So you think times are tough now?
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If this brutal economy grows even meaner and nastier than it already is, you might need to rethink the notion of recession roadkill, Gordon reckons.
In 1931, Gordon's dad was laid off from the textile mill near their home in Whitehall, Washington County, and struggled to feed his wife and 10 children.
The family's very survival came down to a large ceramic bowl set on the kitchen table each evening. His mom would point to it and say, "If you don't eat that, you don't eat." The kids knew better than to complain. And they always cleaned their plates of the rough-hewn casserole of parsnips, potatoes, onions and tomatoes from a backyard garden and rodents killed that day for meat and pelts that would fetch a buck.
"We did what we had to do to survive," recalled Gordon, who was hired in 1935 at 17 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and labored four years building state campgrounds in the Adirondacks. A monthly $25 government check sent home to his widowed father kept the large brood afloat.
In today's grim economic landscape, we could learn a thing or two by studying the survival skills of the "greatest generation." Their experience of gutting it out in tough times, a deep streak of self-reliance and abiding commitment to frugality — turning off lights in unused rooms, darning holes in socks instead of throwing them out, recycling aluminum foil from food packaging — resonates anew in 2009.
"Everyone in those days was self-sufficient. We could put a stick in the ground and get a potato. I worry that young people today aren't prepared to take care of themselves if things get really bad again," said Ruth Hand, 88, of Clifton Park, who grew up on Old Post Road in Rotterdam. She recalled a Depression-era childhood spent tending chickens, growing vegetables and cleaning rooms in the tourist home her family ran to supplement her dad's income from a foundry job.
This recession, the deepest in at least a generation, does not come close to the dire economic conditions of the Great Depression, which began with the stock market crash of 1929 and continued for a decade until war production ramped up in 1940, according to David Hochfelder, assistant professor of history at the University at Albany who's researched American capitalism.
"We've only been in this recession for 18 months and nobody knows what it will look like in two years," said Hochfelder. But federally insured bank deposits, unemployment insurance, welfare programs and a social safety net that wasn't in place during the Great Depression will lessen the impact of a prolonged recession this time.
In March, the national unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent, with about 6 million Americans out of work. During the worst years of the Depression, 1933 and 1934, the nation's jobless rate hit 25 percent, meaning that 15 million Americans were out of work, and another 25 percent of breadwinners had their wages and hours cut. In addition, more than 10,000 banks went out of business between 1929 and 1933 following a panicked rush to withdraw funds and battered consumer confidence.
Hochfelder said anxiety levels over today's recession are exacerbated by a 24-hour news cycle that creates an echo chamber of bad economic news and plummeting stock prices sow broad discontent when roughly 50 percent of Americans own stock, compared to less than 10 percent in 1929. The matter of perception reminded Hochfelder of a Will Rogers quip: "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work and a depression is when you're out of work."
Lessons in thrift Hochfelder gleaned from his grandmother while growing up in Chicago — she kept a ball of recycled string, a cookie can with salvaged buttons and walked a mile in winter to save a nickel streetcar fare — make good sense to him these days.
Leo Dean attended elementary school in Watervliet when his dad, a custom woodworker at Albany Boat Corp., was laid off after the bottom dropped out of luxury cruiser sales in the early 1930s. He got by on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and realized his family was struggling financially when he was sent to the corner market to buy food on credit, which the grocer tracked in a ledger book.
"We had several very hard years," recalled Dean, 84, of Albany, a senior vice president of Norvest Financial Securities in Latham. His family survived on money sent by his uncle, a policeman, and aunt, a bank teller, who remained employed. After five years without a paycheck, his dad finally found steady income crafting the wooden siding on cars.
"I remember great rejoicing when he got that job," said Dean, whose aunt also paid $60 a semester tuition in 1937 that allowed him to attend Christian Brothers Academy in Albany.
"Those were really anxious times, never knowing what troubles were coming next. Hopefully, it will never come to that again," Dean said.
Rosaline Etlinger, 95, of Loudonville, a retired Albany High School social studies teacher, is haunted still by her discovery of an indigent man who had frozen to death in the winter of 1935. He couldn't afford to heat his apartment and had run out of the firewood she left him to burn in a fireplace as part of her job working for the Red Cross in New York City.
"I remember seeing a terrific amount of agony in those years," said Etlinger, who graduated from Douglass College in Brunswick, N.J., in 1934 but could not find a teaching job. Her father, an Austrian immigrant, lost his life savings of $29,000 in the stock market crash and her Red Cross salary kept her family solvent. When Etlinger recounts these stories to her grandchildren, they tell her to stop living in the past.
For Gordon, the past is a tonic that reminds him of the gritty times that molded his character, whether it was hunting rabbits for supper with his pet ferret — an illegal, but effective method — or his mom's marksmanship. She kept a .22 rifle above the kitchen door, out of reach of her children, and used it to shoot muskrats as they swam near the back porch when the canal overflowed. "My dad was a good cook and could make it taste like beef," Gordon recalled.
"The Depression left a lasting legacy of frugality on all of us who lived through it," said Bob Herman, 89, of Slingerlands, a retired state budget official. He grew up in Newburgh and his father's auto parts and sporting goods store remained in business during the Depression, saving his family from the worst of it.
"At the root of today's economic problems are unrealistic expectations," Herman said. "We grew up with hard times and we've never forgotten that."
That's why Herman, who travels widely, finds himself repeating a habit he can't break: Going around his hotel room and turning off lights not being used.
Link to Article: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=794061&category=REGION&TextPage=1
