Dear Friends of my era,
This was in
Sunday's (July 23) 5 Doves LDLs. Maybe you
have seen it already - if not you really
should. This is the kind of memorabilia that I
really enjoy.<< I was born 2 years after the
"crash">>.
With me, I
estimate that I could remember and/or identify with
over 95% of what Pastor Riley recounts here.
Barbara B., with what you shared with me previously,
your percentage may well be higher.
My dad was a
Denver City fireman so we always were fortunate to
have a house to live in and plenty of food on our
table. But we rarely had the money to go to Elitch
Gardens; Lakeside amusement park or the likes
of such.
And, Barbara, we
never seemed to have noticed any class
discrimination or snobbery at our High Schools
(Skinner and North) or did you? Not me.
So here goes -
enjoy the memories with great thanksgiving for how
the LORD brought us through!
In
closing: Good Preaching Pastor!
Loving Jesus More
Each Day,
BoB
F.M.
Riley (23
July 2017)
"The
Great Depression”
Posted in July
23, 2017, edition of Latter Day Letters
- edited & enhanced by BoB
Yes! I sure do remember
The
Great Depression..
By
Pastor F. M. Riley
July
16, 2017
"God that made
the world and all things therein.......hath
determined the times before appointed, and the
bounds of their [mankind's] habitation,"
Acts 17:24-26.
Introduction
I am 83 years of age.
I suppose it is because of my age, that I was
asked if I remember anything about the Great
Depression, which began in 1929 and extended through
the 1930's and 40's. Yes, I sure do
remember that period.
I was not yet born when the entire world
economy collapsed, beginning the Great Depression
in 1929. I was born nearly five years later
in 1934.
After the end of the
First World War, America as a nation and people,
expressed their gratitude to God for giving them
victory by turning away from the Lord, and
descending into wickedness and depravity.
The years following the First World War were the
years of "the flapper girls," prostitution,
national prohibition, bootlegging all across the
nation, organized crime, [the beginning of the
Mafia], gangster wars, political corruption,
and worse.
Now that I have had 83
years of life in which to observe the whole world
system, I have come to believe that the Great
Depression, was likely one of the first warning
"signs" given to mankind, of judgment to come, by
our long suffering and gracious God who created us
all.
Family
Background
After I was born and was
old enough to understand, I was told that my
Father was a prosperous farmer when the Great
Depression came upon the world. My Dad had
owned 160 acres of good farm land, which was a big
farm back in those days, due to the farm land
having to be plowed with horses or
mules. Tractors, as used in farming
today, were just being invented, and still being
perfected, back in the late 1920's and 30's.
My Dad told me that he
raised fine mules on his farm to sell to other
farmers. When the Great Depression
came, my Dad had 50 fine mules ready for sale,
which before the Depression were selling for $100
to $150 per mule. After the Depression
began, my Dad took those mules to the livestock
auction, where they brought only $5.00 each.
My Dad's farm was
mortgaged, and after the Depression began, he was
unable to make the mortgage payments and lost the
farm. He was forced to go into public work
in order to live and support the family.
From that time on our family was regarded as one
of the "poor" families in our community.
Jobs became extremely scarce after the beginning
of the Great Depression, due to many businesses
and factories failing and closing their
doors. My Dad worked at whatever he
could find to do. He had no "formal"
education, and so was forced to do hard manual
labor the rest of his life. But due to his
love for his family, and his desire to provide for
us, I cannot remember ever hearing him complain
about the hard manual labor he was doing.
My
Own Memories
I was born in 1934, the
year that historians now call the worst [hardest]
year of the Great Depression. At the time,
my parents and family were living in an old shack
in the country south of Higgins, a small community
in the Panhandle of Texas. We were living
there because, at the time, my parents didn't have
the money to afford anything better.
Not long after I was born, more work became
available for my Dad, then we moved into
town.
Food
But financially times
were very hard. Some of my earliest
memories as a baby were watching my Dad and my
older brother leave the house every morning before
daylight. They were going rabbit
hunting, in order for the family to have meat to
eat during the day. Yes, the grocery stores
sold meat at that time, but we didn't have the
money to buy it. So my Dad and older brother
took their "22" rifles and went rabbit hunting
every morning before my Dad left for work, in
order for our family to have meat for the
day.
Times
were
so hard financially, that the
government back then brought in
"commodities" for the poor each month. I
don't remember the day of the month the
"commodities" came, but I do remember that nearly
every family in our little community looked
forward to, and depended on, receiving those
commodities.
