MC folks recall tough times

‘Tremendous Fall in Prices of Stocks Checked by Buying by Bankers,” read a headline in The Eagle’s Nov. 8, 1929 issue.

The news of the Wall Street stock market crash had slowly trickled down the East Coast and made its way to Madison County readers.

“Utter collapse of prices regardless of intrinsic values made the first three days of the week the wildest the stock exchanges of the country ever had experienced,” the story states.

Almost 80 years later, as the country heads back into what many say is another economic depression, some Madison County residents are reminded of the “hard times” they experienced in their early years.

Although the November 1929 news of what would eventually lead the nation into the Great Depression was well-known by area residents, it’s not clear locals were intensely affected by the 1929 event’s consequences.

Even The Eagle’s editor at the time was seemingly unsure of the event’s local importance. The news wasn’t displayed across the front page, instead it was placed inside, which was a typical spot for most of the paper’s national news items at the time.

“I could understand that they lost of a lot of money but that’s about it,” Ninety-seven-year-old Madison resident Culton Goodall recalls of the stock market crash, which he read about in the newspapers and heard about on the radio. “I didn’t know anything about the stock market. I’m afraid I still don’t know much,” he said laughing as he rocked himself in an easy chair in his Church Street home.

Hard times

At the onslaught of the Great Depression, many local residents were already struggling by today’s standards. Most relied solely on their gardens and farms to produce the food they needed to survive. Extra spending money was almost unheard of.

Upon graduation from Madison High School in 1929, Goodall’s parents gave him a hen house, about 20 chickens and some feed.
“That was my spending,” he said.

It wasn’t unusual for residents to outfit their homes and wardrobes using leftover feed and flour bags, which were often used to make sheets, pillow cases, underwear and dresses, according to local residents.

Elizabeth Turner, 88, who grew up in Achsah, recalls a different view of Depression-era living than those who grew up in more urban areas. Turner said she spoke with a city friend recently who recalled visiting soup kitchens during the Depression.

“We didn’t know anything about no soup kitchens in the county. We had our own gardens, our own chickens,” she said.

“We didn’t know nothing about the Depression. I know we went through it…I heard a lot of people talking about it, but it wasn’t any different.”
Turner’s Christmas celebrations as a child were much simpler than what many children expect today.

“I remember coming downstairs and looking for Santa Claus and we’d find an orange. Just an orange, but we would be just happy with that,” she said.
Dorothy Weaver, 88, was raised by well-known local furniture maker E.A. Clore and his wife Alma Crigler Clore, on the family’s property north of downtown Madison. Although Weaver recalls always having “a full table of food,” times were tough.

Even though four of her brothers – who eventually took over her father’s furniture shop – were employed and making a decent wage (a dollar and a half a day), they still needed other means to survive.

“They would walk down by White Oak Run and trap muskrats and go hunting for rabbits, then sell the hides to make a living. Anything to make some extra money,” she remembers.

Being creative with what you had was essential. Weaver remembers using leftover food to help make herself look presentable for church.
“You took a biscuit to church and you’d shine your black patent leather shoes,” Weaver said. “The lard made them shiny.”

Local disasters

Athough the Depression presented widespread challenges throughout the 1930s, it seems many residents were more focused on more close-to-home hardships at the time.

Madison County farmers lost close to $1 million in crops in 1930, according to an Eagle story from the time.

Culton Goodall remembers the year clearly. When Goodall was a teenager, he lived at his grandmother’s farm near Old Pratts, since it was closer to Madison High School than his parents’ Oak Park property.

After graduating, he was set to move back home when his uncle broke his leg. Instead of moving, Goodall stayed at the Old Pratts farm to help out and fill his uncle’s place.

“It was an extremely dry year,” Goodall recalls. “We didn’t have rain until the first of April. And then we had one rain in the summer in July, until the fall,” he said.

In those days, many local farmers used horse-drawn farm equipment, according to Goodall. But the drought left him without enough hay to feed his team of three horses that he used to plow 60 acres. All that was available for the horses was straw and shredded corn stalks, he said.

“With what we were feeding them I would think they’d be skin and bones,” he said. “What interested me was that, when I went to put them away, they’d take off toward the pond. That showed me they were healthy. They had some life about them.”

Dorothy Weaver also recalls the 1930 drought, the mountain fires that followed, and the Hebron Valley floods that came after that. Also around that time, the Clore furniture shop burnt down two separate times.

“It was just one thing after another,” Weaver said.

Thrifty habits continue

Despite being forced to wear pumpkin-colored, boys-style shoes when she was a child, Weaver never felt as though she lacked anything she needed.
“We weren’t deprived of anything, that we knew of,” she said.

Many local residents who lived during that time have kept their old, thrifty habits, and may be easier to adapt to the current economic hardships the country is currently facing.

“These people will survive easier than the young people,” Madison Senior Center Director Shirley Workman said of the group of local elderly residents who visit the center each day. The group includes Elizabeth Turner who says she’s always made it a point to gather all the coupons she can to keep her costs down. “They grew up in a time when you had to watch everything, you weren’t wasteful.”

Workman, 65, recalls that her father – who grew up in Greene County – would always pay cash for everything.

“You lived within your means. You did not live on the thought you’d be able to afford it tomorrow,” she said.

But as more jobs are lost and expenses continue to rise, people will be forced to change their lifestyles.

“I really think we need to step down a little bit,” Dorothy Weaver told The Eagle. “We’ve all had it so good so long I think we got to sacrifice something.”
And Weaver, along with others, think the experience with make everyone stronger.

“You can’t blame the youngsters now because everything they want, they get,” she said. “But I don’t think it takes all that many toys [to make them happy], if you just give them some of your time.”