HOW WE MANAGED IN THE DEPRESSION YEARS.

by

Mona Hyer Waibel

.

     Life was good in rural Sweet Home during the 1930’s & 40’s, and my life was going well with a great family. My Mother, Audrey Bryant was always our moderator and she taught the four Hyer children to listen and carefully make decisions. She also emphasized the importance of getting along with each other and the world around us.  Selfishness and quarreling was something she did not tolerate. We had a rounded out life with the usual ups and downs.

     Being poor was the usual for all my friends and family, during this time. Looking back at our school pictures at the Long Street Grade School, we didn’t look very well dressed, but we always were smiling anyway. Dresses were cotton and no slacks were allowed for girls.  Boys wore jeans and button down shirts, and plaids were in.

    Children played hard and worked hard too in our family, as there were many chores.  Some we liked to do.  Chickens had to be fed grain, and I liked to scatter the chicken feed, and then we gathered the eggs from the hens nest. And the cow needed to be milked every day, and then the barn had to have the manure shoveled.  My brothers didn’t like that job.  And I avoided stepping in the chicken manure. Nothing smelled as bad as chicken manure on shoes, but the worst was on bare feet in the summer time. Cleaning chickens, plucking the feathers in hot water is an awful, stinky job. But we all enjoyed the CHICKEN EVERY SUNDAY meals with a stewing hen made into chicken and dumplings and home made noodles too. Mother made most anything taste good. 

    Meal preparation was long and consuming and I helped cook all our meals. Mother was the main cook, but by the time I was eight, I was really into peeling the mounds of potatoes and doing the desserts too. Our table was full of good things to eat, some were quite unusual, Mother also cooked brains and eggs, kidney stew and anything inexpensive for our large family. One thing I never learned to enjoy was scrambled brains and eggs.  Too soft and mushy for my palate. Supper time was a happy time of visiting together on how our day went.  No one ever was late for this, we all especially liked this time. Our family sat around our round table and eight straight back wooden chairs.  I still own and use these wonderful chairs today. None of us liked sitting at the back of the room, because you couldn’t get out very easily.  We were all growing in our family.  Our house was too small but comfortable.  Visitors were always invited to stay for supper. 

    My dad had a difficult time finding work in the depression, and he just puttered around the place while Mother worked in a restaurant for a small wage.  She brought home chicken necks, gizzards, etc from the restaurant and for several years that was what we had to eat. Of course, the poached deer helped out too.  Our policeman Walt Devou, looked the other way then, he knew families needed the fresh meat to live.

    Venison was a very important part of our diet, besides canning it; we made jerky.  My parents always cut up our deer meat. Our first meal from the deer, were liver and onions and the second meal was steak, with biscuits and gravy. The bones were cooked up for tasty soups. We never wasted a thing. Mincemeat began a few days later, with apples, cider and lots of raisins to drive you mad with the smell. Our mincemeat was for the holidays and Mother did an especial good job with it.  Our friends begged her for a quart, but unless she had plenty – she kept it for home. She made this delicious mincemeat until her death at 97 yrs. Today, mincemeat making is a lost art

   Summers were fun times, with climbing trees and making a tree house.  And even the cone fights are good memories now.  Being the only girl, I had to fight alone – but bravely. My brothers liked picking the Bing cherries because it gave them another opportunity to climb. And sometimes my parents paid my brothers to shoot birds out of our cherry trees. Every dead bird they killed with their Beebe gun, they were paid for. These pesky birds were eating our winter supply of fruit and so they were expendable.

    Everyone raised vegetable gardens and did lots of canning. My Dad really worked hard on that garden. It had tall corn, beautiful red tomatoes, leaf lettuce, radishes, cabbage, carrots, lots of   Oregon giant and Kentucky wonder green beans growing on poles, onions and many rows of potatoes.  We had a nice cellar and pantry too.  Our basement cellar housed potatoes, apples, onions all winter as well as crocks of sauerkraut and pickles.  In the pantry were hundred of jars of wonderful things canned from our garden.  Mother never fooled around with quarts of fruit. With four children and lots of visitors, we ate ½ gallons of pears, peaches, cherries, prunes and occasionally applesauce all winter.  There was always a large bowl of canned fruit on our table. Food was a very important part of our lives and we felt fortunate to have enough to eat while others were having problems.

