Depression-era food...

[Old Arkansawyer]

My parents married in late 1930 and my siblings were all born before
1940. As they lived on a farm food was not in short supply, just cash
money. My dad and uncle cut firewood with axe and crosscut saw an
hauled it to town with a team and wagon for 50 cents/rick, 75 cents/
rick for cook wood. They both ran trap lines in the winter and my
dad trapped a mink just before Christmas, sold the fur for $18.00
and thought he was rich.
Myself, a late comer to the family but we still lived like they had
become accustomed to in the depression. Grew most of our food,
had a dairy, beef cows, hogs, chickens and ducks/geese and some-
times goats. Had an acre garden with about 1/2 in strawberries.
My mom sold black walnut meats by the quart that she had picked
out of the shells for what she termed her spending money.
I have some of these traits as I grow vegetables and gather wild foods
and if I hunt or fish I eat what I kill. Also have been accused of being
a hoarder as I keep lots of stuff for which I have no immediate or
foreseeable use.
As per the food list, I have eaten and continue to eat a goodly number
of these items. Including chicken feet in an Asian café.

Now the question. What would the younger generation do if those
times return?

 

[Sistema1927]

My wife's father and grandfather came up with a way to feed the family during the depression. They were both carpenters, and went door to door offering to build and hang a screen door for $1. The dollar barely covered the cost of their materials, but here is the beauty of their scheme. Invariably, the homeowner, impressed by their hard work and craftsmanship, would have some other repairs that needed doing. Not only that, but neighbors would be lining up to get their $1 screen door, as well as other needed repairs.

The family was fed, they had work, and the folks they worked for received good value for their money. A win-win all the way around.

 

[tops]

Starve! Larry

 

[DWalt]

I don't believe that actual starvation was common in the USA during the Great Depression. But malnourishment, certainly. Somehow, but I don't know how, it seems that most Americans managed to find enough food to stay alive. Not like in Russia, where millions died from starvation during the Stalinist period.

An example - Before I was born, my father's mother and one of his sisters and her husband moved into my parents' house and lived there several years during the mid 1930s. All of them were unemployed and had no other means of support and nowhere else to live. As my father had a job with some income, combined with the vegetable garden and the chicken coop and the fruit trees I mentioned earlier, no one starved. I suspect similar arrangements were repeated in many families.

 

[crazyphil]

I was born in 1935 so my early days were the tail end of the great
depression. My Dad was a section hand on the railroad & we lived
in half of a little section house. He used to take his .22 and walk up
the tracks in the evening, then come back with some cottontail rabbits
he had shot. We ate a lot of rabbit.
I also remember when my Dad and Mom would leave me at Grandmother's
house for the day, Granny would always have home baked bread. She
would smear bacon grease on it. Better than it sounds.

 

[Kurusu]

From what I understand talking with my depression era parents (now deceased), a "wet nurse" was a pretty common thing in the 30's and 40's.

I think if you told today's millennial that someone else was going to nurse their baby, they might have a stroke.

Wet nurses are as old as mankind. It's use only started to decrease after "formula milk" was invented in the mid XIXth Century.

It probably had a "comeback" during the "depression years" for economic reasons.

 

[jdlii]

And they are dead! Died from heart disease caused from eating to much lard.

 

[jdlii]

I never saw my Dad eat chicken, during my life, no matter how it was prepared. His stories of growing up during the depression provided the explanation.

The meat wagon/salesman would come around once a week. His mother, depending on the financial situation, would give either $.05 or $.04 to buy either a chicken or a rabbit. Chickens were more expensive but, preferred by his mother.

He told me that he ate so much chicken during that time period that he swore to himself that if, as an adult, he could afford not to eat chicken again he never would. He kept his promise. Come to think of it, I didn't see he eat any of the rabbits that I brought home after a hunt either.

The other story had to do with a bounty paid on woodpeckers by the local power company. Depending on the size, they would pay $.02 to $.05 for each deceased woodpecker delivered to the power company.
My Dad said that the bounty presented a problem because you had to be able to afford BB's before you could hunt woodpeckers. He also stated that it didn't take long for woodpeckers to become scarce because every kid with a BB gun was shooting woodpeckers.

His feelings toward spam, experienced during WWII, cannot be retold here because I would be banded from the forum.

