The good old days... of the Great Depression

Common Sense Commentary: I don't fear an economic Depression.  I've been there and done that. I don't worry about losing everything; I was born just a couple of months after the 1929 crash of the stock market and beginning of that Great Depression  parallelled by the Dust Bowl in West Texas.  I already know how to be poor.  The thing that bothers me is our loss of freedom and the life long debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay off for our spendthrift government.  The thing I miss most today is not prosperity or easy living but the kind of men and women I was raised around.

These old eyes look back in my memory to a time when honor, honesty and home were cherished and respected in America .... at least in Texas.  It was a time when most men worked from dawn to dusk, six days a week, to pay their bills and keep a bare necessity of beans and cornbread on the table for their wives and children.  Most families seldom had deserts but I remember my precious Dad sliding his piece of cake across the table and saying, "I don't like cake; you kids share it". 

My mother was beautiful, loving, always modest and figuring out ways to stretch a penny and to keep us kids healthy and happy.  She succeeded.  All of our many aunts, that I knew, were modest in their dress, humble, helpful and selfless.  My mother's grandmother Jones set the example and led the way for all her children and grandchildren.

When a family income just barely kept it fed and together, if parents didn't balance their budget, they simply went hungry or went to what was called "The Poor House", a state institution .  That was the most feared consequence people knew in the 1930's.  People back then were too proud and self reliant to accept something for nothing.  Men and women were all wiry and tough from hard work and limited food. Look at an old photo of the beginning of  World War II's new crop of soldiers off the farm.  They were all skinny  and suntanned.

I really miss those days when the poorest of the people, in Texas, wanted work not hand-outs, when men never cursed around women or children and women didn't curse at all.  Now, it's on TV and in public every third word.  Ninety percent of people in my boyhood believed the Bible was God's Word.  

I don't know whether men or women have been damaged the most by today's corrupt and corrupting world, but I suspect it's the women.  All of my aunts, during the Depression, seemed wholesome, loving, with an almost pure aura about them.  There are fewer of those, it seems, today ... but I attended a Jones Family reunion recently and saw glimmers of my long departed aunts.  My mother's mother was a Jones.

It isn't easy today to grow up straight and true.  It was much less difficult before TV and raunchy movies infected a whole generation or two.  But girls, it isn't impossible.  God is still ready to help and encourage
those who are sincere and truly want to be a spiritual woman.  Yes, I know, men should lead the way but most men do not "spiritually" lead their children and wives within the guidelines of God's Word and in faithful Christian service. My dad did but few do.  May God bless all faithful Christian women who are walking in the steps of those original West Texas Jones girls who were walking in the steps of Jesus.

Pass it on. RB