December 2010
Children of the Great Depression 1944
Winfield Sterling
(Including memories of Peggy, Fanny & John Sterling)
 |
| Charles, Esther, Bruce, Dorothy, Peggy, Fanny, Winfield, Scott, Ruth, John, and Peter
I don’t remember hearing loud complaints from our parents about life during the first years of their marriage and during the Great Depression (1929 - 1942). They were married in October 1928 and the Great Depression started on October 1929. According to my memory, the Sterling family survived the depression quite well because they had 10 acres of irrigated land on which to grow food. They grew hogs, had a citrus orchard and dairy cows for milk, cheese and beef. They also grew chickens for eggs and meat. I was just a kid during the depression so I remember very little about family tribulations. By the time I was old enough to understand how poor we actually were, our family had mostly put the event behind them and I never thought to ask Mom or Dad to explain the difficulties that they encountered. But my brother John once asked Mom about their life during these hard times. According to John, Mom was a little insulted by the question. “I’ll have you know that when we were married, we had a new house, a new car, a farm and everything was paid off.” The implication was that she and Dad were not poor. |
When chatting with Peggy, Fanny and John recently, I wondered aloud if Mom might have been a little embarrassed about their poverty. Fanny and Peggy assured me that embarrassment was not an issue. They claimed that Mom and Dad were so much in love that Mom hardly noticed the hardships. Well, OK, maybe Mom and my sisters are incurable romantics. She may not have been embarrassed, but her diaries certainly tell a story of hardship.
Bruce was born the year the depression started, so all 9 children were either born or lived under the influence of that difficult time. Bruce, Dorothy, Peggy, Fanny, Winfield, Scott, and Ruth were born between the years 1929 to 1942. Some ill effects of the depression were still being felt when John and Peter were born in 1943 and 1945. Consequently, I think it is reasonably fair to claim that the 9 children of Charles and Esther Sterling were “children of the depression.”
In her 1935 diary, Mom wrote: “milked 12 cows and 2 new heifers. Made a new loan for 6 months so we can get ahead. We must pay it off. My beautiful linoleum has been laid. I’m enjoying it so much.”
In her 1937 diary (in Fanny Ross’ possession) she stated that “Mother brot clothes out for the children. A pretty blue one for Peggy – suits for Dorothy and Winfield.” In 1940 she wrote: “Dad and mother are thinking of us as they always do. Brot out 5 prs of long cotton hose and 6 loaves of bread. Bruce has been angelic all day. As a result, our nerves are steady.” Wearing “hand-me-downs” was the order of the day. Peggy remembered that she was the beneficiary of Margie Bair’s clothes. If the clothes were not worn out when Peggy had them, then they were passed on to Fanny. In other words “use it up, wear it out, make do or do without” as the old saying goes.
According to Mom, Bruce was very inventive when avoiding work. When asked to perform some task, he replied: “No, we are rowing.” Mom said, “Row over this way.” Bruce replied, “No, we are out in the ocean. It will take days and days.” Another time Bruce committed some unpardonable infraction and Dad was chasing him so as to administer a little corporal punishment. Fanny, who was very sensitive to violence, ran along behind yelling loudly, “He won’t do it again, I promise.” Dad turned around and told Fanny, “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to do it to you.”
Grandpa Heacock owned a hardware store in Edinburg. Folks need hardware even in depression times, so maybe Grandpa’s Heacock Hardware business survived as well or better than many other businesses. I doubt that he prospered greatly during those hard times, but he was still able to buy a new car in ca. 1938. He complained bitterly about the unfair high taxes that were imposed on his business by the city and county – especially some imposed by A. Y. Baker that he considered arbitrary (according to Steven Heacock, personal communication).
Recently, while going through an old box of Mom's stuff, I ran across some chattel mortgages that shed a little light on some of the economic difficulties they encountered soon after she married Dad in 1928. From 1931 through 1940, our father borrowed money primarily from the State Bank of San Juan for some purpose -- likely to feed and clothe the kids or for seed and equipment to plant crops. As you can see from the summary table below, Granddad Winfield co-signed from years 1931 through 1935. Grandpa died in 1936, so he was no longer around to cosign future loans. He sold Dad 10 of his 20 acres in 1929 for $1.
