{"id":4776,"date":"2008-10-01T17:36:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-02T00:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2008-10-01T17:36:57","modified_gmt":"2008-10-02T00:36:57","slug":"a-look-past-the-hyperbole-of-the-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4776\/a-look-past-the-hyperbole-of-the-great-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look past the hyperbole of “The Great Depression”"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Grandmother is 89. In 1929, she was 10, living in Duquesne, PA<\/span>, a steel mill town not far from Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

Grandma is still a story teller, although Alzheimer’s has mixed up the palette of her recollections, which makes for some interesting mash ups. Before Grandma’s synapses got all Web 2.0, it was the Depression stories that fascinated me the most.<\/p>\n

They were even better than the WWII stories, which were pretty good because she worked in an ammunition factory, but that’s a story for another crisis.<\/p>\n

All of Grandma’s Depression stories, from the time a truck carrying oranges jackknifed on the road right before Christmas, to the beautiful indoor pool, gym and library that Carnegie built (where Aunt Emma secretly played basketball), to the truant officer chasing down Uncle Joe, all of them had a three-part moral:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We were dirt poor.<\/li>\n
  2. You don’t ever want to be that poor.<\/li>\n
  3. Save your money just in case anything like that happens again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As I got older, I started to understand how being a “Child of the Depression” had molded my Grandmother. The bargain shopping. Walking across the parking lot of the A&P stooped over not because of age, but because she was looking for dropped change. The look of disbelief Christmas morning when my brother and I sat in a pile of un-boxed toys surrounded by shreds of wrapping paper a foot thick, looking for more<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    The lingering impact that living through the Depression had on my Grandmother used to interest me as an exercise of amateur psychology, a topic I’d toss around with my parents to show them they got something for the four years I spent doing keg-stands at URI: She was conditioned. Using a tea bag twice is a mild sort of PTSD. Aren’t I clever?<\/p>\n

    I don’t feel so clever, now. Now I’m recalling Grandma’s somewhat more reliable pre-Alzheiner’s stories looking for tips, or hope, or something…She did always say, poor as they were, they were happy. That’s something, right?<\/p>\n

    This morning a friend forwarded me a link to something that is on the Wikkipedia page for The Great Depression, a page that probably has gotten more traffic Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My Grandmother is 89. In 1929, she was 10, living in Duquesne, PA, a steel mill town not far from Pittsburgh. Grandma is still a story teller, although Alzheimer’s has mixed up the palette of her recollections, which makes for some interesting mash ups. Before Grandma’s synapses got all Web 2.0, it was the Depression […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-investment","7":"category-lending","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9282,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/9282\/americans-and-hard-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":4776,"position":0},"title":"Americans and Hard Times","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"July 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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? 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