Rare Color Photos of the depression (the previous one)

[Barklessdog]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/

I used to hear stories by my parents, mother in law & others. Seeing it brings all those stories to life.

Share your depression stories-

My father used to save everything like butter dishes. When he passed away his garage was filled with cleaned butter dishes, also rubber bands & tin foil. Nothing went to waste.

My mother in law at pop corn with milk for cerial and her grand parents would always have food to give to wandering beggers that would come to their house.

[uwe]

great stuff - very vivid

[exiledarchangel]

Incredible work on those photos!

Depression stories? Well not excactly depression, but during the germans visit to greece during world war 2, things were pretty rough. My grandfather has told me stories of people chasing cats or dogs to eat and stuff like that. But I don't blame germans for that, it was greek gonverment's mistake that said "no" to Adolf. 

Now, if you can wait some months, I will start telling you some stories from the new depression... 

[uwe]

You would have been better off surrendering to the Italians! Italian occupation was much more preferable to German one. And you'd have gotten Nicholas Cage to boot! Here was your chance to surrender to people who had great food rations and would have gladly shared them with their mediterranean kin, see at 1.54 and some real Greek pride at 4:27 "Surrendering to (Wehrmacht) Catain Weber's dog is more appropriate than surrendering to an Italian!":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRoRCptl8z0&feature=related



Actually, I liked that film. It got thrashed at the time, but I thought it was a cutle little love story. People fell in love with each other even in WW II and even the "wrong uniform" could sometimes not prevent it. And it wasn't banal in all places. Captain Weber (Hauptmann Weber that is!) is not portrayed as an evil sadist in the film, yet towards the climax of the movie he follows orders and lets surrendered Italian soldiers (after Italy switched to the Allies) be shot by German firing squads. He flinches, is aghast, even near tears, but does his job, Befehl ist Befehl!, and the Italians are traitors who must be punished. I thought that pretty telling. It explains how the Nazi system could work as long as it did with "decent" people.
 

[exiledarchangel]

Here was your chance to surrender to people who had great food rations

Prosciutto with melon? No thank you, I think even germans can beat that!

[uwe]

But certainly preferable to cats and dogs!

[exiledarchangel]

Mmmmm a hot dog would be nice

[Barklessdog]

My wife's grandfather made his fortune during the depression by owning a tomato greenhouse. Food was something still in demand back then.

Whats also interesting is the "Great Dust Bowl". I just can't imagine something that horrible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PX9CwwOx_U&feature=related

[Highlander]

Those are some stunning pictures... they must have been 'shopped or someone got extremely lucky with their stock - should be very yellowed by now...

Everybody has a story... some are just gifted with more than most...

This my oldest "colour" photo is of my mum taken approx 1942, when she was 16...


Her parents emigrated to Canada in approximately 1922, in the last of the Highland Clearances and she was born in Vancouver in 1926 - the family was struck by the depression, as were most, and her mother, elder brother and her were sent back to the Island whilst her dad stayed on and got whatever work he could find, sending money back home as often as he could... he was a master carpenter, which makes this shot much more poignant... he is seated on the left in the shot, holding a tie-pin tightener (?)... I have no idea where this shot was taken, or the true date, but I presume that it was in British Columbia... he is on the lower-right in the other shot...

My mother and grandmother stayed with her family in the home village, whilst her brother was left with an elderly sister of his fathers - the family was broken up in more than one way, as my grandmother "got religion" and was committed for some years; luckily, my mother was well looked after by her uncle and his wife/family, but her brother never spoke to his father again...
It was after WWII before my Grandfather returned to British shores, and try as hard as he could, he could not get his son to talk to him. He spent much of the remainder of his life working as a ships-carpenter in Glasgow and it was in the fifties when he and my grandmother finally got back together - I only knew him in my early life; he married late in life and died aged 84 (when I was 4), his wife, 14 years his junior, died within months of his passing - I have only fond memories of my grandparents - as a curiosity, my grandmother was so "ill", her twin sister is in my parents wedding pictures (1957), and not my grandmother...

I'll pot a bit more later as my tea has just arrived...