Each year as Dad signed the loan papers, he quoted his collateral -- which varied little from year to year:
10 year old black mule
10 year old grey mule
9 year old bay mare
9 year old black mare
7 year old bay mare
16 Jersey cows
2 Holstein cows
2 Guernsey cows
11 Jersey heifers
1 Jersey bull
1 McCormack riding cultivator
1 Sanderson double-disk plow
1 Oliver cultivator
1 Iron-wheel farm wagon
----------------------------------------------------------
Dad’s Mules – Maud and Pet
Chattel Mortgages mainly to Security State Bank of San Juan
Year Amount in $ Length Info
1931 $575 5 months co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1932 $520 90 days co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1933 $500 120 days co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1934 $500 6 months co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1934 $500 6 months co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1935 $537 6 months co-signed by W. L. Sterling
1936 $250 6 months Value of collateral property about $1000
1936 $100 30 days
1938 $105 4 months
1938 $100 90 days
1938 $200 90 days
1939 $50 90 days
1939 $350 90 days
1939 $62.50 30 days
1939 $350 90 days
1940 $240 90 days
1940 $200 120 days
1940 $423 90 days
1940 $485 90 days
1940 $440 90 days
----------------------------------------------------
These bank loans brought me to the startling revelation that life for the Sterling family was probably not at all easy during the depression. My memory of such things was faulty. In 1940 (when there were 5 kids), Dad borrowed money from the bank 5 times. This must have been the equivalent of being maxed out on a credit card – with little income to pay it off – and paying interest. Mom and Dad must have sweated blood worrying about paying off these loans. If they failed to pay off the loans, they risked losing their collateral and possibly their land. In 1949 they borrowed a total of $1,797 which would be the equivalent purchasing power of over $26,000 today -- when inflation is taken into consideration. The national unemployment rate exceeded 20% during the mid-1930, so good jobs were hard to find. As I remember, Dad found work as a Deputy Sheriff guarding work gangs out of the county jail. Mr. Jack Younkin hired Dad to cultivate his corn. He also learned to shoot a bucket full of White-wing doves with a single 12-gauge shotgun shell if the doves lined up on the fence just right. He helped build Moore Air Base and worked some in the Heacock Hardware store for his father-in-law. But mostly, he farmed. In 1941 he made $73.16 from a bale of cotton (see attached receipt.) By then he was farming 50 acres, so he likely produced many such bales and our economic life began to improve. He complained that he was often not paid the true value of his produce by Valley produce buyers and that farming was just another form of gambling.
Mom’s adjustment to the life of a farmer’s wife might have been rather difficult. Before she was married, she was surrounded by art, music, and education. Her life in Edinburg as the relatively sheltered daughter of a reasonable wealthy businessman was far different than child bearing, rearing, house cleaning, cooking duties, etc. – all starting at the same time as the Great Depression. Of course, this is speculation, but I can’t imagine that her new married life was easy. My guess is that rearing 9 (often sick) children during the depression took a huge toll on Mom’s health – she was often not well during her married life. In her 1935 diary, she said, “I feel so weak and without vitality.” Then “I am so worn out.” She sometimes sent Bruce and Dorothy to her parents’ home for a couple of days.
Did Mom have chronic fatigue syndrome or something?
“Peggy Jo is a darling, but into everything. She and Bruce have run off to Grandma’s just now. Babies so cross tonight. Jack Younkin and Bayliss slow about paying. Borrowed more money today for feed etc. Awful day on my nerves. Tried to finish ironing in one day. Bruce is so hard to get along with. Peggy Jo needs constant attention. Baby (Fanny) is so good. Lost Mr. Lucas found by boy swimming in canal with weight on his neck. I’d gladly go without all if Charles would go to church with me Sun.”
