Q: I guess I was born in 1918 and I was about 10 when the Depression really started or began. I guess the Depression started when the stock market crashed in 1929.  And of course, with the crash, many people lost jobs and there was no work.  Many people who were even professionals at the time walked the streets because they could find no source of real employment. And of course for a city, times were quite different.  There were no radios around and many families did not have radios.  For preserving the food, there used to be what we called ice boxes, where, there would be theses boxes, insulated boxes with compartments in which people could store stuff: butter, milk.  And it was kept cold by ice.  Commercial.  People bought ice commercially: buy a small piece about 10 cents or a nickel. A quarter could buy twenty five pounds, ten pounds, something like that. And you lived by an ice man. It was a truck in our area.  And of course, you took the after from the melted ice…it was collected in an empty container and it was a chore of the youngsters to make sure it was emptied because if it weren’t emptied the whole floor the whole floor became a lake.  Prices for common things.  Bread was about five or ten cents a loaf; milk, ten-fifteen cents a bottle; pies, you paid maybe $2 and maybe fifteen, twenty cents. And of course I came from a town in the South—Tampa.  It was a cigar-making town.  The cigar-making industry…but the cigar-making industry sort of faded and moved elsewhere.  As a boy, there’s nothing spectacular about really except the stuff I did.  Kids during those days.  The area where I lived was not urban, not fully urbanized. It was more like semi-rural, I guess you would call it.  There were big stores and stuff like that, but there were plenty of fields and the youngsters were curious; you know, and they were cross the fields, and chase were birds and we’d stir up the ant nests to see what kind they were.  We had big insects. We had huge grasshoppers.  They were about 6 inches.  We’d catch them.  And dragon flies—we called them “mosquito hawks” because they do eat mosquitoes.  We could catch them—you were good if you could catch them because they were pretty fast. And then we’d tie a string to the tail and you and a dragonfly to fly and catch them.  We’d catch butterflies and squeeze ‘em between books to make pictures for our moms. And of course we had the usual things that all the kids would fight with.  Or play games with rubber guns. You take an old inner tube, at that time, an inner tube is something that the tubeless tires now don’t have…they were a special rubber.  You’d get an inner tube and cut it across the grain so that you came out with big rubber bands and get a clothespin and with an imagination you came up with a rifle or a gun to shoot each other with. That was one thing we did.  The other thing, there were enough of branches around and trees around to climb on them orange trees, grapefruit trees. And other fruit trees. So one never really went hungry if you wanted to because you could always run across the field and pick up oranges, grapefruits, guavas….guavas…do you don’t know what a guava is…guavas, mangoes, fruit of that sort.  So we’d do that and nobody cared much about it.  But the governor, the people couldn’t find work, I just lazed away most of my time.  At that time I went to the library. And I had no concern about work.  I didn’t really know about working very much. There were people coming by and want you to, they sold handbills for twenty-five cents a day and some people from the country had eggs and they would want somebody to sell.  So if you wanted to hang onto a car and go door-to-door all day, you could do that. And some did that.  I did it once or twice.  Umm, what else.  Oh, umm… people…the governor at that time.  I guess the president at the time was President Roosevelt and he of course encouraged the people to not be so concerned with the conditions.  So he started programs like the CCC: people could join…and on the countryside they did quite a bit of--- cleared trails, setting up work camps, making parks you perhaps enjoy now.  In many areas you go there.  They built recreation areas which we now enjoy.
Q: Do you know anybody in them that helped out building them?
A:  Not really.  No, ‘cause I was a youngster and I was working in a restaurant washing dishes at that time, when I quit that job…and thought I was going to school.   But Mama wouldn’t let me go so I went to the CCC to look for a job. But I never worked for it because after that I started working in an icehouse.  Where--that was where they would bring block ice and the drivers needed blocks of ice to deliver to their customers and if people came in to buy small chunks of ice, I’d would cut it and sell it to ‘em. People who wanted fish—or wanted to go out fishing, or, just go out for recreational purposes.  Some people brought in things like, there was one guy I remember who brought in frog legs. He’d come in with like a barrel full of frogs, and he needed ice to keep them so I’d do that.  And there were people who would bring fruit, like papayas for example, because they were very perishable.  Some people would bring them and leave them so they would be refrigerated in that time.  The other programs that went on were the government set up programs whereby youth could--- and furnished instruments for and paid teachers to teach for a nominal sum so this kept youth off the street because the youth could go to these programs and join the group and learn to play an instrument.
Q:  And this was with the WPA, the Federal Music Project?
A:  Yes, it was that program yes.  And um, there were other programs in which arts were promoted and um, um, those were really life-saving, and of course they developed.  There was food, excess food that they packaged for the excess to be donated or given away and um, that was mostly, ah, my experience during the Depression because I was in school, iiii guess I was about twelve when it started and about eighteen or twenty by the time WWII came.  So I guess my experience was that of a typical youth.  Many of the um um um Tampa cause we were quite adventurous.  Many people um youth got restless during the teenage, you know, uh there was no work so many people would, youngsters, would um get hop trucks that were carrying produce from the south north to various places.  Or sometimes some people worked and I guess even after the Depression, worked in the um um farms.  And they did that, but I do know that people did that.  People would ride the rails coming north or to other places where the farm opportunities might be better.  Ah, I know my friend and I we thought we would um, go down and join the Navy.  So we went down to join the Navy…. of course they told us there was no… nothing open, nothing during that time.  So we didn’t join the Navy and came back.  We felt sort of hemmed in a lot.  My friend, he caught a truck and went on up to ummm…ummm …Tuskegee. No.  I wanted to go to Tuskegee.  He wanted to go to another.  I can’t think of the name. Film college.  So he went there; he got into school and he worked and later he, he umm, got a doctorate finally from Indiana U. I umm, didn’t leave at that time because as I said I wanted to go to Tuskegee… because of the doctor who was there the guy who um developed so much for potatoes. Doctor….but anyway, he um he developed quite a bit from peanuts and potatoes and things like that and I wanted to study with him because he was a great guy.  But um, my mom got sick as I said and I didn’t make that so then that’s when I went to work for the icehouse and I worked there for um until I was about nineteen I guess.  I worked there two or three years after finishing high school.  I didn’t have enough money to go to school anymore and (inaudible phrase).  So um, I um worked there at the icehouse and then when I was off I worked at the veterinary hospital next door and that was interesting because I could get into (Laughing) see how the doctor worked with dogs and worked with them myself some and the doctor who worked also had a family of greyhounds.  So in the morning he paid me to go out and walk the greyhounds and feed and groom the greyhounds for races.  So I had about three jobs so I didn’t have much time off.  So that was the bulk of it I guess.  When WWII came, I of course left and went into service so I don’t know whether that gives you a sketch of …
Q:  Yeah, uh.  You said you worked.  Did anyone else in your family have a job during that time?  What did they do?
A:  My stepfather worked but no.  I had a sister who was younger than I and my mother stayed home and took care of the house.
Q:  Right.  Do you believe that the government should have gotten as involved as it did?
A:  I think the government did well, and I think the uh and I think uh the result sort of speaks for itself because today people who were in CCC camps learned skills and many of the art work that was done during the Works Progress Administration still exists today and you can search the library and find lots of art that was developed during that time that is not being done now.  People were given an opportunity to um do things that they wanted to do uh and might not have had the opportunity to do, so I think it did well.  And the camps and recreational areas which exist now are probably still difficult to keep up are still there.  So I thought it was a good program.  I thought it worked well.
Q:  Do you think the importance of it is stressed more now as opposed to then or do you think it was still considered a very important thing at the time?
A:  What?
Q:  The New Deal Programs.  Do you think that today they receive more respect than they did when they were enacted?
A:  What program?
Q:  Just any of the New Deal Programs.
A:  Uh, the programs at that time were developed had a purpose and I think they served that purpose well.   I don’t know whether the highway programs were developed or instituted during that time.  I don’t recall.  I don’t know when the highway program was developed.  But programs which significantly improved life of Americans I think were good things.  And I don’t know some of the programs then I don’t know whether they um they would or will do that.
Q:  When you look back at your life during the 1930s would you say that it was a memorable experience or would you classify it more as a “hard time” as, you know, history books do?
A:  Um, we were aware that times were tough but we were also at the low end of the barrel so to speak.  For instance, we know that shoes didn’t come easy.  I remember wearing cast off shoes and I always used to fuss about the pants and stuff I wore because sometimes they were hand-me-downs or what have you or uh and because there was one time I remember very distinctly my mom had worked very hard to get enough money to get a shirt and she sent me to the stores down to get a shirt with the money for school.  And my sister and I started out and there were stores along the way where we knew we shouldn’t have stopped where the merchandise was going to be old, and rotted, and different.  And, uh, the people over there were very persuasive—they would reach out and catch you ‘cause you looked in the window and so forth, so we looked in the window.  So, I got a shirt which got home and didn’t take Mom long to notice it was different. So she was not very happy with us that time.  And since I was older than my sister, it was my fault!
Q: Do you remember a lot of businesses going under when the stock market crashed?
A: A lot? I didn’t know much about the stock market at that time.  I guess there were many people that went. Mmhmm.
Q: Do you remember your parents ever talking about the banks? Did they trust the banks?
A: Well, yeah.  My mother had money in the bank and of course when the banks when broke, she lost the money. And she bought-- oh, I’m sorry, I said something wrong.  I said I didn’t know about stocks.  I didn’t.  But my mother had purchased some stocks and I think we still got the old certificates around somewhere now. But I do know, she—people became quite afraid of the banks…and that’s one of the things the government did do, they set up a system so that the small deposits could be protected.  But people did not trust banks because as a youngster, when I did make a little money here and there, I wouldn’t put it in the bank, I would put it in the post office.  The post office gave about two percent. And you could go to the post office and start an account at the post office. So it was true the banks were not trusted at that time.  People lost money and they lost faith in the banks.
Q: Do you remember listening to Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats?
A: Yes I do.  I always listened to them.
Q: Do you have any memorable—specific memories of them? It’s going back pretty far…
A: Well, it was always comforting.  His Fireside Chats were something that umm, you learned to listen to and hear what he said and listen.  It was encouraging.  Herbert Hoover, the president just before him, had been a different kind of person. I guess he was an engineer and he was considered smart and all that…uh, people developed trust and um…believed in Franklin D…and he came up with programs which seemed to work.  And also his wife was very involved also, so she went around and… we learned to believe in what they were doing…and how they were doing it…
Q: Would you say that Roosevelt kind of “revolutionized” the way people looked at the government? Was he still pretty much looked at the same way…how was Roosevelt regarded in terms of what he did for people?
A: Uh…Uh…personally, I looked at this at that time and that sort of very strong personality did seem to have an effect on government…much more so than now because um, there were not…there did not seem to be, for instance, umm, corporations and all did not have the strength.  There were a few big ones everybody knew…everybody knew Standard Oil and of course, trains were a mode of transportation.  Many people had cars….cars were…there were many people who had them. They were spread down the ladder, so to speak. And umm, but…today I think that back then, people thought they had more power than they do today.  I think today people think they have power; they have less. Then I think they had less but they actually did have more.
Q: Looking at Roosevelt and comparing him…do you believe, like through Fireside Chats and things, you get to know him, you got to know him to some extent: very personally.  Did you still see him more as a head figure on a pedestal.  You look at presidents today: Clinton as being a normal person….we don’t revere him in the way…we see them as these “beings” who are so high above us.  Do you think Roosevelt was seen more as more of human being or was he still kind of on that pedestal?
A: On a pedestal. (Laughing) I would say that umm…people looked up to him for his strength, character, and his foresight.  But I don’t think that they worshipped him or anything like that.  And today I think that people don’t seem to have the same faith in the government and the power of the government as they did then.
Q: Just as a different question: did you know that Roosevelt had polio? When did you find out that he actually had that?
A: Well, I guess we knew that pretty soon after because he always had his Fireside chats and he usually sat in a chair and we realized that he was…that he did have polio.
Q: Did you ever do roller—derbies, or soap box derbies?
A: No.  What we did…we didn’t do that…what we would do, we had roller-skates, and then you took a roller-skate and you separate the wheels and make a scooter out of it.  Pull front wheels, back wheels….make it bigger, so much like the scooters you have now…same idea…but ours were better! (Laugh)
Q: Did you ever go to the movies? Was there a movie theater in the area?
A: Yeah.  I suppose the first movie I remember was “Wallace Berry and the Kid” way back in…I guess was shortly after ’29 when my mother took me to it.  The screen was wavy and green-colored and they had captions... I remember that…and umm, after that we ran into “King Kong,” first picture “King Kong flying down to Rio” and then the cowboy pictures.  Cowboys were usually for the boys: Tom Mix, and Jean Audrey I think…no…maybe Jean Audrey was later.  But Tom Mix was one…and uh, Tank Steel I think was another…and uh, as a kid we used to read a lot…we’d go to the…for a nickel you could get outstanding stories, rehashed…you could go to the places and the guy would let you wander around a whole lot.  You could exchange yours for some others.   So outstanding stories were forecast as much as things we have today. Actually many of them did just that. And pretty accurately too.  I think very frequently about how we are inundated with sales…everything sales…rocker sales all day long.  I couldn’t see how that would happen…
Q: Did you have a radio?
A: Yeah.  Not until I guess I was about 36. 36? Yeah, before that we didn’t have a radio at home.  And when I, my first job was at a saloon, icing beer.  Beer had just come back into being there.  Prohibition was in existence before then.  And out of that you got a lot of gangsters…Al Capone…ummm..Jean Cagney too, I believe…but anyway.  Yeah the first radio.  I got a little tube set…somebody had thrown out I supposed…and I pushed it together with the tubes and stuff and I’d listen to the radio and stuff…and the fights…and the programs, the music was great…and later on I got to play around with ‘em, trying to putting them together.  I wanted to make a crystal set.  I don’t remember whether I ever did or not. But I remember experimenting and wanting to…as a matter of fact…many people were experimenting with radios at that time…Ham…and then the little complex where I worked there was a little radio shop…so I used to hang around there and see what was going on there.  But that was…
Q: Do you remember any programs on the radio, specifically, that you enjoyed?
A: Oh, I know we used to hate the classical music.  It would drone on and on and on and on….and I used to… “The Shadow”--- “The Shadow Knows.” Yeah. And that fitted in with the many books you would read…you would read Doc Savage…was a popular magazine character then…the Odyssey was one of the books talked about the adventures of young boys…you wanna read about all the adventures, places, about all the seven seas, and about the wild wild west…what was going on… and I guess we read a lot of books on Pedro and Sam, did you read Lassie? And there were a couple of other dog books.  But those were always good… and of course I guess about that time I don’t remember.. there was fairytale time…you would read fairytales.  Ummm….I guess that isn’t very spectacular, but that’s about…pretty much where it went….When I was a teenager, I enjoyed going to the movies…that’s about…and listening to the radio…to some…umm…music. Yeah.  Music was good. It was good to listen to the Bandstand: at night…
Q: Did you like swing music? Big Band?
A: Yeah. Uhh, at that time the Big Bands were just coming in.  Baby Goodmoon, or Cab Callaway, um…Jay (inaudible word), and we had annually, we had the Cauliflower Fair, which still goes on now…I think about February. And all the school kids got out a day to go in…fairs were supposed to be off bound, and then they weren’t…but they had tent shows and rides.  And at first, they used to have a lot of farm displays, and then I think they sort of faded…and then they’d have the Gaspirilla Parade.  Tampa was supposed to have been invaded by a pirate: Gaspirilla…and he was supposed to…actually the pirates would come in…and they would take over the town!
Q: Like a little reenactment?
A: Well sure! And it still goes on now! It’s a festival now.  They come in and they take over the town.  They’re dressed in costumes and all…they sail the boat right up the river, dock, and then they get up and march over town doing whatever they want.  And they throw candy to the kids, and pick up the kids and put ‘em on the floats…they have a number of floats today…and then they have a big dance that night.  So that’s the Gaspirilla Festival. And they still do that now.
And then the alligators.  I’ll tell you an alligator story…they would wander around the streets and things like that. But there are alligators, and birds, rabbits, bobwhites, in the fields….climb trees, chinaberry trees…do you know what a chinaberry tree is?
Q: I don’t know…maybe I’ve seen them…
A: They have little green berries.  And boys, we’d make pop guns… you take a (inaudible word), that’s a plant…its hollow and it has a pithy center…but a hard rim.  So we’d cut it about this size (indicating), the longer the better, where you could get a straight hole through it.  And then you built a ramrod.  You feathered the tip with a rod.  You had to make it airtight.  You’d take a berry.  It’s pulpy, but it has a hard seed.  So you’d put the berry, push it in and push it down with the rod so far.  The rod does not go all the way through. You have a pocket, an air pocket.  So then you take another, and you have a spool on your hand, so you don’t hurt your hand…and you take the 2nd and push it down and the mark and the pulp makes it airtight. So you get it down so far and you hit it…and it comes out with a loud pop.  It can sting you across the room.  Those were pop shooters.  We used to do that.  And then another thing. Palmettos were around a great deal. Palmettos have a fan shape and so you usually had a stem…the stem had been feathered and its real ply because its… real ply…but its still stiff so if you cut it off short, put a little notch in it, and cut the fan around…you can shoot it like an arrow.   So we used to come up with a lot of things.
Q: That’s pretty creative!
A: Yeah.  We used to do that.  And teachers learned…
Q: Learned how to detect, huh?
A: Well, in those days, if you were late, the teacher would get a palmetto strip from the corner.  It’s thin and very ply and very painful! And she’d have you hold out your hand, and she’d whack you on your hand a couple of times.  And boy-- it wouldn’t leave a mark or anything, but..(laughing) it left a sting. So I used to get those now and then. But umm…as for inventions, say telephones…we didn’t have a telephone…we didn’t even think of telephones…we knew of them cause we saw them in the movies…but many of the people didn’t have many of the things you have now, ‘cause when…well they were kind of expensive but we had a car.  My stepfather was always in trouble because we had a cars.  And if you had a car you didn’t need food! So that was, ummm…true of the times.  I’m trying to think now… we had people…people went fishing.  We’d go fishing. And crabbing.  We’d catch crabs.  And uh, we didn’t go to the beach very much.  I guess I didn’t travel twenty miles out of town until after I was twenty.  And you walked to school or took street cars. You don’t have street cars anymore.  But I remember when those street cars rolled down the street…and on rails of course.  And some, at first, used to board…they were kind of open.  And then they closed and put a trolley on the street and boys, and I don’t know about girls, would run along, and if you didn’t like the trolleys, you’d pull the trolley off and then on of the cart. And then they’d have to go back in the back…it had a roller on the end so you’d lift it up and pull it down.  So to hold it on the wire is to go.  And to try and ride was usually a nickel, and we didn’t have a nickel, so we had to walk to school.  The bad guys would go and hop on the back and ride anyways.
Q: Do you think that the Depression brought your family closer together?
A: The Depression brought many people closer together because when people are in dire need, they tend to lean on people more.  So yes I think the Depression brought a lot of people closer together.  And people shared.  People shared more.  In the neighborhood, you knew everybody in the neighborhood and everybody didn’t mind sharing.
Q: Is there anything else you can think of that might be interesting for us?
A: No.  We  played stick-ball in the street.  We had a local team, I think that played baseball once.  It’s gotten so “professionalized” that there aren’t that many local…
Q: Recreational Teams?
A: Yeah, recreational teams to bind the people together.  To bind the neighborhood together with the team.  And that’s most of it. So I’m sorry I didn’t think of anything exciting.
Q: No! That was great! Thank you so much!

