Mama's Story of Survival

Every day as I listen to the news media and hear the politicians talk, I am convinced more and more that we are on the verge of another depression. While some of our so-called leaders are telling us not to worry the economy is looking up, there are others painting a grim picture, indeed!  

 Most of us are not dense…We can see the factories closing down.  We see all the going out of business signs posted on windowpanes, and we see the rising cost of living every time we go to the supermarket. I have reason to believe I am looking into the faces of a spiritual hungry nation. There are those praying for some relief… Maybe for the first time in their lives they are concerned about where their next meal is coming from  and where will they get the money to pay their next house payment…It has become a terrifying situation. Many have lost their health insurance adding another burden for fear they might have a major medical problem.

 I sat down with my eighty-eight year old mother one day and I ask her what it was like growing up during the depression years of the 1930s…The story is not pretty. There were times before we got through her story my heart was filled with sadness. It was not as we see on television of the Walton Family. In her own words here is her story....

 “Well, honey, we had it rough. You see, nobody had anything. I can remember my daddy working at anything he could get to do to be able to feed my three sisters, my baby brother, mom, himself, and me. We learned “mighty fast” to make do with what we had, and if we didn’t have it, we did without. There were times we went to bed without anything at all to eat. I could hear my little sister crying because she was hungry. I always cried with her, not because I was hungry, rather because she was hungry. The next morning my daddy would leave the house and be gone all day and into the better part of the night. When he came home, he may have a sack of meal, a little lard, and maybe a gallon of milk. He had worked for someone all those hours and his only pay was that meager supply of food. However, we were happy to have it. Mama would make a pan of cornbread and a skillet of gravy and we ate maybe for the first time in two or three days. I have helped my daddy cut wagonloads of wood with an old crosscut saw to take into town to trade for a twenty-five pound sack of flour, a slab of meat, and a bag of pinto beans. That would feed us for several days.

     Then my daddy died in the year of 1934. I did not think things could get any worse, but they did. Suddenly, we were homeless… nowhere to go and no money. We went from one family member to another until each one told us they could not keep us any longer. So we would leave that home and go to another one, ‘just for a visit’ mama would always say. “One of the most embarrassing things in your life is to be homeless,” my mother told me. We lived a cold, lonely life. We never had enough food because we felt bad to be eating other people’s food and not have any money to help buy groceries, so we ate very little. I always felt as if I was taking food off someone else’s plate. We knew we were not welcome to be there so that made it even worse.

Mama’s prayers were answered when a distant cousin come looking for us to tell my mother he knew a tobacco farmer who had a house we could live in. We could pay rent by working on his farm. He was in need of help and had no money to hire anyone to help him plant his crops. We were all so excited it was hard for us to sleep that night. At daybreak, we started walking a twenty-five mile trip to what we hoped was our home… It was a hard trip for us with no shoes on our feet and carrying everything we owned in this world. Cousin Billy knowed (knew) a  shortcut through the hills plus we got a ride for some of the way and just after dark that night with wounded feet, hungry, and cold, we arrived.

We moved into that little house with some of the roof gone, floorboards were rotting and threatened to break through when we walked on them, and some of the windowpanes were broken out. Nevertheless, we didn’t care for we had a home again for the first time since our daddy died and we were thankful to Mr. Clark for letting us move on his farm. That first night we arrived we slept in the barn on some hay because we could not get in the house until we moved some trees and tall weeds from the door. We would clear them in the morning when we could see what we were doing. However, for that night even though we were hungry we rested a peaceful sleep. God had provided us a home.

That first winter, my little sister came close to dying with pneumonia. Until we got the roof fixed, my mother hung a heavy quilt over the ceiling trying to keep cold air out.  One night, sleet and freezing rain blew in on my sister. She became so sick we didn’t think she would live but through God’s wonderful mercy she survived. After that, Mr. Clark fixed the roof. 

We worked long and painful hours for the ten dollars a month rent we paid. My mother and two older sisters worked in the tobacco fields six days a week until all the tobacco was planted. After that, it was a constant struggle to keep the weeds out of the fields…Then came the cutting, the housing, and finally stripping of the leaves, getting it ready for market. I took care of the children and did all the cooking...

Still we did not get any money for anything we did other than rent and food. Mr. Jack would give us clabbered milk to churn and we would make our supper out of buttermilk and cornbread many nights... If he had more eggs than his family could use he always gave some to us, but that was not very often.  We helped him butcher his hogs and he gave us some meat and  meat skins from the hogs. Sometimes we would carry them home in a washtub. Mama could use them skins in many ways to help feed us. She would wash them and scrape them to make lard from the fat…It was a real treat for us to eat those baked meat skins. She would cook them in the oven until they were crisp and golden brown and let me tell you - they were good! We seldom had milk for gravy but mama could make some good biscuits and gravy with just water, flour and that meat grease. It filled us well enough. She  always put a meat skin in the pinto beans or vegetable soup she cooked and it was very tasty with a piece of cornbread. Our food was much better in the summer when we could eat from the garden. And during the second winter we ate the food we canned through the summer and we had better meals. 

We were proud of everything Mr. Clark and his wife did for us. Mrs. Clark gave us clothes that her daughters no longer wore. Most of them were quite tattered, but Mama reworked them. Often she would take two dresses and make one out of them. We never had boots in the winter so we would take burlap sacks and wrap our feet and tie strings around them to keep our feet warm.

We stayed there for three years and then we were able to move. The country was slowly coming out of the depression and my older sisters and I found jobs that paid us money. It was a good feeling to have money for the first time in my fifteen years of life. I worked for an elderly woman cleaning her house and got three dollars a week for six days of work. Finally, we had some good meals and clothes to wear. We were always grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Clark for what they did for us…We had all survived the Great Depression together!!!"

 I ask you, could we survive that kind of life? Could we make it through just one winter? Some say it would never get that bad again because of all our aid programs - but what if the money was just not there anymore. Could we survive on clabbered milk and a pone of cornbread? Could we work long hours six days a week to pay a ten dollar a month house rent, receive a bag of ground cornmeal, a sack of flour, and a wash tub full of meat skins? Can this happen to us… You bet it can! Will it happen? I cannot answer that question…However, I’ll tell you what  I am  gonna do ---I'm gonna' hold on that much tighter to Jesus…The way I see it, He is my hope now, in the future, and forever!-)."

Have a great day in the Lord,
Mary Frances King

He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for the giveth of his bread to the poor...Proverbs 22:9