Apparently, Mom sometimes got help. She mentioned that “Emilia washed.” Later she commented that “Emilia helped me clean house so she could have a few cannas. Had a “nice blowout” on the way home from church. “$7.50. How are we going to make ends meet?”
When Dad moved from Kansas to Edinburg with his parents, he was 20 years old and had not completed high school. One day the Edinburg High School coach showed up and convinced Dad that he should complete course-work requirements for graduation. Apparently, the real reason he wanted Dad to finish high school was that he was one of the tallest men in Edinburg at 6’2” and the coach needed a center for the basketball team. Their team made it all the way to State finals.
During the depression, we lived in a one-bedroom frame house. Where we all slept during the early depression years, I can’t remember. We had an iron wood stove in the living room to keep us warm in winter. It was taken down in the summer to provide more room. Mom wrote: “Norther and cold. House seems so small in winter. Cold brrrr! Peggy Jo cried so much. I couldn’t get the children warm for so long. Daddy finally got the stove up. And we didn’t mind the room it took up at all.” At some point in time, Peggy and Dorothy began sleeping on the porch at Aunt Augusta’s home and Fanny slept in a trundle bed under our parent’s bed. Later, maybe when Winfield was born, Fanny joined her sisters at Augusta’s.
An icebox was located in the kitchen where the block of ice -- delivered by the ice-man -- was placed. As the ice melted it dripped into a pan under the refrigerator. A large toad lived in this pan. Peggy remembers a spanking she got from her father when she talked back to Mom about dumping this pan of water. The toad sometimes stood by the back screen door to be let out.
That rear screen door closed automatically with a long spring. Often, when kids left the house through that door, it closed with a loud bang. The sound really got on Mom’s nerves, partly because she had had a row of pink goblets lined up on a high shelf. The banging door caused these goblets to vibrate on the shelf. Often one would fall and break. We were admonished to please close the door gently.
Mom invited her brother Richard and his wife Harriet out for Sunday dinner. According to Peggy, Mom apologized for frying the chicken in butter because she had no shortening. They drank out of pint canning jars because the pink goblets had not survived the banging door.
The bathroom was a crowded place, especially with 3 older sisters. But it had running water, a toilet and a sink. Baths were taken every Saturday in a washtub placed on the kitchen floor – whether baths were needed or not. Girls got to bathe first while the water was still clean. Men and boys were last.
For several years, Dad, Bruce, Winfield and maybe Scott slept in a little white bunk-house that Dad had found someplace and moved in beside our little home. It had no running water or toilet but, if memory serves correctly had a single electric light bulb. Peggy said that -- as one might expect from an all-male abode -- “it was never neat.”
The primary strategy for surviving the depression was to spend as little of our hard-earned money as possible. Here’s an example of Mom’s record of expenses for Sept. 2, 1939.
Note the $0.39 for maybe 1.5 gallons of gasoline and the weekly grocery bill for $6.65. There is no charge for kerosene, eggs, and butter from Augusta. My guess is that our family benefited substantially from living next door to Grandma and Augusta Sterling. Augusta had a large chicken pen that provided a supply of eggs and the ingredients for her wonderful fried chicken. Aunt Augusta was an expert at removing a chicken’s head by swinging it in a circle, then whipping off the head. With the head in her hand, the headless chicken was allowed to bleed in the grass. Mom used a different technique. She asked one of the kids to hold the chicken’s legs while she chopped off the head with an ax. Fanny was not allowed to watch such violence. She was not even allowed to be around Dad when he was driving the mules because she might hear some offensive language. Dad explained that mules really understood only that kind of strong language. And, “First you must get their attention by hitting them between the ears with a 2 X 4.” Personally, I doubt that he would hit one of his valuable mules with a 2 X 4 – but then he did have temper suitable to a redhead, so who knows?
