The Depression of the Great Depression

Depression Syndromes: The Great Depression indubitably imprinted permanent dysphoria on the children who grew up during those years, especially those who lived in homes that struggled to put food on the table. Even after the Depression had ended, the fear of hunger and poverty branded into the nervous systems of those who survived did not disappear in the wake of jobs, cash flow, and a plethora of available goods and services. My parents exhibited the damage sustained in their own unique ways. My mother, for example, hid chocolate pudding from her own children. She always made two boxes of Jell-o chocolate pudding, one for the family (which included her) and one of herself (which included only her). The extra portion was always hidden well behind the larger items in the refrigerator, like the milk jugs. After we kids were asleep, mom would make her way down the steps from the upstairs bedrooms and quietly help herself to her own gigantic bowl of pudding. No other food item was horded in this way, just the chocolate pudding. Everyone knew she did it and no one ever confronted her or faulted her for it. After all, she controlled the kitchen and who wants to piss off Oz of the Kitchen?

Another quirk mom had was shoes. She would wear a piece of clothing until it fell apart at the seams, wear the same black wool dress to church every Sunday all winter long, and bargain shop for clothes like a professional rag-picker, but her stash of shoes was like something from a Hollywood diva's closet. The woman adored shoes and would not hesitate to blow the budget on a pair she loved. I must confess, her taste in shoes was enviable. The pair I remember and loved best were black linen Winklepicker heels with embroidered red roses across the tops. The Winklepicker shoe had sharp pointy toes and high thin heels ending in a small metal cap that made a snappy sound as they crossed the floor, leaving little dents on wood surfaces. Mom had a gorgeous set of legs and when she modeled her black strapless dress with a full tulle skirt covered in glitter and her Winklepicker high heels, she shimmered like a fallen star from the vast of night. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Of all my friends' mothers and the women in my family, she was the most beautiful. When she walked into a room in the Winklepickers and her sparkling dress with her red hair pulled back into a French twist, she appeared as something "other," as if she had walked out of a movie screen or a romance novel into our home to reintroduce herself as my mother. I was fascinated by the transition and a bit frightened at the same time, wondering if she perhaps was someone I really didn't quite know. But like her younger brother always said, "Mary is a knock-out."

Or she could knock you out. No matter how beautiful she was, how lovely her house, or how much money my father made, the Depression left deep scars of inferiority that she struggled to conceal her entire life. Any smart-aleck remark from one of her wisenheimer children could send her into a rage and we risked our lives if we blurted out something stupid. As an adult, I realize how teasing wounded her pride, which itself was a thin veneer she carefully preserved. I once pointed out an error she made in grammar, but worse, I laughed about it. Mom had dropped out of school because she had no shoes to wear and she was extremely sensitive that while Dad had graduated with an engineering degree from Washington University in St. Louis, she had not finished the 8th grade. After my remark, she glared at me, raised her chin, sniffed, and bit her lower lip. Then she reminded me that I could spend my Saturday vacuuming and dusting the entire house as well as doing the dishes after dinner. In turn, I reminded HER that I had plans to go to the movies with my friend Kathy that Saturday night. It was the fifty-cent double feature and by golly, I could not miss that! Once I turned eight years old or so, Mom never raised a hand to me - she saved the spankings for my brother - but she could verbally skewer me and did so. She reminded me that if I was a linguistic genius, or what she called barker of 25-cent words, my paltry B in English on my last report card should have been an A. To ensure I understood her message, she capped her sarcasm by adding that she did not see the president of my school's student council standing before her nor had I yet won any memorable scholastic awards. I was knocked so hard off my high horse that serfdom felt like an honor and if memory serves me, I spent the day cleaning. At the end of the day, however, she allowed me to go to the movies, dishes be damned.

