# The Dust Bowl



## mamabear2012 (Mar 8, 2012)

I just started watching the Dust Bowl series on PBS. It just amazes me that our country could go through something like this, survive it and NOT learn from it.

It's sad that the nation has become so comfortable and so many are completely unprepared for bad times. :dunno:


----------



## Clarice (Aug 19, 2010)

I agree. I can only pray that the storm in New England and the people who watch this series will wake up and prepare for the next disaster. There will be another.


----------



## alwaysready (May 16, 2012)

mamabear2012 said:


> I just started watching the Dust Bowl series on PBS. It just amazes me that our country could go through something like this, survive it and NOT learn from it.
> 
> It's sad that the nation has become so comfortable and so many are completely unprepared for bad times. :dunno:


Thats why I do what I do today hearing stories about from Grandparents, Greataunts and Uncles.

They told of three diffrent times.
1. Life before the Great Depression which didn't affect them much because they didn't have a lot of money and were used to providing for themselves.

2. Life during the Depression where they say many displaced people made the best of their lot. They helped as much as they could. Remember they didn't have a lot of money but they did have full bellies.

3. The Dust Bowl true suffering so bad they came to California. And even after being out west for 20+ years they still had gardens, chickens, rabbits, goats and canned anything they could get their hands on.


----------



## mamabear2012 (Mar 8, 2012)

My grandparents didn't really talk about the depression era. The only real evidence that they lived through it was their psychological need to hoard. I think they believed that they would be without again one day. We couldn't leave an Ihop without my grandmother stuffing all of the jelly and sugar packets into her purse. It kind of became the family running joke.
I wish I had asked them more questions about their past when they here. Unfortunately I was too young and idealistic to ever think that history could repeat itself.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

And slightly more recent history - the rations during WWII. Both my parents lived through the depression and WWII, and yet it amazes me that that didn't turn them into preppers of sorts. I think they were so eager to get the bad stuff behind them. 

That said, they both see what I do and fully support it. And they do both still eat three full meals a day whether they're hungry or not, and I've always thought that was because psychologically they weren't always certain of getting another meal.


----------



## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

You might like a book called, The Worst Hard Times. It is about HOW people survived the Dust Bowl. People in TX sometimes ate tumbleweed. 

I think people generally think it won't happen again or it won't happen to them. The same reasons that people don't prep.


----------



## Attila (Jan 30, 2011)

I heard my grandparents and parents speaking often about the depression. Especially my grandparents. My grandfathers greatest advice to me was "never be in debt". My parents were children of the depression, so it was the norm for them growing up.

Needless to say, we have lost a lot of good information with the passing of my grandparents generation, and even the passing of my parents generation, the Greatest Generation. During the depression there were many farm and rural people, who had always been on hard times. I knew an old guy from South Louisiana who said that they couldn't tell when the depression started because times were always tough.

What will make the potential coming times tough is we as a people have become extremely soft and lacking in general knowledge of how to get by. It is pretty frightening when you think of what percentage of the country have never grown so much as a tomato plant, much less a garden.

We have become a society geared towards instant satisfaction. Look at all the useless crap we buy day after day, year after year. Cars, electronics, of which we haven't a clue in the world how to repair. Do we have the where with all to face the coming hard times with some dignity and fortitude like those who lived through the depression of the 1930's?


----------



## DJgang (Apr 10, 2011)

My grandma, God rest her soul, said she didn't know there was a depression until we came out of it and everyone told her.


----------



## Tweto (Nov 26, 2011)

DJgang said:


> My grandma, God rest her soul, said she didn't know there was a depression until we came out of it and everyone told her.


My grandparents said the same thing, they never knew what the great depression was tell years later.

The big question is what will the historians call these times. This is allot more then a recession, but not a depression yet and it is not close to be over with yet. I think that these times will be worse then the Great Depression.

When it's all over what will they call these times???


----------



## mamabear2012 (Mar 8, 2012)

Tweto- I was thinking the same thing as I watched the series. What will they call these times? Then I started thinking about the poverty rate. Wonder if people will begin making more shanty towns & calling them Obamavilles instead of Hoovervilles.


----------



## alwaysready (May 16, 2012)

Tweto said:


> My grandparents said the same thing, they never knew what the great depression was tell years later.
> 
> The big question is what will the historians call these times. This is allot more then a recession, but not a depression yet and it is not close to be over with yet. I think that these times will be worse then the Great Depression.
> 
> When it's all over what will they call these times???


Its sad to say but if what I see coming is true. The historians just may end up call these current times. "The Good Old Days"


----------



## Freyadog (Jan 27, 2010)

alwaysready said:


> Thats why I do what I do today hearing stories about from Grandparents, Greataunts and Uncles.
> 
> They told of three diffrent times.
> 1. Life before the Great Depression which didn't affect them much because they didn't have a lot of money and were used to providing for themselves.
> ...


My mother told me as a little girl during the Depression, she can remember men coming to the door asking for food. She would help the maid make biscuit sandwiches and give to these men.


----------



## alwaysready (May 16, 2012)

Freyadog said:


> My mother told me as a little girl during the Depression, she can remember men coming to the door asking for food. She would help the maid make biscuit sandwiches and give to these men.


My Greatgrandmother told me the same thing. She said once some men came and asked for food after feeding them they gave her 2 dollars and left she was so suprised and greatful to have so much money. About a month later she found out they were bank robbers and would do that everytime someone feed them.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

Freyadog said:


> My mother told me as a little girl during the Depression, she can remember men coming to the door asking for food. She would help the maid make biscuit sandwiches and give to these men.