 

[DWalt]

The other story had to do with a bounty paid on woodpeckers by the local power company. Depending on the size, they would pay $.02 to $.05 for each deceased woodpecker delivered to the power company.

That is something I have never heard about before. Were woodpeckers doing that much damage to power poles? Why would woodpeckers be interested in pecking power poles?

 

[PALADIN85020]

My Grandpa spread duckfat on his bread or rolls.

My father did the same with bone marrow. Tried it myself, and it wasn't half bad!

John

 

[bill2000]

My Mom told me she took lettuce and sugar sandwiches and baked bean sandwiches to school for lunch. Baked bean sounds OK but I'll pass on the lettuce.

 

[BearBio]

My paternal grandmother, as late as the 1980's, washed plastic bags and dried them on the line. Tables made out of plywood and salvaged pipe for family get-togethers.

Grew up eating cornmeal mush (fried and with milk & sugar), fried "boloney", SPAM, canned tuna (My mom would not eat canned salmon because they bought it in quantity), boiled rice with milk & sugar, lots of burger meat.

 

[pawngal]

My Mom told me she took lettuce and sugar sandwiches and baked bean sandwiches to school for lunch. Baked bean sounds OK but I'll pass on the lettuce.

I have eaten both and quite like them. My much older sisters took baked bean sandwiches to school.
The lettuce would be leaf lettuce grown in the garden, rinsed with vinegar then sugared.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Very interesting. Many of those things sound very Southern or Western. I recall Skeeter Skelton writing about off season hunting-without a license-"but let me tell you that store bought meat was a seldom thing during the Depression."

 

[tops]

I don't know why but in 35 yrs. as a utility lineman I have saw a bunch of woodpecker holes. Larry

 

[jdlii]

That is because the wooden power poles were later coated with creosote and woodpeckers didn't "cotton" to that taste. When the poles "cured" over time and with natures help, they became tasteful again!

 

[armadillo]

Both my parents were "Dust Bowl Okies" who moved to south Texas in the early 30's to survive. They ate worse sometimes.

One of my aunts told us that they had "rabbit round-ups" - it was like some-one put poop in the punch bowl - the adults were silent and I never heard it mentioned again.

Years later as an adult I saw a short movie clip of an Oklahoma rabbit round-up and I see why - it was so depressing to see those desperate people clubbing a bunch of jack rabbits trapped against a fence. I know they had to because jack rabbits thrive on the dry crops and the people needed to eat but it put new meaning into "depression."

 

[oink]

I'm the child of depression era parents and heard their stories. I grew up eating many of the items on that list and thought it was just normal food. Heck, it is just normal food. I still eat many of the items. Why wouldn't I eat boiled cabbage, tomato sandwiches (really the bomb with that new Chipotle ranch dressing), tomato gravy, bean soup, etc., etc. Those are good eats.

 

[bushmaster1313]

From what I understand talking with my depression era parents (now deceased), a "wet nurse" was a pretty common thing in the 30's and 40's.

I think if you told today's millennial that someone else was going to nurse their baby, they might have a stroke.

I confirmed with my wife that her grandmother (who lived till my wife was pregnant with our second child) nursed babies of dry mothers during the depression out of the goodness of her heart and not for money.

 

[jtcarm]

My late parents were both depression-reared in Texas. Dad on a panhandle farm, mom in a tiny Trans-Pecos town.

Both consumed mass-quantities of pinto beans & cornbread.

My maternal grandfather was an outdoorsman from Louisiana and brought home lots of fish and some small game, the latter bagged with his first-issue Colt Woodsman or Remington Model 11.

There was precious little game or fish in the panhandle back then, so my dads family subsisted mostly on home-raised produce and livestock.

A kind of funny side-note regarding foods of the era:
As a teen, my great uncle on my fathers side had a penchant for running away from home. After one of his failed escape attempts, the family was sitting down for dinner one night, when uncle told his grandfather “Grandpa, there’s why I run away, all we ever eat around here is beans!”
Grandpa shot back “Boy, someday you’ll wish you had a pot of beans on the table!”

Soon after, Uncle Tom (yes, that was his name) was conscripted into the AEF and shipped off to France, where he and a few other men in his unit got cutoff and lost for several days in the Argonne Forrest.

On returning home, he admitted to his grandpa that he’d remembered what he’d told him while wandering that forrest, and said he’d have given anything for a pot of pinto beans.