Americans and Hard Times

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Born in the summer of 1951, I’m one of those Boomers who’ve lived the transformation from simpler, more innocent times, to the hi-tech, everything’s gotta be in the fast lane, in your face 21st century. 1951? Possibly the best debut year in post WW II Major League Baseball, as both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays broke in that year. I grew up watchin’ both of ’em in their primes, as they played at levels normal human beings could only daydream about.

America was a country in transition. The big war victoriously concluded, albeit at horrific cost, the Korean ‘Police Action’ about done, and Boomers were being born by the dozens everywhere you looked. So many paradigms were shifting all at once it seemed. The GI Bill was sending thousands of young men and women to college — folks who before the war would only have fantasized about affording a college degree and the life it promised. Suburbs entered our vocabulary. Home ownership begin to grow at prodigious velocity. Cars became a must have item.

It all sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? It was, but it wasn’t all Channel No. 5 and Willie makin’ basket catches.

My memory really only goes back to around 1956, when I turned five, started kindergarten, and got to attend ‘regular kid’ Sunday school at Dad’s church. Of course, it wasn’t ’till much later in life that I realized why I had such a good time with the older kids — duh, I was the preacher’s kid, but wasn’t anything in the same zip code as a goody two-shoes. Yeah, even back then.

Ironically, like many in my generation I learned how Americans handled hard times by listening to my grandparents tell about the Great Depression. Once you’ve heard enough of those stories from folks who lived through it as teens and emerged as adults of tempered steel, you tend to shy away from self pity when hard times come knockin’ at your door — hard times hardly in the league about which they talked.

Grandma was the oldest of eight kids who were born and raised in rural Missouri. Hard times? Most don’t realize this, but hard times hit rural areas long before the big crash of 1929. In the mid to late ’20’s Grandma and Great-grandpa (also a preacher) several times headed out on a freight train, leaving the rest of the family to work on dairy farms in Ohio, pick crops in other surrounding states, or in one case shuck corn at harvest time in Nebraska. She was 14 when her dad began bringing her with him on those sojourns.

Hard times? Those were hard times. And that’s how Americans back then got through them. They relied on family and neighbors and themselves, making incredible personal sacrifices as a matter of course. It takes a village? My ass. It took rugged individuals who helped those who helped themselves. Their hard core sense of self reliance, responsibility, duty to family and those in need was fierce. Wanna know what was missing?

A sense of entitlement and moral relativism. Even those showing up at Grandma’s door, later on during the actual Depression, in Vista, California, would refuse even a sparse meal of scraps unless they could do something, anything to earn their way. The worst of it though was when, “We literally didn’t have anything to share — then being thanked for our kind hospitality.”

Hard times.

We’re in the middle of a giant helping of what my Uncle calls FUBAR. Don’t know what it means? Ask anyone who’s been in the military. It means things are screwed up pretty badly. Having lived through several recessions, I have my own sad stories, which I won’t share here, as my stories are surely no different than yours. I’ve stared into the black abyss alone too.

It’s an experience we’ve all had when times turn harder than Aunt Evie’s stare after you’ve crossed her. It’s the sudden awareness that your worst fears may indeed become the new reality in your life. The cold chill of desperate fear that sweeps through every part of you with a sometimes literal sense of temporary paralysis. It’s when we look directly into the black abyss — alone with our thoughts. It makes some, it breaks some — but it’s difficult to imagine it leaving anyone the same as before.

And the nights? Geez, Louise, Mytle — who hasn’t gone through a 20 hour night of your mind playing horror movies with you as the victim? It can be debilitating.

So many of those in real estate and related fields have been playing out the black abyss part of their life’s script lately. We all make that trip alone, regardless of our support system. It’s like major surgery — your family and friends will be there for you, but you’re still the only one on the table with a doctor standing over you wielding a scalpel. Support only goes so far.

I write about this only to remind you — you’re not alone — not by a long shot. Speaking only for myself and my past trips through the black abyss, I can tell you this without reservation. I came out a better person, with a stronger sense of who I am, and a steely confidence born only from the heat it takes to temper high quality steel.

I also discovered quite happily that my spiritual faith had been tested. Turns out my faith and beliefs were strong, and made stronger — a blessing from which I benefit to this day. There’s nothing like getting your priorities right, while learning you were up to the task.

Would most of us go through the black abyss again by choice? No sir, not me. But I’ll tell ya something that surprised me about myself — I wouldn’t go back and erase those experiences for all the gold in Fort Knox. There’s a freedom that comes with successfully staring down the demons that seem to arise in us during soul-wrenching, character testing, hard times.

There’s no feeling freer than the knowledge you measured up. You were knocked down, but not out. You emerged as a higher quality, tempered steel. And even better than that? Hard times will never scare you again.

Put a price on that.