday. They did this for almost 2 years. Gramp told the story of 3 men being crushed when rocks rolled off of a rail car as it backed into place for them to toss rocks off. 2 were dead for sure but Gramp said one guy was barely breathing. The foreman had the rock tossing crew just bury them in the rocks and keep going. After that Gramp and brother Bill finished the week but never went back.

This ain't old, but in 1974 they were building the nuclear power plant at Brownville NE (where BuckNE works) I remember farmers going to work there and driving 50 miles one way every day to make $5 an hour. Union wages! One guy said he grabbed an armload of 2x4's and took off with them. Another guy told him to drop them! You only carry one at a time......... Now McD's starts at 10.50/hr

When my Dad was a kid, he would crawl up in the top of the barn and get baby pigeons out of the nest. His Mom would make squab pie out of them. Beats hungry!