    Also in our pantry were large jars of pickles, tomatoes and much canned venison and occasionally beef.  Canned meat is really delicious and quick to fix a meal for a hungry family. Mother made lots of wonderful stews and chili that we all loved. In the pantry were quarts of jams and jelly.  My brothers and I picked gallons of Himalayan and Evergreen black berries and we helped boil off the juice for that wonderful black berry jelly we loved. Strawberry Jam was really a treat, and mostly we had large red berries for the sweetest jam in the world.  Mother’s Pear preserves were so good on hot biscuits.  Sometimes we did apple butter too.  Our pantry could put out a good meal very quickly.

    Our kitchen was always busy.  The smell of home made bread and cinnamon rolls was so special.  But being a good cook Mother had to hide the cinnamon rolls, so there was a few for our lunches the next day.  Occasionally in cool weather we cooked yummy pots of baked beans that simmered all day in the oven of the wood cook stove. 

   Besides the large garden, we all had to have part time work in the summer crops.  I started picking strawberries as soon as I entered school. Ernie Scholl had the berry patch and that was where we went, walking the mile each way.   I never liked all the bending over, but never the less, I picked many hallocks and crates every day. But the raspberries, black caps, and beans were very enjoyable. After about ten years old, I earned enough money picking, to buy my school clothes for the fall.  All except shoes and my dear grandmother Lettie Sankey bought all her grand children a new pair of shoes to start school from Braden’s Department store. I loved the patent leather shoes, but mostly I needed strong shoes that would last all year. Penny loafers were a favorite for the boys.

     We did raise a pig or two.  My brothers and I learned to slop the hogs and hold our noses when we got close to their pen.  It was fun to feed baby pigs on a bottle. And we did love the pork.  My dad never ate fresh pork, and Mother fixed another dish for him. Sometimes we cured bacon and hams. Mostly, the fresh meat we had year around was chicken, venison, perhaps fresh trout, wild ducks, and rabbit fryers. People just poached deer when ever they needed meat for the table. And the police just looked the other way. Hunting season was like a special holiday too.  I remember schools closing down for several days so fathers and sons could go hunting.

     My Dad did more work than raising a garden, he was always fixing our shoes, resoling them to last just a little longer.  He had a regular cobbler set that did wonders to our shabby shoes.  There was a metal last that the shoe was placed on, then he worked for hours cutting a soft piece of leather to put on our worn shoes.  He tapped and tapped each piece of leather until it fit perfectly. After he finished the leather part, he would give them a great polish and shine and we were back in business again with shoes. I don’t remember what happened if we outgrew these shoes! 

      And of course, there were always things to fix at our house. He had quite a knack for repairing things. We had some very interesting self closing gates, and fences. The gate in the fence that magically closed on its own was perfectly balanced so that after we walked through the wooden arched gate; the gate slowly shut itself.  I had a photographer take my parents picture under the gate for their 50^th wedding invitations.

    Floyd could take old ship lap and do wonders with it.  Besides using it for hot fires, he built an entire house out of ship lap.  When we outgrew that house, he built extra bed space in a special bunk house for the boys to sleep in, right in our front yard, many beds, a potbellied stove and no insulation, the wind just blew in through the cracks. The amount of fellows staying in this bunk house varied from night to night.  And in the morning, everyone gathered around for a hot breakfast at our kitchen table.

    These were the days before school buses and the Gabriel boys of Cascadia stayed most of the week days over night so they could attend Sweet Home high school.  The bunk house was primitive, but fun for all these fellows. We all celebrated when we had our first flush toilet and hot water shower.  It wasn’t until about 1943 that we had those! Up until then, there were baths in the old copper bath tub and many quick runs to the outhouse.

   Being the only girl had a few disadvantages; mostly being stuck with the mounds of dirty dishes.  But I did them and tried to be cheery about the long hours it took to do this for so many people.  One brother was supposed to help me some of the time, but he had a habit of hiding the dishes in the wood cook stove’s oven.  Out of sight and out of mind.  Mother soon put a stop to that.  He had to chop a lot of wood to pay off this orneriness debt.

   The Great Depression was a difficult time for families, but it also was character building.  Great lessons were learned from our time in the depression years. “Money does not buy happiness”, and “Earn your money by the sweat of your brow.” We looked forward to an optimistic life and it really turned out well for all the four Hyer children.

My name is Stephenie Flora. Thanks for stopping by. Return to [ Home Page ] All [ Comments and Inquiries ] are welcome.