My grandparents, who were born in 1922 and 1930, adopted and raised me. They had some real stories about growing up in the Depression. Dad was raised in the mountains on his grandpa's farm in West Virginia until the family moved to Ohio when Dad was 13. Dad was the oldest of 6, and in turn, his mother was the oldest of 11, and everybody lived on grandpa's farm in WV. Mom grew up in Ohio and came from a farming family, but her father was injured in a machine accident when he was 18 or 19, and since it was his leg that was hurt, he was considered not able to work on the farm again- so he became a barber. Mom was a twin, and she and her brother were the youngest of 5. Mom remembered going to the soup kitchen with her older sister- Mom would carry the basket of bread and Aunt Kate would carry the bucket of soup, because their mother was afraid Mom would spill it.
Things were still tight when Mom and Dad married, moved to Texas, and had my mother, but as time went on, things got better. My mother and I grew up eating the same things, which was a mix of homegrown or depression cooking and modern convenience foods.
Mom had a vegetable garden that took up about a fourth of our backyard, which was large. She always grew tomatoes, green onions, green peppers, green beans, radishes, cucumbers, and asparagus fern. Other things she'd vary from year to year. She tried potatoes a few times, but they'd never get very big, so she gave up after a while. Pumpkins and watermelon would get eaten by the birds. The year after Jimmy Carter was elected President, she planted peanuts! Oh, and sunflowers... she put out sunflowers every other year. Mom canned batches of vegetables for winter months.
We had two pear trees, an orange tree, and two black walnut trees. The little orange tree didn't make it past the bad winter freeze we had when I was 12.
So, for food, about 3-4 times a week, we ate their standards- fried meat and potatoes with veggies from the garden. Dad didn't like any macaroni and cheese that wasn't mom's homemade baked stuff (with the cracker crumbs on top!), so when Dad was working late, Mom and I would treat ourselves to Kraft macaroni and cheese. Sometimes we had Kraft boxed spaghetti dinners (which mom bulked up with ground beef), and sometimes she'd make an authentic spaghetti gravy that a good friend, whose family emigrated to Galveston from Italy, taught her. Mom had a Fry-Baby that she'd fry shrimp or fish in, and every summer, when my uncle would come down from Ohio with my cousins, we had a crab boil almost every day. Mom would make stuffed/stewed green peppers, sausage and sauerkraut (yeeech), wilted greens salad with bacon, homemade chicken and noodles... all kinds of things. She would roll out the noodles on the table, which had been covered with wax paper, and cut the noodles with a butter knife. And when the weather was cool, I would walk home from school and enter the kitchen to find that same table covered with Mom's red-and-white-checked tea towels, which were in turn covered with her homemade oatmeal-raisin or coconut cookies.
Dad went hunting every winter during deer season. He always got at least two a year, plus sometimes he'd get a hog or a turkey. Whatever meat we wouldn't use, Dad would donate to a church food pantry or something so it wouldn't go to waste.
That was the big thing in our house- not letting things go to waste! Sound familiar to anyone else?
It's time for another smiley story contest!
