Things we did to get by in tough times!!!

Saw the post down below. Made me remember when we where starting out. I can remember that my first wife and I where glad when we could afford some of the Kraft Mac & cheese. Many nights that, a can of Spam, and a few fried potatoes was the evening meal. Fed the little kids and us for less then $2. We drank water.

I was working to get started farming and going to college at night. Milked cows on the weekends for an Uncle. Money was real tight. I can remember cutting and fitting a piece of an old flat belt in the bottom of my work shoes to cover a hole. It was school time and the kids needed school cloths and shoes. I wore that pair of shoes until it started snowing.

We had a large garden but by spring things would get tough. Never could justify keeping an fat hog or steer back then. They where too much of our income. Eat a lot of chicken. LOL I can remember paying the spring rents and inputs in 1981. I had less than $45 dollars to my name left in the checking and savings account. We talked about asking my family for some help but decided to pray and see what would happen. We borrowed zero money for operating. We both worried about having loans with the high interest.

God provided. I got a part time third shift job. I worked three days a week. The job was bagging fed for the morning delivery trucks at the local feed mill. I would do 20-25 ton each night by myself. That is 800-1000 50LBS bags each night I worked. I was the only guy in the bagging end of mill. On the days I worked I only got 3-4 hours of sleep in two short naps morning and evening. I did that for two years. I can still remember how it hurt your shoulders at the end of a long night when the bag would drop off the bagging scale. You had to catch it or the rollers on the conveyor under it would bust the paper bag. Then roll it through the sewing machine. Then stack the finished bag on a pallet. I got paid $3.50 an hour.

I remember stopping and getting a case of Kraft Mac & cheese and a bunch of other canned food stuff with my first pay check. The wife about cried when she saw that she would have plenty to feed everyone.

We survived. After that spring there never was any less that 4 figures in our savings. I worked and made darn sure of that. My wife made sure that the pantry was always stuffed with enough to eat on for weeks on end. That always included a case of Mac & cheese. She would doctor it up some and made it work. The kids loved it when she would cut up hot dogs in it for them.

Before she passed in 1995 she got to help burn the farm mortgage. We had everything paid for and money saved. She said it was a load off her mind while she was sick. She no longer had to worry about paying debt.

I know that many had it much harder. Really hard in the Depression. I still remember those times when ever I see a box of Mac & cheese. God has blessed my family. None of them have those kind of worries today.

OK,,,,, :? :? :? :wink: :wink:

It would do the western world some good after being spoiled with post WWII prosperity. To have some suffering, doing without and successfully struggling through adversity . To build strength , character, gratitude and discipline.

God Bless You and Yours

Sounds like Mom and Dads situation.
k

I meant to ask at the end what some of the other guys/gals on here had to do. Plus what things flash into their memories when they see them.

I remember my folks sweating out making a $310 mortgage payment in February or March. We did everything that we could possibly do for ourselves. About the only time we took anything to the local repair shop was to take valves in to be ground.

I lived on my own for 3 years before I got married. I bought glue to fix my shoes so they would last longer, A night out with my girlfriend, (to be wife) was a pizza, with soda pop.
When I got married it was a little easier due to 2 incomes, then we actually went on a honeymoon. Wife was making $8 per hour. That was in 1994 I think.

When we were growing up my parents were a bit short on money, mom sewed all our clothes, when we were babies they were happy when they had money so they could add hotdogs into their diet and when the garden started producing. Burned slab wood for heat many winters as it was free at the mills.

I remember them arguing over which bills to pay in a given month, I remember chrismas's were pretty lean, I remember digging out the basement by hand, I remember our cars often had no floors due to rust out, and were usually 10 years old before we owned them.

Sure makes you appreciate everything once you get ahead a bit.

Now days it take so much money just to pay all the damn taxes. Land has to bring in income to keep the guberment paid

Growing up we used to hunt possoms with a couple hounds and bring them home put them in a building and fatten them up pretty greasy but not that bad tasting,no deer here in those days so we ate alot of squirrel,rabbit and my favorite snapping turtles.Used to tote bags of sugar and corn back in the woods for a local moonshiner that paid pretty good as he didn't trust many people to keep quiet.Always grew a big garden and my grandmother canned any and everything.Hand milked cows for milk, cream and butter and fed the extra to the hogs and chickens.Used to cut firwood with a bucksaw and an ax then load the long lengths on a wagon and bring them to the cuoff saw to cut them for the stoves.