** Note: Underlined words indicate that the spelling or exact word was difficult to comprehend and may be incorrect.

A: It was not that we were ever involved in [the Depression] because my dad was in the service and he always got his check every single month so we had money.  We were able to go out and buy things.  But I remember the people around us, people who lost their homes, houses that were going, almost a whole block—sixteen hundred dollars for a big house.  They did not have the money to pay the mortgage; they barely had money to put food on the table. On the street corners, particularly in Manhattan, there were men who were bankers and they’d be selling apples.  That was their only income.

Q: Did you actually see people selling apples?

A:  (nodding) They were selling apples on the corner.  It brought them a little bit of money to feed their family because they had lost their money on the stock market when that fell in ’29.  So then I can remember people coming to our back door and begging for a half a sandwich and they would do anything—they would paint the house, they would shovel snow, they would dig in the garden, anything you wanted them to do just to have something to eat because they were just so hungry.  If you went to the store, a pound of boiled ham that tasted like boiled ham was twenty-five cents a pound.  We went to the movies for ten cents and you saw cartoons, the news, the coming attractions, and two pictures.  That was all for ten cents.  And one day we got a free gift.

Q:  Did you have any specific movies that you remember?

A: I was only about seven or eight, so you don’t remember movies.  I remember Shirley Temple—she was the rage.  I wouldn’t say anything more than that that stood out.  I can remember the man coming through the street with a truck and you got a big—what they called a “sleeve” of bananas for twenty five cents.  You barely couldn’t even eat all the bananas! There were no refrigerators; you bought ice from the ice man for ten cents for a big chunk.  That kept you for three or four days.

A: Do you remember when the stock market first crashed?

A:  To me it didn’t mean anything because I was too young. But that was in ’29 or ’30.

Q: Do you remember if your parents mentioned anything about trusting the banks after that?

A:  When the banks closed, I remember my father being almost irate—what he going to do, how was he going to get money….but then Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and then the banks opened up again and people could get their money—but they were on line from, oh, before dawn lining up to get their money. I remember that the man around the corner who couldn’t pay for all the things that were going on between his work, his family and everything else, and he went out and he hung himself a couple blocks down in the woods.  It was just too much for him to take.  I remember Roosevelt creating what they called the WPA, which was getting people to work for nominal pay.

Q: Did you know anybody who was involved in that?

A:  Yes, there was one family in particular I knew that the father went out and he was working.  I don’t remember exactly what he did, but I know he was working for the WPA to feed his family because they had quite a few children.

Q: Do you remember your parents talking at all about their impressions WPA or about government during that time?

A: My father—he was the “Lord and Master” of the house.  My memories of my mother—she was always sick—almost in bed all the time, and I was the one that had to take charge of the other two children.  So there wasn’t too much discourse between them. My father was a frugal person; he doled the money out but boy, he held onto it like glue

Q: Do you remember who he voted for in the elections?

A: I wouldn’t know who he voted for.  I would assume, probably—everybody was so disgusted with Hoover—that most [people] probably voted for Roosevelt. I think the man was blamed for more than he really was responsible for, but people turned against him completely.

Q: Do you think that Roosevelt was a better choice when he was elected?

A: Well I suppose he was because as soon as he was in, he started things going and I think it was by ’35 or ’36 that the United States turned around and it looked like we really weren’t going to lose everything that we had.  He did an awful lot for the country.

Q: Did you ever listen to his Fireside Chats?

A: Sure.  We had to.   You don’t know my father! You didn’t watch cartoons or anything in those days.  When he came on, we sat with our hands folded and we didn’t move for one hour while we listened to him.  Don’t ask me why. We weren’t going to remember it all!  He made us do it.

Q: So did a lot of families where you lived listen to the Roosevelt chats?

A: I suppose so, because it was a fairly built-up neighborhood just where we were.  They were all working people and I remember so many of my friends—their fathers losing their jobs…and trying to find other work and there really wasn’t that much work around except for the people who went off with the WPA and worked for them, and the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps—they went out and they worked on dams and reservoirs and clearing the land and the woods and everything else.  And that’s about all.

Q: Do you think that the government programs were important to be enacted?

A: Oh boy, they sure were!  They really brought the country around.  They put the people back to work and put money in their pockets so they could provide for their families.  It was important what [Roosevelt] did.

Q:  So would you say the praise he received for that was justified?

A:  I would say so.  After a while, though, people began to feel he was getting too powerful.  He was up for a third term and people were totally against that.  Nobody ever had a third term in America so far so people felt he was getting like a dictator and a lot of people turned against him. But in the beginning, he really did a lot of good.

Q: Do you think the people felt more personally connected to him? We’ve read a lot about people writing letters to Roosevelt and his wife.  Did you know any body who wrote letters to them?

A: No.  See, I was too young for that. That would have all gone over my head; I wouldn’t have paid any attention.  If I had been a teenager, maybe I would’ve then, but I was only nine or ten.  So that’s why I say I couldn’t help you out too much because my parents were not totally involved Depression-wise.  We did have money, we did have food on our table.  Unlike some families that, I guess they were living on bread.  You could get a loaf of bread for five cents—a big loaf of bread.  And as I said, meat was really cheap if you could obtain it—if you had the money for it—and people were losing their houses as I said because they didn’t have the money for the mortgages.  That was the sad part, I guess, because many of my friends moved away because they couldn’t afford to live where we were.

Q: On a different note, what did you do in your spare times as far as games, etc.?

A: Well we played games that you people have probably never heard of before.   I think the only thing people play today…do you still play tag?

Q: Yes we do!

A: Well we had a game called “Red Light”—I bet you’ve never heard of that.

Q: “Red Light, Green Light?”

A: “Red Light, Green Light?” Yeah? You did? Oh my goodness.  And Potsie—you know, where you draw the boxes on the sidewalk?

Q: Which one was that?

A: Well, you started with 10 up on the top and then you had 8 and 9 and 7 and 5 and 6 and so on down to 1 and 2.

Q: Like Hopscotch?

A: Hopscotch is another word for it.  We called it Potsie.  In fact, when I was teaching school, at recess time when the children didn’t know what to do with themselves, I drew them a Potsie card on the playground around the schoolyard and I taught them how to play and they thought it was great.  We used to jump rope—that was a great thing thing—hide-and-seek…and then there was one thing you wouldn’t dare say today: “Nigger in the Cornfield.”

Q:  How did you play that?

A: You had to hide and…I don’t remember too much of that, but for some reason that popped in my head. Giant Steps—did I say that? Somebody was it and you all lined up behind them and said: “May I take a step?” and they’d say “You may take one giant step” or “one baby step” or “two giant steps” or whatever it was that popped into their heads. Now whoever got up to them and touched them first and ran back was free.

Q: Did you ever do soap-box derbies? Do you remember hearing about those?

A: No.

Q: Were you into comic books?

A: We played a lot of paper dolls.  As I said with my dad, I mean, he was frugal, and he didn’t hand money out par se, so I used to use a Sear’s catalog.  I cut the dolls out of that and put them on heavy paper and they were my paper dolls and I used to make clothes for them.  We would cut out the pictures from the catalog and make a house out of a notebook. We didn’t have the things that children have today.

Q: Do you think your childhood would have been a lot different if it hadn’t been for the crash?

A: Probably.

Q: But would you still say you had a happy childhood?

A: Well, I don’t remember my childhood as being that happy because my dad was so strict. We couldn’t do things that other children did.  I had a brother that was the youngest in the family and he got away with murder because he was an only boy—and we used to have to cover up for him all the time so there wasn’t a lot of dissension in the house. It wasn’t the happiest of childhoods…when I see what my grandchildren have today and all…even what my own children had..it’s a whole lot different…when I was a little bit older, and the Depression was really over by that time when I was going to high school, he doled a nickel out, which was what the subway cost to go to high school.  He would give me ten cents. Five cents to go and five cents to come home—but I still had a mile to walk from where the subway let me off.  He never thought of that.

Q: Where did you go to high school?

A: It was a Catholic high school for the dioceses of Brooklyn. It was quite a ways away from where we lived.  You had to take the bus or the subway to get there.

Q: Can you give us a summary of a normal day?

A: In the day of the Depression? I guess my father did all the cooking.  I used to have to do the cleaning up and washing all the dishes and watching out for my brother and sister.  You had to ask permission: “May I go out for a little while?” You didn’t dare sneak out.  You got permission to go out.  It was pretty rough—I’ll tell you that. My mother wasn’t there to help.

Q: She was always sick? She was in bed?

A:  Most of the time I remember the door being closed and she was in the bedroom.  And yet I’ll tell you something—she lived to be 98! Maybe it was the good care she had. (chuckle) She didn’t have to go through half the things that other people went through.

Q:  So who did the cooking in your house?

