For me the depression was the better years. I was happy with what little we had. I didn’t miss what we didn’t have. Some kids had it all. No envy from me. Where I lived, none of us had toys or games — so we made our own.
Learning self-reliance at an early age was an advantage. The depression, however, was terrible years for the adults in our neighborhood.
Living in much smaller houses with almost no yard, I learned to entertain myself when the sun went down. Rather than be bored, I read history and politics, and that background paid off big time when adulthood arrived.
I used marbles I had collected over the years to create basketball and baseball games. The Chinese checkers board became a football field on which I played for both sides and maintained a won and loss scoreboard. It was forced creativity. I hated poverty then and even more now, but looking back, I appreciate how the depression forced me to learn to figure percentages and to graph the won and lost records.
A big concern today is obesity; some parents are worried about the enlarged middle of their children. In my day, we had not heard of obesity, let alone worry about it. We did have a few fat friends. Probably due to health problems. They were treated badly and called “Fatso.” But all kids, me included, were given nicknames. I was tagged as “Skinny.” And I was!
We never missed a meal at home. We had bean soup, baked beans, or bread covered with bean soup. Bread then cost more if sliced so we never bought sliced bread. Mom made bread at home, too. One slice of bread after school was my snack before I rushed out to the ball field to play.
Today, kids ride home on a bus or in a car. Not much exercise sitting. At home they e-mail or text or get in a car and ride to their highly regulated games — rules by parents, of course. Our softball teams were organized by us, scheduled by us with other neighborhood kids, and often we had to walk across town to the other team’s field. Some teams even had regular bags for bases. We did not. We had large bricks. They did the job as long as you didn’t slide into them head first. If you did make that mistake, you walked home for Dr. Mom to treat and bandage. We did not require a sign or a law to tell us not to slide into bricks. We learned the hard way.
When Halloween came around, we did not trick or treat. We just tricked. People had no money for treats. We soaped windows, threw corn on porches, or removed furniture from porches and hung it in a tree. All required exercise and creativity. I soaped a neighbor’s window one year. Did a good job creating a picture. Then my dad learned of my art talent and made me scrape the soap off the window. Unwelcome exercise. Instead of removing soap from windows today, some parents are hiring trainers to exercise their little ones. We had trainers in the depression days but we called them parents.
I was smart enough then to keep a diary. One day I wrote: “I had a very happy day today. Mom took us downtown and bought Glenn a new overcoat. I was given his old one. I really like it.” Glenn, my brother, was seven years older than I. Later, of course, I had new clothes. None, however, brought the pleasure that came when the clothes you knew were going to be yours someday actually became yours. To me, the hand-me-downs were as new as new could be.
A toothache was a trip to the drug store by South School. Doctors were called only when a real emergency existed. We didn’t need bureaucrats to tell us we were sick; Dr. Mom did a great job.
The depression forced youngsters to create, think, plan and play together. We learned to get along. We did not rely on parents to solve our problems; they had tremendous pressures of their own.
It was difficult being a kid during years of scarcity but, as I grow older, I am happy self-reliance was forced upon me. I don’t advocate depressions. Not at all. But learning to do without is a difficult but excellent education. As Mark Twain said, “Never let a formal education get in the way of your learning.”
Knight Goodman is president of Knight Goodman Inc. public relations firm. He formerly held management positions at Aeronca and The Journal, and was chairman of Middletown’s bicentennial celebration in 1991.