When we moved to our farm in '61 , Dad bought a couple hogs and we had 3 cattle. We moved there in the fall so crops had been harvested by previous farmer. We had to go out and pick up corn that picker missed or had fell down,put in bags and carry up to grind into feed for them. We ate a lot of spaghetti/tomato juice and mashed potatoes. Drinks , either water or milk from the cow (yea we had only one) and even when 3 we milked by hand. The farm was 80 acres , house and barn for $18,000 , land contract. Once in a while Mom would buy a six pac of Coke and on Fri supper we would have burgers and fries and a Coke AT HOME and that was our nite out so to speak.BUT... at least we had elect lights and fuel oil heat and indoor bathroom. Grandparents would have a more bleek story to tell.

We got married in the mid 80's. We each made $4.25 dollars per hour (then minimum wage). We only bought things AFTER we had SAVED up the money for it... NO credit card.

Bought groceries at an old fashioned warehouse or bought stuff on sale for the pantry or freezer. We both always took a sack-lunch or leftovers to work.

In the early years, we hardly ever went to see a show or went out to eat (though now we do once in awhile).

We have never had a brand new vehicle or major piece of machinery. Husband did nearly all his own mechanic work on farm equipment.

We only bought used furniture for about the first 15 years or so (and now even I try to find a good bargain, no high-end or brand-name stuff around here).

We only fixed up our buildings as time and money allowed - and my husband did most of it

Whenever we had some extra money we paid off debt on our farm or else on a vehicle loan if we had one at that time.

We take good care of our vehicles... I drive mine until it is OLD, husband drives his until is NEARLY DEAD (drove his last pickup for about 15 years - it was falling apart at the seams).

We were just blessed through the years with advancing in jobs to make a decent living... though by many people's standards I am sure we are considered poor. But we feel rich! We enjoy spending time with each other and with our kids. We eagerly await meeting our first grandchild - a baby boy who will be arriving into this world within a few weeks.

Cheap entertainment is that we hang out together in our shop about every weekend (when we are not at junkyards or auctions getting parts or taking pictures)... our kids and their friends are welcome to come/go at will. IT'S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE!!!

I remember when Dad would drive the Pontiac 'Tempest' into the creek (bout 4" deep) and we would get out and wash it. I recall watching the road rush by, with one foot on the side panel and the other foot on the 'HUMP'. Floor pans rusted out!

Mom POPPED popcorn and put it in an "IGA" paper bag then poured butter over it and we went to the drive-in. The movie playing was "Barbrella". That was my only time at the Drive-in when I was little.

Mac-n-cheese by Kraft wasn't around back then.

Yes, as a whole, we are a VERY BLESSED nation indeed!

JD Seller, I remember when we moved to the farm. Mom and Dad had just inherited 60 acres from grandpa's estate. Mom's sister got the house and buildings, we got the equipment and 60 acres,None of the equipment was less than 20 years old. Dad was in the military and mom was a nurse. Dad was on pcs orders to Iceland for a year, and we had 30 days to drill a well get septic approved and in, electricity to the place and a mobile home bought and set up. Dad was gone for a lot of the time and we were just starting in a new environment and had very little. (remember these were the post Vietnam years and military pay was below poverty level). We started a garden the next year, did a bit of fencing, had the land farmed on shares, so we could provide feed for the animals that we bought in the spring. I worked for a local dairy to bring in some much needed money for the family. Luckily when dad returned from Iceland he was stationed at Fairchild AFB, 40 miles 1 way from the farm.when I was growing up, very seldom sow my dad. There was no work for him in Spokane after he retired in 1979. He found work as a contractor for Lockheed in Saudi Arabia for 3 years, then Italy for the Navy for 2 years and finally Adak Alaska for 2 years.

During the very lean years mac and cheese was a staple. After the garden was finally going good food wise life got better.

If I had grown up in the current generation I would not have known the deprivation or how to provide for myself, which I do by growing a garden, borrowing a large chest freezer from my dad and freezing the garden's bounty, and putting the knowledge that I gained from helping my mom can when I was growing up.

On a side note, there are people at work that love it when I bring in things that I have spent the time to slave over canning and preserving. I am complemented every time I bring something in.

I would not change the deprivation that I grew up with for anything in the world.

Respectfully

Leonard

I'm afraid we aint seen nothing yet.

