Trafford Publishing: What Depression? How America's kids beat the blahs of the 1930s

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What Depression? How America's kids beat the blahs of the 1930s

by Don Clark

106 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); plus 18 photo pages; catalogue #03-0122; ISBN 1-55395-759-8; US$15.50, C$17.95, EUR13.00, £9.00

"When they were good, they were very, very good..." but angels they were not. Depression era kids enjoyed extraordinary freedom from parental supervision or instruction. Parents, for the most part, simply assumed that the kids would make it home in time for dinner. What they did during the daylight hours was up to them. A misktake? Not necessarily. Creativity was the result and it took many forms ranging from mischief to artistry. This is a book for everyone to enjoy, a lighthearted story of the hard-time kids and how they beat the blahs of the Great Depression.

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about the book about the author sample excerpt catalogue info

About the Book

How Bad was the Great Depression of the 1930s? With a few exceptions, it's too late to ask the parents of the time. that leaves the job to us, the kids of the '30s, to tell the story of those grim "have-not" years that strangled, yet strengthened, the family structure of our nation.
As one of those kids, I can introduce two influences that generated genuine Depression Era suffering - liver and spinach - and we had them often. Now, why then, did parents force such nauseous fare upon innocent children? Because spinach was good for us, and it was cheap. That's one. Also on the bottom line, liver was even better because it was free. Mammas just asked the butcher for some liver for the cat. And a bone for the dog made a pot of soup. That's how bad the Depression was.
Parents took it on the chin. Imagine no job, no paycheck, and very little hope of finding a replacement for either. Dads and Moms lost two of life's important ingredients, joy and hope. And more, they faced an uncertain world with the ever-present fears of empty pantries, tax collectors and unsympathetic mortgage bankers.
Kids shared shortcomings with their parents, but they weren't crushed by the staggering array of painful responsibilities that beset their elders. Situation normal. They hadn't known better times. Was it a terrible time to rear youngsters? Maybe and maybe not.
What Depression? makes a case for the kiddies and illustrates how their presence added to family stability and survival. In effect, the document represents a time capsule of the Great Depression years in which the kids play the starring roles. The Lawton Wood Brats serve as a cross-section of those who did so much to turn minuses to pluses and to twist frowns into smiles. If you had put this handful of high spirited boys and girls into any American neighborhood in the 1930s, you could have expected similar results.
It's easy to put down kids who grow up in years that are relatively free from economic pressures. But good times or bad, they all rise from the same blueprint and specifications, one for a boy and one for a girl. Each gets a good measure of creativity, initiative, curiosity, energy and that ever present capacity for mischief. So, if you were to crank today's kids back to the '30s, it is reasonable to conclude that their energies and talents might have found the same pathway as the one evolved by the Lawton Wood Brats, and their durable contemporaries, when times got tough. If you look for maximum returns, invest in our kids.

About the Author

Don Clark is a U.S. Navy veteran of WWII, journalist, editor, former advertising agency executive and is the author of Wild Blue Yonder: how America's first fighter pilots were trained during WWI and co-author of best-selling Brother XII, the Devil of DeCourcy Island, the story of a mystic who drew hundreds from around the world to his colony off the coast of Vancouver Island in the 1920s.
Don is a founder member of CHAOS (Cannon Hunters Association of Seattle) and, as an archaeological diver, participated in the recovery and restoration of ancient, muzzle-loading cannon in the U.S. and along Mexico's Yucatan coastline.
He and his wife, Tina, life in Cannon House on the Pacific Coast at Ocean Shores, Washington.

Sample Excerpt

Music, the cause or result of depression?

