Hard Times A couple days ago we were eating each a bowl of homemade vegetable beef soup and crackers for lunch. The crackers triggered a flash back to my child hood sometime in the mid 30’s .We lived on a farm near the small town of Waldron Missouri. We did not own this farm or rent it but my brother Ralph had a contract of sorts with the owner that we could live in the small house on the farm and raise pigs, chickens and raise a vegetable garden in return for his farm work six days a week for $ 3 a week. During some harvesting extra farm help was needed so the owner would hire a fellow from Waldron to help. This one day Ralph came to the house for the noon meal along with me J .B., Dorothy and our mother. Ralph asked the fellow to come in the house and eat his lunch as it was cold. He said “n I have my lunch in my lunch pail and will eat it out here behind the smoke house out of the wind.” Our mother went out to check on him and all the fellow had to eat was a few crackers. He came to do a day’s work with just a few crackers. He was given a plate of whatever it was we had that day. I have often since wondered about his family . There wasn’t any school lunches , welfare or aid of any kind. Unemployment around 25%. It was tough times. The three dollars a week I’m sure didn’t go far but was something. And we had three meals a day. It upsets me even now to see the waste in the buffets. Guess now it would be hard times if a person didn’t have a cell phone.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 11:20:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015