Despite my mother's temper, her children and her family were priorities. At the end of every school day, she perched herself on her stool next to the counter where the kitchen telephone was hung (rotary dial in those days) with her ashtray, pack of cigarettes, and glass of iced tea, waiting for me to crash through the back door into the kitchen in my red wool coat with the black faux fur collar and my arms filled with books. She waited with anticipation and as soon as I had unloaded myself from the trek home from the school bus, she wanted to hear about my day. How an average kid's school day could be that interesting was beyond me, but even in my self-absorbed, adolescent brain I understood that she vicariously enjoyed the high school years she missed through me. Since she dropped out of school in the 8th grade, other than what she saw in the movies or on television, she had no idea what high school was like. Because of her broad smile and the light in her eyes when I walked through the back door, I felt it was my duty to provide her this bit of pleasure at the end of the school day. She listened with such interest and compassion, and whether I had had a good day or bad, she heard all the details and in a weird, convoluted way, she became my therapist and confessor. I recounted my struggle to stay on the girls' swim team and she encouraged me to stick with it even when I lost every damned swim meet. She knew which girls were friendly, those who were real friends, and those who snubbed me. I confessed my feelings about certain boys, my heartbreak in my freshman year when the "love of my life" broke up with me because I stupidly told him I thought his best friend was adorable, and she knew about all my secret crushes. When my junior year English teacher singled me out in class as a star writer, she nodded as if she knew all along I was the next Dorothy Parker. She bristled when Mrs. Whitehead, the head of the school's chorus, refused to allow me to audition because I had turned down her request to join our church choir. Mom suggested I go to the church choir rehearsal that week and then request another audition, which I did and found myself in the church choir singing loudly out of tune but never being allowed into the school's chorus. I am sure that once Mrs. Whitehead heard my voice at church, she determined I wasn't Carnegie Hall material. Like most adolescents, and indeed most people, my days passed mundanely and I came home with absolutely nothing to report but rather than disappoint her, I revealed a bit of gossip or something odd a teacher wore that day. Without that, I fabricated a tale just to please her, nothing too wild or upsetting, but enough to keep the smile on her face. And, I got pretty good at the storytelling, albeit some of the stories were wrapped around my own fantasies of what I wished had happened that day because school mostly bored the hell out of me.

Regardless, my mother was fiercely proud of my high marks, any activity I participated in (whether I was any good at it or not), and she encouraged me in whatever I attempted to achieve. If I were invited to one of the school's formal dances, she made sure I always had a new gown to wear, complete with heels, jewelry, gloves, and a trip to the salon to have my hair styled. After I married in my junior year of college, I dropped out of school to give birth to my first child. Mom had taken me out to lunch and I ventured to ask her to babysit once the baby was born so that I could find a job and work. My husband was working full-time and finishing his studies to earn his degree. We needed money. Mom refused. She read my disappointment and smiled. Sucking on her cigarette, she told me she would not babysit for me to work, but she would take care of the baby if I returned to college and earned my degree. She encouraged me by saying that she would buy the baby's formula, buy Pampers to make diaper changing easier, and would help me with some clothing. I agreed. Once again, Mom had my back. A year later, my father accepted a position at Sanger-Harris department stores in Dallas and she was unable to keep her promise, but she continued to send enough money for baby food and Pampers and sent me an occasional new outfit from Sanger's to keep me going. I enrolled in night classes available on the evenings my husband was free and the few conflict of schedules we did have was resolved by my mother-in-law who enjoyed taking "Mr. Taters" for a few hours a week. My huband's mother Connie thought the baby's nickname was hilarious and she got a kick out of taking him one or two days a week to the Catholic church pre-school where she worked. All the children at the school loved baby Frankie and adopted Mr. Taters. Frankie quickly learned when mommy had "study time" and was content to play with his little brown French poodle or toys for a couple of hours. I taped notes to the kitchen cabinets and studied from them while cooking and doing dishes. Frankie was not content, however, to go to bed at night and insisted on a full hour of story time either from his Babar books, Winnie the Pooh, or one of his Richard Scarry books, his favorite. I financed those two years of school with an NEA loan and graduated cum laude with a degree in Literature and English Letters. Both my mother and my mother-in-law have my gratitude for helping me, as does my boy who was such as easy baby to please.