A:  My dad did it.  I remember he loved salt and he loved grease and everything was too salty and too greasy; he used to pour fat over everything!  I won’t eat spinach today because he never washed the spinach and you got the little sand in your teeth when you ate it.  I’ve never been a spinach eater.  You sat there and if it was ice cold, you ate it.   You didn’t get up from the table until you had finished everything on your plate.

Q:  Do you think your opinions have changed over time? You’re looking at this from a sixty year perspective.  Do you think you’ve changed from when you were actually living it?

A: Oh I sure have! Things have come a long way. I’ll tell you—I think it taught us a lot.  As we grew up, we knew the value of money and the value of a nickel or a dime—and if you wanted something you saved up for it; you didn’t go out and buy it because they’re weren’t credit cards.  You had to have the money to buy it first. If you wanted something very badly, you put your mind down to saving up for it.

Q: Do you think it brought your family any closer together?

A: I think it did.  Families were very close together during those days. In fact, even as children grew up, if they got married, they lived within three or four blocks of where their parents lived.  So families stayed in like a nucleus. Today, young people are off to the ends of the earth! I would say it did.  It kept families very much together.  One looked out for the other.  If the husband wasn’t working, the wife did the best she could to keep the family together and feed the children and what have you.

Q:  And where was your father employed again?

A:  He was in the army.

Q: Did he travel a lot?

A: No, by that time he didn’t.  My father was about 25 years older than my mother.  It was a big age difference there.  He was pretty much settled by the time he got married.

Q: Do you know how long they’d been married when the stock market crashed?

A:  Maybe three years. About that.

Q: So they were pretty well established by then?

A: Well wait.  It was more then that because—no, about 12 years.  They were married in 1920. The Depression started in ’29 and ’32 was the worst of it. They were married quite a while.

Q: Do you remember having to sacrifice anything in particular that you had in the twenties that you couldn’t when the stock market crashed?

A:  No, I don’t think so.  I don’t remember having toys like that—like the children have today.  I did have a doll carriage—I knew that—but I never had a bike in my life.  Today children have three and four of them before they get to high school. Whatever money my father got—it wasn’t a lot because it was a government pension…so..he never really made that much.

Q: You had a brother and a sister?

A: Yes.

Q: They were both younger than you?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you ever have to help take care of them?

A: Oh sure! With my mom being sick.  My brother was the youngest.

Q: How old were they?

A: At the time of Depression, my brother was about seven and my sister was probably about nine.  I was about eleven.

Q: Roosevelt was one of the nominations for Time Magazine’s person of the century.  Would you agree with that?  Would you say that that’s accurate? What do you think about what he did?

A: I would say so.

Q: So you would say that that kind of government involvement was absolutely necessary to help the people?

A: I would almost say so.  At that time, women were not in the forefront.  And when Frances Perkins became the first woman to be the Secretary of Labor, the first woman that ever held a Cabinet post, everyone said “How could she do it? She’s a woman!  How could she do it? She doesn’t know enough about it!” She made a good one. And then of course, Roosevelt’s wife, she was very outspoken. She put women in the forefront at that time.

Q: Do you remember a lot of girls idolizing Eleanor Roosevelt?

A: No.  I think in more cases people didn’t like her for some reason—maybe because of how she spoke out and it almost looked like she was the president…and he was…

Q: So that was considered very unconventional?

A: That’s right.  He took orders from her, they seemed to think.  And of course the way he kept the fact that he was crippled—that he could not walk—nobody knew that at all.  That came out afterwards.  Whenever they took a picture of him he was always sitting in front of a desk or a table so you didn’t see him from his hips down.  You didn’t know he was actually sitting in a wheelchair.  And people were so surprised when they found out about it, they couldn’t believe it. I think it was before he even ran for president that he contracted polio on summer vacation down in Georgia.  It certainly wasn’t held against him—no reason why it should be.

Q: A lot of times we have a tendency to look at presidents as being very high above us.  We almost don’t think of them as people.  Do you think that that was true of Roosevelt or do you think they saw him on a more personal level?

A:  In those days, I would say its only in the last ten years that people look at the president as a normal person doing the same things that we do.   Before that they were always on a pedestal.  What they said was what you did.  They were on a higher plane than anybody else. Of course there wasn’t the freedom that there is today—you wouldn’t dare get together and start shouting in the square, and what they did do, when the Veterans did that—Eisenhower and McArthur were sent out to disperse them.  That was the only time I remember anybody getting together and shouting and yelling and screaming and all…

Q: And questioning the government?

A:  That’s right.  But they felt because they had no money that they should get their pension. But they dispersed them pretty fast.  Today it’s a matter of what’s going to occur..there’s usually somebody out there that doesn’t agree with it and we didn’t have that in those days.

Q: Do you remember people saying that Roosevelt was stepping out of line in order to get involved in people’s lives?

A: Many times.  People thought of him as a dictator telling people “YOU have to do this.” That’s the way they felt…

Q: As far as relief programs, were there particular ones you heard the most about? You mentioned WPA,  CCC.. but were there particular ones that you knew people were involved in or programs that you heard on the radio…advertisements…

A: The [WPA and the CCC] were the ones we heard about. Those were the ones that were in the paper. Those were the ones you knew that people you knew were involved in in order to put food on their table.

Q: So most people were very grateful for those kinds of programs?

A: Yes.

Q:  Did you listen to a lot of radio, aside from Fireside chats?

A: In the daytime I don’t ever remember doing that.  I’ll tell you—if you had a radio, you were better than the next person, because people didn’t even have radios in those days.  And I can remember our first one: in fact, they show it in all the magazines today...it was like a half-round about that high (indicating about a foot) and set up on the mantelpiece.  People used to come over to the house just to listen to Roosevelt’s fireside chats because they did not have a radio.

Q: You actually had people come to your house to listen to the Fireside Chats?

A: Right.  They would sit around and listen. Nobody ever had a refrigerator. That was un-thought of.  You had an icebox, or in the wintertime you put your food outside to keep it cold.  Those are things that people don’t believe today.  We didn’t have a car.  We either walked, or in those days they had trolley cars. A lot different from today.  I hope it never happens again, I’ll tell you.

Q: Do you think there’s a chance that it could?

A:  I don’t think so.  I think the government is smarter today.  People are smarter today.  You have to go through a lot of people in order to let something like that happen.  I mean, the stock market,  that could go down to rock bottom, but then it has more of a tendency to come back.  They tell you: you hold on, don’t panic: and that’s what people did in those days, they panicked.  That’s why the markets fell and the banks closed and everything else.

Q: Did you know a lot of people—well, they may not have told you—but keeping money in their house instead of putting it in the banks, or were they pretty much trusting the banks when Roosevelt reopened them?

A: I think they probably did—but you know, at my age I didn’t pay much attention.  My parents probably knew.  If they didn’t trust them, they put it under their mattresses—but I don’t really remember it…

Q: Were there certain things you remember your parents saying certain things, like today they say “Don’t waste this…” Were there certain expressions you remember them saying that you don’t think they wold have used as often if it weren’t for the Depression?

A:  Oh yes.  You didn’t waste food; you ate every scrap on your plate. A nickel got you a long way, I’ll tell you that. You know, people were very frugal; they learned to be. They had to take a little bit and make it do a lot.

Q:  Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your life during that time?

A: No.  I don’t remember it as a happy time.  It’s more like a time I want to forget.  A lot of my father being very strict and we were punished like we were in the army.

Q: Do you think he would have been less strict if times hadn’t been so hard?

A:  Probably not.  That was his manner; that was his way.  I don’t think that would have changed. He just was a very strict disciplinarian.  As I said, my brother got away with murder; we used to have to cover up for him.

Q: What did you usually eat for dinner? What were your meals like? Do you think they would have been significantly different had you more money?

A: Well, we always had meat on the table.  My father always had a garden in the back, so in the summer we always had vegetables and fruit and all that. I don’t really remember us doing away or not having something like other people did.  I had friends that I knew where cereal was their main stake. They ate a lot of cereal to supplement the meat and the vegetables that they didn’t have.  We were a little bit luckier because the money was there and [my father] didn’t have to go out and look for it. He didn’t have to go weeks without bringing it home to his family.

Q: So you lived in Brooklyn, right?

A: Yes.

Q: In a small house in Brooklyn?

A: That’s right.

Q: I think that’s it.  Thank you very much!!!

A: I hope it helps you out!

