Tell me a tale: the dust bowl and Depression days.

My potatoes were sprouting, so I made potato soup today. Granted, I had real butter and the potatoes were healthy enough that there was no need to thicken the soup with breadcrumbs.

Still, potato soup was a Depression mainstay.

My mother was an Okie, father a Texan. In the dustbowl days my relatives became migrant farm workers. They tried to get into California, but the police near the state line sent them back. Thousands per day had been pouring in and the state had no choice. We were not let in until I was about three.
In those days, there were roads, not super highways. I recall my mother stopping by the side of the road and climbing an apple tree. She drove only until I was six. Then my step father bought a car that had the gear shift on the steering column. Rather than learn to manipulate the new hardware, she simply gave it up. The last time I saw her drive, the entire family got behind her to push start the car. We gave it a healthy shove and she took off. Only trouble, one of my brothers didn't get to let go of the bumper. She dragged him a block. Fortunately, he didn't require hospitalization. The car my step dad gave up was a 1929 Dodge Victory six. It had wood spoke wheels. He traded it for a shiny Chrysler that broke down every single time he drove it.
Things were different in the Dust Bowl days, People had a cameraderie not often seen today. For that reason alone I miss its passing.

Potato soup and cameraderie....

<sigh>

Can you two come over to my house?

noddy wrote : "Still, potato soup was a Depression mainstay. "

growing up in germany , potatoe soup always figured in a housewife's menu . i still enjoy potatoe soup - but it usually includes some other veggies , some beef, some chicken ... but i've also had potatoe soup that was just that : "potatoes and water " . that was in 1945 right after the war ended - it wasn't gourmet food, but it did fill the belly - and it doesn't seem to have done me any harm ! hbg

Can you three come over to my house?

It's funny and sad that I remember words:

oil patch

tar paper shack

But the whole story is lost to me.

I remember my grandfather (father's side) telling about a new car (he made good money as a "ringer",) and getting caught in a "dust storm" where the dirt sandblasted all of the paint off of the car.

My grandmother grew up in Okhema, a few doors down from Woody Gutherie (he was older than she was, she was quick to point out).

My grandfather had a sister named Electra.

I wish I could remember more.....

I'm the only Texan in the family. The rest of the kids were born in Oklahoma and raised in a small town called Pitcher. It was a lead and zinc mining town. They had something called chat piles which was the waste from the mines. On trips back to see the one sister that married and stayed there it was a big thrill to slide down the chat piles on shovels. Later two sister died from environmental diseases caused by the heavy metal ores. My dad died from black lung disease from working there as a miner when a young man.

They said the depression was bad, and Oklahoma had become a dust bowl and the soup lines were long. Photographs from that period always seemed to show thin people, with deep sunken eyes with a lot of dirty kids sucking their fingers.

Mama owned a supply store for the miners, so things weren't so bad and she was proud they didn't have to go stand in the soup lines.

She said the shelfs were stocked with plenty of dried beans, salt pork, lye for making soap, kerosene for lamps and 50 pound bags of flour. She saved the flour sacks to make dresses for the girls.

Sunday dinner was usually fried chicken with flour gravey, snap beans cooked to a fair-the-well, canned corn and corn bread. Salad soaked with a mayonese dressing and dessert was peach cobbler with homemade ice cream. She used to call it the good old days - later in life she liked the convenience of tv dinners.

tell me a tale
here is a good website for anyone who wants to look back at that time : ...THE DUSTBOWL AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION...

Can you four come over?

Thank you seaglass.

It is nice to hear these stories even though they make me ache about the frailty of my memory.

Or my lack of attention to things that didn't seem important and therefore weren't committed to the deep part of my memory.

I worry that these stories will disappear.

When I was a kid I remember my parents hurriedly packing the cars because a dust storm was approaching. There were seven of us living in the house, my parents, me and my three brothers and grandpa.

We had two cars, one belonged to grandpa, the other to my parents.

I remember the tension in the air as we quickly packed. I can still see the grim look on my mother's face, her lips tight and her forehead creased in worry.

"Hurry, children! Get that stuff in the trunk! Gustav, go help your grandpa!"

I helped Grandpa put some stuff in his trunk and then I heard my dad honking the horn.

"TIME TO GO, GUSTAV!" he screamed over the screaming winds. I looked up to see a wall of dust approaching from the west.

I raced toward my parents car and dove into the back seat. I yelled out the window for my grandpa to hurry.

"I HAVE TO GET ONE MORE THING!" he screamed as he raced back toward the shanty.

Then we were driving down the road. My brothers and I, kneeling on the backseat, watched and waited for my grandpa's car to turn out of the driveway. We were relieved to see his familiar car but what I saw next caused took my breath away. A massive dust cloud materialized behind my grandpa's car.

My brother's and I started screaming and crying. "Hurry, Grandpa!" we yelled in unison, but all of a sudden his car was engulfed by the massive cloud of dust and he disappeared.

We never saw my Grandpa again. We went back the next day, but the whole area was a sea of dust. The dust literally covered everything. Only the tops of trees and telephone poles were visible.

My dad put his hand on my shoulder as I wept and said, "He was a good man, Gustav, but this is a hard country and these things happen."

That image of my grandpa making a futile attempt to escape the dust storm still lingers in my mind......



I miss that old bastard.

later, perhaps

stop crying , gustav ! i see him coming down the road now - i'm sure he is looking for you .
what did you call him , a "batard" ? lucky for you , you old codger . hbg

On the 14th day of April of 1935,
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky.
You could see that dust storm comin', the cloud looked deathlike black,
And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track.
From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line,
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande,
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom.

