My 82 year old mother's letter to my daughter

My daughter is a history buff, and she asked my then 82 year old mother what it was like growing up during the Depression years. My mom worked on this letter bit by bit for quite a long time, and pieced it all together. She grew up in Wisconsin with her five sisters and she is one of two remaining.
I hope you enjoy reading this and learning a bit more about what life was like back then.
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Dear Hali,
I remember I was 4 years to 10 years old during the depression.

There was no work. People were on welfare like my Uncle Stanley and Aunt Rosie (my mother’s sister). The welfare worker would check on them. Once she took the cover off the pot of soup and said, “Oh, you have meat! Maybe you don’t need so much help!”

They had seven children, one very sick and died. That was a sorrowful time for everyone.

Uncle Stanley worked for the Lullabye Furniture Company and they were all laid off. They made rocking cradles, and no one had money to buy them.

Yes, there were a lot of poor people. Then a good thing happened. President Roosevelt started the WPA (Work Progress Administration). It gave jobs to many jobless. They received a little pay. Their job was to build public buildings. They built the beautiful P.J. Jacobs High school and Goerke Park Stadium. A jeweler donated some land to Stevens Point and they built Iverson Park, the swimming pool, bathhouse and lodge. In Bukolt Park they built a bathhouse and lodge.

President Roosevelt also started the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp. The purpose was for 16 to 17 year old boys to earn money that was sent home to support their parents and family. They cleared land and built bridges. Aunt Rosie’s son, Andy, went. They had him cook. When the depression was over, he cooked in hotels in Milwaukee then started his own restaurant, which was very successful.

Many women like my Aunt Mary (Pa’s sister) took in laundry from the rich people to help support them. Once when I was there, she showed us a white men’s shirt she washed, starched, and ironed.

Pa had a brother, John, who was an electrician in Milwaukee. What excitement it was to see him! He came in a car! He would bring my mother bolts of material for her to sew dresses for us six girls. Working for the Electric Company in Milwaukee, he got Pa in the Gas Company in Stevens Point. He worked there many years until arthritis got him. He shoveled coal all day into hot burning furnaces. After working in the hot furnace rooms, he’d have to go out in the cold winter to read meters. That’s what got him. Incidentally, that’s how they made gas that got into our cooking stoves. He said Thanksgiving Day was the hardest day because everyone was using their ovens.

So now for the first time in his life he was unemployed.

The war in Europe was getting worse. Hitler conquered many countries, including Poland. We didn’t have a big army to help, so President Roosevelt started the draft. Every boy age 18-35 was drafted in the army, unless they volunteered for the Navy, Air Force, or Marines. If we were six boys and not girls, every one of us would have been drafted.

President Roosevelt then started many defense factories, building planes, boats, fighting equipment. With the labor force in the army, places like Lullabye hired women and older men like my father. He was so happy there. He was now working with a bunch of men and women—not just one man in the Gas Company. He enjoyed their company.

The war ended in the early 1940’s. The depression ended. The boys came home, were given their jobs back, but a great number went to college because the government paid for it because they were in service.

Everyone was working. We now lead a normal life. Pa took part time jobs helping potato farmers. Terry went to Milwaukee, working in an insurance agency. Verona and Grace moved to Milwaukee, at first had house work jobs, then Verona worked for an envelope company. Grace in an office at County Hospital. Mary worked for Hardware Mutual (now Sentry) and after graduation they transferred her to Detroit.

I worked in an insurance agency for six years after graduation and lived at home. Irene lived at home too, working at Hardware Mutual, while Mary and I were still in high school. Irene paid room and board. Ma told me that if Irene hadn’t stayed home and paid room and board they could have never remodeled their house.
The house was raised, a full basement and furnace put in, a hot water tank, a bathtub. Pa bought a refrigerator. We had an ice box all those years. Ice was cut from the Wisconsin River, stored in saw dust. In the summer blocks were delivered to our homes— we put a card in the window saying if we wanted 25 lbs or 50 lbs. A pan under the ice box collected the melted ice.

Before the house was remodeled there was a cellar with a sand floor and hand pump. The hand pump was never used. There was a faucet in the kitchen where we got all our water. There was a big wood stove in the kitchen and belly stove in the living room. Ma would wash clothes in the kitchen with a wringer type washing machine. Pa would heat the water on the wood stove, then fill the laundry tub for rinsing. This same laundry tub is what we took our bath in on Saturday night. The oldest went first, and since I was the youngest, I was last. The same water was used to bathe all of us.

There was a little room with just a toilet in it.

