Stories and Accounts of the Great Derpression
Stories and Accounts of the Great Derpression
“Movies were only a dime, but we didn’t have a dime.” In Lamore, North Dakota not much went on. Aileen Muir was born on Dec 12, 1916. Her father, Gale Muir, was a carpenter who made enough to get by and support his family. When the thirties came, jobs became hard for Gale to find. He always had work. It was just scarce. When Roosevelt started WPA, Gale was the head of a group hired to build sidewalks. He was paid fifty-four dollars a month while the other workers made forty. “Times were hard, but we always ate. Most of the food we grew ourselves. We had potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and other veggies. My dad built water canals to the plants and he used to pump the water by hand.” Unlike a lot of families, Aileen had meats to eat. Some came from their own animals, but every winter her dad would buy meat which would last the winter.
“The girls used to wear dresses and the boys wore overalls. We only lived a little way from school so we didn’t have to walk that far. I was fortunate. I never had to give up school. Our neighbors, the Tanners, had two boys who couldn’t go to school because they had to work on the farm.”
Aileen’s mother Bessie would make all the children’s clothes. She would reuse old material to save money. “We wore the same clothes all week, and saved our best clothes to wear to church. The only time we spent money was if we had to, but at Christmas people would spent a little more.”
GRANDMOTHER EDNA 1929
“When the banks closed and my father lost his money, he had two concerns. He had written two checks; one was to pay for the new indoor plumbing and the other was to pay the hospital for my birth. He was really glad when the checks didn’t bounce. He didn’t want to be poor and in dept.” Edna grew up about ten miles outside of Plant City, Florida, a small farming town. Her father, Dan Murril, was farmer who grew corn and oranges. He also raised hogs and cattle which he sold and let the family eat. "A lot of what we ate...