Great Depression Stories

The Great Depression was a time of misery for many people. City people stood in bread lines. People from the dust bowl states loaded their meager belongings onto their rattle trap cars and traveled to California seeking work. The Great Depression was a time of hunger and discouragement, but for me, it was a time of building happy memories. I didn’t know we were in the midst of the Great Depression. We lived on a small farm and raised our own food. Oh, I knew we didn’t have much money, but who needed money when there was a horse to ride and the whole world of nature to explore? My memories of the Great Depression are not depressing. Those were the years of carefree childhood, when I ran barefoot around the farm and discovered all the secret hiding places of the mother birds and their birdlings. Those were the years when an old tin can was all we needed to start a game of Kick-the-Can, or we could play One-ole-Cat with a five cent sponge rubber ball and a spoke from a wooden wagon wheel for a bat. Yes, the Great Depression holds happy memories for me, and I’d like to share some of them with you.

Family Stories

“We are creatures of memory and hope. If the past is blotted out and memory no longer functions, man is robbed of a source of great pleasure.” Marion A. Hogan, Kit Carson, Colorado—Home of the Famous Scout, Friendly People and Land of Prime Beef Cattle.

Some of my cherished memories of the Great Depression years when I was growing up were the winter evenings with the family sitting around the kitchen listening to Dad read or sharing family stories. We didn’t have TV or video games. Only occasionally was there money to go to a movie. So we enjoyed each other. A fire blazed in the old kitchen range and like as not Mom would have popcorn for us, some times even fudge.

A favorite story from my dad’s past is one he shared on rare occasions. At a hometown rodeo, he rode Little Buck, one of his brother’s horses. Dad was not a participant in that rodeo, just one of the young ranch hands who came to watch. Something spooked Little Buck and he went to pitching. The crowd began to cheer as Dad stayed in the saddle and Little Buck put on a real rodeo act. “Look,” someone said, “he’s even fanning his horse.” Dad always concluded that story with, “What they didn’t know was, I just couldn’t find the saddle horn.”

As a young man, my dad worked in Strawberry Valley, Utah for a time. On weekends, he rode the approximately 30 miles into Heber to play baseball. In order to make the best time, he took two saddle horses. When one tired, he switched the saddle to the other.

Baseball was not the only motivation for that hard ride. It so happened there was a beautiful young woman living in Heber at the time. Often he rented a buggy and a harness at the local livery to take his girl on a picnic. One of his saddle horses served to pull the buggy. Though a good saddle horse, it was not well trained to harness. Just as you had to sometimes push the old Model T to get it started, he had to lead this horse to get it started. He handed the lines to his girl, jumped off the buggy and led the horse to get it going. As the buggy came by, he swung aboard and took over the lines. One Sunday afternoon, the horse decided to run, he missed the buggy, and his girl had a wild ride into town alone. That special girl became my mother.

In our whirlwind lives, we stand in danger of neglecting to pass on to our children and grandchildren stories that gave us pleasure as children. I share these stories of my father in hopes they will inspire you to share your family stories with the next generation.

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For games we used to play, go to Games we used to play

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