Among the "commodities"
was cheese, flour, sometimes bacon, applies in
season, canned goods, etc. Sometimes
loads of clothing, both new and used, was also
brought in on the "commodities" truck.
My mother was an
excellent seamstress, even on the old pedal sewing
machines. She looked forward to receiving
the flour, for she used the flour sacks to make
shirts and underwear for us children, and to make
curtains for our windows, and hand towels and
dusting cloths for the kitchen, and our
home. There were no paper towels back in
those days. They were invented many years
later.
Our
Home Life
What a wonderful loving
Daddy and Mother me and my older brother, and my
sisters were blessed with. My mother was a
devoted Christian, and as I was growing up, we had
Bible study and prayer in our home on a regular
basis. We didn't have many material
possessions in our home, but our home was always
filled with love.
My Mom and Dad truly loved each other,
loved us children, and we all loved one another.
Praise the Lord!
Our
Transportation
My family always
attended Sunday School and Church services. In
my early life we often went to church services in a
wagon harnessed to a mule, due to not being
financially able to own a car. I was
four years old before my Dad bought the first car I
could remember us owning. It was an old
beat up used car that wasn't all that dependable, a
"Chevie," the best I can recall. But my
Dad was good at keeping it running, until we were
able to afford something better.
Many people in the 1930's
did not own cars, while some who did own a car, had
put their cars up on blocks in their yards, because
they could not afford to buy the gas to
operate their car. I am talking about gas
costing ten cents a gallon back in those days. It
was this way for several years into the Great
Depression.
Clothing
and
Money
Most people today have been
born since the Great Depression, and have no idea of
how bad it really was. There simply were few
jobs and next to no money for people to live on
during the Great Depression. I am not
exaggerating the truth, when I tell our readers that
if one had the money they could buy a fine pair of
new shoes right out of a store for a one dollar
bill. Yes, I do mean just $1.00.
Yet thousands of Americans during those years were
cutting out cardboard inserts to put inside their
shoes to keep from walking on the ground, because
the soles of their shoes were worn out, and they
didn't even have the one dollar to buy more shoes.
In our family each child
had two pairs of shoes. One pair was special,
to be worn only when attending church on
Sunday. The other pair was to wear during the
week. The rule was strictly enforced. On
Sunday we put on our good shoes to attend church
services. When we got home from church
service, we immediately took our good shoes off and
put our old ones on. If we forgot, a paddle
across our bottom would remind us. There was
no money to buy new shoes, so we carefully preserved
what we had.
Yes, we children did wear
clothes with patches on them. I remember
watching my Mom sewing patches on our clothes many
times. A rag was never thrown away in our
home. Rather, it was washed and used for
patching our clothes. When I started to
school, I was sometimes snickered at and made fun
of by other children whose families had enough
money that they didn't have to wear patched clothes.
A
Home of our Own
I was six years old
[1940] when we were able to stop living
in rent houses all over our little community.
My Dad found an old abandoned wrecked house, that
was for sale. Literally wrecked!
The renters who had
previously lived in the house were very poor.
During the previous very cold winter, they could not
afford to buy coal or wood to heat the house, so
their whole family moved into the front part of the
house [two rooms], then took an axe and chopped the
floors out of the two bedrooms on the back part of
the house, and burned the chopped up flooring
boards for heat. They didn't bother to tell
the owner of the property what they had, but as soon
as warm weather arrived they moved. When the
owner of the property saw what had been done, he
just put the property up for sale "as is."
The old house was located
on a half block of city property, and the owner was
asking $100.00 for the whole thing. Of course
my Dad did no have a hundred dollars, however we did
have several milk cows. My Dad traded six milk
cows for the property. This will give our
readers some idea of what milk cows were worth at
that point in time.
Anyway, we finally had a home of our own
and didn't have to rent anymore. My Dad set to
work on the old house, and over the next six years,
he transformed that wreck of a house into a nice
home for our family to live in. But then
tragedy struck.......
The
Great Tornado
The date was Wednesday,
April 9, 1947, a warm Spring day. It had been
cloudy and humid most of the day. Then that
evening at 7:28 p.m. a terrible tornado came
roaring out of the southwestern sky, and made a
direct hit on our little community. It
only took about three to five minutes to pass
through the town. But it left 46 people
dead, nearly every home in town destroyed or badly
damaged, and our home completely gone.
Fortunately, my older
brother and sisters had already left home and gone
into public work. A few months
previously my brother had bought an old house in
Higgins, and my parents and I were able to move into
it temporarily. A few days after the tornado,
I found my Dad sitting on the porch crying like a
baby. All of the years of hard work he had
done in building us a home had vanished in the wind
in three minutes time. This was the only
time in my life that I can remember my Daddy crying,
and it like to have broke my heart.
