Today is my Aunt Marion's birthday; she's 91 and she's amazing. (I call her a sequin person because she's so sparkly). I phoned Aunt Marion in Milwaukee today to wish her a "Happy Birthd
ay" and she wanted to know how we were doing with the lay off. Aunt Marion was 11 years old at the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929. My mother was 12. By the time she was 16, my mother dropped out of high school because her parents didn't have enough money for her to buy a gym suit and she was too proud to go to school without one.
Aunt Marion is worried a bit about the economy and the fact that my husband is laid off during this time. She can remember the Great Depression and therefore can envision a deepening and lengthening of the economic recession. Because I was born after that time in history, such a picture is not easy for me to comprehend nor do I want it to be.
The emotional effect of the Great Depression, I feel, was a living, breathing presence in my family, and it's legacy has been passed down. My mother would tell me stories at bedtime about how she and Aunt Marion took a wagon "to the county" to get milk and flour. They lived in West Allis, Wisconsin, a part of West Milwaukee, right down the block from where Liberace and his brother George grew up. "Walter" Liberace and George went to the same school as my mother and my Aunt Marion. My mother remembers that Walter was very kind to her. He helped Aunt Marion and my mom with the wagon of groceries they brought home from the county. M
y mother was embarrassed they had to do this and in her adult life she never took anything that even hinted it might be charity. On the contrary, my mother, though never having more than just enough to get by, was a exceptionally generous person. When she left a tip at a restaurant, it was a big tip. When she gave a gift, it was something lovely. I remember one time we went to the Wisconsin State Fair and there was a little girl standing by one of the rides. She was blind. My mother walked over and gave her enough to ride all the rides she wanted that day.
That was the positive legacy of the Depression. It left my mother with a great understanding of how people can fall on hard times through no fault of their own. My mother's natural empathy for people was amplified through her experiences during the Depression and World War II.
But the Great Depression left another psychological and sociological effect on America - the effect of deprivation. There are several ways in which people respond to deprivation. One is to accept deprivation as a given, the other is to rail against it.
It's interesting that Liberace once stated: "Except for music, there wasn't much beauty in my childhood. He later recalled, "We lived in one of those featureless bungalows in a featureless
neighborhood. I hated shabbiness. I'd walk 27 blocks and pay 15 cents to sit in a new, clean movie house when I could have walked five blocks and paid 5 cents to sit in an old, dirty one." www.1st100.com/part3/liberace.html Perhaps Liberace's excesses were somewhat of a reaction to the Great Depression - a kind of a Scarlet O'Hara "I'll-never-go-hungry-again" response. Perhaps he was railing against deprivation.
I'm wondering if my mother's response to the Great Depression, on the other hand, was one of resigned acceptance of the loss of control over one's financial fate - the acceptance of deprivation as a given in life. It's not that we were poor. It's just that we were never prosperous. There was money just enough for a vacation for two weeks up North in the summer and maybe a new car every so often. My parents never owned a house and my mother was never able to take the trip to Ireland she had dreamed about. But she was "content" as she put it. And that, to me, can be a danger. "What good is money?" she'd ask, "even the pigs won't eat it." I never understood what that was supposed to mean, but I think it was one of those cliques we try to live by like, "Money doesn't bring happiness."
To many this is an admirable trait, but it's one that keeps people in their class and never allows them to rise above it. It seems to me that the whole point of living is the rising. This planet is rich enough in resources, and humankind is creative enough to envision prosperity for all. During this time of economic revolution (for surely these times are ever as much revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution) we must be sure that rather than fall into acceptance of crisis as inevitable, we need to embrace a vision of a better life for all, a more equitable distribution of wealth and the knowledge that we do have the ability and perhaps the obligation to continue to rise. It's all about the rising.
ay" and she wanted to know how we were doing with the lay off. Aunt Marion was 11 years old at the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929. My mother was 12. By the time she was 16, my mother dropped out of high school because her parents didn't have enough money for her to buy a gym suit and she was too proud to go to school without one.Aunt Marion is worried a bit about the economy and the fact that my husband is laid off during this time. She can remember the Great Depression and therefore can envision a deepening and lengthening of the economic recession. Because I was born after that time in history, such a picture is not easy for me to comprehend nor do I want it to be.
The emotional effect of the Great Depression, I feel, was a living, breathing presence in my family, and it's legacy has been passed down. My mother would tell me stories at bedtime about how she and Aunt Marion took a wagon "to the county" to get milk and flour. They lived in West Allis, Wisconsin, a part of West Milwaukee, right down the block from where Liberace and his brother George grew up. "Walter" Liberace and George went to the same school as my mother and my Aunt Marion. My mother remembers that Walter was very kind to her. He helped Aunt Marion and my mom with the wagon of groceries they brought home from the county. M
y mother was embarrassed they had to do this and in her adult life she never took anything that even hinted it might be charity. On the contrary, my mother, though never having more than just enough to get by, was a exceptionally generous person. When she left a tip at a restaurant, it was a big tip. When she gave a gift, it was something lovely. I remember one time we went to the Wisconsin State Fair and there was a little girl standing by one of the rides. She was blind. My mother walked over and gave her enough to ride all the rides she wanted that day.That was the positive legacy of the Depression. It left my mother with a great understanding of how people can fall on hard times through no fault of their own. My mother's natural empathy for people was amplified through her experiences during the Depression and World War II.
But the Great Depression left another psychological and sociological effect on America - the effect of deprivation. There are several ways in which people respond to deprivation. One is to accept deprivation as a given, the other is to rail against it.
It's interesting that Liberace once stated: "Except for music, there wasn't much beauty in my childhood. He later recalled, "We lived in one of those featureless bungalows in a featureless
neighborhood. I hated shabbiness. I'd walk 27 blocks and pay 15 cents to sit in a new, clean movie house when I could have walked five blocks and paid 5 cents to sit in an old, dirty one." www.1st100.com/part3/liberace.html Perhaps Liberace's excesses were somewhat of a reaction to the Great Depression - a kind of a Scarlet O'Hara "I'll-never-go-hungry-again" response. Perhaps he was railing against deprivation.I'm wondering if my mother's response to the Great Depression, on the other hand, was one of resigned acceptance of the loss of control over one's financial fate - the acceptance of deprivation as a given in life. It's not that we were poor. It's just that we were never prosperous. There was money just enough for a vacation for two weeks up North in the summer and maybe a new car every so often. My parents never owned a house and my mother was never able to take the trip to Ireland she had dreamed about. But she was "content" as she put it. And that, to me, can be a danger. "What good is money?" she'd ask, "even the pigs won't eat it." I never understood what that was supposed to mean, but I think it was one of those cliques we try to live by like, "Money doesn't bring happiness."
To many this is an admirable trait, but it's one that keeps people in their class and never allows them to rise above it. It seems to me that the whole point of living is the rising. This planet is rich enough in resources, and humankind is creative enough to envision prosperity for all. During this time of economic revolution (for surely these times are ever as much revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution) we must be sure that rather than fall into acceptance of crisis as inevitable, we need to embrace a vision of a better life for all, a more equitable distribution of wealth and the knowledge that we do have the ability and perhaps the obligation to continue to rise. It's all about the rising.