Q: Today’s date is Friday, March 23rd, 2001. This interview is being conducted at [Mrs. Higgins' residence].  We’re interviewing Miss Laura Higgins and the interviewers are Chrissy Morgan and Valerie Lykers.
A: What do you want to know?
Q: How old were you then during the Depression years?
A: Well, my daughter was four years old and my son was two years old. So we lived on Church Street.  We had no running water; we had a pump outside, outside pump. Our house—we had no toilet inside and no electric lights--  so we moved from the farm to the way it was on the farm.  There was no difference.
Q: Why did you move from the farm?
A: Well, my father wasn’t able—he was sick, and he wasn’t able to do any more farming.  So my mother took in laundry and I stayed home after I got married and helped her with her laundry.
Q: During the 1920s did your parents buy things on credit?  Or can you tell us what your life was life in the twenties compared to the thirties?
A:  Back in the twenties?  Well, that was when we moved from the farm to Church Street.
Q: How did you feel about the government?
A: Well, it wasn’t that great.  Roosevelt wasn’t in yet.
Q: So in the twenties, what was the general consensus on the government?
A: Well, it was about the same as it is now.  We didn’t have no social security or anything like that because they didn’t have social security back in those days.
Q: After the stock market crashed, what happened to your family?
A: Well, when we had the Depression the banks all closed.  You couldn’t do any banking or anything.  But it didn’t bother us because we didn’t have anything to bank!
Q: Do you remember a lot of people talking about losing their money when the banks closed?
A: Yeah, right.  Uh huh. It was very bad.  See, we used to do all our shopping in town.  There was no business out this way at all. It was all in town.  We went to the shops and did all our shopping downtown! The stores were all in town.  We had the Shop Rite and there was a vacuuming store and a little Five & Ten.
Q: Did a lot of local businesses close when the stock market crashed?
A: Mmhmm.
Q: Do you remember any of the stores in particular?
A: Mmmhmm.  It was pretty bad.  People was out of work.  My husband was working for the county and he worked for $25 a week. And we went to housekeeping, that’s what we made.  $25 rent!  Isn’t that something?
Q: How did you—
A: Well we survived. We saved money. Because that’s where we are today. Mmhmm.
Q: Once Roosevelt came into office, did you like Roosevelt better than Hoover?  Who did you vote for?
A: Well, I voted for Roosevelt.  I thought he was a pretty good president.
Q: Did you feel like he followed through with his promises?
A: Right. Mmhmm.
Q:  Were you and your husband angry about Hoover not taking action?
A: Yeah. Mmhmm. But we always made a big thing about voting.  We always went and voted.
Q: Did you know anyone who was in any WPA programs or any governmental programs around here?
A: No.
Q: Do you feel that Hunterdon County was more isolated from the events of the Depressions?
A:  Yeah.  It was mostly farming. It was mostly farms.  It was all farms around here.
Q:  Self sufficient?
A: Right!
Q:  You said you voted for Roosevelt.  What motivated you to do that? Was it his policies, his promise to help the economy….
A: Well, he said he was going to do a good job and took of us, so that’s why I voted for him.  To help the people out.
Q: Do you think he followed through on his promises?
A: Right.
Q: Herbert Hoover—did most people you know voted for Roosevelt.  Did you know some people who voted for him?
A: For Hoover, yeah.   But they mostly voted for Roosevelt.  In fact I saved all my campaign buttons. I haven’t gotten ‘em out recently, but I have all the old ones, you know?
Q: Do you? That’s great! Did you ever listen to Roosevelt’s fireside chats?
A: Oh yeah! Uh huh!
Q: What about other radio programs—was the radio a large part of entertainment at the time?
A: Right.  Of course, we didn’t have radio or anything like that then.  That wasn’t until later.
Q: Do you remember when?
A: Because we didn’t have any electric then.  Everything was battery operated.
Q: So when Roosevelt came on the radio did you go to other people’s houses to listen to the Fireside Chats?
A: Yeah, right.
Q: Did you have any—in your spare time—do you remember doing anything in particular?
A: Well, I had two babies you know…so that was it.
Q: Do you remember what your children played with or liked to do in their spare time?
A:  Well, we didn’t have much time to do that.
Q: What did your children help you around the house with?
A: They helped around the house? No! They were young!
Q: Did you ever go to the movies?
A: Yes. It was 10 cents.  At the Palace Theater over in town.  It was the Palace Theater.  It was ten cents to go.
Q: Do you remember any movies in particular?
A: They were all—you know, you had to read on the screen.  They were silent movies.
Q: Was it a very popular thing to do—to go to the movies?
A: Uh huh.
Q: Do you remember doing anything else for entertainment?
A: No.  We used to get all our families together.  We had family reunions, you know..
Q: Do you think the Depression brought your family closer together?
A: Yeah. We all got together at family reunions.
Q: Can you tell us what a normal day was like during the 1930s for you?
A:  Everyday, it was just another day!  My mother would send me downtown—we had a place on Park Avenue where you could go and get the day-old baked stuff. And I drove and I’d go downtown—I’d go early before it got cold, and I’d come home with that.  So it was good.  And we had a garden and we had chickens and we raised our own eggs and everything.  It was on Church Street.
Q: So most of your food was from your garden?
A: Yeah. Uh huh.
Q: So you’ve seen Hunterdon County change a great deal, haven’t you?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you think its changed for the better?
A: Well.  It’s changed a lot.  We’re living in a different world altogether than the one we used to live in.  It’s altogether different.  Everything is different.
Q: When you look back on your life now---  you’re in 2001.  If you look back to the 1930s, would you say it was a memorable experience or do you look at it as more of a period of hard times?
A: Of hard times.  Yes, yes, yes.  But now people got money.  I don’t know if they’re saving it or not.  But they got money.  They’re making good money, you know, and so…
Q: Last year at the turn of the century people were talking about whether or not Roosevelt could be considered the person of the century.  What would you say about that?  Would you say he could be considered the person of the century for what he did?
A: I would say he was.  Roosevelt was a good man.
Q: Why?
A:  He was a good man, Roosevelt was.  He traveled all around; he helped the people out. They just interviewed, on the television the other night.  They interviewed the Roosevelts.  Did you see it?
Q: No, but was it on A&E?
A: Yeah.
Q: They always do really great biographies!
Q: Do you remember when the Depression ended: did your life change significantly?
A: Well, it was just the same right through.
Q: So you would say the Depression didn’t really impact you?
A: No, no.  It didn’t hurt us. Because we were so used to living on the farm and not having…so…
Q: Did you still stay in touch with the rest of the world though? Did you get a newspaper from the Hunterdon County Democrat?
A: Just got the Democrat.  We always got the Democrat.
Q:  Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about that time period?
A: No, there really isn’t.  But I know things have changed.  Because they’re building up more land.  They’re taking all this farm land. And this is it.  So I’d like to see the farm land come back.
Q:  I think I would too!
A: There’s no farm land at all.
Q (CM): It’s very sad.  I’ve lived here for ten years at least…
A: Do you live in—
Q (CM): I live in Flemington.  I live over by Barley Sheaf Elementary school.
A: Uh huh, Barley Sheaf.
Q (CM):  Barley Sheaf, and even where I live used to be farmland.
A: Uh huh.  We go over to the school; they invite us to come over.  You know, seniors, to look at the school. And do you live in—
Q (VL):  I live in Readington.  And actually, you know, we have a lot of farm preservation going on.  So yeah, I feel the same way you do.  I wish there were more.
Q (CM): I wish people would preserve more, because once its gone, it doesn’t come back.
A: I know. You know, this land was a farm and when we lived—we moved from town down to Rugmart.  And we owned the circle. And 202 came and bought the circle from us and we had to buy more land to build the house.
Q: What year was that?
A:  From the farmer.
Q: What year was that?
A: Back in the thirties or fifties….thirties I think it was.
Q: Oh wow!
A: Isn’t that something?
Q: So they were constructing the highway around here during the Depression?
A: Yeah. See, 202 came up, see, there was no 202. But when 202 come in they put the circle in and they needed the land. And we had the land. My husband bought it.  He had insurance policies and I said “What are you going to do with that?” And he said: “I’m going to buy the land over there on the circle.” So he did.  And we had a garden there because we were living in an apartment and we’d come over with the children and they’d play and we’d go in the garden and work, you know, and so they came and took the circle.  So we owned that circle.
Q: Wow! That’s the neatest thing! You’re a celebrity! You’re a Flemington Celebrity!
A: So then we built—I have the garage.  I used to work in the garage, pump gas.  And I worked hard.
Q: That’s tough work.  You mentioned that you saw movies during the thirties…do you remember any of the names of the movies?
A: The movies? Charlie Chaplin! And there wasn’t much movies—it was all black and white.  It’d come on screen and you’d have to read it—you had to read it quick, you know!
Q: Do you remember the first movie you ever saw that had sound?
A: No, I don’t.  It was all in black and white, you know.  And then we used to have the old opera house.  I used to work at the old opera house.  I used to line fur coats.  That was on Bloomfield Avenue. They tore it down.  They used to have plays in there and everything.
Q: On Bloomfield Avenue in Flemington??
A: Uh huh. On Bloomfield Avenue.   And they put a parking lot in there; they tore that down and put a parking lot in there.  But we used to—I lined fur coats.  I went to line coats.
Q: Do you remember the Lindbergh trial then very well?
A: Oh yeah!!! Oh yeah! Uh huh!
Q: Did you know a lot of people who—
A: Well my husband got me tickets.  And I washed and ironed all night so I could go to it the next day.  Go to the trial.
Q: So it was a very exciting event?
A: Yeah, right! Very exciting.  And we had a radio then.  Television, I think we had television because we had electric.  And we’d see they came in so we went downtown.
Isn’t that something?
Q: That’s incredible.  And did the people stay in the Union Hotel?
A: Oh yeah!  A lot of ‘em come in.  They brought their lunch, they went into the hotel, spread it out! They was gunna eat it on the table! (Laughing) And they chased ‘em around! Isn’t that something?
Q: Where did people come from?
A: They came from New York and all over, you know? And they thought they’d go in there and eat. Isn’t that something?
Q: That’s funny.  So you didn’t hear a lot about Roosevelt’s New Deal projects in this area?
A: Yeah. When Roosevelt was elected, my mother passed away because I was over there that day taking care of her.
Q: Do you remember hearing about his inauguration?
A: Uh huh.
Q: I think that’s everything.  Thank you very much.  You have it all on tape now.  And you can play it.
Q: So what else was in town then?  You said there was a grocery store, there was the movies, what else was in downtown Flemington?
A: Well, there was an ice cream place.  We always went in the ice cream place.  On Saturday we’d get a quart of ice cream.
Q: Do you remember how much it was?
A: I don’t know how much.  But my daughter wanted to go in and get it.  She was small and instead of going and bringing out the ice cream she came out with a great big ice cream cone, eating it! She didn’t get the quart of ice cream! She was eating it so then I had to go back in and get the quart of ice cream.
Q: Were there clothing stores in town? Dress shops?
A:  We had “Cheap John’s.” We called it “Cheap John’s.” You went downstairs and he had materials and stuff like that. And they had a bake shop in town.
Q: On Main Street?
A: Mmhmm. On Main Street.  In town.  You had to go into down.  The old post office was in the Deetze Building.  It wasn’t in town.  It was up in the Deetze Building.  As you come out on Mine Street: the Deetze building is right across there.  That’s where the Post Office was.
Q: Was the library always there? Was that in the same place it always was?
A: The library? Yeah. Mmhmm.
Q: That’s really neat.
A: You have to come talk to me again!
Q: Well its just so amazing because I’ve lived here my whole life.  And you don’t meet people who know: you say “What was Flemington like?” They say “I don’t know! I haven’t lived here that long!”
A: I could tell you those things as old as I am!
Q: What else was built in the thirties? Do you remember anything big being built or happening?
A: Well the Catholic Church burned down on New Year’s Eve.  We were in Lambertville. We were away.  My daughter was young; my son wasn’t born yet.  And we couldn’t get down the street because that was our street that where we lived on.  And the whole church was burnt.  And all the stained glass windows—there were 5 on each side—they all melted. And beautiful, the church was beautiful.
Q: What caused the fire?
A: Electrical Fire. And so it took them about 3 years to build that church. And they put this one up.
Q: When did you get electricity? Do you know what year you got electricity at your house?
A: Well, my mother put it in.  Because we didn’t have electric.  Because we were doing the ‘ole—have you ever seen the irons that we used to iron with?
Q: I might have, I don’t know.
A: I’ll show you.  We put ‘em on the stove and we would iron. This is what we would iron with.  In the winter time we took ‘em to bed with us because they’d be warm and warm up the bed.  My mother would say: “Where’s all those irons?”  We’d have to go up and get them.  They’re heavy.
Q: That is heavy.  How much do you think it weighs? Maybe 2-3 pounds?
A: Isn’t that something? That’s what we used to iron with.   And then my mother put electric in and we had electric.
Q: When did you get a telephone?
A: We didn’t have any at home. After I went to keeping house we got a phone.  Now I got a phone in every room!
Q: We all do!
A: Isn’t that something?  But they have changed so much when you go down Flemington-- down the streets. There’s nothing.  Nothing but offices up there.  I go over to Community center—you know where the community center is on the highway?
Q: Yeah.
A: On Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We have like a friendship group and we meet there and we go there and we play High Rummy Q?
Q: I like Pnuckle!
A: …with the little piles?
Q: Yeah! Alright! That’ll work! Thank you!