My mom vividly remembers one particular time when a hobo came to the door asking for food, and my grandmother had to turn him away because she didn't have enough to feed her own family. After he left she sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her arms and sobbed because it hurt her to turn away anyone in need. It was one of the rare times my mother saw my grandmother cry.

Mom's also talked about how one time Grandpa got paid for work with a sack of potatoes. So they had potato soup for every meal for a week, and by the end of the week the soup was little more than water...


----------



## mamabear2012 (Mar 8, 2012)

Hearing all of these stories really makes me with I had taken more interest in my grandparent's lives. Breaks my heart that I was too young and too full of myself to develop better relationships with them before they passed away. I will not make that same mistake with my children and (some day, if I'm blessed enough to have them) grandchildren.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

mamabear2012 said:


> Hearing all of these stories really makes me with I had taken more interest in my grandparent's lives. Breaks my heart that I was too young and too full of myself to develop better relationships with them before they passed away. I will not make that same mistake with my children and (some day, if I'm blessed enough to have them) grandchildren.


I know what you mean. As my mom is in her last months, maybe her last month (she's stage 4 pancreatic cancer), suddenly the stories are so much more important. It's like we can't write them down fast enough - it will be hard enough to lose her, we don't want the stories to die with her, too. And yet, no matter how many stories we get down, it always feels like we're missing so much more.


----------



## TheAnt (Jun 7, 2011)

Tweto said:


> The big question is what will the historians call these times. This is allot more then a recession, but not a depression yet


I dunno, when I sit down and think about things long enough I get "depressed"! We as a nation have fallen so far and have doubled down on the idea that government is the answer to our problems. When I sit down and get depressed I realize I need to get off my butt and do something. Get ready, the smell is in the air.


----------



## mamabear2012 (Mar 8, 2012)

Goshengirl- I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. It's great that you are writing her stories down though. That's a wonderful and priceless gift for future generations.

Bugout Bag- I feel the same way. I've had this horrible feeling (like a weight on my chest) for some time now. I take baby steps toward prepping because of low funds but being productive does help.


----------



## CulexPipiens (Nov 17, 2010)

kejmack said:


> You might like a book called, The Worst Hard Times. It is about HOW people survived the Dust Bowl. People in TX sometimes ate tumbleweed.
> 
> I think people generally think it won't happen again or it won't happen to them. The same reasons that people don't prep.


Mrs. Culex got it as an audio book from our library and was absolutely riveted by it. Every day she'd come home and almost narrate the entire CD that she had just finished listening to. After hearing that we were both looking forward to (and did watch) the PBS 2 part series on it.


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

Tweto said:


> When it's all over what will they call these times???


The begginning of the end.


----------



## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

mamabear2012 said:


> Hearing all of these stories really makes me with I had taken more interest in my grandparent's lives. Breaks my heart that I was too young and too full of myself to develop better relationships with them before they passed away. I will not make that same mistake with my children and (some day, if I'm blessed enough to have them) grandchildren.


This is my thoughts as well, too bad I was so full of myself not to ask about what my Dad's parents went through coming to this country from Norway. I suspect that they came through Ellis Island, I wish now that I had asked what it was like and what their path from the East Coast to Lofall, Washington on Hood Canal consisted of.


----------



## musketjim (Dec 7, 2011)

I spent a lot of time with my Granparents and they never spoke about it, but they had a large garden as long as I could remember and canned always as did my mother. I wish I had my Grandpas green thumb. I read that the Great Depression wasn't bad if you had a job. But I saw the History Channel show Black Blizzard about the Dust Bowl and couldn't imagine living like that. Before and during the depression we were a largely agrarian society from what I've read which makes folks a little more self sufficient. Quite different from present time.


----------



## BillM (Dec 29, 2010)

My parents went through the depression and it changed them and thier world veiw for the rest of thier lives.

My dad would not borrow money or have a credit card.

When my mother got Alzhimers, she reverted back to being a young person in her mind.

She would take tolit paper and carfully fold it and stick it up her sleaves when she went to the bathroom. we could never get her to tell us why until we asked her where she got it and she told us she got it at work.

When she was going through the depression, she worked as a shoe sales girl in downtown Nashville. She lived at home with her mother and four of her sisters.
They all stole toilet paper from public restrooms because they could not afford to buy it !

My dad lived to be ninety seven. He became senile the last three years of his life and had to live with me. He thought he was living in a rooming house and hid his money , watch and wallet every night in his bed room. The next morning , he would accuse us of stealing his stuff. It would take two hours to find it all,(he was great at hideing it but terrible at remembering where he hid it ).

I finally solved his problem by stealing all his stuff and after he got over the initial loss , he forgot about it and was content.


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

Grandma and Granpa were some of the ones that didn't know there was such a thing as a great depression during those years. They were back at granpas home in the Ozarks of MO with his family. He always up until he just couldn't but back then that IS how his family was fed that and squirrels that is one sign of the GD grandma would even allow a squirrel in the house said she had had enough of em forever. Grandpa also never used tobbaco but he grew a crop of it every year for a lil extra money for the family. 

Also for anyone still thinking you will just take to the hills and live off deer and turkey, grandpa never hunted he always talked about how much pleasure it gave him when they brought and released deer and turkey down south, as they had been hunted completely gone very early in the Depression and Dustbowl era. Bout all there was was squirrel and he said even those got pretty slim.


----------

