Reading about people who lived during the Great Depression has always piqued my interest, but never moreso than when those people were my own relatives. My dad was born in 1934, so he was just a little squirt when the stock market crashed in 1939. He remembers the poverty, however, and some of the ways my grandparents made ends meet throughout most of his youth.
For the letter I, topically speaking for the A to Z Challenge, this next question is one that my dad answered about his dad.
Where did your father go to work every day and what did he do? Did his work interest you?
Daddy was a preacher, and except for a few years during the 1950s was bivocational. He did a variety of things--farmed, sold real estate and insurance, sold furniture, worked at an ammunition plant during World War II, hauled ice. Generally preaching brought in very little income.
Sometimes during the Depression, he would return from a rural church with 50 cents, $1, or $2. Often he would be given farm produce, chickens, a ham, or ground beef. His sideline work brought in most of the family's meager income. I remember an occasion in about 1940: a farmer stopped by and offered Dad a job shucking corn for $2 a day. Dad jumped at the offer,.
For whatever reason, Dad always considered preaching his profession.
Yes, I was interested in all that he did.
2 comments:
Nice to meet you, Zoanna. I loved listening to tales of my grandparents and how they grew up. They're all gone now, so I try to pump my parents for info so it's not lost.
In our small rural community, church pastors had second jobs, usually driving a school bus, helping pour concrete, etc. And the wives also worked in some sort of part time job. The pay was minuscule.
thanks for the reminder of those times.
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