Q:/V.L.  Mr. Otte, how old were you during the Depression Years?
A:  Well, 1926 I believe, the worst part of it started actually started--Ah, 8 years old.
Q:/V.L.  Eight?
A:  Yes.
Q:/V.L.  OK, and where did you live?
A:  Bayonne, 34 East 49 Street, Bayonne.
Q:/V.L.  OK, did your family buy a lot of things on credit during the twenties?
A:  No, they bought it with nickels and dimes. (V.L. laughs) That’s the way things worked, if you wanted to buy something, you bought it, and you paid for it every week almost.  There’s somebody knocking on the door looking for a nickel or dime. Plenty of times, we didn’t have a nickel or dime-- to pay them.
Q:/V.L.  Can you tell us a little bit more about your life during that time?
A:  Yes, sure. I had an older brother, in fact four kids in the family.  My older brother was six years older than I was and I still remember, well actually I remember 1926 when Lindbergh came back I, quit school or jumped school, like you kids would say--
Q:/V.L.  Cut? Cut? (laughs)
A:  Yes, and then I went down to, what they call it the long docks, which was Newark Bay and it was a railroad then the long docks, which was a bay in there.  I broke a couple of bottles and took the bottom of the bottles to magnify it, so we never seen a plane before we seen Lindbergh, come in, The Spirit of Saint Lewis, and then, little things like that, and then I think the Blue Diamond Express Train, they let us out of school we all lined up along side the tracks and watched the express train go through, but that was the nice part.  The best, part that we had was in school when you was young.  But then after that, after school you'd go out.  I'd pull the wagon, my brother went down in between the tracks we’d pick up coal, and a stuff to burn at night and things were rough I mean, four kids in the family and, Pop worked two jobs actually, to keep us kids and then they didn’t get ?????? I think, it was something like thirty dollars a month for the rent and you had to sweat in order to get thirty bucks in them days.  And a, little things like that, a  school was nice we enjoyed school, we went to school got out of working around home. (both talk at once)
Q:/V.L.  When did you stop going to school or did you graduate from high school?
A:  I had three and a half years of high school, and a, my dad feel through a roof and broke his elbow so he couldn’t work no more so I went to work. Ah, what was that, 39, in and around 39.  But in between there, you could see things that was very dull, people out of work, nothing to do, you go to school ya had, knickers on in them days with the high socks on, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them before, but a, lots of times we went to school with a piece of cardboard in your shoe because your, keep ya from the pavement your whole shoes were worn out. I remember Pop, he’d get a few extra bucks he used to fix our own shoes actually,  put leather on the bottom of our shoes. And a, in them days ya see a guy walking the streets, with a big grind wheel they’d make a few bucks by grinding knives and a, grinding shears up for the people, and then you’d see guys go down with a, umbrellas, to fix umbrellas and things like that.  And of course we had no, fridges we had icemen, and that was a delight for us kids we used ta, swipe ices that was our ice cream you might say, in the back of the wagon which was drawn by a horse of course. Then a, then a, we had things like, ya never had here now, is like, the bread delivered to your door if you were wealthy enough.  Bread in them days were, five cents a loaf and a, sometimes, we get stale loaves for 2 or 3 cents, but a, actually, what I remember mostly is eating. I think WPA came in that time, Pop got a job. He had to be a watchman.
Q:/C.M.  From the WPA?
A:  Hum?
Q:/C.M.  Was it from the WPA itself?
A:  Yes. Yes.  And a, we used to take regular, we used to call them spuds, white potatoes, and we’d go out watch all night with Pop and we’d more or less camp out, we’d a, roast our potatoes and this is what we had to eat, you know, and for dessert you’d had maybe a piece of bread with evaporated milk and a little sugar on, that was our cake you might say.  Things like that. You’d think that, with everything that went on, there just to survive, I mean, it lasted quite a long time.  And a , you’d see New York at, you can a, we had no TV or anything, but a, ya read about it in the papers which was what,  a penny for a paper—about people selling apples and, selling things like that just to make a few bucks to get something to eat.  I mean it, things was just pretty bad. Then the stock market and everything went down, and what I remember people jumping out the windows, but a, I guess they can’t do it these days. (laughs)  Stock market drops so much, that they’d gotta put bars on the windows now, so that, I guess they can’t jump out windows anymore.
Q:/C.M.  Did you actually witness people jumping out of windows?
A:  No, I haven’t witnessed, but we read about it.
Q:/C.M.  You read about it?
A:  And a, lot of people.  The one thing I really remember, we moved from Bayonne to Union, NJ, this was, Oh, back in I think 28, 1928 around 30, 28 or 30.  And a, Pop got a job, he was a, in the building trade.  He got a job as a builder with this one, man that was building a few houses, a, in Union, and things were going pretty good there for a while, until things fell apart again.  Ferris, the name of the man was Ferris.  He stopped building and he went bankrupt.  And a, I remember we lost our house.  We bought a house in that period, say of two years, and we lost our house.  I remember with going Pop, down it was a--  Newark, Furmington? right before Newark, the guy that had the a  mortgage on the house. I remember him, saying “Oh, we can’t put your mortgage off, I mean we always gotta be paid.”  So, we lost our house. So then now we start renting again. You know. And I mean things like this that a, went on. As far as eats and stuff, ya buy a nickel for a bunch of a, greens and Mom would make soup.  I was brought up, you might say on soup. Till this day I still love soup. (laughs) But a, as far as work, Pop had two jobs.  He worked at nights, papering and painting for people and a, we got along pretty good until, after a while we lost the house and things started going down again.
Q:/V.L.  Do you remember what year you lost the house in?
A:  Yes—let’see it was 1932.
Q:/C.M.  1932, that’s usually considered the peak in the depression years.
A:  1932, it was a beautiful home, over in Union.  After living in Bayonne, which was like New York City right now, you might say. It was out in the country for us.  And a, we had a nice life, good schools, and stuff like that but, things were still rough after we lost our house why, things started going down again until a, things picked up and we started all over.
Q:/C.M. Do you remember specifically what your father did for the WPA?
A:  Yes.
Q:/C.M.  How long did he work for the WPA?
A:  Not too long.  It was about a year and then a, the building trade started to pick up a little bit, and a he went back to the building trades. But a, after that it was more or less, he worked for a lumberyard, I remember. Than, the lumberyard burnt down, so he was out of a job again, things got tough again. But this was all in Bayonne, this wasn’t in Union.  When we moved to Union, things started to straighten out quite a bit.  Things were much nicer, and schools and, things we had.  I never had a professional haircut until, you might say, I went to work.  I used to get one of those jobs, you know, with, like you put a pot on and cut around the pot. Something like that. There’s a lot of things we did without.  Hand-me-downs, my brother was 6 years older than I.  I was wearing his clothes most of the time, a little bit baggy but, I mean we couldn’t afford anything else.  But a, things like that.  That’s what really makes life. You know, another thing I swore, after living that life, I swore my kids would never have to go through something like that. My luck, I, you know, it never did happen.  I always had a good job. So.
Q:/V.L.  What did you guys feels about the government?  What did you feel or your father? Did you ever hear him say anything about the government?
A:  About the government?
Q:/C.M.  Was he really grateful when he was working for the WPA or was it, so much just dealing with hard times, or is it more kind of, hating the government, or wanting to blame someone?
A:  We never hated the government. We never, you can never demand anything from the government, I mean, we worked for what we got.  Actually for handouts, my dad was a proud man but we had to have it. There was nowhere else.  And a, it wasn’t only us, it was a thousands of people that was in the same predicament that we were.  It was a rough deal.
Q:/C.M.  Do you remember your father saying anything about whether or not he liked working for the WPA?  Did he mention what it was like?
A:  He did it because he had kids, four kids.  He didn’t say he liked it or not. He just, if you wanted to survive, you had to do it, either that or go out and steal.  You know, a lot of people, in them days, if you ever had milk or something delivered you’d find, even your papers, if you had a paper delivered it would be gone, you know.  It’s a—people had to do things to survive.  If they couldn’t get a job, they got money somehow to live, you had to.  You could do it legally or illegal. So we did it legally, so far as in them days if you swiped a loaf of bread, you’d get a hundred per cent more punishment than you do now if you swipe a car.
Q:/V.L.  Do you think that the government should have gotten as involved as it did or do you think that—
A:  Involved in what?
Q:/V.L.  Involved in people’s lives through the New Deal programs?
A:  They had to. They had to because everything was falling apart. I mean a, if there’s no jobs and no way of making a buck or, just put yourself in that instance, if your dad wasn’t working and you had nothing to eat, what would you do?  You either work for the government, or go out and steal it.  And a, working for the government was the legal and proper way to do things.
Q:/C.M.  So did most people, when the programs came in.Were a lot of them that you knew taking advantage of them?
A:  Of the government? No. No.  You find that people that got things from the government really needed it.  You know like, I don’t know if I should say this, but not like today.  If you get my, I don’t want to say it, but if you get my idea of it.
Q:/V.L.  After the stock market crashed, did your family still trust banks or not?
A:  We a, didn’t have to trust banks because we never had a buck in the bank. (everyone laughs)
Q:/V.L.  Were you shocked that it happened?
A:  In them days, it was a, they call em the dark days.  What, we were kids we could only hear what Mom and Pop were talking about you know, and it was bad days for everybody. A lot of people didn’t survive actually.  I mean a, all of your gangs I think actually started up in around them days, robbing and stuff like that, swiping fruits from fruit and vegetable stands in order to have something to eat.
Q:/V.L.  Do you have any idea how much your father made?
A:  Let me see now.  I can tell you what I made when I started.  It’s a hell of a lot better.  When I started, I worked for a quarter an hour. Now before, when I had to go out to work, I worked in a fruit and vegetable store all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and every night from after school until 8 o’clock at night for $1.85 a week.
Q:/V.L.  How old were you, when you started working?
A:  It was back in a 36, 37.
Q:/C.M.  Did any other members of your family have jobs?
A:  No, they were young kids when that happened.  See, like I say we’re three years apart.  I was born in 18, my sister was born in what 15, my brother was born in 12, 1912, but he was going to school. In fact, I was about the only one who went through a, my older, my younger brother went through too, a high school.  I had three and a half years and then, that was all, I had to get out and go to work.  Like I say a, jobs started to come in.  Pop worked for a tiling /roofing company and he hit a bad roof and fell through.  Coming through the beams he cracked up his elbow and from that time on, his right hand, his meat hand you might say, (laughs) he couldn’t work no more so, we all went out to work.
Q:/C.M.  Do you remember feeling resentful that such a need for money made you have to go out and get a job, or was it more just that you realized it was something that you had to do?
A:  No. That’s right. That’s right.  You see, my dad tried to get us everything. Like a , well for instance, when I went to high school, instead of riding a bus, my dad gave me a proposition, you learn how to play the trumpet and get in the band. In high school, I’ll buy you a bicycle. Well, he fixed a bicycle up and made a bicycle for me, he didn’t buy one.  He made it form parts that he picked up here and there.  And a, I joined the band. I played the trumpet for a year and then after I got the bicycle, I quit. (everyone laughs)  It’s things like that a, that you remember mostly.
Q:/V.L.  Do you remember who he voted for, in the election? Do you have any idea?
A:  I remember Pop voting for Herbert Hoover.  That was in 1926, 28?
Q:/C.M.  Do you remember him saying later that he regretted it and he wished he had voted for, Roosevelt?
A:  I think it was Roosevelt that brought us out, of everything.  I mean a -I say, he was a good president, we needed him. He was there what, for three terms I think. (everyone agrees)
Q:/C.M.  Did you ever listen to any of his Fireside Chats?
A:  Oh, yeah! Yeah!  All we had was radio, that’s all we had. In fact, the first radio I made with a, ah  a oatmeal box and I put  wire around it and I had a crystal,  and then we put the earphones  into a bowl and we all sit around the table to listen  to the sound from the bowl so we heard what was going on.
Q:/C.M.  So it was a very big deal to listen to the Fireside Chats?
A:  A big deal?
Q:/C.M.  Did a lot of people do it if they were able to?
A:  Yes, he comforted a lot of people.  You know.  Like, he made promises, and he tried to go through with the promises, not like now a days, ah, they make promises and as soon as they get into office, forget it.  I mean, as long as I’m elected, the hell with you guys, fend for yourself. (all laugh and agree)
Q:/V.L.  What else did you do in your spare time? Like hobbies, sports, you know?
A:  Oh, I love to play baseball.  In fact, 1939, I was semi-pro.  I played baseball for Tuscan Farm.  In 1939, Pop, and Frank, and George and I, we played ball all the time, even my sister.  Played ball all the time.  I did a lot, I love sports!  Played basketball, played soccer, the only thing I couldn’t do was swim, as far as a sport cause we’re never near water.  And for recreation, Mom used to brings us down to long docks and get some chicken necks and we used to, crab off the long docks, you know, pull the string up and then zippen it up with the net.  We used to do that and then, the park was about, well let’s say, five blocks away, and every day Mom would walk us to the park, so we could get on the swings and we never had any grass around.  In Bayonne, everything was paved, you know, so it was a great pleasure to get out, take your shoes off and run around in the grass, I guess that’s, more or less what we did.  But, like I said, hard times, but you always get through them and you appreciate what you got. And we appreciate, what Roosevelt did.
Q:/C.M.  Times recently nominated Roosevelt as the person of the millenium. Would you agree with that? Would you vote for Roosevelt as the person of the millenium?
A:  Would I vote for Roosevelt?  In them days I couldn’t vote, but I think from what I hear, I would vote for Roosevelt, yes.  Mostly, if I remember correctly, he was Democratic and, my dad used to vote Republican all the time, but he voted for Roosevelt. I think a lot of people did because of the fact that he was making promises and he kept his word, more or less he tried to keep his word.  He was a politician and he was, what you would call a politician, that a, tried to keep what he says he was going to do, he did.
You go to some a big hole and the way things are going now, you never know what the hell is going to happen now.  They say maybe six months of, a, hard times again as far as people getting laid off and stuff.  In them days, when you get laid off, it was laid off in droves.  The whole place shut down, period, I mean that was it.
Q:/C.M.  So would you say that in a sense, Roosevelt kind of revolutionized the idea of what politics were about?
A:  Yes.  I’ll tell you something else that Roosevelt did.  I think it was the, a, NRA what do you call it.  I worked 68 hours a week, I was making $12 a week in the National Grocery Company, and when Roosevelt got in, he cut it down where we could work 40 hours a week and get the same pay.
Q:/C.M.  That was part of the NRA, National Recovery Administration?
A:  Yes. Yes.  That helped us quite a bit.  And like I say, the best part of my life, actually, when I got out of school, I think I enjoyed it more, than when I was in school.  In school, you had your sports and you had your, we didn’t have homework like you guys, (all laugh) have now, I mean, you do most of your work I think at home and you do more at home, than you do at school.  But, we appreciate everything we got, as far as, we can go out and play ball and run in the park, play caddy, play marbles, fly a kite, play kick the can, play ring-a-lario. All these sports were kids stuff, and we, whenever we got the chance, we played them and enjoyed it, really, we never got into trouble.  I mean, we sneak a smoke or something like that like go in back of the barn and sneak a smoke, we never did that.
Q:/V.L.  Did you ever do anything with the Soapbox Derbies or any of that kind of stuff?  Were you into that?
A:  Yes.  Pop used to build us everything in the world.  Like I said, he couldn’t buy anything, so he built everything.
Q:/C.M.  Where did your father get the pieces for the bicycle he  built for you?              A:  Oh, yes.  You go down to the fruit market and get a box. Now, today they have scooters.  We used to have a wooden box on a two by four, take a regular pair of street skates, pull them apart, you know loosen the bolt underneath, pull them apart, put one in front and one in back, and there was our scooter.  Right, and another thing we used to do is get an old hoop from a barrel and a stick, and we used to bat that and go up and down the streets batten that.  This is all the things, now a days, I mean a, kids now a days should of lived when we lived.  We had nothing, no radio, no TV, I mean you had to really go out and do things for yourself if you wanted to enjoy it.  Now fishing, we take a pin and bend it, right, put a little piece of bread on it and go down fishing, that way.  You know, we used to catch a lot of fish that way. (laughter) Things like that, it’s all together different now.  I mean, I often said if our grand people ever woke up and see what we got now. Myself, I was born in 1918, I mean, where we had a lot of horses pulling wagons and stuff like that, and now when you figure you get a picture coming through the air and you get it and you can sit here and watch it.  I mean, and now this computer is got me so as I’m a dummy. (laughter)  I don’t know a damn thing about a computer. But I mean things like that, and you know, to think of it, mom was the same way.  Mom lived to be 99 years old and she used to say, “My God, what you people got now that we never had,” and she was born in the 1880’s, you know. I mean, that was a big difference.