Mom's generosity expanded beyond the realm of her children. She loaned her brothers money when they were need, bought her nephews and nieces Christmas gifts when times were hard for their families, and took care of her sisters and brothers when they were ill or depressed. She never hesitated when called upon. She was also a good neighbor and friend, honest, forthright, and helpful. Her greatest challenge was her own mental and physical health of which both were fragile. While she was blessed with financial security and a good life as an adult, enjoying travel and the things money could buy, she continued to be fraught with the insecurity and anxiety that was an outcome of growing up with little security or stability, let alone food or material goods. Throughout their lives, in good times and bad, she and her nine brothers and sisters found respite in laughter, partying, dancing, and sticking up for family, but a current of dread and anger always seemed to run just beneath the gaiety.

The Great Depression Mask: The Depression most likely was the cause of my father's obsession with public image: stoic, dignified, serious, and a man of few words. Beneath that mask, however, at home and in privacy, he often revealed a youthful spirit, someone who loved to joke, tease, and play, and a man who deeply loved and grieved. One permeating characteristic that held fast across his lifetime and with everyone he knew was his need to control the almighty dollar. So much so, that after any kind of shopping spree, Mom would order me to promptly take all the packages upstairs and hide them in my closet. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to spend money without Dad knowing it. My guess is that she pilfered grocery money until she had enough to buy the things she wanted. Thus, the family's Friday night dinner special: bean burgers! (This was before non-meat burgers became a vegan's dream.) I don't think Dad could have, or would have, sent Mom to prison for embezzlement of the grocery money, but he held a tight reign over the bank account. To his credit, we never went without, but Mom was a woman of her times. "Don't tell your father," was a common adage in the house.

Dad was not just a miser with his family; he literally practiced what he preached and often asked nothing for himself. For years, he wore his olive drab army-issued undershirts beneath his white dress shirts for work instead of investing in white cotton ones. Every night he polished the same dress shoes for work the next morning. Until I was a junior in high school, we were a one-car family. When Mom needed the car to grocery shop or go to a doctor's appointment, he took the bus to work, rain or shine. The man never complained about any of it. I do remember one splurge, however. When I was about nine years old, Dad came home from work one day in a used 1950, five-window, deluxe short-bed pickup truck. It was bright red and so was Dad's excited face when he drove the truck into the driveway. As a kid, he had always wanted a red truck and when someone he worked with offered to sell his to him at a bargain-basement price, Dad could not resist. His excitement was so intense, Mom had no words and simply stood in the driveway smiling in perplexity. I do not know how much Dad paid for his truck and he only drove it for a couple of years before replacing it with a baby-blue 1957 Bel-Air Chevrolet, which I believe came after he was given a pay raise.

No one could blame Depression era children for growing up with money issues. Many of my father's childhood stories revolve around what he didn't have rather than what he did, and those things that he was able to get his hands on were treasured so much that great care was given to them to preserve their value as long as possible. Take the pair of white summer shoes he had to wear well into fall and then into winter. While my mother's solution to put something on her feet resulted in cutting out cardboard inserts that served a soles and then going outside only when the weather provided dry conditions, my father extended the life of his shoes by polishing them black to fit the season. Unfortunately, the black polish over white leather turned the shoes a bright purple. While we can chuckle over that mishap, a pre-adolescent boy would hardly find it funny having to wear purple shoes to school. In addition to that humiliation, he was required to wear his knickers as long as possible as well. In the 1920s, boys wore short pants, usually ending just below the knee with long black stockings and by the age of sixteen, generally traded off this style with long trousers to signify they had reached adulthood. We can only imagine how a young man might feel when finally ridding himself of his childhood britches to don a pair of trousers and join ranks with the other men of his family and at school. Because my father was a gifted child, he had been moved up twice into a higher grade level, which made him two years younger than his classmates. So at 14, he was still wearing knickers in a classroom with 16-year-old boys, most of whom wore long pants. Even if he had been allowed to wear trousers, it was unlikely that his parents had the money for new pants at that time, especially if he was having to polish his white summer shoes black to make do.

