JUNE, 1997.
Annotated August & October, 1999 (as memories refresh themselves).
Typeface changed on August 19,2001
http://www.erroluys.com/RidingtheRails.htm
and here: http://www.erroluys.com/BerkeleyHackett.htm
| 1.Foreword | 9. Entertainment. |
| 2.Family | 10.Survival |
| 3.Separation | 11: Survival techniques |
| 4.Income | 12.Bitter? |
| 5.Costs | 13.Heritage |
| 6.Food | 14.Again |
| 7.Essentials | 15. Afterthoughts |
| 8.Charity | 16.Links |
Just as many people have asked me about what it was like during World War II so have many more people asked me what it was like during the great depression of 1929 to 1939.
Many books have been written about that horror both from a personal point of view and from an academics point of view. The worst book I know about the depression was one written by John Kenneth Galbraith about the causes of it. It is a poor book and I put it down after reading chapter or so. A huge amount of garbage has been written about that depression and those books cover the waterfront from the extreme left to the extreme right. After you read (or scan) my experiences during that depression you may understand why I am a political independent and don't belong to either party, particularly the extremes of left and right!
THE DEPRESSION WAS SUCH A HORROR THAT IT BURNED ITSELF INTO MY MEMORY AND I CAN STILL SMELL, TASTE AND HEAR SOME OF THOSE HORRORS. I AM NOT GOING TO BE PERSONAL NOR AM I GOING TO TELL TALES OUT OF SCHOOL. I ONLY WANT TO TRY TO GIVE YOU A TASTE OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO SOMEONE LIKE MY FAMILY, DOWN ON THEIR UPPERS, AS THEY USED TO SAY.
EVERYTHING HERE IS TRUE. IT IS AS TRUE AS MY MEMORY, NEITHER EMBELLISHED NOR MINIMIZED. JUST AS IT HAPPENED, AS BEST I KNOW AND CAN RECALL.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I STUDIED ECONOMICS AND FINANCE YOU WILL FIND THE ANSWERS HERE. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I REFUSE TO BELONG TO EITHER PARTY THAT ANSWER IS HERE AS WELL.
The family consisted of my father, Alfred William Rinfret, my mother, Laura C. Rinfret, my three brothers (Bill, Maurice and Alan), my sister, Cora and myself. Seven in all!
We emigrated here because my father had gone bankrupt in his fur business. In Canada that was the ultimate disgrace and he was forced out, socially. He did not know a depression was coming in the U.S. and no one else did either. And so he thought he would have a new start. Little did he know what was ahead. He and all of us had gone from the frying pan into the fire!
We came into the United Sates with practically no money and no one in the family had any marketable talents. My fathers skills as an entrepreneur, a furrier and a salesman were not good for much in a country that was about to go over the economic cliff!
I have no idea how much money my father and mother had in their pockets when we got to New York from Canada. It could not have been much because shortly (about three months) after we arrived we were in DEEP financial trouble.
WITHIN THREE MONTHS ALL OF OUR FAMILY POSSESSIONS WENT INTO STORAGE AND THEY WERE EVENTUALLY AUCTIONED OFF AT A PUBLIC AUCTION. THAT WAS DONE WITHOUT MY PARENTS KNOWLEDGE OR APPROVAL IN ORDER TO PAY THE STORAGE BILL. WE, THEREFORE, LOST EVERY FAMILY POSSESSION WE OWNED!
From 1929 until 1939 our family was separated in one form or another!
From 1929 until 1939 the family was pretty much separated, broken into bits. On two different occasions for about 3 years my father went back to Canada without the family in order to try to get work. He had no costs in Canada and he lived for free since he boarded with his parents, who lived until 1949. My brother Maurice lived with my fathers parents also so that almost everybody was leaning on my grandparents!
I was domiciled with relatives on two different occasions. One such occasion was with my mothers sister (Bertha) and another was with my mothers brother (Alfred). Total time was about 9 months. There were many reasons; one was that I would get to eat regularly, another was that I would have a regular place to sleep, the third was that the immediate family could not provide me with anything, particularly clothes.
My brother Maurice went back to Canada in order to live with our Grandparents (fathers parents) since they could feed and house him. My sister went to live with some friends and that lasted about a year. My brother Bill ran away from all of us. He got married, which he could ill afford, and what my mother could ill afford was the loss of his $15.00 (yes $15 ) a week salary!