Q:/C.M.  So, would you say it was actually almost a better kind of life than it is now?  Do you think the city was better for people?
A:  I think, you kids got everything, but we had more pleasure from playing.  We’d take a broomstick, cut four inches off, shave down the end, use the rest of the broomstick, we’d play caddy. We had a great time, we found a pair of stairs going into a house, we’d play baseball by hitting the ball on the point of the stair and we had the street marked off.  We’d play handball in the street, instead of tennis. We’d mark two lines in the park and we’d play handball, back and forth handball. All those things that we played, it was, everything was homemade you might say. Now a days, I never seen anybody play, although racket ball is coming back now, but years ago we’d find a wall and play handball up against the wall, it’s things like that.
Q:/C.M.  So you would say you had a good childhood despite the affects of the Great Depression?
A:  Oh yes. Oh yes, sure. You appreciate more of what ya got now than you did when, you know, you were brought up poor like.
Q:/V.L.  Did you guys go to the movies ever during the 30’s or that kind of thing?
A:  Oh, once in a while when Pop got a job, he’d give us a nickel we’d go down to the movies but, what’d ya see.  You had to learn how to read because, ah, there was no voice, I mean, silent movies we called it.  Come to think of it, you see on TV now, how the hell anybody still sat there and watched them it’s a, (laughs) were not laughing at them.
Q:/V.L.  Do you remember any names or titles of any movies or songs from anything that time that you really liked?
A:  Charlie Chaplin, my favorite,(laughter) Charlie Chaplin.  All slapstick, I mean, and then Laurel and Hardy I believe it was, after a while.  After Charlie Chaplin, then Laurel and Hardy we used to get a big kick out of watching. You know, slapstick, you know, pie in the face and stuff like that.
Q:/V.L.  Did you listen to a lot of the radio shows like Amos and Andy, and…..?
A:  Oh yes, sure, sure Amos and Andy.  You know, today we had Amos and Andy, and everybody watched or listened to Amos and Andy.  If they would take the same program today, they wouldn’t allow it.
Q:/C.M.  Why?
A:  You figure it out. (llaughter)
Q:/V.L.  Did you read a lot of comics or any of that kind of stuff?
A:  Oh Yeah. If we got a paper, we read that paper, time and time again.
Q:/V.L.  Did you get the little big books?
A:  And then after a while we got the comic books.  That was a, well after, ya know, Pop got a job and things like that, but we all helped, threw our pennies in the pot, ya know, to keep things going.  After school we got to go out in the woods and pull down all the trees and bring it home and cut it up, so we had heat for the house.  Every night after school we had to go out and get wood.  When I was real young, this is before 1926, I remember Frank, picking up coal, me pulling the wagon. We’d fill it up because the trains went by and the coal would fall off.  We’d pick that up and we’d heat our house.  What we had for our house was a, what you would call a railroad flat.  We had a kitchen with a pot stove in it, or a gas range that’s run by wood or coal.  In them days, if ya had coal you were lucky.  It used to be a dollar a bag, and it used to last us long. And then, we’d have to shut the living room off because we couldn’t heat it. So what happened, we put a pot stove in the dining room, we put all our beds in the dining room, and that pot stove would be cherry red to keep us warm.  But the thing, is we had to get the coal to do it.  If you put wood in, it would only last so long before it would go out.  Coal lasted all night to keep us warm.  All those little things add up to a, what I call a damn good life.
Q:/V.L.  Could you give me a summary of just a normal day, say like in 1930’s, 1933, or 1934?
A:  Yes, I can remember a couple.  When Pop fell through the roof, he had a brace this way, a leather thing, and a brace this way (hand motions).  He couldn’t move his arm. He held it like this. (demonstrate)  So he was home.  We’d come home after school, and a, he was a great one. He built in the garage, he built a place where we could box.  We used to box all the time in the garage. Then outside, there was a wooden wall out there, we used to shoot BB’s at this wall.  Then, the rest of the time, if we had nothing else to do, we’d play ball.  Marbles was another good game.  We played marbles a lot.  And then, I don’t know if you know what it is, where you line off a line in a square in the dirt and ya take your knife and you divide it up, man, property?  I don’t know if you kids ever played that.
Q:/V.L.  Hopscotch?
A:  No, no, no no. Ya cut a square like this (demonstrate) right, and ya take a penknife, hold it by the blade, and you stick it in.  You stick it in, and then your mark, that that was yours.
Q:/V.L.  Oh.
A:  So then you had to stand in there, until you missed, where it wouldn’t stick in.  And then, somebody else would take it and they’d try to steal your property by throwing the knife in there, cutting your property up. See?
Q:/V.L.  That’s neat.
A:  That’s what we used to play.  Did you ever play that?
Q:/V.L.  No, but that’s really neat.
A:  Kick the can. You guys played.
Q:/C.M.  Oh yeah, that’s fun.
A:  Ring- a- lario you played.
Q:/V.L.  What’s ring-a-lario?
A:  There’s a home base. You get chased around, and if you get caught, you put your hand on your head…
Q:/C.M.  Kind of like blind man’s bluff?  Well no, I guess not.
Q:/V.L.  Like tag?
A:  Yes.  What the devil is the other one?  Where you hop over each guy---I’ll have to give up on that.
Q:/V.L.  Like freeze tag?
A:  You used to get down in a line, on your haunches and you’d jump over.
Q:/V.L.  Leapfrog?
A:  It’s like a leapfrog, yes.  Yes, we used to play that game a lot.    And then, Pop had no work, so we got some wood, and we built a whole miniature golf course in our back yard. (laughter) I mean a whole miniature, like, take a big can, cut it in half and make a loop where the ball went up and went out the other end.  We had a whole golf course in the backyard, Pop made for us. But like I, he did a lot of things with his hands, that we couldn’t buy. Like wagons, he made all our wagons.  And things like that.  Whenever he had a buck to spare, he always gave it to us.  Another thing, we used to play Mom against Pop.  (laughter)  Pop would say no, but Mom would slip us a nickel for candy. It was one of those deals, I mean, it was really little things like that, that you really remember.
Q:/C.M.  What did your mom do during the day?
A:  She was a homemaker.  She reprimanded us first like, I threw a ball through somebody’s window.  And we used to live where there was no cellars in our house, just crawl space.  And, the lady came over and told mom about it.  Mom took off after me, so I crawled under the house. (laughter)  Mom couldn’t get at me.  But when Pop came home, he crawled under the house after me and when I got out, mom had a broom waiting for me.  So, I would get reprimanded twice.  I’d go to school.  My sister was one grade ahead of me, or two grades ahead of me.  We had this little rotated classes.  If I did something wrong in school, before I got home, Mom and Pop knew about it.  He used to have a razor strap, one of those, its always a straight razor, that was the strap that we were deadly afraid of.  Because we got that across our butt plenty of times, and we really got a whoppin if we didn’t toe the mark. (laughter) As far as Christmas and stuff like that we would get one toy. Generally, Pop would sneak when Mom wasn’t around and tell us what it was before we got it. Then a Christmas tree, we used to go out and get a, I think it was a quarter for a Christmas tree. If the branches weren’t there you drill holes and put branches in and take from here, like rob peter to pay paul and stuff like that, and we got a Christmas tree.   The Christmas tree stayed up from Christmas all the way till my birthday in February 26th because it was so cold in the damn house, that the tree wouldn’t wilt or dry up. (laughter) But then ya figure, in our homes like I say we had, later on , it came where we had kerosene heaters. I hated them I’d rather have the coal stove.  And then we had the toilets, I don’t know if you’ve seen them?  They had the big tank up on top, to flush your toilet you pull the chain and water would drain from there and flush down into the toilet.  Things have changed.  Telephone, we never knew what a telephone was, we never used one. All we used to do was use a couple of cans with a string in between.
Q:/C.M.  When did you first get a telephone?
A:  Believe it or not, 1951. In fact when my first son was born, I didn’t have a telephone in the house. The man next door had a telephone, and he came over and told me that Ken was born.  I was sleeping on the living room floor waiting for him to come over and wake me up. We didn’t have no phones. Couldn’t afford them.  Like ya figure, I started with a quarter an hour when I started in the middle stamping business, a quarter an hour.  Then, I mean, you work 48 hours I think it was, the NRA, and you get your few bucks a week, you give everything to Mom and Pop and they might give you a quarter or something back and you go out and enjoy yourself on a quarter.  In them days you could buy a lot for a quarter.  According to the prices now a days, like I say, A nickel for a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs was 12 cents, and things like that because ya made nothing. Now a days, I’ve been out of the business now for18 years, when it was 1943, I retired makin 35 thousand dollars a year.  I trained a guy, now he’s makin over 80 thousand dollars a year for the same job I had.  This is 18 years.  And this is what happened when I was makin a nickel an hour and then a quarter an hour and then after the war, I got a dollar an hour.  Now, my god, everything is, you won’t work for less than 50 bucks an hour now a days.  (laughter)  I think we had better times in our days  than you kids, with all your appliances you have now.  We appreciate it, and in fact when your brought up like that, you appreciate the things that you have.  Now a days. a kid just takes something and throw it in the corner and forget about it.
Q:/C.M.  Would you say it was a misconception to say that these were hard times?  There are a couple of books on the 30’s titled hard times. Do you think that’s accurate?
A:  Yes, when they say hard times.  You see I’m lookin at it from a kid’s view.  If I was an older person and I couldn’t find a job, and I couldn’t support the offspring, ya know, I would say it’s hard times.  But with the kids, the kids will level out, anyway if it’s a bumpy road, the kids will level it out and say they had a good time.  where your mother and father sweated and they had hard times, figurin they got to have a place to live.  We got to have a roof over your head.  Like I say, Pop used to mend our own shoes and Mom used to fix the socks. We never bought anything new.  Everything was all hand me downs.  No haircuts, no nothin.  We had no toothpaste.  We used to use salt, ya know, on the brush, for a toothbrush.  If we were lucky the toothbrush doesn’t wear out, then we’d do without it.  All those things.  The one thing I remember though, is the movies.  I never had a feeling for the movies.  I had, maybe it was because I seen the early movies, I thought they were fake and make believe.  I never, I never really enjoyed the movies. I’d watch a ballgame, great. But we did, most about everything we played ball and then miniature golf because Pop made our golf course for us.  And then fly kites.  We used to stay up all night to see if you could keep your kite up all night long. See how long, I think 2-3 days we used to keep the kite up without bringing it down.  And things like that.
Q:/C.M.  Do you remember your parents getting upset or being sad or angry telling you, save this don’t waste it?
A:  Yes.  It was a common phrase. Don’t waste it.  When they put food on the plate, you ate it, because you know if you didn’t eat it you were gonna go hungry.  They didn’t have anymore.  Like I say, soup. And then another thing, if we had a roast of pork, I don’t know if you ever seen somebody cook with pork, you know the fat?  It turns white.  We used to take it and put it in the pantry where it was ice cold in the wintertime that was where we would put everything to keep it from spoiling, in the pantry.  Summertime we had a block of ice.  But, we would take that, they used to call it schmaltz, and spread it on bread, put a little salt and pepper on it and we would enjoy and I mean that was a treat.  Actually, that was a treat.  It was something different than from the soup that ya had all the time.  It was hard times, but it was good times.  Ya know, it’s because now you’re young, if you have a hard time, you get over it like that (snap fingers).  You won’t remember the hard times, you’ll remember the good times.  That’s the way it was with me.
Q:/V.L.  Do you think your opinions have changed over time?  I mean, you’re looking at this, remembering right now, when you’re in your 80’s.
A: No, I don’t know.  I always think, if you can get up in the morning, (laughs) you’re doing good.  I mean, you make life of what it is. Like, well grandma. I was a tool and die maker. First of all I started off at a store.  I loved the store because I love meetin people.  I had a good time in the store.  And then after the store, I went in the building trade.  I was smoking at the time and when wintertime come I couldn’t even afford a pack of butts. So I got out of the building trade because there was no work in the wintertime, which was another thing with Pop, he was a builder, and some wintertime in them days, he didn’t work.  If you didn’t save a few bucks over, you had problems.  So he went out and painted houses and stuff like that in order to supplement yourself.  This was the way it was.  In fact I remember, he was laid off from work and the four of us, my three brothers and Pop went over and painted the church over there in Union to do something to get out of the house.  And there was many a times, that a, well, you’d wake up and there was a basket at the door, food. Things. So.  Now a days is different. Kids don’t enjoy what they got.  I think they expect it.  I’m not talkin about you kids, (laughter) but most of the kids, they expect it.  If they didn’t have it, they put a hell of a hullabaloo about it.  Where we appreciate it, whatever.  If we spent a nickel and got a kite and had one ball of string and Pop said here, here’s another couple of cents. Go get another ball of string.  Hey, we had a happy day.  You know, little things that really made big things out of little things.  What else do you want to know?
Q:/V.L.  I can’t think of anything else.  Thank you very much.
A:  As far as like I was gonna say, health. My family had the best as far as health.  But when we were kids, say you had chicken pox or something, you call up the doctor, or they call them visiting nurses used to come, and oh, you put cocoa butter or do this and that and we survived. Like, diphtheria was a very bad thing, when we were kids. The who9le house would be quarantined and stuff like that. At that time, I remember my brother had diphtheria and we were quarantined, but we had a job in the store.  So they put the sign on the house, quarantined, and we went with a neighbor, lived with a neighbor, so we could go to work.  If not, we would have had problems.  So, you know what this hand and that hand, you know what this hand is doing in order to save that hand.  In other words, if you had nothin, you made somethin.  And now a days, if ya haven’t got nothin you go up and you say to town hall, hey I need this and I need that.  Nine times out of ten ya get it, years ago ya didn’t do that. Years ago, you made your own bed.  You make your bed ya lie in it.  This is the way it was.
Q:/C.M.  Do you think that the people that killed themselves during the depression or those that basically gave up, were justified?
A:  I think they’re nuts.  People think more of money then their lives is something wrong.  You know, like I say, we didn’t have nothin, but when we got a penny, we enjoyed the penny and if someone took the penny away, it wouldn’t have mattered.  Because we still love life, I mean , you can’t, some people, ya got a million bucks and somebody takes a million bucks, as far as I’m concerned right now, they can have my money, as long as I got my health.  But people didn’t think, they panicked. In them days, every thing, they panicked.  Every little thing that went wrong, oh this and that, this is gonna happen and that’s gonna happen. Same way when we went into the war, I mean, you had to go ya went.  A lot of people, oh I don’t want and they took off and went to Canada.  Right?  I mean that it’s one of those things.  There’s another thing. I was reading in today’s Parade, you might have the Parade around here. As far as, well, maybe I better not get into that because you might say I was prejudiced.  I’ll say, I don’t know if you want to record it or not.  In my estimation, the people living today, how am I gonna say this?  They forgive and forget too easily.  I went to war.  Casious Clay, at the time, didn’t want to go to war, yet they made him a hero today.  Look in your Parade.  They praise this man to high heaven, and the guys that actually went to war they just forget about it.  And, another thing.  Shut that damn thing off.
Q:/V.L.  Do you think the 1930’s brought your family closer together?
A:  Yes. The 1930’s, I’m trying to think, well, 1932 I believe it was, I graduated grammar school and I wasn’t going to go to commencement because they had white pants and a blue jacket.  And I couldn’t go because I, I went to commencement. My aunt come over, she, I don’t know if you heard of the Happiness Boys of New York, they call them the Happiness Boys, three people in New York, had a big business going as far as extermination, rats and this and that, you know.  And they had all the ships that came in they used to derat.  Well anyway, my aunt is the one who brought me a coat and things so I could go.  But still, I went, and I still remember to this day, I had big holes in the bottom of my shoe. (laughter) I mean, everything we got we appreciated and like I say again, people today don’t appreciate what they got.  They want everything given to them too.  Now, where’s the beer and pretzels?  (laughter)
Q:/V.L.  Thank you very much.

