A similar story is told by Florence Deeks regarding H.G. Wells' _Outline of History_ --- one wonders how many more instances of this sort of thing need to be brought to light.
It is unfortunate that every family hasn't preserved what the Great Depression was like in their oral history, but I'm glad to see that the specifics of this are being shared.
For my father's family, my grandfather drove the year's tobacco crop in to Richmond to sell, but what it sold for wouldn't even buy gas for the return trip, so he sold the truck and walked home.
A co-worker's family has preserved a _wonderful_ tradition rooted in the Great Depression --- each Christmas present is described by a riddle (of course, this was begun so as to afford a modicum of pleasure to gifting something practical such as a pack of razor blades), and when it is time to open gifts the entire family gathers in a circle, the recipient reads the riddle, and everyone takes a turn at guessing, and only after _everyone_ has chimed in is the gift finally opened. Opening gifts is an all-day affair.
Unfortunately, the original riddles, or even more recent ones have not been preserved --- I told him he should write his family tradition up in a book.
duxup 3 days ago [-]
I think the lack of stories is somewhat related to how people will sometimes unfairly take bad things that happen to them as a personal failure, and how just brutal the depression can be ... so that they do not want to pass it on / relive it.
My grandparents told me that a lot of adults they knew at that time were never the same after the Great Depression. Many of those folks built lives, businesses, careers to be proud of ... and many were wiped out entirely.
The failure of farms, businesses, livelihoods took such a brutal toll, and I think some took the idea that they were responsible for failing to provide / etc so hard that it impacted them the rest of their lives.
Sharing it may not have been something they wanted to do.
robotnikman 3 days ago [-]
I feel like my grandpa was a hoarder because of what he went through during the great depression as a kid.
WillAdams 3 days ago [-]
The field of psychology has gone back and forth on that, but the bottom line is it's a socio-economic divide:
>Only the rich can afford to have nothing, because if they want something, they will just buy it.
but for folks on the other side of that divide, as my father often said:
>Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
and the calculus of kept object vs. potential storage space is far different.
throwup238 3 days ago [-]
My parents bought a house from a woman that survived the Depression and they found decades worth of stored food under the house. Grains, sugar, fruit preserves - pretty much anything that could be saved was. They bought the house a decade ago and still haven’t gone through everything.
I feel it’s a rather common response from the trauma of the Great Depression.
inanutshellus 3 days ago [-]
Man, that's genius, to create anticipation and shared joy over each present.
Not saving them is a dag nabbed tragedy.
Are the riddles hints as to what's in the package, or random or? Would love to hear some of them.
WillAdams 3 days ago [-]
Hints as to what is in the package.
The only one which was related to me was:
Q: What was Colin Powell before he was promoted to General?
and the gift was black maize popcorn:
A: A black kernel (colonel)
Ccecil 3 days ago [-]
I knew a man who grew up in the depression. One thing he said that stuck with me was that they had one pair of shoes...and they were for winter only.
WillAdams 3 days ago [-]
That was actually pretty common in earlier times --- a notable line from a biography of Abraham Lincoln where it was related that poor folks would carry shoes to church and only put them on after arriving at the church grounds:
>Who wears out good shoe leather on walking?
helboi4 3 days ago [-]
Sometimes you really come across a scenario that expresses how unfathomably deep the tradition of sexism goes. The idea that Steinbeck would rather thank the man who literally just asked for the research papers for him, rather than the woman who literally wrote them is one of those scenarios. The fact that that was a totally unremarkable and natural thought process to go down is just so wild.
burkaman 3 days ago [-]
It's also unclear if she even agreed to share her notes. This article says she did, but other sources (https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-dust-bowl/sanora-babb) say her boss just gave her notes to Steinbeck without telling her.
adamc 3 days ago [-]
It suggests to me that women were so low in status as to be effectively invisible in plain sight.
metalforever 3 days ago [-]
People still do this to me (a woman) in the workplace now, like a lot.
epicureanideal 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
helboi4 3 days ago [-]
I'm gonna guess you're probably a sexist since you felt the need to write this bad faith comment twice. It's dumb to ignore the actual researcher when its the research you're benefitting from. She ended up getting nothing from her research which was pretty common for women back then because it is well known that it was not socially acceptable to allow women to overshadow men with their achievements. This was the early 20th century. At that point of time, any similar scenario was probably sexism. Everyone was sexist. The likelihood is not low.
epicureanideal 3 days ago [-]
> I'm gonna guess you're probably a sexist
I think this proves my point.
WillAdams 3 days ago [-]
Who was the highest placed woman in government at that time?
The fact that it was essentially inconceivable that a woman would be in charge anywhere is pretty much the definition of sexism.
epicureanideal 3 days ago [-]
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setocanra2018 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
alecco 3 days ago [-]
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eimrine 3 days ago [-]
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Rendered at 01:44:12 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It is unfortunate that every family hasn't preserved what the Great Depression was like in their oral history, but I'm glad to see that the specifics of this are being shared.
For my father's family, my grandfather drove the year's tobacco crop in to Richmond to sell, but what it sold for wouldn't even buy gas for the return trip, so he sold the truck and walked home.
A co-worker's family has preserved a _wonderful_ tradition rooted in the Great Depression --- each Christmas present is described by a riddle (of course, this was begun so as to afford a modicum of pleasure to gifting something practical such as a pack of razor blades), and when it is time to open gifts the entire family gathers in a circle, the recipient reads the riddle, and everyone takes a turn at guessing, and only after _everyone_ has chimed in is the gift finally opened. Opening gifts is an all-day affair.
Unfortunately, the original riddles, or even more recent ones have not been preserved --- I told him he should write his family tradition up in a book.
My grandparents told me that a lot of adults they knew at that time were never the same after the Great Depression. Many of those folks built lives, businesses, careers to be proud of ... and many were wiped out entirely.
The failure of farms, businesses, livelihoods took such a brutal toll, and I think some took the idea that they were responsible for failing to provide / etc so hard that it impacted them the rest of their lives.
Sharing it may not have been something they wanted to do.
>Only the rich can afford to have nothing, because if they want something, they will just buy it.
but for folks on the other side of that divide, as my father often said:
>Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
and the calculus of kept object vs. potential storage space is far different.
I feel it’s a rather common response from the trauma of the Great Depression.
Not saving them is a dag nabbed tragedy.
Are the riddles hints as to what's in the package, or random or? Would love to hear some of them.
The only one which was related to me was:
Q: What was Colin Powell before he was promoted to General?
and the gift was black maize popcorn:
A: A black kernel (colonel)
>Who wears out good shoe leather on walking?
I think this proves my point.
The fact that it was essentially inconceivable that a woman would be in charge anywhere is pretty much the definition of sexism.