I was always sent away on the holidays, most of the time to friends who were literally asked to invite me for the festive meal, particularly Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is one scar I have had for years (but no longer) and that was that I hated Christmas since Christmas to us was a time to cry since there were no presents for anyone until late into the Thirties.
Almost all (90+%) the family income came from my brother Bill and my sister Cora. Every once in awhile, but not often until about 1937, my father sent us money. He did not, could not, contribute much money to the household. He was, by and large, unemployed from 1929 until about 1937. In other words he was basically out of any kind of work from about 1929 until 1937 or for about 8 years!
The money my mother could count on consisted of $15 from my brother Bill and $12 from my sister Cora. My brother Maurice kept whatever money he earned and refused to share it. My brother Alan and I were in grammar school and whatever we could scrounge up on the street we gave to my mother.
My brother Bill got married in 1933 and that meant that my mother was left with $12 a week on which to take care of a family of 5 (my brother Maurice, Alan , myself, my mother and my sister Cora). You can understand if I say that we lived all the years from 1929 until about 1937 in a state of perpetual financial crises.
How did my mother cope? One answer is that she did not, the other answer is that whatever personal possessions she had were regularly hocked! We lived in what was then called Sunnyside, Long Island. Sunnyside was about a 5 minute bus ride from Queens Plaza or about a 40 minute walk. Mother would hock whatever she thought would get her a few dollars.
She did have a lovely pearl necklace she hocked regularly. When we were desperate for money we would walk to Queens Plaza (Long Island) to the Hock Shop and get a few dollars for the pearl necklace. To this day I can take you to the location of the store on Queens Plaza since I knew it well and they knew me well, at that time!
For those who have never known or experienced a hock shop it was marked by a sign that consisted of three gold balls dangling from a single bar:
Alan and I regularly contributed whatever we might have earned running errands, delivering milk, working at the local deli for tips only on deliveries etc. . That was only a few dollars a week. Neither Alan or I ever held back one cent. My mother, therefore, had to keep together a family of 5 on about $12 a week which was about 30 percent of the minimum needed.
My brother Alan and myself did everything we knew how to earn a few cents (yes, cents) a day. I used to go from store to store asking if there was any need for help. After awhile most of the store owners got to know me and they could give me some work; trumped up or not didn't matter to me!
Money was the one thing that dominated our lives or more accurately the lack of money dominated our lives for about ten years. Every battle my parents had was over money. Every fight in our house was the result of money problems and a money shortage.
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more
about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing
else." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
Anglo-Irish playwright, author. The Soul of Man under Socialism, in Fortnightly
Review (London, Feb. 1891; repr. 1895).The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1993 by Columbia
University Press. All rights reserved.
Every tear I saw my mother shed was over the lack of money. All we seemed to do was to, literally, count the pennies in the house among all of us. We fought over money almost all the time, my mother would go into a panic if she could not account for every penny. Not one cent was ever foolishly spent and not one cent ever went for anything that was not vital to life.
I used to get ten cents a day from my mother to go to Long Island City High School which was in Queens Plaza, New York. The subway cost 5 cents each way which meant that I got subway fare but no lunch money. I would take the subway to school and the 5 cents burned a hole in my pocket. The perennial choice I faced was this: should I spend the 5 cents on something for lunch and walk home or go hungry and take the subway home (the distance was about 4 miles)?
I invariably choose to spend the 5 cents for something for lunch and walked home with a young girl who was in as dire straits as I was.
Money was our constant headache and our greatest worry. We frequently ran out of money and had nowhere to turn since borrowing from neighbors was impossible as was credit from the local stores. If mother got caught particularly short she would send my brother Maurice to Brooklyn to touch up my Uncle Enos (her brother) for a ten dollar bill. But I remember more than once where mother could not get the 5 cents subway fare for Maurice to go to Brooklyn. So he walked to Brooklyn (about 10 miles) and took the subway home since Uncle Enos never once said no.
But it scarred my brother Maurice all his life since he could never ask anyone to pay him for work he may have done for them! He was the one that was always asked to go hit up someone for money and it was that which haunted him for his entire life!
Our entire life in the 1930's was centered around money, it was our cross and we bore it day in and day out. It was a cross from which there was no relief.
The memory that I retain to this day (77 years old) is that of my parents crying, singularly and together, about money!
The irony, which I do not understand, is that money per se has never interested me! Go figure that out!