In her own words from her 1935, 1936 and 1937 diaries, Mom bragged that her pullets produced 8 to 12 eggs per day. “I’m 34 – working hard to make ends meet. Twenty dollars allowance – many bills to pay. Washed and ironed. Chicks are doing fine since Winfield leaves them pretty much alone – 55 left.” (The story is that 1-year old Winfield liked to hug the cute little chicks. He hugged them so hard that he killed some of them.) “Charles doesn’t know what to do now. He rounded up his cows but no money – just enough to live on. Charles was sued by Wade Bliss for cotton rent money unpaid last year. No help now. Too tired to do anything but go to bed. Windmill will not pump me water to wash. Charles and I appeared before a gov. loan com. tonight. Our cows are fat but give so little milk. Cream check going down -- $7.19 last week. Am saving a five spot to pay our interest. We are broke flat. Note from Mr. Green at San Juan Bank demanding action regarding $500 note we owe him. Charles is so worried tonight. If he sells all the cows, how will we live? Where is our car license fee coming from? Have been feeling so badly with back ache, headache and sore spot on tummy. Sore throat too. I can’t collect myself these days. Dad Sterling has been ill. Fanny’s boils are awful – all on her head. They spread so rapidly and she’s cutting her first teeth. Made 12 glasses of jelly in spite of feeling badly. Charles said that he is glad he can’t see what the next 10 years will bring.”
Behind our one-car garage, somebody built a palm-thatched palapa that Mom called her “portico.” It was under this “portico” that Mom washed clothes. Her washing machine was bought on an installment plan for $5.97 per month. This “portico” was attached to the garage where Mom stored jars of “canned” food. Peggy remembers one batch of canned tomatoes went bad as evidenced by lids shooting into the air. Dad grew lots of tomatoes in those years so they were a logical fruit to can -- or throw at each other if Dad was not watching. She also reported canning beets and pickles.
Then this entry on October 12, 1937 after our dog Pat died: “Pat killed today. We felt like he was one of the family. Winfield (age one) went around all forenoon calling ‘Here Pat, here Pat.’ We buried him under the second grapefruit tree and put flowers and trinkets on his grave. Fanny’s (age 3 or 4) chant after Pat’s death: Run up and down, run up and down. Adhesive tape, adhesive tape. Get killed, get killed.”
Dorothy (about age 5) said, “I love everybody who is nice to me.”
In 1937, Dad and his partner Dick Sawyer picked “80 hampers of peas” at their La Grulla farm. But later Mom wrote: “Severe frost and cold. Gone are our black-eyed peas, corn, cane and English peas. We wonder what we will do now.” According to legend, Dick Sawyer was madly in love with someone named Bubs Montgomery, so he spent little time on the farm and much time with Bubs. Dad did most of the work. He lived for days on end in a little shed at La Grulla, where he listened to the sound of the water pump which provided water from the Rio Grande River to his crops. If the pump stopped, the silence woke him and he rushed out to determine the cause. He was away from his family in Edinburg for extended periods – a condition that was very unsatisfactory to everyone. After one final disastrous crop, they gave up on La Grulla and Dad moved back home.
Mom somehow found time to play the organ at the Methodist Church and to serve as homeroom mother for some of the older kids. When serving in that capacity, she would often take an orange as a present for each child in the class. She also sometimes provided food for needy neighbors. Fanny remembers being sent out to neighbors to check on them. Dad remained fairly positive most of the time. But at La Grulla, a local gangster approached him with his pistol drawn and aimed at Dad. Dad said, “You won’t shoot me.” Fortunately, the gangster agreed. Later, this gangster was caught by the law and put on a bus to take him to prison. Somebody attacked the bus and filled it, the gangster and other passengers with bullet holes.
Grandpa’s windmill pumped water out of his big cistern into an elevated water tank which provided running water to our house. The cistern was filled with muddy canal water when it was available. Mud settled out of the water onto the bottom of the cistern so that it was necessary to clean it out every once in a while. Somebody had to be lowered into the cistern maybe 12 feet deep, to shovel the mud into a bucket that was then pulled up on a rope to be dumped. As far as I know, our water was never treated with chlorine.
