Learning about Life in the Depression

Sometimes I'm not sure if all of the news pundits are talking about an upcoming depression as a historical state or an emotional state. The news we hear daily doesn't seem to be too uplifting. One of the things we can do is to learn about how people coped during the depression of the 1930's. Today, we are such convenience driven/throw away consumers it may seem next to impossible to try to learn to live on less.

An excellent book review written by Charles Hugh Smith of Edmund G. Love's biographical novel, Hanging On: Or How to Get Through a Depression and Enjoy Life , published in 1972, gives us a glimpse into how life changed for an upper middle class family during the 1930s. Click Here to read this book review. I found this book over at Amazon and have listed the link to it over in the left hand column, but at the writing of this blog entry there were only two used copies available. Whether you read the book or not, the things to be learned from this book review are that this family was greatly changed...but they survived.

Another great depression lesson comes from Clara the cooking lady over at You Tube. I love the fact we are sitting in her kitchen as she makes depression era recipes and talks about the depression. It's like visiting an aunt I never knew I had! Here is one of her videos about making the Poor Man's Meal. There are many more videos to view.She is 91 and wonderful.


After watching Clara, and reading about the depression of the thirties, we have to hope that we as a nation are not headed in that direction again. Survival with less money is a daily lesson in how to do things you used to pay much more for--for little or no cash. The more you read--the more you know--the less you feel depressed.

“It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.”
Harry S. Truman