Everything was cheap but everything was to expensive!
If you were unemployed everything was so expensive as to be totally and completely out of reach. And since, at one time, one out of three people were unemployed nothing was cheap!
In terms of today's prices the costs and the prices in the 1930's were ludicrous; but the income levels were just as ludicrous. It is all, of course, relative. If you have an income most things are somewhat affordable. If you have no or very low income most everything is unaffordable!
For what it is worth here are some prices I remember:
The most vivid memory I have of food is that there was never enough.
In actual fact I have some rather horrible memories about food, at least in the Rinfret family.
I remember one dinner where my mother, myself and my brothers and sister sat down to a meal. The meal consisted of 3 boiled potatoes and one slice of white bread which we divided up amongst us. I noticed my mother was not eating and I asked her why she was not eating.
She answered that she was on a diet.
When I was about 50 years of age it hit me that she had not been on a diet but was giving up what there was to us!
Our meals seldom contained any form of meat and when it did it was either hamburger or flank steak, neither which I can eat to this day.
If it was hamburger you got a patty about the size of a 50 cent piece. If you got flank steak it was sliced paper thin so that you could see light through it. At most it might be about 4 inches long, an inch wide and paper thin . Each persons portion was two slices and a one pound flank steak fed 6 people!
We ate tons of "nutritious" food all of which was bulk and starches! We had pasta at least twice a week but never with meatballs. We ate chicken on occasion but not often. Potatoes were a staple in our diet as were various cabbages and carrots (in those days they were cheap).
Bread was day old bread which could be bought at the bakery for half price. Cookies were 25 cents a pound but they were broken and a day old.
And in those days a day old meant stale!
We never but never got dessert except rice pudding and all the other goodies such as candy and ice cream were unheard of by us.
After 1937 when things started to improve a bit my mother did bake a pie (apple was her specialty) and an occasional chocolate cake.
My mother lived until 1976 but she remained as frugal with food as she had been in the depression. It was a sin to waste a shred of food and you were forced to consume everything but everything on your plate. We ate for the starving children in China! We cleaned our plates at every meal and that was almost obligatory.
All my bad food habits of today emanate from the depression and from my formative years. I eat too much candy and far too much ice cream. But since no one in the family could afford any liquor I don't drink to this day, except for wine which I learned in France while on my Fulbright fellowship.
On the holidays we never but never had a turkey nor did we ever have anything different and festive. That did change when my father found full time work in 1937 (he had been unemployed for 8 years then) but to this day I cannot stand either Christmas nor Thanksgiving which to me was always an oxymoron!
I am finally over my dislike for those holidays but it took some 50 years!
What then did we eat?
Whatever the cheapest things my poor mother could afford or find!
When I talk about the essentials of life I mean just that. The list is easy to put together and here it is:
And that was it. There was no telephone, no radio, no movies (I solved that one around 1938 by becoming an usher at the local "Bliss" theater). All washing was done by hand (the old fashioned scrub board) by my mother as was the ironing. We were limited to one shower a week (saved soap) and we were limited on the use of electric light after it got dark.
If our shoes wore through we bought rubber sole replacements at the F.W.. Woolworth store which we glued on with rubber cement. We nailed the heels on ourselves when needed . We sewed everything and made do. I well remember my mother sitting by the hour darning our socks on a darning sock ( a semi round wood support for the sock).
My mother would wash the clothes by hand on a old fashioned scrub board. She then would stay up until 12 or so at night ironing everything so that we would all have clean clothes in the morning. To this day I can see her ironing one garment after another late at night. She did everything and what clothes went to the cleaner went only because they had been dirtied to the point where they could not be washed.
We traded clothes and I was clothed by hand me downs since I was the youngest. If a shirt was needed it went to Maurice, then to Alan and finally to me.
We all wore hand me downs. To this day I role up the cuffs of my sleeves since I always got Alan's clothes which were always too big for me (my sleeves are rolled up as I type this article).
Whatever my mother had to buy she bought on the never-never plan. She frequently defaulted on her payment obligations. She frequently failed to pay the rent, she frequently ran up bills she could not pay. We owed everybody; the grocery store, the drug store, the doctor, the ice man, the milk man, the egg man; name it or them; we owed and owed some more.
