don’t you go across to Mexican town, you can buy ’em over there.” And then she turned around and continued her conversation.
She never knew how much she was hurting us. But it stayed with us.
We’d go to school two days sometimes, a week, two weeks, three weeks at most. This is when we were migrating. We’d come back to our winter base, and if we were lucky, we’d get in a good solid all of January, February, March, April, May. So we had five months out of a possible nine months. We started counting how many schools we’d been to and we counted thirty-seven. Elementary schools. From first to eighth grade. Thirty-seven. We never got a transfer. Friday we didn’t tell the teacher or anything. We’d just go home. And they accepted this.
I remember one teacher—I wondered why she was asking so many questions. (In those days anybody asked questions, you became suspicious. Either a cop or a social worker.) She was a young teacher, and she just wanted to know why we were behind. One day she drove into the camp. That was quite an event, because we never had a teacher come over. Never. So it was, you know, a very meaningful day for us.
This I remember. Some people put this out of their minds and forget it. I don’t. I don’t want to forget it. I don’t want it to take the best of me, but I want to be there because this is what happened. This is the truth, you know. History.
Fran
Fran is twenty-one. She’s from Atlanta. Her family is considered effluent.
MY MOTHER HAD a really big family, she was one of seven kids. She brought me up, not on fairy tales, but on stories of the Depression. They feel almost like fairy tales to me because she used to tell bedtime stories about that kind of thing.
The things they teach you about the Depression in school are quite different from how it was: Well, you knew for some reason society didn’t get along so well in those years. And then you found out that everybody worked very hard, and things somehow got better. People didn’t talk about the fact that industries needed to make guns for World War II made that happen. “It just got better” ‘cause people pitched in and worked. And’cause Roosevelt was a nice guy, although some people thought he went too far. You never hear about the rough times.
A lot of young people feel angry about this kind of protectiveness. This particular kind is even more vicious somehow, because it’s wanting you not to have to go through what is a very real experience, even though it is a very hard thing. Wanting to protect you from your own history, in a way.
Blackie Gold
A car dealer. He has a house in the suburbs.
WHATEVER I HAVE, I’m very thankful for. I’ve never brought up the Depression to my children. Never in my life. Why should I? What I had to do, what I had to do without, I never tell ’em what I went through, there’s no reason for it. They don’t have to know from bad times. All they know is the life they’ve had and the future that they’re gonna have.
All I know is my children are well-behaved. If I say something to my daughters, it’s “Yes, sir,” “No, sir.” I know where my kids are at all times. And I don’t have no worries about them being a beatnik.
I’ve built my own home. I almost have no mortgage. I have a daughter who’s graduating college, and my daughter did not have to work, for me to
put her through college. At the age of sixteen, I gave her a car, that was her gift. She’s graduating college now: I’ll give her a new one.
We had to go out and beg for coal, buy bread that’s two, three days old. My dad died when I was an infant. I went to an orphan home for fellas. Stood there till I was seventeen years old. I came out into the big wide world, and my mother who was trying to raise my six older brothers and sisters, couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. So I enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC. This was about 1937.
I was at CCC’s for six months, I came
She never knew how much she was hurting us. But it stayed with us.
We’d go to school two days sometimes, a week, two weeks, three weeks at most. This is when we were migrating. We’d come back to our winter base, and if we were lucky, we’d get in a good solid all of January, February, March, April, May. So we had five months out of a possible nine months. We started counting how many schools we’d been to and we counted thirty-seven. Elementary schools. From first to eighth grade. Thirty-seven. We never got a transfer. Friday we didn’t tell the teacher or anything. We’d just go home. And they accepted this.
I remember one teacher—I wondered why she was asking so many questions. (In those days anybody asked questions, you became suspicious. Either a cop or a social worker.) She was a young teacher, and she just wanted to know why we were behind. One day she drove into the camp. That was quite an event, because we never had a teacher come over. Never. So it was, you know, a very meaningful day for us.
This I remember. Some people put this out of their minds and forget it. I don’t. I don’t want to forget it. I don’t want it to take the best of me, but I want to be there because this is what happened. This is the truth, you know. History.
Fran
Fran is twenty-one. She’s from Atlanta. Her family is considered effluent.
MY MOTHER HAD a really big family, she was one of seven kids. She brought me up, not on fairy tales, but on stories of the Depression. They feel almost like fairy tales to me because she used to tell bedtime stories about that kind of thing.
The things they teach you about the Depression in school are quite different from how it was: Well, you knew for some reason society didn’t get along so well in those years. And then you found out that everybody worked very hard, and things somehow got better. People didn’t talk about the fact that industries needed to make guns for World War II made that happen. “It just got better” ‘cause people pitched in and worked. And’cause Roosevelt was a nice guy, although some people thought he went too far. You never hear about the rough times.
A lot of young people feel angry about this kind of protectiveness. This particular kind is even more vicious somehow, because it’s wanting you not to have to go through what is a very real experience, even though it is a very hard thing. Wanting to protect you from your own history, in a way.
Blackie Gold
A car dealer. He has a house in the suburbs.
WHATEVER I HAVE, I’m very thankful for. I’ve never brought up the Depression to my children. Never in my life. Why should I? What I had to do, what I had to do without, I never tell ’em what I went through, there’s no reason for it. They don’t have to know from bad times. All they know is the life they’ve had and the future that they’re gonna have.
All I know is my children are well-behaved. If I say something to my daughters, it’s “Yes, sir,” “No, sir.” I know where my kids are at all times. And I don’t have no worries about them being a beatnik.
I’ve built my own home. I almost have no mortgage. I have a daughter who’s graduating college, and my daughter did not have to work, for me to
put her through college. At the age of sixteen, I gave her a car, that was her gift. She’s graduating college now: I’ll give her a new one.
We had to go out and beg for coal, buy bread that’s two, three days old. My dad died when I was an infant. I went to an orphan home for fellas. Stood there till I was seventeen years old. I came out into the big wide world, and my mother who was trying to raise my six older brothers and sisters, couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. So I enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC. This was about 1937.
I was at CCC’s for six months, I came
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