Posted on 02/24/2009 4:31:17 AM PST by Kaslin
When was this published? If someone's not being paid $10 an hour today, they can't pay a week's rent.
***
I met an old man about 5 years ago. I asked him to tell me what life in the depression was like. He thought for a minute and said, "We used to eat grass."
Then his eyes lit up a bit and he said, "it tastes really good with salt!"
bttt
Good advice!
The other church ladies and I are planning garden and egg swaps this summer. One gal said she’s got a cherry tree and when she calls, come and get ‘em before the birds do. The kids loved the sound of that!
Maybe a slight silver lining? Working together?
My dad says his family used the Sears and Roebuck catalog when he was a kid. My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing until the late 40's, but the good news was they had converted over from catalogs to TP around 1940.
Glenn Beck is saying the same thing on his weekly TV show with Fox News.
Good Grief! Talk about missing the point!
A person can WORK for ten dollars and hour, get government subsidized housing, food stamps etc. Churches and Civic organizations offer help. But, by gosh, at least do some work and earn something to contribute to your "upkeep"!
If you're single, you can afford rent on ten bucks an hour, but you have to have a roommate. In our area, you can rent an okay 2 bedroom apt (not great, but okay) for $700 a month. Split it with a roommate and rent plus utilities comes out to about 450 per month. That's just about a quarter of someone's salary if they're making 10 bucks an hour, and that's doable. (taxes on $20,000 a year are practically non-existent.)
Indeed, you have.
And as for your laundry list of solutions, it all sounds good in theory. Ever tried it?
Come to think of it, it doesn't really sound all that good in theory, either.
You could do that in most civilized American cities about 25 years ago.
The one that always sticks out in my mind is the one of her standing next to some tomato plants outside the boxcar her family was living in at the time.
She used to tell the story of her mother sewing underwear from the flour and sugar sacks. The sisters used to fight over who got the one with the brand label.
And she used to tell a story of one winter when there was no work and her mother took the last of the cornmeal to feed the wild birds. Her mother then caught them and that was their dinner.
I always marveled at how she “made it” from such humble beginnings.
I remember when after WWII my mother substituted stinging nettle for spinach which used to be my most favorite vegetable. She put flower on the nettles before she chopped them with the knife
My 7th grade math abd science teacher was a POW in Germany during WWII. He told us that at the camp he was at there were Russian POWs in a section next to them. He said that the Germans would not feed the Russians and that the Russians would pull grass boil it and eat it.
Oh, did this bring back memories of my dad. He died 2 years ago, but if he was still alive, he would have had one giant 100th birthday party this August.
His family also has a '2-seater' and many times he would reminisce at dinner about the Sears catalogue & glossy vs non-glossy pages, which always got my sons laughing.
In fact, when we met with the minister before dad's funeral, he asked us about our memories & that was one of the first. Did that bring a smile to my uncles' faces during the service!!
If spinach was your favorite vegetable then, clearly, you’re capable of handling a depression!
One, many of us already have cut spending to the bone, given up anything superfluous, and deprived ourselves of every pleasure that might be bought. Many of us are already baking our own bread, raising and canning our own vegetables, hunting our own meat. And we're still having a very bad time.
Two, I too have had conversations with survivors of the Great Depression: my 99-year-old mother-in-law and a 97-year-old cousin. Both of them emphasized that they were farm girls, were very poor in the sense that they had no money to buy objects, but they could eat because the family raised its own food and did not have to pay for food, water, or electricity.
Their expectations were lower: they didn't have central heat, and merely chopped wood to feed the woodstove or fireplace. This was free. Water was free. Health insurance was unheard of and medical care unsophisticated, so there was no money slated for it: if a child got scarlet fever or dad got a heart attack, he simply died. One didn't get bills for electricity, gas, car insurance, car registration. Property taxes and income taxes were minimal. Neighbors bartered goods for services.
Today, few people can do any of this. Our houses are often too big or too full of windows to be heated with a woodstove, even if we could afford to go out and buy one, even if we could find the constant supply of wood. We can't get our own water. A quarter-acre lot can't raise enough food for a family. We can't keep chickens, goats, or pigs in the suburbs or cities. Most people can't hunt, and mark my words, there are going to be a lot of ugly hunting accidents when ignorant suburbanites take their shiny new rifles out to hunt in the suburbs for their first-ever deer.
In addition, we have millions of dependent, helpless poor and illegals here, sucking up resources. We didn't have the huge population of illegals during the Depression.
Forgive my negativism, but I see that this situation could be far worse than the Great Depression.
In many places, no one, no matter how wiling to work they are, can get a job even for $8.00 an hour.
Go to Home Depot and see the employees they do have standing around with no customers to wait on.
Our Wal-Mart had empty shelves this week. The pet dept. had a sign on the empty shelves—trouble getting stock from suppliers.
I don’t disagree at all with this advice. But anyone who thinks there are jobs for the taking out there doesn’t see the whole picture.
good post.
Dough balls boiled in milk....(Gnocci)
Potato stuffed dough in butter (Pierogie)
Barter: Pie for eggs.....Beef for pork.....
These farm folks in Brockport NY didn't even know there was a depression.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.