I am not sure what year my grandfather lost his job, but he was working at a factory when it either closed or downsized and as the story goes, he walked through the door one New Year's Eve, sat down on the couch, buried his head in his hands, and sobbed. He had lost his job and knew that a marginal existence for his family would now become even more tenuous. As the only adult male in the family, to save everyone from starvation, he started his own shoe repair business and worked from home obviously making enough money to pay the rent and buy food. But I'm sure items such as trousers for my father was a luxury that could not be afforded. So my father went to school in knickers well past the age they were intended to be worn and dreamed of owning a pair of long pants. Eventually, just before he graduated, he was provided a pair of trousers and he said that that was one of the happiest days of his life. He finally felt like a man.

Although Dad rarely talked about himself or growing up, he did share a story with me about his own father, my grandfather Edward Oberlin. Given a bucket and a nickel, he was periodically sent by his father to the local bar where the bucket was filled with beer which he ran home to his parents. Apparently, no laws were in place to prevent such a transaction. Dad related how quiet my grandfather was, a man who seldom spoke and did so only when necessary. Perhaps the man was just worn out. Dad's maternal grandmother lived with them, and he spoke fondly of her many times. Perhaps she furnished him with the affection he craved, but he must have often felt lonely as a child because although a good and loving person, as an adult Dad was a quiet man, a loner, and at times, distant. Between a caviling mother and a solemn father, and growing up in a Depression, the world must have felt like a lonely place to Dad. However, one occasion lived in his memory and revealed how important even minor recognition from his father was to him. Dad had returned home from World War II's European campaign, and grandpa asked him to walk down to the bar with him. No nickel, no bucket this time. Dad was in his uniform and my grandfather wanted to buy his son a beer. I wasn't told what they talked about, and perhaps that wasn't what was important to my father. He merely told me that that afternoon meant much to him because it was time that just he and his father spent together as two men having a beer together.

My grandfather had served in the army during World War I and was a casualty of mustard gas. Unfortunately, he died a few years later when I was about three years old of a brain tumor. He was just in his middle fifties and I never got to know him, so I am grateful that Dad shared the story about having a beer with his father in the bar. I also learned something further from that story and the few other stories my father shared with me. Like the one he told me about the Depression glass bowl he won at the movies. In those days, a theater ticket was about 25-cents and that included the feature film, a news reel, and a cartoon. During intermission dishes were sometimes raffled off by calling out the number found on the purchaser's ticket. The dishes were made from Depression glass, a mass-produced glassware that came in pink, green, and blue and was sold very cheaply or given away for free. My father was about ten years old when he went to the movies just before the Christmas holiday and the number on his ticket was called out. He won a pink glass bowl and decided he would give it to his grandmother as a Christmas gift. When he got home, he found some paper to wrap it in, and being the perfectionist he was, he wrapped and re-wrapped that bowl because he couldn't seem to get it just the way he wanted it to look. Finally, frustrated to the point of tears, he decided to give it one more try but had wrapped it so many times, his fingers grew tired and he told me, "I dropped the damned bowl on the floor and broke it. Then I cried because it was the only thing I had to give my grandmother who, I am sure, would not have cared. But, I did. I cared."

In an era when things come to us so easily, when we live in such abundance that we can afford to give clothing with price tags still on them to Goodwill, replace an iPhone that costs hundreds of dollars with a new one within a year or two because it has better "features" on it, and redecorate and renovate our homes periodically so that its "style" fits HGTV's standards, I cannot not help but to wonder about these stories I learned from my father. How must it feel to treasure a glass bowl that hardly had any value at all, so much so that it was given away free, that breaking it could reduce you to tears? How might it feel to hang on to a single pair of shoes until they fell apart? What would it mean if we treasured the things we owned, took good care of them, valued them because they were scarce? What if we treasured people and took care of them because they were scarce, valued them for being unique, for being miracles? My parents had a hard upbringing, but they knew the value of things, understood the sanctity of life, and held dear the people in their lives. I wonder what our world would be like today if we had less and valued things and people more. Just saying. . .