WE GOT THROUGH THE DEPRESSION IN DEBT UP TO OUR EYEBALLS AND SOME PEOPLE NEVER DID GET PAID! I went back after the war and the pharmacist informed me we still owed them money. I paid it. Others not.
ASIDE. When I was mustered out of the Army in 1945 I got a $200 bonus. After I was home a few days my mother and I went to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Theresa in Woodside, Queens. My mother wanted to get the deed of my fathers burial plot. The Pastor took the deed out a file drawer by his desk, detached a piece of paper and said "There is an outstanding debt of $200 for the burial". My father had died in 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. I took the $200 out of my pocket and gave it to the Pastor. I paid for my fathers burial almost five years after he was buried, but I paid it with ALL and the only money I had! END OF ASIDE.
My fathers estate consisted of debts, more debts and no assets.
The only ones who ever gave the Rinfret family any help were relatives and the Harritons.
Relatives gave us food, money and clothing to say nothing of shelter after we had been thrown out on the street for the non-payment of rent or evicted for some other reasons.
I recall, as if it were yesterday, our possessions in suitcases on the street and I remember our walking down the street carrying those suitcases just as DID the refugees of World War II.
Nobody else ever gave us a dime or any help of any kind whatsoever. That includes the Federal government, the State government, the Red Cross, the Catholic church and the local community.
We were on our own and if it had not been for our relatives (family) we would not have survived! Family was (and is) everything.
Who were the Harritons? The Harritons were Abe and Estelle Harritons who had two children, Abe and Marie. Marie was beautiful and both were as nice as could be.
The Harritons "owned" the apartment we rented in Sunnyside, Queens. They were avowed communists and he was an artist with the WPA. He painted the type of art I always called "Workers of the world, arise" . When my mother or father did not have the rent the Harritons would always say that we could pay it when we had the money. Never once did they do anything except be kind to us.
I have already talked about all the help we received from our relatives but I have left out one uncle; my mothers brother named Enos Chartrand. He was a very successful businessman throughout the thirties and whenever my mother was up against the wall she could always and did borrow from Uncle Enos. Borrow is a euphemism; I doubt that he was ever paid back two cents. He never said "No" and he always gave willingly (his wife was just the opposite). My mother, of course, never took advantage of him. The very first dollar bill I ever got came from him.
I must say that the Catholic church in Woodside, Queens (where I went to school) would feed us kids who had had no breakfast. In order, however, to be fed you had to admit before the entire class that you had no breakfast. I was not one to do that even if I were starving! I learned to create an artificial menu of what I had eaten for breakfast so that I would not be ushered out with the rest of the poor kids. My family was never poor; just temporarily down on their luck! I guess you would call that pride!
I have to be honest with you; I do not know for sure why we never received any charity. It may have been because it was not available or because my mother and father refused it. Would they have refused it when we had no food for several days? I doubt it.
All in all I do not remember any charity of any kind ever helping us even when we were in the most dire of dire straits.
All of our entertainment was home made up to about 1938.
We hung out in empty lots and sat on the local
park benches around the empty lots. My "buddies" were a young
strong man named Francis Foster (he's on the right) and a young handsome athletic type called
"Carl Muller" (on the left). We discussed the world in general and each of us
would argue like mad about a point of view. Later on we all went to war
and we all came home!
We built skate carts out of a plank, a wooden box and a pair of roller skate wheels.
We played stick ball on the streets or in the lots. The stick was an old broom stick which, if we broke it, we had to wait a long time to find another.
We played roller skate hockey in the streets using a large stone as a puck.
If we were lucky someone might get a potato and we would roast it in a fire we built in the empty lots. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get a "mickey" ( a fire roasted potato) for everyone of the" gang".
We played hop-scotch on the sidewalk if someone had a piece of chalk in order to draw the diagram.
Most of the time we "hung out" and if we showed up at the local lot and nobody was there we would go home.
The "rich" kids belonged to "Sunnyside Gardens Park" but the Rinfret's didn't because we didn't have the money to pay the dues until about 1938.
We had no radio until about 1935, television had not yet been invented, a telephone was an unheard of luxury (mother always used 'the neighbors') and I became an usher at the local "Bliss" theater in Woodside in 1938 so I could see the movies.
I don't remember ever going to the movies prior to my being an usher. I got 25 cents an hour and once in a blue moon someone would give me a 5 cent tip.