[Highlander]

The American links come to the fore with my father's family - in 1911 (approx) my grandfather and his next two youngest sister's emigrated to Michigan, where he worked the Great Lakes  (we have only one reference from Oct 1914 and what I presume to ba a vessel called "Sioux Lookout") - he could not find a working passage back to the UK when the Great War started so had to pay to return for duties with the RNR, but that is another story...
My great aunts married and raised there families - I know very little of their depression era but the photos (we have lots of them as they wrote lots to the sister that stayed at home; lived until she was 99 and never married) do not look like they were too destitute - the other side of the coin...? I have no idea what type of car is in the last shot...


Back on the Island, things were quite different...

My father was born in 1923 and is being held in this shot by his great uncle Alexander (known as Sandy), the uncle to the right (who was cut out of the original shot) is another story... my grandfather was a complete stranger to the family, spending almost his entire life at sea, sending the money home to support his wife, their three children, his father and his uncle - he lived a very hard life, survived numerous incidents in both World Wars and is a significant story in his own right (about 70 pages at present with lots of research to do) - but he did what he could to keep the roof over the family's head...
They were not poor, but they were nowhere near rich; the family looked after a croft (a 6 acre smallholding), kept sheep and two cows, and most importantly, owned one of the two horses in the village that worked as a team to do all the ploughing for the village - Nancy was her name - as a historical point for you Yankees, the other horse was owned by Donald Trump's grantfather, who is a relative (his mother and my father's mother were 2nd cousins, with MacLeod ancestry iirc)... My great grandfather, John Stewart, was in his seventies when he finally stopped going to sea to fish - as I said, very different days... during the harder times they would live on salt herring as it would often be impossible to go to sea during the winter months...

Above is a very rare family shot (my dad took the picture) and below is my grandfather with his sister's in Michigan, post WWII on a stop-over...


I know of family in about 10 different US states these days, but mostly lost touch with them, which is a shame...

[Highlander]

My wife's family were Kentucky tobacco farmers that pretty much lost everything and ended up wandering from farm to farm for work - her dad (on the left) is a striking likeness to his dad (on the right) which is a story I can not even dream of explaining at present, especially when... no, best not go there...

[Barklessdog]

Everything has changed so much from those times.

[Lightyear]

The very last picture, #70, is of a carbon black worker in Sunray, TX.  I'm fairly certain that my moms father worked in that plant and also the helium plant during the depression and throughout war.  Mom was born in 32 and remember things being very tight and every sqaure inch of their yard planted as a garden - it's hard to get things to grow in the panhandle of TX.  She also recalls the dustbowl and how dirt was on/in everything - hanging wet sheets over closed windows - the whole mess.  She also said that her mother would always feed the hobos something when they came to the back door.

Dad was born in '22 and he grew up poorer than poor - when I asked him what it was like when the depression started he said they couldn't tell the difference - they were poor sharecroppers but that they always ate even if it was rice three times a day for a couple of months.  He started working in the fields before he was five.

People today rarely have an idea at just hard life was and can be.  I strongly believe that I'm successful, and financially secure - within reason, because I was raised by parents who suffered through the depression and passed along a fervant work ethic and financial acumen.

Folks, this is a very bad economy but it is not a depression - at least not yet

[Denis]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/
I used to hear stories by my parents, mother in law & others. Seeing it brings all those stories to life.
Share your depression stories-

Saw those the other day and they are truly fantastic. My mom's parents saved everything too, buckets and buckets of old nuts and bolts to every reusable styrofoam cup they received at restaurants. If it could be used twice, it was kept.

My dad's parents were older than my mom and they did not save such small stuff but they were very frugal. Grandad didn't believe in buying new cars, traded tons of guns, rings, etc all the time and ended up with a ton of money in the bank and wads of it lying around in the house.

[Lightyear]

........ Grandad didn't believe in buying new cars, traded tons of guns, rings, etc all the time and ended up with a ton of money in the bank and wads of it lying around in the house.

When the fecal matter hit the fan back in '08 I had to fight the urge to bury money in my backyard, stash it in furniture, etc .....