When the wind blew, that old windmill groaned as it pumped water. Grandma Alice claimed that she did not want water piped into the home where she and Aunt Augusta lived. “It would be a frivolity,” she claimed -- according to sister Peggy.
 |
| Mary Alice Sterling |
Trash was burned out behind the house near the citrus orchard and a ditch was dug for the tin cans. A wet burlap bag was recommended when the trash was burned to put out grass fires that might be started. One day Dad saw a plume of smoke rising from our property as he was driving home. Thinking it might be our home, he drove faster than Peggy ever remembered. Fortunately, the smoke was coming from grass burning in our orchard and not from the house.
The orchard had been planted to provide gift fruit. It contained tangerines, tangelos, grapefruit, valencias, mars, and navels. The tangerines were a favorite of the Sterling kids, so usually disappeared first. My favorite was the large navel oranges – good even when still fairly green. According to Peggy, the young trees were provided as a payment to our family for some contract that had gone bad.
When I think back on those times, I am amazed at how rapidly wealth was acquired after the depression. The ranch/farming partnership with Mr. Reising played a large role in our economic health. Brother John informed me that he never thought of our family as “poor.”
All nine of these children have lived reasonably comfortable adult lives – at least in comparison to life during the Great Depression. When I hear somebody claim that money is not important – I disagree. It is from this background of the Great Depression that maybe I appreciate the importance of living in a free and safe society where the opportunity to create wealth is possible for almost anyone.
As you can see from the faces in the above photos, we were not an unhappy bunch. Dad often sang or hummed while enjoying his work. “Come out and smell the earth,” he requested of somebody. One of his favorite sardonic expressions was: “Jump up and click your heels together, the worst is yet to come.” There was a great deal of laughter and fun in our family. Mom accompanying my talented singing sisters on the piano, produced delightful harmonies from our house. We generally ate well and out of 9 children, nobody died – a big change from previous generations. It was a good life! I overemphasized the negative in this story to explain the conflict between the Pollyannaish stories I was told of our family life during the depression as contrasted to the more negative story found in Mom’s diaries and other sources of information.
Addenda:
Notes on Family Health Problems
After reviewing this family history, I have come to think of our early family home as something like a Sterling Family hospital and Mom as the doctor. It seems like someone was frequently sick, broke a bone or was going to see the doctor. There was even a contest of sorts about who had the most broken bones. Anyway, I decided to start a list that we can add to in the future.
Dad – Got a very bad infection from a cactus thorn while burning cactus for the cows. Also had a tooth pulled that began to bleed badly after he got home. It bled all the way to Dr. Hamme’s office. He claimed that all Sterling men ultimately died of stomach problems.
Mom -- Suffered from periodic bouts of depression which she dealt with by over-eating. She died from intestinal cancer.
Dorothy – Her appendix ruptured as it was being removed. “. . . fell from our moving car today and it upset her badly tho no bones were broken.”
Peggy – Lots of sties and chicken pox. When she had chicken pox, Bruce pushed her face into stinging nettle. She thought she would die. Had preventative tonsil removal at the same time as Winfield. Doctor recommended eating jello before the operation, but none could be found in the Valley. Mr. Reising found some in San Antonio. Aunt Augusta made pajamas for Peggy and Winfield so they would be well-dressed in the hospital. In Mom’s 1935 diary, “Daddy said to Bruce – don’t hurt Peggy Jo.” Bruce replied, “Aw, you can’t hurt her – she’s tough.”
Fanny – Yellow fever and malaria. “Fanny is very sensitive. She cried today when her Daddy sat on the cot by her too suddenly.”
Winfield – Broke arm when thrown off a horse. Large infection under ear that may have caused some hearing loss. Impetigo on the neck.
Scott – Caught his arm in the wringer of the washing machine. Drank some kerosene used for lamps (before we got REA electricity) and became very sick.
Ruth – Cut off the tip of her thumb in push lawnmower. Mom tried to stick it back on but it did not take.
John – Equine encephalitis.
Peter – Fell off wood pile and broke 7 bones. Won contest for the most broken bones.
Probably everybody had colds and chicken pox. And, we all had a terminal case of freckles.
No comments:
Post a Comment