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| Arkansas Primary Source Sets University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture |
By Moristotle
[Original publication on February 13, 2009.]
My niece Karen recently sent me a short account written by her father (Elbert O. Condley, January 31, 1918 – June 7, 2008) about a hard time in Arkansas during the Depression:
In 1930 we got very little rain, so we had no corn or hay to feed the cattle. We always depended on corn for bread as well, and to feed the hogs. We usually killed three or more hogs each winter for meat and lard. Hog lard went into almost everything we ate. So what were we going to do this winter?
My dad learned that we could pick cotton down along the Arkansas River, so we went to Russellville and rented an old house, and a farmer sent a flatbed truck to get us each morning and bring us back at day’s end. There were eleven of us, including my brother Arvel and his wife Ruth. We would return each night a tired bunch. The young ones would be asleep before my sisters and Ruth could even get supper cooked. We did this for about six weeks and saved a few dollars, then we went back home.
Then Dad got a job at the coal mine, and about Christmas time he came home with two 100-lb sacks of beans, twelve buckets of hog lard, twelve sacks of flour, twelve sacks of cornmeal, salt, baking soda, etc. And that’s what we survived on that winter, plus a little milk from the cows. All we had to feed the cows was turnips. It had rained late in the summer so we had lots of turnips. We ate them too.
Arvel and Ruth went to Parkdale after the cotton picking. My dad had given them a cow, and they had a little furniture. They had saved twelve dollars, which they paid someone to drive them to Parkdale. So they arrived with no money. But the landlord advanced them enough to get them by until they made the first cotton crop.
They probably lived on rabbit and possum. My brother was a great possum hunter.
| Copyright © 2009, 2023 by Moristotle |
Always startling to read about what people had to do to survive. We have it so good, and most of us don't even know it.
ReplyDeleteAnd Elbert fought with other American and Allied soldiers at WWII’s Battle of the Bulge….
DeleteCal kept his cool,
ReplyDeleteknew when to step away,
when the end was near.
Even he did not survive
the Hoover years and
the long slog from
the nothing we had left.