The radio reported, we listened with alarm,
The wild and windy actions of this great mysterious storm;
From Albuquerque and Clovis, and all New Mexico,
They said it was the blackest that ever they had saw.

From old Dodge City, Kansas, the dust had rung their knell,
And a few more comrades sleeping on top of old Boot Hill.
From Denver, Colorado, they said it blew so strong,
They thought that they could hold out, but they didn't know how long.

Our relatives were huddled into their oil boom shacks,
And the children they was cryin' as it whistled through the cracks.
And the family it was crowded into their little room,
They thought the world had ended, and they thought it was their doom.

The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night,
When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight.
We saw outside our window where wheat fields they had grown
Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown.

It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns,
It covered up our tractors in this wild and dusty storm.
We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in,
We rattled down that highway to never come back again.

Lovely memories and stories, sad as they may be.

Boomer, I have just little bits of memories from my family's past. I know more about my mom's italian side than my dad's mixed-bag side.

In college I 'interviewed' my grandparents for a course project. It was about food history. I learned a bit about their lives in the depression, mostly my grandma's, though. The Celtics were playing a game on tv and both my granparents were distracted. That would have been just a few years before my gradma became senile. She talked about baked squash blossoms and something called (roughly) scarpaccia (old shoe) - a kind of frittata.

My grandma's parents owned a restaurant in Chicago. They sold the factory workers lunch of stew and bread. They also had a soda fountain. My great grandpa would pay my grandma a quarter to eat raw eggs because she was too skinny and he was worried about her getting TB. How the raw eggs connect, I dunno. She saved up her quarters and bought herself a green coat. I have some old pictures from her childhood......

I also have a sharp great uncle who tells me stories of his past growing up in Queens - his family owned (owns?) the Seven Santini Brothers moving co.

Question to Littlek about 7 Santini Brothers
I just happened to be doing some family history, and it's my great grandfather who started the 7 Santini Brothers so I'm just wondering if this could be the same one that you mentioned.
Please email me,
Thanks
Anita

Well, I have my mother's cookbook.

My family did ok in the depression, though not so well, even quite terribly, some time later. But, in the depression years, my dad and mother worked and met at rko studios, where he was a cutter at the time (film editor) and she was a secretary. For the rest of her life, as she could, my mother saved string and aluminum foil, and much else. My husband's parents - originally from Minnesota and Montana - saved napkins and ketchup and mustard and salt and sugar packets from whatever coffee shop they went to, so that after they died, we found sacks of these.

I'll try to post some things from my mom's cookbook.

General Foods
COOK BOOK
Consumer Service Department
General Foods Corporation
New York

A Key to the Question of Three Meals a Day

copyright 1932

I've always cooked from this book - though in recent years I don't check it much - starting with some cookies when I was small. But now I see it as a complete treasure. I'll read some of the chapter headings to you -

Subject Index: This Question of Three Meals a Day

Know the Products on your Pantry Shelf

Doing the Job the Modern Way

An Adequate Diet (a quick glance now led me to a paragraph on goiters)

Seasoned and Sauced and Served with Grace

Planning Menus of Interest



Well, I'll leave you there for a while. Back with a couple of recipes after I look a bit.

Well, I stopped at a page to look at a picture, captioned "An easy way to happy and adequate breakfasts". (hmmm, General Foods)

but on the facing page is this recipe -

Log Cabin Fired Mush

1 1/2 cups yellow corn meal
3 teaspoons salt
5 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup Log Cabin syrup

Combine corn meal, salt, and 1 cup water in upper part of double boiler, and mix well. Add remaining water and syrup, and cook over direct heat until mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Place over hot water, cover closely, and cook 2 hours longer. Turn into loaf pan which has been wet with cold water.
Let stand overnight or until thoroughly cold and firm. Turn into loaf pan and slice into 1/2-inch thick slices, dip in flour, and saute in well-greased skillet, turning to brown both sides. Serve with butter and additional Log Cabin Syrup. Serves 6.

OK, here's another, and like the first recipe, it includes some things some couldn't afford..

TOMATO RABBIT

2 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of paprika
1 cup milk
1 cup canned tomato soup
1 cup grated cheese

Add dry ingredients to milk in top of double boiler. Place over rapidly boiling water, bring to scalding point (allow 3 to 5 minutes), and cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add soup and cheese; cook until smooth. Serve on crackers. Serves 4.

Oops, Fried Mush, not Fired Mush... though they seem the same to me.

I could go back and edit those recipes, but I won't get into the cut and paste to do that. In the first one, the second "Turn into Loaf Pan" should be "Turn from pan".

My grandparents and my dad (born 1908) lived in Wisconsin. No dustbowl for them but times were indeed tough during the depression. My dad finished college (electrical engineering) and there were no jobs. No jobs at all.
String? My grandmother saved string just as your kin did, osso. When my dad and his sister cleaned out grandma's house they found boxes of string labelled, in German, "String Too Small To Save." Boxes of string too small to save.
Recipes? The Joy Of Cooking is 75 years old this year. My version is not the first edition, but it is close. The writing, at times, is pretty astounding:

(Page 1) ""To give this book the impression of sobriety and stability it deserves, the alcoholic cocktails have been relegated to the chapter on Beverages. There they may blush unseen by those who disapprove of them and they may be readily found in the company of many other good drinks by those who do not."