This is the second part of the Great Depression as seen by my mom.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Part 2 – WorkingDaddy did a lot of things to earn money, some of which I don’t even remember. He had a job at Bradas & Gheens Candy Company in Louisville, and he made $12.00 a week. We considered ourselves very lucky because a lot of people didn’t have that much, if anything.
Then Daddy got lucky. He got a job at Colgate’s and he made $19.00 a week to start! This was Jeffersonville’s main industry and we really felt blessed.. Of course, any major purchases were made on credit, probably a dollar down and a dollar a week. But the main thing was that he had a job.
Mother worked a good part of the time at anything she could find to do. She wasn’t proud. One year the cannery got a government contract to can mutton and she turned to and got a job there. The town reeked of cooking mutton and so did mother. And when Colgate ran a batch of Super Suds soap powder at the same time the mutton was cooking, Jeff stank to high heaven. I have never really cared for lamb.
Daddy worked at Colgate’s for quite a few years, but the powdery materials he breathed finally got to him and he went on to other things. He farmed larger farms (leased, not owned), managed the hardware department and was paint and toy buyer for Sears. He sold cars and real estate, was Assistant Traffic Manager for Goodyear Engineering during World War II, and ran a Schwinn bike dealership. After he retired he ran a bowling alley and a tool rental store at the same time. I have often wondered what he could have done if he had gone to high school, much less college.
Mother, in her lifetime, worked in a doctor’s office, for a loan company, for Indiana Bell, ran a bakery shop, and was the first woman to run the Over, Short and Damaged (OS&D) desk for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Grandad [My mother’s grandfather. – Jim] worked for veneer mills, had a butter-and-egg route for awhile, going out into the country and buying them up and peddling them on a route he worked up in town. He also worked on a couple of farms, and ended his working days at the New Albany Box & Basket Company.
I was a fairly well dressed child, even with the Depression breathing down our necks. Mother and Sis [One of my mother’s aunts who lived with the very extended family. – Jim] both sewed very well, Mother did tailoring, and they both “took in” sewing for other people. They crocheted, made quilts, curtains and whatever else was required. Chicken feed came in cotton bags, sometimes plain with lettering and sometimes patterned. The sacks were bleached and recycled into curtains, pillow cases, aprons, dresses for children – and the material wore like iron. I still have a few things packed away that Sis made.
Mother would drift through New Albany’s most exclusive department store, looking at dresses in my size. They she would buy material (remnants, if possible), spread out newspapers on the floor, cut a pattern, and I would end up with a dress resembling one she had seen at the White House. [The “most exclusive department store” was named the White House. – Jim]
Sometimes I liked what she had made, sometimes I turned up my nose and whined for store-bought. Some I remember with fondness: a pongee dress with an embroidered yoke when I was five (I always did and still do love clothes); a lavender cotton with tiny white dots and flounces edged with rick-rack. When I was in high school and a member of the red-hot Booster Club, we were supposed to wear red and white. Mother made me a red basket weave wool skirt and jacket, which I wore with a white shirt, and everybody wanted to know where we had bought it. I remember a red and white dotted swiss she made me after I was married that I loved.
Part of the strain on the budget was that I had such expensive feet! Mother had a short chubby foot and could get a pair of shoes for $1.98 tops. I had long, skinny feet and my shoes cost $5 or $6 a pair, and then I had to take whatever fit. I went through several identical pairs of buff leather Mary Jane’s, trimmed in brown patent, when I was about four to six years old. I was so sick of them and so elated when Mother finally found me a pair of black patent slippers for Easter. I wore them as much as I was allowed, ignoring the painful blisters on my heels until Mother caught me limping.
Martha Ferguson