Q: Today is March 24, 2001.  We are interviewing Ron Roth at [his residence]. The interviewers are Valerie Lykes and Chrissy Morgan.
Q: You were born in 1929.  You were pretty young at the beginning of the Depression.  Did you live in Easton, Pennsylvania?
A: No I didn’t.  Actually, the Depression started in 1929; the effects weren’t really felt immediately.  The effects were felt when I was a little kid.  In fact, my parents lived in Nazareth Pennsylvania.  My father had just bought a dairy; it was very prosperous and he was doing well, and of course when the crash came, they couldn’t keep up with things and he lost the dairy and all of his savings so my family was penniless, and I had an older sister, Lorraine, and myself.  And of course just putting food on the table was a major issue at that point.  So my grandparents lived on a farm, so as a 3 year old, I was shipped out and I lived with my grandparents because my parents really could not afford to feed me—literally.  Of course they visited frequently because living on a farm they got a free farm when they came out there (laughing). And so from 3-6 I lived with my grandparents on the farm, which was very interesting because rural electrification had not happened; we had kerosene lamps, and I can remember the ritual every morning: taking newspaper and cleaning out the chimneys because they would get literally black…so everyone helped my grandmother do that. We had wooded coal burning stoves: so that meant you had to lug all that stuff into the house; we had no running water, no electricity…there was a pump in the kitchen was connected with the spring… which was, oh, maybe 500 yards from the house…and so we actually had water in our house and a lot of people didn’t even have water in their houses… they had to go out with a bucket and bring it in…so we were “modern.”  We also didn’t have any indoor facilities; there was an outhouse about 50 yards from the house and that’s where you went and in the winter, of course, you didn’t do that so everybody had their potty under the bed or the lender mug and that was a very different living.  You went to bed early...you sort of went with the sun.  When the sun went down, shortly thereafter you went to bed and when the sun came up you got up because there was work to do.  And one of the things I can remember--- in the dead of winter, it would be very, very cold because there was no heat upstairs—and my grandmother always had a couple of bricks in the oven and she would wrap a towel around the brick and everybody got his or her brick and you went up to bed and you put it where you were the coldest.  I always put mine by my feet.
Q: Do you know if your family bought anything on credit in the twenties?
A: I would say almost everything.  In fact, I wish I could remember the name of the outfit that uh—it was some kind of a credit bureau that was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  When you had a major expense, for instance, well my mother went to the hospital to have my younger brother, I know my father took out a loan from them, and it was always a terrible chore-thing because you could get an unverified loan—you know, you could get it on your signature—but they caused more interest than the bank.  And we were always in debt.  ALWAYS in debt.
Q: Did your parents trust the banks after what happened in ’29?
A: I don’t think my grandparents did.  I think my parents trusted the banks because by about 1936, things were pretty level again--- but my grandparents, I don’t think they ever put money back in the bank.  IN fact they had—in their upstairs hall—a very large, very heavy safe and all the goodies were in there.  I used to love when my grandmother would sit on the floor and swish those things around one way and then the other way—the door was—I would say, 8 inches thick.  It was a big thing, but the space inside was relatively small, so they kept a lot of cash in there, and they had bonds—like my grandparents had some money; they lived on a farm, so therefore they didn’t lose as much during the Depression as a lot of other people.  The people who had bought businesses or were in industrial things, they really took it.
Q: So how did your parents survive when their dairy went under like that?  That must have been a major blow.
A: It was a very major blow.  The house hadn’t been paid off so my grandparents picked up the mortgage, so we weren’t homeless and my [father] came from a very large family and he had most of our family, most of our uncles were farmers so my father would go work for one of his brothers and come back with a bushel of potatoes or whatever.  So that’s how we survived.  A couple chickens…we barely got by.  And in the summer time we gardened and my mother canned and canned...we had a whole basement filled with cans.  I can remember as a kid I thought I would never ever want another green been because I bet you we had 300 cans of green beans.  Every other meal the vegetable was green beans.  Potatoes and green beans: they were the staples.  And on Sundays we always had chicken.  There’s a book called Chicken Every Sunday and I read it because that’s what we always had; we always had chicken on Sundays!
Q: Did you feel that living on the farm kept you more isolated from the events of the Depression?
A: Uh, probably a little insulated—but the effects of the Depression were felt everywhere.  Maybe the ultra-wealthy were saved, but everyone was affected by it.  And if there’s something good to say about the Depression: it hit everybody.  It didn’t pick out you or you or you or it didn’t care what race you were, what your religion was… it hit everybody.  Misery likes company so you couldn’t/didn’t really feel sorry for yourself, you weren’t jealous, because you were all in the same boat.  We had very little. Todays kids talk about allowances and it amuses me when I hear about the kinds of allowances they get.  After we were sort of back on our feet again, I would get 10 cents a week, and 5 cents of that was for the church offering plate and the other 5 cents was for me to do with what I wanted to…and that was usually to go to the Five & Ten and buy a lead soldier, which, as a little kid, was my craze.  We innovated; we played a lot of games that we made up. If there was construction near by or something all the little ends that they sawed off of wood, we saved all those little pieces and would play with those and build with them.  We were very creative because we didn’t have a lot of things.  Obviously there was no television… I remember when my mother came back from Philadelphia…she took a trip to Strawbridge and Clothier and she bought our first radio.  It was, I would say 8 inches long and about 5 inches high…this tiny little thing… but oh God…every afternoon when I came home from school, there were about 6 programs, all 15 minutes in length designed for kids and we were all glued to that little radio.
Q: Did you listen to Amos n Andy?
A: Well that was at night, but oh yes we listened to Amos and Andy! Charles Carrell was a favorite in our house.  He played Amos. And the reason I happen to know his name because our neighbor across the street was Charles Carrell—not the same one who played the part—but he had the same name.  So I always remembered his name.  I have Amos n Andy wind-up toys that I had to have because Amos n Andy were important to me.  As were Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, Little Orphan Annie…they were all very important to me.  And the singing lady at 5 o’clock…
Q: Do you remember any songs from that time period that you particularly enjoyed?
A: I remember a lot of the songs.  In fact, one of the reasons I joined the local barbershop chorus is because they sing a lot of the songs that were popular back in the twenties and thirties.  But I remember the oddball songs.  There was one called “10 Little Maids.”  “There were 10 little maids at a village school… picture ten little maids at a village school…  And one little boy loved them all but he can’t have ‘em all, so…” Blah blah blah blah blah blah.  One was blonde…no… “five were blonde and four brunettes and one was a saucy little redhead.  The girls grew up, the boys left school, and at 21 he wedded the saucy little redhead.  Here’s what one pretty girl at the village school taught that one naughty boy at the village school:  It’d be fun but your heart picks someone so you can’t marry ten pretty girls!”  Stupid…
Q: Do you remember anyone who was employed by New Deal Programs? Or did your parents have any friends who were employed by those programs?
A: I knew a lot of people who worked for the New Deal programs—particularly the WPA.  And we kind of looked down on those people, believe it or not.  In fact, the WPA, we jokingly said we’d “poke around” because we felt they really weren’t working as hard as…. We’d see those crews, and mostly they were standing.  There’d be 5 guys with shovels…one would be shoveling and four would be leaning on their shovels.  We were Pennsylvania Dutch and we were hard workers and we sort of looked down a little bit on WPA.  Although—they did wonderful things for the communities.  They built post offices….they  built a swimming pool and park in my hometown that…it’s a model park.  The swimming pool is huge and it was really one of the great things that they did.  They built a great big amphitheater…so…as far as community improvement kind-of-stuff, they did that, and it gave employment to a lot of people.  In retrospect, as an adult, I understand that that was a saving feature for a lot of families, that without that employment, they would have had nothing.  And it did provide a lot of stuff for communities.  But my family, par se, sort of looked down their nose at that…that they were taking the cheap way out or something.
Q: Did a lot of people have that same opinion?
A: I don’t know.  I think that was maybe unique to hard working Pennsylvania farmers..I don’t know.
Q:  Did you think the government was taking too activist a role?
A: No, I don’t think they had that view at all.  It was just they felt that these guys were being paid for more than they were working. It was a form of welfare.  And my family didn’t take welfare.  You worked for it.
Q: Do you know who your parents voted for in the election of 1932?
A: Oh absolutely.  Roosevelt. There weren’t very many, I think, that voted for anybody else.
Q: Were the people largely in favor of the programs Roosevelt was enacting? Were they considered justified, or was it stepping out of line, getting too involved in people’s lives…
A: I don’t think it was any of those.  It was a desperate time.  People were hurting, and this man held out hope.    And I think people voted for hope.  And fortunately, a lot of the programs worked.  They didn’t all work, as you scholars of history know, but some of them did and the country got turned around.  Of course the biggest boost to the economy was the Japanese attacking  Pearl Harbor.
Q: So back then, you don’t think people really thought about Roosevelt invading space…but now looking back they have a different perspective?
A: I was very young then, so I know I didn’t think of those things.  I sort of doubt that my parents did, although my father was very intellectual and was very involved in politics.  He was a driving force in the formation of unions…in fact he spent most of his life organizing unions throughout the country and that was his last job…he worked for the FLCIO.  So he was politically very involved in that kind of thing but as far as voting for Roosevelt the first time, I think it was a matter of, we needed change, what we’d tried led us to disaster, we needed the other political party in to see if they can do something and Roosevelt came up with programs that people saw some hope in and I think that’s why he won that election.
Q: Did you listen to his Fireside Chats?
A: Oh sure. That little radio got a lot of use.  And he had a wonderful voice.
Q: Do you think that was part of the reason why he got elected in 1936—the honesty he had, the charisma, the ability to speak out to the people?
A: Well I think there were a lot of things that were different then from now.  First of all, I think the media was not intrusive.  The media had respect for people and there conditions.  For instance I never knew until I was quite elderly—well, not elderly, but much older—that Roosevelt was really infirmed. That was never made public to any of us. We didn’t know that he was practically a cripple.  You know, we heard and saw this wonderful image.  And he had a wonderful resonant voice.  He was like grandpa to all of us.  And I think the media was different then.  They treated things differently.  We didn’t have insights into all the behind-the-scenes stuff that would have distracted.
Q: Do you think that was a better kind of media than what we have today?
A: Well, it certainly was good for the times. All the stuff that’s going on now was going on then, but now we’ve uncovered everything and I think maybe we’ve made a lot of people—particularly young people, very cynical.   In fact I’ve become a little cynical myself to tell you the truth and I think they’re all lousy louts.  They’re out for individual gain, they really don’t give a hoot about the people, and if the people perchance make out or do well because of something they do, good… but that’s not their prime driving factor.  I’ve become a little cynical.
Q: So you would say the government then was much less selfish?  Roosevelt was more “on a pedestal” than we’d see our presidents today?
A: Oh yes! Oh yes! In fact when he died, this nation came to a halt.  The only other time that we approached that was when John Kennedy died-- was assassinated.
Q: Do you remember anything from the Fireside Chats in particular?
A: I can remember that he usually, somewhere along the line, he would refer to Fallow.  Fallow always got a line somewhere.  That was his dog and I thought that was great.  It was just like listening to grandpa.  You got a warm feeling just listening to that voice.  Of course the speech that I think I could almost verbatim give you was the day Japan attacked and he spoke before the Congress. “The day that shall live in infamy.”
Q:  Was Roosevelt more on a pedestal or was he more like “one of the family”?  Was he a very personal president? How was he regarded?
A: Looking back, I think people either loved him or hated him.  He wasn’t the kind of person you could be lukewarm about.  In my immediate area, he was revered.  He was the savior of the country and I can remember on inauguration day, January 20th, we always had a big celebration in my down—they had a presidential ball, and they raised funds for the March of Dimes.   It took me a long while to make the connection that March of Dimes originally was to fight polio, and that’s what he had.
Q: I was reading an article about how he told people to send in their dimes and that was considered the beginning of March of Dimes.  Did you have a movie theater where you lived/
A: Oh! We had 3 movie theaters.  One of them closed shortly after, like when I was 4 or 5, I only remember being in it once.  But the Broad Street theater was the big theater and that had all of the latest hits from Hollywood.  I remember I saw Pinocchio and Snow White and the 7th Dwarfs.  I can remember our whole class marching six blocks up to the movie theater to see that one!
Q: This was in Nazareth?
A: Yes.  It was a Tin Can matinee.  Do you now what a Tin Can matinee was?  Everybody had to bring a tin can of food and that was your fee to get into the theater.  So most of us had a can of Campbell’s soup ‘cause that was the cheapest thing you could buy!  But that was your admission to the theater.
Q:  What did they collect the cans for?
A:  For the food pantries to give to the poor.  So they called then Tin Can Matinees.  And the Royal theater, which was over on Main Street, that was only open on Saturdays.  And they opened at, I think it was 1:00, and they showed big movies…usually westerns…there was two of those and then they had a serialized show…it was always like 10 or 12 parts and every Saturday they would show one serial.  It always ended on a cliffhanger so that you would come back next Saturday to see what happened.  All the kids on my block, we all went to the theater on Saturday…it cost 10 cents. We had to know what was going to happen.  You know—they tired her to the railroad tracks and you could hear the whistle blowing and it was over! Or he fell off the edge…it was over! It was always a cliffhanger.
Q: Do you remember in your spare time playing any sports?
A: We did lots of stuff because we didn’t have television so we would put on little plays.  Models were big.  We built models—model airplanes, model cars.  All the kids—our backyard was the playground for our neighborhood.  My mother said “I never have to worry about mowing grass because there’s no grass to mow!”  ‘Cause all the kids played…you know, we made jungle gyms, we had swings, we had see-saws…it was all in our backyard.  And my mother always used to say: “My kids are in my backyard.  I know where they are and I don’t have to worry about them. If they’re someplace else I gotta worry.”  So our backyard became the playground.  And of course school was very important.  School and church.   I belonged to a thing called Luther League…that met every Saturday morning.  And not only did we study Bible stories and stuff but it was fun time.  We’d have a lot of singing and we played a lot of games… group games like “Crack the Whip” and circle games I can’t even remember the names of… like  “Drop the Hankie,” “Fox and Geese,” you know, all kinds of stuff. They were fun games but you had to have a crowd.  And there we had a crowd. Of course at school they had music lessons for anybody who wanted them.  They were free, and that was in the summer time so everybody I knew was learning to play a musical instrument.  Not only did we have the community band and the high school band, but the legion had a drum and bugle course.  So I belonged to all three because that was what you did.  The Fairview Elementary School was a block and a half away and they had a basketball court there and they had marble circles.  You guys don’t even know about playing marbles…
Q: I do!  I really do!
A: Oh you do?
Q: A long time ago.  I remember that.
A: We had poppers and shooters and we played jacks too.  Marbles was a big thing in my day.  In fact I have quite a marble collection because I became nostalgic about old marbles.
Q: Did you trade marbles?
A: Oh yeah! But you’d mostly lose ‘em!  I was buying marbles—a lot of marbles—with my nickels in the Five & Ten.  That was the great shopping—the Five & Ten. Every Saturday afternoon we’d go to the Five & Ten to spend our allowance.  We would look for hours before we’d make the big decision.  And that’s what we did on Saturdays—movies and the Five & Ten.
Q: Do you remember Soap Box Derbies?
A: Oh yes.  They were very popular.
Q: Could you give us a summary of a normal day.