There was a local swimming pool, "Sunnyside Swimming Pool", located on "Queens Boulevard" that cost ten cents for a full day of admission. You would go to the pool (during the summer) and bring your lunch in a brown bag and your drink was the water from the fountain. I remember going to the pool about 3 times.
I spent an enormous amount of time in the "Woodside Public Library" but not as much as most since I spent most of my "school days" in the NY Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a cave in Central Park. I only attended school if forced to attend by my mother (see my publication on "Education" ).
We could not afford magazines and only occasionally afforded a newspaper (we always bought the N.Y.Times).
My sister bought me a bike around 1938 and I took it apart each and every day to grease it and to wipe it down. As our conditions improved I was able to ask my mother for small amounts of money and I could buy a rubber band airplane model for ten cents. My first model was a "Sopwith Camel" (French) from World War I. I finished it and flew it after almost cutting my left index finger off!
We never were involved in drugs, violence or alcohol. We belonged to a group of kids who liked each other and who hung out together but that's all they were.
Nobody in our group could afford cigarettes and no one was really interested in them. Later on after we had seen people smoke and we got older and more curious we would go down to the empty lots by the local railroad overpass and cut up the "silk-weed" stalks. We would smoke the stalks but they were so bad nobody kept it up. All I remember is coughing my lungs out (I don't think I have smoked a pack of cigarettes in my entire life, maybe that's why!).
Did we play baseball, touch football or basketball? Yes and no. I don't remember ever playing basketball. We played softball if I could get into the local private park (I was frequently thrown out since I was not a member). We played touch football but the trouble was getting a football, no one had one and the Sunnyside Park was very chintzy about letting the kids use it.
Sports were not a big deal and nobody but nobody emphasized them.
When I woke up in the U.S. Army hospital near Paris in early January, 1945 after being brutally wounded the first thought in my mind was "I survived".
Surviving the depression was more difficult.
My father didn't make it. He died of a heart attack in late 1941. Two of my brothers and my sister, all of whom I adored, were psycho cases for the rest of their lives.
My brother, Alan Herve''
Rinfret, was killed in combat around Florence in 1945 just before the war
against Germany was won.
My family got kicked in the teeth, first by the depression and then, by the war. They were stomped on, beaten down, psychologically damaged and scarred forever.
The national cry in late 1941 was "You owe us!" meaning that the country had a right to call on its citizens to go to war because the citizens owed the country.
FOR WHAT? FOR A JOB, FOR FOOD, FOR EDUCATION, FOR EMPLOYMENT, FOR HEALTH CARE?
FOR FREEDOM WHICH WAS DEFINED AS THE RIGHT TO POVERTY?
WHAT DID WE OWE A SOCIETY THAT WAS NOT ABLE TO PROVIDE THE CITIZENS WITH THE MOST BASICS OF LIFE?
FOR THE RIGHT TO HAVE THE GOVERNMENT TO THREATEN ITS VETERANS WITH RIFLE FIRE AND BAYONETS, AS DID GENERAL MACARTHUR IN THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON IN 1933!
For the extreme right wing to call us lazy and to imply that we were dumb and to blame for societies miseries and malaise?
For the left wing to ask us to give up our freedom in exchange for a mess of potage (communism)?
My mother, my father and my two brothers and sister were victims of a helpless society gone berserk.
The all-knowing, conceited, egotistical, self -serving institutions failed and failed totally and completely.
In the mid-1930's we were playing with revolution and Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew it.
What was the depression like? In the early 1930's:
I have a dear friend named Dr. Sam R. He was a most eminent psychiatrist whose clients were the biggies of the world. I once asked Dr. Sam to tell me about myself.
He answered that "You are the most disgustingly well adjusted person I have ever known in my professional life but never go into politics." I should have listened!
We did many things out of sheer desperation:
No, not at all.
Am I resentful?
Yes.
Was it really that bad?
Worse, I have left out a scrutiny of our tears, our emotions, our fears, our denigration, the destruction of our optimism, our despair, our loss of faith, our loss of hope.
Do you resent your parents?
On the contrary, they had more guts than anyone could ask for and they DID keep the family together no matter what it cost. My parents were made of steel and they were never but never beaten! Bent yes, beaten, NO. Mother lived until 1977 and died a week short of 92. I adored both my parents.
Who was to blame for the failure of the country to get back on its feet for so long a time?
