Posted on 01/01/2009 12:01:45 PM PST by Vendek
In 1929, James San Jule's father was a successful businessman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. San Jule graduated from Tulsa Central High School and had been accepted at Amherst college in Massachusetts, planning to go on to Harvard Law School. Because of his youth, his father wanted him to wait a year and arranged for him to work as an office boy in the Exchange National Bank at Tulsa.
"I didn't think much of money in those days. It was just something we had," said San Jule. "My father was probably a millionaire. We owned fancy cars, a fancy house, fancy everything. I led the ordinary life of a wealthy kid, nothing spectacular."
San Jule was working in the bank in October 1929, when the debacle began.
"Of course, you didn't believe it. ‘This is something that happens,' you thought. ‘It will pass.' "
The Crash of 1929 wiped out San Jule's father financially and physically.
"It was a horrible, horrible period, about which I understood little. What's a kid to do? You have no worries about anything. You're going to Amherst and Harvard. All of sudden your life is blasted out of existence. It felt like being de-princed."
In the winter of 1930, San Jule ran away from home, not quite sure where he was going or even why he was leaving. It just seemed the thing to do.
Between 1929 and 1941, 4,000,000 Americans desperate for food and lodging roamed the land. Of this number, 250,000 were teenagers who rode the rails and grew up fast in speeding boxcars, living in hobo jungles, begging on the streets and running from the police and club-wielding railroad guards...
READ MORE..."I used to beg for food"
(Excerpt) Read more at erroluys.com ...
Only half joking.
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For later reading.
My Step-Father was one of those boxcar kids. Left home at 14 because his parents were giving up his younger siblings for lack of food. Rode the rails from SoCal to NyCity. He found a job in a Jewish Bakery carring bags of flour to the third floor.
The bakery owners though in finding that he was a Catholic literally took him by the ear and enrolled him in a Catholic HS. He didn’t want school, he wanted to work and help the family back home. They told him that the only way to survive in the world was to be educated. They let him study, then work. After he graduated they encouraged him to get some college education.
Eventually, he joined the Army in 1939 so that h could have a regular meal and a place to sleep. Because of the college he was invited to enroll in OCS in 1942. The Army completed his education and he retired in 1969. He always
thanked the Jewish couple that saved a poor kid from California, He would sometimes hint at the kids he saw on the streets who ended up dead or abused.
Married after the war and other than the house and the occasional new car; never wanted much for himself. Insisted that if there were no leftovers at meal time then not enough food had been prepared.
Spoiled sis and I rotten rarely denying either of us any reasonable request.
Unless you lived through the ten or so years of the depression followed by the five war years; one can not understand what those individuals endured and accomplished.
My Dad quit school in 1929, at 14 years of age to work, in order to help support the family.
He started all kinds of little businesses.
My Mom's family lived in a small town, by the railroad tracks in Northern Saskatchewan, and Mom told me of the men who used to come into the back yard asking for morsels of food.
She said Grandma always found something for them, even if it was just a couple of peroigi.
Once, she asked Grandma why she was feeding these people when there wasn't enough for their own family (of 11).
Grandma told her that those people are someones children, and that if any of her children were ever hungry, she hoped that someone would feed them too.
Yes, she was, thanks.
I never got to meet her. She died before I was born.
But I know her through my Mom, and apparently I have her nose.
:-)
My folks got married in the midst of the depression. She was an immigrant, he was the first-US born of immigrants. He had a HS education and a job as a court stenographer. She never made it past grade school, and gave up work as a switchboard operator to start a family. They never had much to begin with, and never lived beyond their meager means.
The biggest problem? Illness, and no money to pay doctors. Their first child died when they couldn't get the money for emergency surgery fast enough; an aunt was forced to put her kids in an orphanage when her husband deserted her; one of them died there.
The war came, my Dad didn't serve since he had five kids by then. An older cousin I never knew enlisted in the Marines and died at Okinawa in '45. His remains were returned and buried here four years later.
That was America back then, though. People weren't used to plenty. Life was tough, but far better than the countries from which they came. You went to church or synagogue, tragedy struck, and you went on, you were grateful for what you had, and there wasn't any safety net. You hoped for a better future for your kids, and for most those hopes were realized -- not by government hand-out, but by your own hard work.
I aspire to be like your Grandma. Your family was very lucky to have had her.
and I bet it’s a great nose
mrs
He would also tell me not to judge Roosevelt to harshly. He often said with out roosevelt's socialism; we might have went communist; said I really didn't know how bad it was back then and how fragile our nation was. My dad was a reg repub also.
my Dad was born in 1912 and was 17 in 1929. his Father was a tugboat Capitan running up and down the Hudson River/Erie Canal and owned a restaurant/bar here in town that my Grandmother and Father ran with his brother and two sisters helping out so i guess they did OK.
my Mom was born in 1914 and was 15 in 1929 and her Father owned a shoe store that had to let the hired help go in order to stay open, butt, i guess he made enough since he adopted a semi abandoned kid off the streets and raised his as his own along with his own three kids.
i remember many stories of hardship but not as bad as others.
Me too. :-)
and I bet it’s a great nose
LOL! It must be....I still have it.
My parents grew up during the Depression. My dad used to talk about riding the rails from Minnesota to California. He came back to Minnesota, though. He was one of 14 kids. After 8th grade the kids were expected to get a job to help support the family. Only one of the fourteen — my Uncle Joe who was the eldest son — graduated from high school. It was a different life back then; something today’s young people will never understand.
Here's the deal: Find a big yard, and find some riders in the nearby jungle that know the ropes. Can even ask a brakeman or switchman about when and where a train is making up, if careful and nonthreatening. But avoid the bulls (RR police).
Use the missions in the yard towns for food and info, and accept the sermons.
Be sure the boxcar door is chocked, so as not to close up on you.
Boxcars are best, but hoppers or piggybacks will do in a pinch. There might be an open vehicle on a carrier.
Stay south in cold season.
Highly recommended for spoiled jerks in the colleges today.
I have friends who are now going off the deepend in complete terror & paranoia just like friends did after waco. I have more faith in America, our government, and capitalism here in the USA. The pendulum swings back and forth, but not much really changes in the longrun. The Repubs will bounce back in 2010 after failed dem policy proves up. Maybe we'll get another Reagen then?
You live your life in a sensible manner; everything will be good times in America.
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