But the good Lord has
promised to take care of those of His people who
have placed their faith in Him for salvation, and He
always keeps His Word. The American Red
Cross came into our community. Those home
owners in our little town, who had lost their homes,
and were financially unable to replace them, were
given grants from the Red Cross to build new
homes. After a few months we moved into a
brand new house, courtesty of the American Red
Cross. We praised the Lord Jesus who had moved
on our behalf, and to this day we support the
American Red Cross when we have money to donate.
Jobs
and
Wages
Oh yes, the wages being
paid to those who had jobs during those Depression
years? I can remember my Daddy, in the
dead of winter with snow on the ground, crawling
into the back of an open truck with other men, and
being driven fifty miles to work on the new highway
being built across the northern part of our county
by the WPA. He sometimes was worked twelve
hours a day in the cold of the winter, and arrived
back home after dark. His wages?
Fifty cents an hour! If I remember
correctly a couple of the men that rode in that open
truck with my Dad, came down with severe pnuemonia
and died. But the times were so hard, that
there were men waiting to fill any vacancies for the
jobs.
Yet people today gripe if
their working conditions are not just "so so,"
and they are not making at least guaranteed minimum
wage. Today, in most states, the minium wage
is now $7.50 an hour. Many worker's today are
making far more money than minimum wage for their
work.
But dear readers, it was
after the Second World War, in the late 1940's
before wages were finally raised to $1.00 per
hour. I know, for as a fourteen year old
boy, I was working on a hard manual labor job,
side by side with grown men, making just seventy
five cents an hour. When I went to work one
day, the foreman on the job announced to all of us
workers that our wages were being raised to $1.00
per hour. Our group of about fifty men working
on that job that day shouted and praised the
Lord. From that exact time, the economy in
America began to gradually improve. Factories
began opening to produce the new products, many of
which had been "discovered" or invented during the
war years, and retail stores began opening to sell
these products. I never had to work for less
than $1.00 an hour on any job again. The year
that wages gradually begin to improve was 1948**
A
Very Significant Year
1948 was the year that
Jewish leaders re-established the nation of
Israel. This occurred on May 14,
1948. What never seems to occur in the
minds of many of the American people, is that
the American President at that time, Harry Truman,
was the first President of any nation in the world
to extend congratulations and a welcome to the newly
established nation of Israel. Now let
our readers consider this Scriptural truth.......
In Genesis
12:3 the Lord God in speaking to
Abraham and his seed after him, explicitly stated,
"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse
him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all
families of the earth be blessed." Dear
readers, do you suppose that President Truman's
blessing upon the new nation of Israel, has had
anything to do with the prosperity of America and
it's people over these past nearly seventy
years?
Well...??
The other part of this
promise from God is that His "curse" will come upon
"him" who curses Israel. Let every
American give this some serious thought! What
is your attitude towards God's chosen people; the
nation and people of Israel? Be careful
how you answer, for the Lord God is listening, Matthew
12:36-37.
Conclusion
There is much more that I
could write about on this subject of the Great
Depression, for I certainly remember much
more, but this will do for now. Someone
once said, "Those who do not learn from the mistakes
of the past, are destined to repeat those mistakes
themselves."
Have the American people
learned anything from the Great Depression, and from
the departure of Israel in past centures from loving
and living for the Lord God of the
Bible? As I look at America today, with
all of the sin and wickedness being perpetrated in
our country on a daily basis, I am made to wonder?
If any reader has not been
genuinely saved from their sins by placing
their personal faith in Christ Jesus, or if
any reader lacks the assurance of salvation, please
read, believe, and act upon Luke
13:1-5, John 3:16, 3:18, 5:24, 14:6, Acts 4:12,
16:30-31, Romans 10:8-13, Ephesians 2:8-10, and
Hebrews 11:6.
<<<<<<<
O
>>>>>>>
A
final note: How many readers
remember that 72 years ago today, the first
Atomic Bomb was exploded in the desert just
north of Alamogordo, New Mexico?
"72" is the number in the Bible which signifies,
"a sign; a token; a warning."
Remember???
Permission is granted to any true
believer or Bible believing ministry to reproduce
this study to share with others, or to quote from
it in context as written.
Thank you dear brothers
and sisters in Christ for your kind expressions of
love for this old preacher. Please continue
to pray for me, and above all, meet me in glory.
Please address all comments, questions, and
correspondence to:
Pastor F. M. Riley, 14275 County Road 8120,
Rolla, Missouri 65401.