A: Normal day? Well, let’s do a winter day because that’s more fun.  On a normal winter day you’d get up and it was still dark.  And it’d be cold as….BRR!!  So you’d get out of bed real fast, grab your shoes and go down to the kitchen which was the warmest, because there was a big stove in the kitchen.   I always used to put my shoes in the oven to warm ‘em up. And we always got dressed in front of the stove and you got a bath once a week—you didn’t shower, because first of all we didn’t have a shower.  And taking a bath and doing laundry was a big production because we had a big copper boiler which would go on the stove that would hold about, oh maybe 25 gallons of water.  And you’d fill that and it took a long while for that to get hot and then to do the laundry that had to be carried by the bucket-full down into the basement where the washing machine was….so it was really a lot of work.  When we took baths on Saturday night we had a big round galvanized tub… put it right in the middle of the kitchen floor and the youngest in the family got the first bath in there and went through the whole family in the same water…’cause you didn’t have the time and energy to heat all that water.  It was a big chore.  Anyways, after you were dressed, we would have our breakfast and it was, in the winter time, hot cereal, either Wheatina or oatmeal.  Ugh, I have terrible memories of oatmeal.  I liked Wheatina but I didn’t like oatmeal.  And always milk.  If we were lucky, we maybe had an orange.  We didn’t have tons of orange juice and stuff like you have today.  We really didn’t have bacon and eggs for breakfast… maybe some toast and jelly and a cup of hot Ovaltine.  But that was advertised by Little Orphan Annie and I had an Orphan Annie mug and little thermos bottle that I sent into the show for…so I would fill that thermos with hot Ovaltine and take it to school with me.  I was special: I had an Ovaltine thermos!  And fortunately I lived only 2 blocks from school so it wasn’t a big deal for me, but there were no buses.  Everybody walked.  And I can remember as a little kid, my mother made this snowsuit for me out of a black, furry kind of material… some woman had given her a big coat so she cut it and made a snowsuit for me… and I remember it had wrists and ankles that were bright red….my mother bought them at the Five & Ten.  So I was all black except for these four red things and everybody said I looked like a black bear.  So I learned to hate that snowsuit.  And it had a zipper that was about two feet long down the whole front.  But anyway in the winter it was nice and warm so…and I wasn’t the only one that had a homemade snowsuit…a lot of other guys did too, so…ehhh, you wore it, because it was warm.  And when we got to school—they had Central heat at school with big radiators so that was kind of nice…that was a luxury.  The school always smelled of oil because they used some kind of oil… there were wooden floors…and they used oil on the mops to mop the floors every day.  Looking back on it, that school was a tinderbox!  If anybody had ever dropped a match it would have gone TSHH…
Q: How many people were there?
A:  How many people were there….there were 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 rooms in the building and it was grades one through five…no, one through six in that building. And from there you went to the junior high and from there you went to the senior high. So 7,8,9 were in the junior high and [10,11,12] were the senior high. And I can remember on Friday afternoons…it was a big square building and the hall was in the middle…there were 2 floors and the four rooms went off… but almost the size of the room was the hall in the middle, which was an empty space…and on Friday afternoons at 2:00 we would all gather in that space: all the rooms on the floor… and there was a radio there…we would listen to Walter Demrash’s “Concerts for Young People.”  And that’s where I really learned to love classical music. We were introduced to things like “Peter and the Wolf” and opera….we listened to the Michata.  I became devoted to Mozart…I thought his music was marvelous.  That was every Friday afternoon and I remember those.  We used to look forward to that… it was really great. And also I remember my third grade teacher really well because if we were really good during the week, the last thing on Friday before we would leave, she would read a chapter from the Wizard of Oz. Now that was long before the movie…. and I thought that was the most intriguing story and she read it so well! Boy we were good because we wanted to know what the next chapter was! It didn’t dawn on us to go to the library and get the book ourselves.  That never dawned on me.  Besides it was really great to have her read it. Miss Cooley—I even remember her name. She always—that was a motivator for us to do well.
 One of the things I did and I don’t know whether you’re interested or not… I wrote for my family—particularly my nieces…I wrote some stories about growing up during the Depression and if you would like I will give you a copy of that.
Q: That would be wonderful!
A: The stories have to do with…one of those, when I was out on the farm and my pet pig…how my grandfather had to tell me that they were going to slaughter my pig.  That was very sad. In fact you’ll probably have a much better idea of who I am and something about the time and life of the area by just reading these stories. My mother was a wonderful woman, but she was a strict disciplinarian.  She used a pussy willow stick to discipline us.  And I don’t know if you know--- but pussy willow is very pliable. And around the ankles that stings! OH! Physically it wouldn’t hurt you but you knew you were punished! I wrote one story about the pussy willow stick. I also wrote a story about my sister teaching—before I went to school I knew how to read and write…I was way ahead of the rest of the kids because she taught me.  But this one story is about—she taught me how to write my name—Ronald D. Roth—and one Christmas—it was the first Christmas that I really was into Santa Claus and I had asked for something. Normally I had never--- because we didn’t have anything—you didn’t ask for anything because you knew you weren’t going to get it—there was no money…. But I really thought Santa Claus was going to bring this to me.  So I couldn’t wait any longer… it was about 5:00 in the morning and I came down and the packages were under the tree and they all had names on ‘em…and I looked at every package and none of them said R-O-N-A-L-D.  And I was sure that Santa Claus had forgotten me. So I went up to bed, very upset.  In fact I probably cried.  And, of course the family got up, came down.  And my sister yelled up to me: “Aren’t you coming down? Santa Claus was here!” And I yelled down: “Well there’s nothing for me anyway!” She said: “Oh yes there is!”  So I came down.  And I saw all the same packages, no new packages there.  So I looked at ‘em all; I said: “None of them are for me.” She said “Sure! This one is!” It was the biggest one there.  And it had “Sonny” on it—‘cause everyone called me Sonny.  That was my nickname.  I didn’t know how to spell Sonny.  So anyway, it turned out to be a happy Christmas.  Oh, and I wrote a story about the day I threw a rock into a brand new car window and that was interesting. I also wrote a story about the birth of my brother—my younger brother—and how little I knew about a pregnancy or how babies were born.  It’s a very naïve story, but funny.  And then the story about my brother and I in the winter sledding.  And also the story about the day I was operated on and had my tonsils out.  And then a story about my grandmother whom I loved very much.  So for what they’re worth—you may have that.
Q: Thank you very much!!
Q: Do you think the Depression caused your family to be closer together?
A: I personally felt the Depression separated us.  Because I spent many a night sleeping late because I felt my family didn’t want me because I had been farmed out to my grandparents. And so I had very different feelings. I felt betrayed and it took me a long time to realize that they didn’t do it because they didn’t like me, but that they couldn’t afford to have me.  But as a little kid that was hard to understand.  I really didn’t understand that until I was a young adult.  I can remember every Sunday night when we were at my grandparents and suddenly I’d turn around and they weren’t there anymore.  They would sort of sneak out because they didn’t want to say goodbye and because they knew I would cry.  And for me that was traumatic.  So when you say “bring families together”…it didn’t bring family together for me.  It separated us.  But I think the question that you’re asking…I think in most cases… it made people depend on one another.  You know, if you had something you shared it.  In that sense, it made people closer.  If your neighbor needed a half cup of sugar for something, you gave it. You shared, you were a closer-knit community.  That sense of community I don’t think exists in most places anymore.
Q: You said everybody listened to the Fireside Chats—why do you think that was?  Now when the presidents talk on TV…we don’t watch them…
A: Well first of all, we were very dependent on government programs.  The world was at war… families had given up their sons and daughters.  There weren’t all the distractions.  We didn’t have television, we didn’t have a whole lot of things to do.  And people were genuinely interested in their country—in what was happening.  And this was “the leader” talking. He commanded respect and attention.  And I think because everybody did it…it was ‘en vogue’ to listen.  Today its ‘en vogue’ not to listen.  Today when they have a political convention, they don’t even put it on Prime Time anymore. You ask somebody: “Did you watch the convention today?” “Are you kidding?” You know--- that attitude.
Q: So the government was much more, in a sense, important to the people than today?  Is it like, today we take what the government does for us more for granted….
A: I’m not sure if we take it for granted; we expect it.  And we have lost a lot of trust in government.  We’re suspicious. As I said I think we’re all a little cynical.  You can’t even compare it.  Plus the instantaneous of everything.  Today you get 20,000 e-mails you don’t even want.  And everybody knows if somebody skipped a breath in Tokyo— you know it about two seconds later.
Q: So there’s too much?
A: Yeah.  Too much to comprehend.  And so people have just turned an awful lot of stuff off. They don’t listen because they have so much information its meaningless.
Q: Do you think that you had more respect for the government under Roosevelt’s command than you did after that? It commanded more respect than government’s today…
A: I personally had a lot more respect for government—for the officials. I personally knew when I was a kid, our representative to the Congress.  He would visit our house.  I thought he was a great man.  It was on a very personal level that you knew officials. They weren’t held up somewhere in an office and communicated to you by--- form letters and releases and the newspapers.  It was eyeball to eyeball kind of politics in those days. You felt involved and therefore you were concerned and you really felt that your vote or your action did indeed count and would make a difference. Today I think we’ve all become so cynical.  In fact I hear people say it all the time.  “It doesn’t matter who I vote for! Whether it’s Bush or Gore it’s more of the same regardless!” And so I think people—well, look at the voting records.  How many people out of the entire population vote? And how many ballots do they throw out? (Laughing)  I think people have become a little disgusted with the whole process.
Q: Back then things were a lot more simple?
A: Yes.  Definitely.  I think people were just more involved—personally involved.  When they went out to campaign, they went door to door.  Politics were discussed around the cracker barrel in the local store or in the barbershop. They were important issues and some of them would get pretty heated, some of those discussions.  People belonged to lodges and social organizations and things like that were discussed there.  Today, I don’t think we have those.  In fact today we try not to discuss religion, politics…you put them on the taboo list!  When you go to a cocktail party, you don’t talk about those things!  Heaven forbid! It’d be controversial! So I think a lot of things have changed.  And not for the better.
Q: Did you ever hear anything about the Bonus Army? Marches or anything?
A: I don’t remember that.  I do remember when the local silk mill in my town was going to unionize that the Klu Klux Klan came to town and they marched in their white uniforms and burned crosses…and I remember how frightening that was to me.  And my town was half Protestant and half Catholic and we got along fine: there was no problem.  But the Klu Klux Klan came in from outside and were really very much down on Catholics, and didn’t want unionization.  And they were brandishing guns and I remember the state police came in and my parents made me go back home; they wouldn’t let me watch it. ‘Cause I was very small then.  I can just remember that as a very scary time and I didn’t know why.
Q: Why were they against unionization?
A:  Who knows.  I think because of who owned the mill and who wanted to unionize it.  I think the mill was owned by an uppity-up Protestant and the people that wanted to unionize were Catholic workers.  I think that’s the case—but don’t quote me on that.
Q: On another term: do you remember the FBI starting? Do you remember having an FBI club or anything? Did you write letters to the president?
A:  Well we all had FBI badges and—you’d get this stuff by listening to the radio. There’d be free premiums…you know, you’d send in a box top from something…you would get the decoder pin, the ring, the whistle-ring or…all this stuff.  It was designed to get you to get your parents to buy the product off the shelf in the store.   But oh yeah—that was all very important.   And there was an FBI story on television—(laugh) on television—on the radio…so that you got very caught-up in the work of the FBI and the most wanted list.  And J. Edgar Hoover was held out as a god when I was a little kid and as a man I find out that he was the worst thing that could have ever come out in the country…so…
Q: When you look back to the 1930s would you say that it was a memorable experience or would you classify it more as a period of “Hard Times” like the history books do?
A:  It was hard times, and they were wonderful times.  We made fun out of nothing; we were satisfied with what we had; we weren’t bombarded on television with all these products we couldn’t have.  The closest we came to that almost every household in America got the Sears and Robuck catalog and/or the Montgomery Ward catalog. And you could see all these things and… So what we did was we turned that into a game instead of sitting there and saying: “I can’t have any of that stuff…” We never said to ourselves we were poor.  Because we were like everybody else; we were all in the same boat. So we didn’t say we were poor.  We knew we didn’t have a lot of stuff, but I can remember sitting for hours with my sister…we’d say “Today you can have the right page and I’ll have the left page.” And we would look and on “This page I want that..” And she would say: “On my page I want that..” We would go through the catalog and in our minds that was our “thing” for the day. You know—we had that for the day because on that page we picked that thing. And that was a game we played.  We didn’t sit there feeling sorry for ourselves because we didn’t have those things; we turned it into a game.  And I think we did that with a lot of things and we had a good time.  I had lots of good friends; we did a lot of things together.  I remember my childhood, particularly when I left the farm and came back and lived with my parents and went to school, as very happy times.
Q: What year was that?
A: What year did I come back? 1935.  I came back to live with my parents.
Q: You said your father was working on his brothers’ farms and that was how he supported the family.  Did anyone else in the house have to work?
A: Oh my mother worked very hard.  She took in laundry; she cleaned other people’s houses; she nursed sick people; she worked as much as my father. She sold…she was a local Larken dealer…which was another catalog and the only thing I can sort of compare with today…it’s like women sell Mary Kay products.
Q: Like Avon?
A: Yeah, like Avon. She ran this business out of her home. There was a catalog; people would buy the thing, give her the money… she sent it to Buffalo and it would come in on the train; then she would deliver it.  She was the agent for that.  My father helped her with that business.  So that’s how they made ends meet. And then about 1934, I guess, my father got a job at the local cement mill.  And things were a little bit better from then on because he had a steady income. It wasn’t that great but at least we knew we had…but my mother still worked very hard at stuff like that.  And we still were far from wealthy but we made do. We got 2 pairs of shoes—one pair of shoes you wore at the beginning of school and one pair of shoes at Easter time.  At Easter time that became our Sunday shoes and the other pair of shoes became our everyday shoes.  So every time you got a new pair of shoes…
Q: Is there anything else you can think of that you’d like to tell us?
A: Well, I’m glad I grew up in that period, believe it or not.  I have very fond memories of it.  I’m sure kids growing up today have fond memories also…I wasn’t bombarded with a whole lot of the problems that you guys are today.  I didn’t have to deal with—in fact, when I was growing up the big thing that we got yelled at for was for chewing gum.  That was major issue in school. Chewing gum.  Today kids are faced with drugs, smoking, sex at a very early age…all kinds of things that just weren’t problems.  It wasn’t there.  There was no pressure; we were relatively carefree and innocent and that was kind of nice.
Q: Do you think that at the time you perceived life as being that nice or do you think that’s sort of changed as you’ve gotten older?
A:  I don’t think I really perceived it in one way  or the other.  You just—you were part of it.  You lived it.  I wasn’t smart enough to step back and take a look at what was going on (Laughing).  I wasn’t introspective in that sense.  I just knew that I had a warm bed to go, I was fed everyday, I had parents that loved me, I had a lot of friends, and we were doing a lot of stuff.  And that was my life.  It was very innocent.  I remember we used to sell candy bars for our little church group and we raised enough money to buy all gold stuff for the altar and for many, many years every time I would go to that church I’d say “When I was a kid we bought that!”  And it was that kind of stuff.  Kind of was a good edge to everything you did.
Q:  We were discussing who the person of the century was.  We had talked about: Was Roosevelt the person of the century?
A:  Of the 20th century? I would rather think it was a compatriot of his: Winston Churchill.  Would be my pick for the person of the century.
Q: I think that’s it! Thank you very much!
A: Girls, it was very nice talking to you! And do well on your report!