As my father grows older, memories of his childhood surface every now and then while we talk. Recently he told a story about when they lived just outside of Tulsa, OK near the railroad tracks in Jenks, OK. He didn’t re-visit the description of the house, but earlier stories described it vividly. It was a two room white board house where 5 children grew up and lived, my dad second youngest. He often told stories of the stove in the center of the kitchen area and how it provided heat for the entire house. And on cold mornings it was his chore to light the stove early each morning. Sometimes they would run down to the trains parked at the rail yard and use the excess grease from a train wheel to help the fire continue burning longer with wood through cold days.
The garage was out back which was converted to a shop where his Dad and his older brother worked on vehicles as mechanics. They took in many jobs other than mechanical work as well. I remember him telling me stories before about painting vehicles with paint brushes and replacing bumpers. Anything having to do with a vehicle they were able to repair in most instances. I view this garage out back of their house as the mechanic, body shop and towing company from the stories I heard throughout the years.
Dad was born in 1926 so these stories give us an idea of the depression era he so deeply remembers in the mid to late 30’s, though he was just a boy. Dad’s stories are not unbelievable nor are they long or detailed. But they do give you a glimpse of his character and background which was common to many people of his generation and his parents. His mother, my grandmother Lily, he said, had a small garden out back of the house between the garage shop area and the back of the house which faced the railroad tracks. And it was here where his story centered from his memory.
Even though this was a very short story told in a few short sentences, I realized it had greater importance than most people could realize. We had been talking about our present economy and Dad started talking about what it reminded him of the most, and that was the Great Depression. He spoke about the money his Dad and Mom had saved but he remembered them not understanding why simply their money wasn’t worth anything. He remembers his Dad asking a close friend who owned a small corner grocery what good were the dollars he had saved for so many years. Grandpa’s friend who was better educated than my Granddad simply replied “Ed, we’re broke, just simply busted and the money isn’t worth enough to buy what we need even to survive”. It’s a hard concept to understand when something that you traded with and which had supplied a living for so long especially during the affluent years of the 1920’s had become so obsolete.
But Grandpa and Grandma didn’t live an affluent life during the 20’s or anytime. They managed to save money when most people were spending even though it was only pennies at a time. Now all their efforts to save for a later day seemed to suddenly fail them. But what they didn’t realize were the friends and neighbors they had come to know and help during earlier years were going to be their means to live in this depression. It meant bartering with other families for items instead of purchasing them.
One family would slaughter a hog and trade some of the meat for milk or eggs or anything another family had which you needed. He didn’t add a complete recount of this part on this occasion but I had heard it a few times before, but he did mention it briefly so we all would know the friendship between neighbors. But this story involved a simple gesture of caring which is so rarely seen these days.
He quoted, “I remember an afternoon when the train stopped out back of our house. Hobos, men and families from every train car emptied out of the stopped train and began walking to our house and small garden which Mom had so neatly weeded and aligned. There were rows of vegetables and two rows of grapes which my mother so eagerly worked for to ensure that us boys would have fresh fruit to eat.”
“Then when I was looking at those people so needy, as many as 50 to 60, I heard my dad yell out from the garage, Feed them as long as you can Lily, just feed them.” A tear nearly came to my Dad’s eye when he finished and I’ll never know exactly how he felt or how vivid the memories of his Dad or Mother were, but I do get a glimpse of his desires. Maybe it’s a desire to see and embrace his parents one more time and maybe it’s a clue of how we can endure if a similar time should happen again. Perhaps he was telling our generation and me, people survived in a previous era by a willingness to help others. And even though you don’t know them, or it’s in a moment when your next meal is as scarce to you as it is to anyone, just give as the Lord has provided for you.
Tim Fisher
Northgate Pentecostals