No dryer. In the winter Ma would hang up clothes in one of the upstairs bedrooms. No mixmaster. No telephone and radio until Irene worked and bought them. We did have a wind up Victrola with a few records. And Pa’s father’s old pump organ which none of us learned to play, but we had fun pumping and playing the keys. His father played the organ in church (Town of Hall) and composed church music.

No car. When Theresa was a baby and had an ear infection, Ma would bundle her up and Pa would put her on a sled and pull her to the doctor’s in the cold winter. That had to be when her hard of hearing started. No antibiotics. When we were sick we had to stay in bed till we got well and Mama would bring us a meal to our bed. Our doctor made home calls.

No books other than a few our neighbor gave us with her bookcase. Mary would go to the library and bring home books and read them to me. How I liked those nursery rhymes and pictures!

A salesman sold Pa a Volume Library, which was a big thick reference book which helped all of us with our homework. It covered every subject.

No super markets. There were a lot of little neighborhood grocery stores. Ma bought most of our groceries from a store that was in our block. She’d send us to the store for something, and we’d say, “Charge it”. On payday Pa paid the bill and the grocer would give him a small bag of candy for the kids at home. That’s all the candy we’d get except at Christmas—a bag from Santa by the big Christmas tree on the square and from Santa at school, and jelly beans in our Easter basket. Also, I’d get a penny on pay day and I would spend that for a penny’s worth of candy. The store had bulk candy.

When there was a childhood disease like mumps or scarlet fever, the Health Department posted a sign on your house saying, ‘Mumps” which meant no one could enter. When scarlet fever made the round in our family, Pa’s coworker told him not to come to work because he would bring the disease to work and then take it home to his kids. So Pa didn’t come in our house. He slept in the wood shed that was attached o our house an Ma took food to him.

Ma sewed all our dresses, petticoats, bloomers, night gown, knitted all our mittens.

No electric iron. We got a non-electric iron hot on the wood stove. No mix master. Mama made cake for Sunday supper dessert. Always baked homemade bread.
My father never owned or drove a car. Once a year he would pay my mother’s aunt, Aunt Annie, to see Grandpa and Uncle Phillip on the farm. After visiting them, we’d go to Uncle Joe’s on his farm. The farms didn’t have electricity. Then President Roosevelt ordered the utility companies to install electricity to all farms.

I liked our house. We had a back porch with a swing and a front porch. Sunday being a holy day, we stayed dressed in our good Sunday clothes all day. My dad too, in his good suit, white shirt and tie. In the afternoon, we again went to afternoon devotions in church. Then we sat on the front porch and watched the people go by for their Sunday walk.

In May and October, the months of Mary, after supper, we all knelt and prayed the rosary in Polish which my father led. My mother taught me my prayers in Polish because she couldn’t speak English when I was little.

We were all together on Christmas Eve. We each got on present. To get a present was a big thing. It was so pretty wrapped in white tissue paper and red string. We all got the same thing: A pair of long brown cotton stockings. Then we had a bottle of soda. (Every Christmas our neighbor gave s a case of soda. He managed the Point Brewery which made soda.)

Under the Christmas tree was a cookie Mama baked with a Santa Claus seal on it.
A few days before Christmas all the kids would go to the huge Christmas tree on the Public Square and get a bag of candy and peanuts from Santa.

We had a father who worked so hard to give us the best life he could. He would take extra jobs like cutting the mayor’s lawn. No roto-tiller. He spade the big garden with a hand shovel, then seeded it, weeded it, and watered it. He’s walk to the Wisconsin River to fish for bullheads. Sometimes they were still alive and would bite Ma. He cut down trees and had a horse and sleigh haul them to our back yard where he’d cut it up in small pieces for our two wood stoves.

When married, he rode a bike to the paper mill. Then for many years walked to the Gas Company taking a stick to chase off the dogs that were running loose. He developed arthritis and had to quit shoveling coal for the Gas Company. He got a job at Lullabye making radio cabinets. That ended when the war ended and the boys came home and got their jobs back.

Used to working, he’d go pick beans and worked with potatoes. He said it was hard work lifting those bags of potatoes. But my goodness, he wasn’t young any more! That’s when he started to walk to daily mass which he cherished.

Whenever we left for school or work, in Polish we’d say, “Stay with God.” and my parents answered, “Go with God.” When we came home, we greeted, “Praise be to Jesus Christ.” They answered, “Now and forever, amen.” We’d do the same visiting Polish relatives. It’s sad that my generation doesn’t greet this way any more.

This is how I remember the Great Depression and what life was like then.

”Go with God, Hali” (and I’ll “stay with God”)

Love, Grandma (Busia)