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Community Corner

Staying Upbeat Through the Depression

Pat Torrance tells us how Montgomery weathered the economic storm of the 1930s - with grace, good hearts and ingenious recipes.

Note: See part one of this article .

Then came the big Wall Street crash, and the good times were over. 

In the big cities the suffering was greatest. As jobs disappeared, families had to depend on welfare, soup kitchens or begging—none of them a good option. Wealthy people had the farthest to fall.

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Montgomery was very much like the rest of the country. Our local churches reached out a helping hand. We probably fared better than most places because most came from a farming background and had more resources to keep body and soul together than city people. Big gardens and backyard chickens, rabbits or goats were all ways to survive without a paycheck.

On the farms, people began to burn corn for fuel because there was no market for it, and it was cheaper than coal. It made good pig food, but there was no market for the pigs, either. It was a terrible time for families, although most managed to keep their children fed in some fashion.    

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Feeding a family became a top priority and required great ingenuity. Some families lived mainly on corn meal mush. First it would be served as a main dish and then the leftovers chilled and sliced for frying in bacon fat. Plain cooked macaroni with a pint of home canned tomatoes was a good supper.

Tender new dandelion greens were used when they were in season. Pancakes or potatoes were sometimes the only things on the menu. Grandmothers made the best bread since they knew how to make their own yeast from the hops in their gardens. Oatmeal became the standard breakfast dish. 

Meat was hard to come by. One housewife tied a piece of salt pork with a string so she could fish it out of the bean soup to use it another time. After several uses, she shared her secret for seasoning the beans. Her neighbor begged to borrow the well-used ‘pork on a string,’ for her own pot of beans. With serious misgivings, she finally agreed to loan it to her. The next day the neighbor came back, apologizing that her family was so hungry they ate the piece of pork. Her neighbor broke into tears on hearing the news.

Hunger is the best seasoning, and often people remember these ‘desperation’ meals with fondness. I was a child attending St. Peter’s school on Sard Avenue in Aurora during those years. It was a very small school and so close to Montgomery that many local children went there. We have fond memories of the mothers who came to cook hot lunches for us.

And our mothers knew how to cook. The south end of Aurora was a melting pot of Italian, Hungarian, Polish, and Lithuanian with a sprinkling of Irish, German and French families. When they put their heads together they came up with some awesome dishes.

Mrs. Briggs was one of the grandmothers who cooked for the children. She had been in charge of feeding the sheep shearers at the boarding house, so she had the experience and knowledge to take on the job. Fresh vegetable soup, freshly baked bread and either bean soup or escalloped potatoes, always seasoned with a meaty ham bone were menu staples. It was hard to concentrate on the three “Rs” with these delicious smells wafting into the classrooms.

Because the current priest was able to bring ham bones from his parent’s butcher shop, meaty bones made their way into dishes that, along with the homemade bread, constituted the best meal of the day for many of the children.

Hand-me-down clothes, resoled shoes, and homemade feed sack dresses were substituted when there was no money for anything better. It was pretty common for the soles to peel away from a shoe, and one resourceful mother used a red rubber seal from a canning jar to hold the sole in place until they could get a proper repair.

Some of the stories about how people managed to get through the depression are sad, some funny, but almost always people remember them with fondness. We’ve all heard stories of sandwiches made with lard, salt and pepper, or sometimes sugar. Mashed beans made a tasty filling – a substitute for peanut butter. One woman told of eating sandwiches made with lard and a filling of onion grass. Others told of brushing their teeth with baking soda, and washing hair in Fels Naptha soap. 

If a little girl had any coins, she would tie them into the corner of her handkerchief for safekeeping. The depression was probably easier on the children who were born during that time, because they didn’t really know a different life. 

Sometimes one of the "tramps" or "hobos" would come knocking on doors in the village, selling small paintings of local scenes, done on pressed board. Other forms of “tramp art” were sold this way. Today, these items are highly prized by collectors. 

Today we rightfully fear another depression, but for us here in our little village the depression actually brought out the best in people. Maybe it was because of the many family connections, but also because good people naturally look out for each other. Even the transient "hobos" learned which houses were good for a meal.

The filter of time allows us to remember the good, and laugh about the bad.  

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