Thankful to survive the Depression

By ELEANOR D. RYAN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 13, 2001

The other day I made Depression Soup -- vegetable soup that began with nothing more than a bone filled with life-giving marrow. Then I added many kinds of vegetables. It was delicious and nutritious. It reminded me of the Great Depression when that kind of soup fed our family -- kept us afloat.

Suddenly that era has become the subject of several books, among them, The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw. He quotes, "These men and women came of age when economic despair hovered over the land like a plague. They had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs, their hopes." My husband, Tom, and I are from that era; we saw it happen.

In the fall of 1929 my life changed forever. My father lost his job. Christmas of 1929 was the last time our family celebrated as we had in the past. For the next seven years it was a constant struggle to survive. I was in the sixth grade and remember vividly.

The following year, just before Christmas, my classmates rang our doorbell and stood on the porch with baskets of food and gifts for our family. I was mortified! I ran upstairs, followed by my mother, and we both cried. "Please don't make me go back to school." I begged.

Of course, I went back, but nothing was the same. From that time on I had to learn to accept whatever was offered. Wearing other people's clothes was the worst. It was humiliating when my more fortunate classmates would say, "That dress looks so much better on you than it did on me." No hurt intended, just thoughtlessness from another child.

Before the Depression, life was good. When my father returned from the Navy, after World War I, my parents, as young newlyweds, bought the little house we lived in. We called it "the cottage." Many of our neighbors were professionals -- doctors, teachers, even a concert violinist. It mattered not that my father was a machinist. He became the "Mr. Fix It" of the neighborhood and was liked and respected by all.

The women were all "stay-at-home" mothers. Once a week they would don their black bloomers and white sailor blouses and exercise at the local YMCA. In the evening, they would sit on their piazzas (porches) and exchange recipes or tidbits about the events of the times.

We children played games under the street lamps on summer evenings -- red light, kick the can, hide and go seek -- and waited for Happy Joe, the ice cream man, to arrive.

It was hard to understand when my parents could no longer give me the 5 cents needed to buy an ice cream cone from Happy Joe, when we no longer could go camping at the seashore during the summer or invite all of the children to my birthday parties. As I emerged into my teens, it was worse.

During my high school years it was necessary for me to help some of our neighbors with their household chores to earn a little money. Their kindness couldn't make it less embarrassing. I cringe when I remember my childhood friends referring to me as their "maid."

My father and I both shoveled snow, picked blueberries and sold them door to door, raked leaves and regularly went to the coal yard next to the railroad tracks to salvage the coal that fell from the cars. My mother basically became a recluse. She wouldn't even go out into the yard to hang her laundry.

The crowning blow came when I was 16 and we lost our home. I remember being disgusted with my mother, but many times since I wondered how I could cope if my home were taken away from me.

When we had to move into a tenement, I knew my mother was going to die. For a week after we left our little "cottage," she refused to sleep in the new home and would go back and sleep in the empty house, on the floor. It was a nightmare that I will never forget.

My father was never the same, even after the hard times were over. He thought he had let our family down, and you couldn't convince him otherwise. He died when he was 49 years old.

Millions of people out there can tell similar stories and yet they survived. Those of us who did survive were made stronger and more adaptive. We have tried to instill some of the resiliency into our children. I'm not sure they will ever truly understand.

Now I eat my Depression Soup and give thanks.

- Eleanor D. Ryan is a St. Petersburg writer.

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