Remembering the Depression

Remembering the Depression by Ruth Hutchinson Calkins

Ruth Hutchinson Calkins was a little girl when the Great Depression hit America. These are her memories of this difficult time. 1 My face was pressed against the window as I watched two strange men driving our car away. It was February 1931. I was four years old; my sister, Margaret, was two. Our world was about to change. 2 Daddy had been a salesman, and we lived in a comfortable home in Long Island. I remember green yards, kids chasing one another around, and eating homemade cake in a sunny kitchen. 3 Later that month, after Daddy lost his job, we lost our home and moved to a building in Brooklyn. It was hard to get used to the small, dark spaces there. Our first-floor apartment had no door to the backyard. When we wanted to play outside, Mother lowered my sister and me through the kitchen window onto a chair. From there, we jumped to the ground. 4 We moved again in June 1931. My parents had found an old farmhouse that drooped like a flower stem in winter. It had no furnace, and the kitchen was without a stove, an icebox, or a washer. It did have a sink and a drain, but the well and hand pump for water were outside. Instead of a bathroom, there was an outhouse in the yard. 5 My parents planted a vegetable garden for food. We cooked meals over an outdoor fire. To Margaret and me, it was fun. 6 Every drop of water we used, we pumped by hand from the well. We needed water for cooking, drinking, washing, cleaning, and bathing. Mother washed clothing in a big round tub. On Saturday nights, the tub became our bathtub. 7 As soon as we were settled, Daddy began job hunting. He walked to New York City and back, 40 miles each way. He was gone for days at a time, taking any job he could find. Closer to home, he picked crops “on shares”—that is, his pay would be a small amount of each crop after harvest. Mother worked hard at home, canning vegetables, washing clothes by hand, preparing meals, and taking care of us. 8 My parents saved enough money that first summer to buy a woodstove and a washer. And I remember the day Daddy found an ice cream churn that someone had thrown away. Mother cleaned it out, and on special days we feasted on homemade ice cream. 9 That fall, our small basement overflowed with stored vegetables. Daddy also brought home apples and peaches that had dropped off trees at nearby orchards. The damaged fruit was sold at a low price to anyone who’d pick it up. Mother made it into delicious jams, or canned it. We were lucky—we never went hungry. 10Slowly, life improved. We lived in the old farmhouse for about three years. Margaret and I started school. Daddy found a job at a nearby rug mill, and we moved across town to a modern house. We still had to be thrifty, but we had gotten through the worst years, and we were full of hopefulness. 11During those hard times, my parents never let us sense any fear. Margaret and I always felt safe, and everything was presented to us as an adventure. We didn’t think of ourselves as poor because almost everyone we knew was in the same boat.