Everybody that claimed they knew the answers to a country in shreds. Read a wonderful book entitled "Oh, Yeah!". The Republicans were against every major social change and improvement including Social Security which they labeled "Communist". As an economist who has studied non stop all my life all I can say is that the nation and the world mishandled the depression totally and completely.
We failed on almost all counts because we were the victims of ideology and ideological nonsense. The right wing had no answers and were heartless and the extreme left wing thought they could bring communism and socialism to America.
The Democratic party saved the United States from revolution and if it had not been for Franklin Delano Roosevelt we would have had revolution. His compassion made the difference and, in my learned judgment, he saved the country as did the Democratic party. If the Republicans had their way the depression would have ended in revolution. What saved the country was the war.
(Now you may understand why I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.)
Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
An optimist. If you survived both a depression and a war sequentially wouldn't you be an optimist?
What was the heritage of my generation? What did my sister my brothers and myself inherit?
There are two kinds of heritage:
1. IN MATERIAL TERMS ALL WE INHERITED WERE DEBTS AND NIGHTMARES. There was nothing to inherit except the debts and the nightmares. Mother had no money and she was dependent on Social Security and my brother Alan's insurance (he paid for it in the U.S. Army and mother got the money because he was killed in action). Dad left us penniless and when mother died there was nothing except some old furniture. She had no jewelry, no rings, no diamonds, no watch, nothing at all. She had nothing of any value (she died on January 20, 1976 just short of her 92 birthday). She had no money since she lived on a month to month basis. I proudly paid for her funeral and had supported her for years with a monthly allowance.
She left us nothing because there was nothing to leave!
2. IN MORAL TERMS WE INHERITED A FORTUNE ALTHOUGH SOME OF MY FAMILY SQUANDERED IT.
We were brought up to be honest, forthright, dependable, responsible, honorable, loyal; imbued in us was a set of high morals. We were taught to never cheat, lie, fake or to cheat anyone on anything! Integrity was the one characteristic that was drummed into us.
ASIDE. My wonderful son Peter once said to me that "You know Dad that we had the worst upbringing possible. In this world our upbringing of honor, integrity, truthfulness is a distinct disadvantage. The worst part is that neither my sister or I can change!" END OF ASIDE.
My mother referred all the time to our family line going back some 300+ years. She imbued in us a sense of having to continue the honor of that family and to never forget our heritage. Her approach was that it was a distinguished family line (on the part of my mother and father) and we had a moral obligation to continue that heritage.
In other words we were brought up to be responsible human beings.
Can a depression happen again?
Why not, humans know no limits to their stupidity.
Unfortunately, I have to say "Yes, it can happen again."
The folly of man knows no limits as the bubble that used to be the Asian boom now shows conclusively. It is never the forces of which you are aware but the ones you don't think about that always get you.
As an historian of economic and financial affairs if there is one thing I know it is that the follies and stupidities of man know no limits.
Yes, it can happen again. I hope and pray not but it is more than stupid to think or say we have licked, forever, the horrible specter of a domestic and world depression.
It appears that the most avid (and polite) readers of this article I have posted on the "Great Depression", as I knew it, are the young High School students. I get email all the time from them and they ask questions and request my permission to reproduce and use this material. I always give it since I wrote this for their education of history from someone who has been there and done that!
I do have some after thoughts about the depression which might be of interest:
Here is the Alta Vista link to the search for the subject of the "Great Depression" (as it has become known). When you crank it up you can access images as well.
I thank you for listening to me. I have no gripes, no complaints, no hates and certainly no scars of any worth.
I am proud that I could deal with all the adversity of the depression when a child is supposed to be at the most sensitive and formative age. I was born in 1924 so that when we arrived in the U.S. I was about 5. The depression ended with the onslaught of World War II and I was then 16 and so I spent 11 years in the worst economic disaster the world has ever known. They were my formative years!
But I survived the depression and combat in World War II. After that magnificent sequence of events, in one lifetime, there is nothing that is frightening, nothing, zero, zilch, notta. THAT INCLUDES THE IRS!
Now you may understand why I studied economics and finance. Actually I studied it in order to get an answer to the question my mother asked continuously throughout the 1930's, to wit, "where did all the money go?".
I leave you with my personal and favorite wish:
"May you never know a depression and may you never have to fight in a war".
I thank you again for listening and give you my best regards and wishes. May your life be productive and pleasant.
"May you never know a depression and may you never have to fight in a war".
Thank you for visiting me!