To confirm that the Depression was hell, consider the unforgettable music lessons. The victors and the vanquished! In our family, we kids were the victors, but it took many years for the vanquished, Mom and her supporting squad of music teachers, to yield the point. Eight years to be exact, in my case. That's how long it took before she gave up on me.
I'm sure I was old enough to stand on my own when she presented me with my very three-quarter-size violin, together with the first of a long string of impoverished, thus patient, instructors. And, oh, how they tried. Some were highly respected musicians, such as the first violinist in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and that dignified Rumanian with the heavy foot that banged up and down in his futile attempt to coach me into keeping time. One, then another, gave up with professional dignity damaged and hopes for financial improvement in ruins.
"He'll never be a violinist. Give it up!"
That's right. "Little Don Lee" never learned to keep other people's time.
"Well, we'll see about that!" would be Millie's typical response, if it could be heard above the slamming of the door. And off she trotted in search of another victim. Well, make that two. Little Jackie showed great promise on the piano, our mother was sure. He'll make up for his big brother's shortcomings. Poor Mrs. Thompson tried her desperate best to take brother Jack up and down the scales. "Robin in the Cherry Tree" and other pleasant little tunes lost something in translation and, wham, the door slammed on that one, too. The experiment came to a cruel stop when, at a recital, an unnamed five-year-old rendered a perfect Beethoven's Fifth. Brother Jack said that he never played the piano after that.
Putting words into Millie's mouth, perhaps was like this: "Well, it's not Jackie's fault. We just can't find a good piano teacher. You boys like western music, don't you? Maybe Jackie would like to play the guitar." I don't know what happened to the guitar teacher(s) but when the war broke out I took his lonely and dusty guitar to sea with me.
My brother didn't complain and our patient mother smiled with renewed hope.
Two down and one to go. Oh, yes. Carol. Wouldn't she look nice sitting at the piano? Again, flawed thinking. Mr. Ernst was a grumpy old German piano teacher, Carol remembers: "No sense of humor. He finally lost his patience with me one day and he ejected me from his studio. I didn't blame him. I didn't take it seriously."
Carol says that there was one good thing about her piano lessons. "I got to go downtown on the bus alone on Saturdays, to the Fisher Studio Building on Third Avenue. After the lessons, I got to go to the dime stores, Woolworth and Kress. That was great. I got to watch the demonstrations. I loved cruising those stores."
The music played on. This time on a hardwood floor in a Magnolia district home. Carol said that she did okay with her first ballet instructor. "Mrs. Edwards was nice, but as I grew older, Mom took me to the Œ great one,' Mary Anne Wells, downtown. MISTAKE! Here was serious ballet and no fun, and I was not only outclassed, I was lost in the dust! Finally one day, after maybe a year or so, Mrs. Wells called mother in so she could show her how I simply could not bend, for one thing, and told mother that there was no point to my continuing."
There is no doubt that Millie was deeply disappointed with this undoing, and with all of us, but she dug even more deeply into her pocketbook to finance the next disaster.
It wasn't Carol's fault that she was back in Mr. Ernst's piano studio and it wasn't her fault that she couldn't memorize for recitals. Her mother shared the blame and the extreme humiliation that Saturday night on stage at the Fisher Studio Building. Sis blanked out in pure panic and to make matters worse, Mr. Ernst refused to help her out of a spot by handing her the sheet music. A piano career was shattered.
Parents of the time seemed determined to propagate musically-talented kiddies. Sometimes it worked with the young ladies but the guys had better be prepared to duke it out with their tormentors. Nowadays, with musical education so well programmed in our schools, young musicians find popular support and acceptance for their efforts. To us, it was sissy stuff, like the day when "Little Don Lee" was persuaded to take his violin to high school during his first semester. That was the first and the last time! It took a long time to get over the peer group insults and the embarrassment.

The All-American Boy

"Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy," came through, loud and clear on out Gilfillan radio speaker every afternoon, every weekday. Radio's fifteen-minute dramas, rich with sound effects and cliff-hanging suspense, filled in the vacant corners of our lives. One after another, "Little Orphan Annie, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Tom Mix" and a host of others filled the after-school hours of America's kids.
Radio was for the parents, too. Music, comedy, news commentary and religion took their turns to entertain and inform the listeners. Talent was abundant in the weekly offerings of the big networks. America loved stars like Jack Benny, Amos'n Andy and Phil Harris as they did the symphony orchestras, ballroom bands and top-rated shows like "Your Hit Parade."
The radio set, in fact, the principle of radio, was still in its infancy. The devices were primitive and cranky to tune. A massive complex of radio tubes, knobs, dials and speakers gave the appearance of a junkyard, or the creation of a mad genius from another time or planet. Radios were sometimes encased in metal boxes, like portable typewriters, or just assembled, open, on a table top. Most commonly, the family radio was a standing cabinet fashioned of cherry, mahogany or oak. It served as a showpiece cabinet as well as the center of family entertainment.
A scrollwork pattern usually decorated an opening on the face of the console radio. A tapestry-like fabric behind this hid the maze of tubes that twinkled and fussed within. There were tubes of all sizes and purposes and they had one thing in common, they fizzled or blew out with irritating frequency and always in the middle of a favorite show.
The radio had a magnetic quality, of sorts, as do today's TV sets. It not only drew listeners' attention, but also their ears. Little heads and little ears were glued to the speaker in an effort to get closer to the action. The same technique applied to after-hours, in bed, when the small radio sets came on the market. With the volume turned low, little imaginations were stirred by the suspense of "The Shadow," and the machine gun rattle of "Gang Busters." Pop hated that show. He knew that it came on every Wednesday night and would lay for us.
The door would pop open with the expected: "Turn that g'd--------thing off!"
Brother Jack reminded me of a favorite do-it-yourself form of entertainment that we staged nearly every day. The "bedtime plays" we performed after the lights were turned out. We each picked a character then improvised two-part dramas that would go on until we were told to shut up, or just fell asleep.

Send your name and address

We sent away for stuff all the time. The radio shows were responsible in large part because they fielded an ongoing plethora of "gotta have" gimmicks like Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Rings which turned fingers green. But you had to have them in order to interpret the coded radio messages. Tom Mix offered a wooden six-shooter but he was upstaged by Buck Rogers' high tech space pistol, complete with sound effects. Cereals like Wheaties and Ralston were big players in this field-"Just mail in the label...." And we all had Ovaltine mugs with Orphan Annie's picture on them.
In retrospect, were we as insulated as it appears? Or did radio and the U.S. Mail serve to extend out presence beyond our neighborhood borders? Send for the answer.

Catalogue Information