Mac and Cheese..Wow! I remember in the early 50's mac boiled strained and a little milk added with salt and pepper to add flavor or spaghetti strings prepared the same way, and If there was meat usually ground hog or deer... good old spam was the entry or meatless chilli on mashed potatoes was second choice. I heard them many times earlier in the depression..My Granpa talked a lot about "meow rabbit"

Oh yeah the 80'S. I bought a farm in 80. Interest was 9%. I was on floating interest and by 85 or 6 I was paying 16%.

No money left to put food on the table for my wife and 4 daughters.

I took a job at a welding shop and worked 40 hours a week. All the while I had about 80 sows, farrow to finish. 30 beef cows and 200 acres of corn and beans along with hay ground.

Stayed at the weld shop to help get the girls thru college.

Worked at the weld shop full time till 2000 when dad died and I took over his cows and row crop as well.

I still help at the weld shop part time, when he needs extra help, to thank my boss and friend for helping me get thru the tough times.

Oh we ate the mac and cheese as well along with a lot of Hamburger helper.

I haven't had Hamburger helper since the youngest finished college. I don't miss it a bit.

Gary

In the late 70s, after the farm sale, things got a bit tough. I remember sitting out til dark with my rifle waiting for a deer, didn"t see one. We had been planning on meat for supper. Got home real late one night. Remembered I was out of firewood, the house was cold. We already had 3 quilts on the bed. I had lengths of wood piled up, but chain saw had quit. Got my JD-B and buzz-saw going by putting hot water in it, was 5 below that night. Brought the car around for the lights, and buzzed up enough for a few days. Carried a nearly used up battery in the house every night, so my go to work car would crank in the morning. Sold stuff at swap meets, and used the money for groceries on the way home. Do what you got to.

I grew up during the big War when everything was rationed you got stamps for gas, sugar, butter and tires were next to impossible to get.
Mother worked at the Air Field in Sacremento 30 miles away so she got lots og gas stamps but only drove 5 miles to Loomis to catch the base bus. She traded the gas stamps for sugar stamps and also Grampa ran a dairy with Jersey cows so we had lots of butter to trade.
Once she got stamps for four tires she took the greyhound bus to sac to get them. She said all the men helped her with the tires, she lays said it was the tires but mom was very pretty single woman in her early 30s.
Walt

Talk about stretching food. There were 6 of us kids. Mom would make spagetti - big pan of it, with a small can of tomato paste and rinsed in the can with water and then added that. You might have a tint of red on your noodles. She would make Oyster stew, canned oysters were cheaper back then, add some milk and again plenty of water - we joked "who got the oyster". One time one of our cousins spent the weekend with us, Mom fixed pnacakes for breakfast and my cousin asked for some butter - my Mom asked "what for?". Didn't know there was anything besides vinegar and oil on a salad until summer I was sixreen and got a job in the grocery store. Wow a whole section of salad dressings. Was 16 the first time I ever ate at a resturaunt. When I started dating I thought I was really treating the ladies when I took them out to eat - was a few years later I learned the place wasn't fancy by any measure.

My story and my sentiments are similar to Leonard’s. During the war Dad was a welder in a trailer manufacturing plant. In 1947 we moved to the old family home place (both Mom’s and Dad’s ---they were across the road from each other, and each had inherited a part. Mom got the old house because Grandma was still alive it was agreed we would live together.

They began to plan how they could live off the land and decided on dairying. They bought land parcels from brothers and sisters who had moved away, winding up with 220 acres. Dad built a milking barn and pens; he bought equipment and a herd. He hand-dug a new well (the dairy barn had running water for years before the house did). They financed it all through the Farm Home Administration, and that $90 monthly note was huge.

We relied on a truck patch that Dad at first plowed with a mule, before the 8N. We grew lots of peas and butterbeans, plus the standard garden fare. Before the freezer, Mom canned (actual cans). Fortunately we all liked liked greens, because in the south they grow just about year round. We raised lots of peanuts. We had hogs, chickens and turkeys, and there was always a bull calf to fatten for beef. The pond and the creeks provided fish and bullfrogs, and Dad, an excellent hunter, brought home lots of squirrels and quail. Any duck or goose that landed in sight of the house went into the pot. There were no deer then. We ate rabbits and doves. We picked berries and plums in the spring, and watermelons and cantaloupe. We had peach, pear and pecan trees. Dad had a hive of bees. One year we even made syrup in my granddad’s old mill.

We only went to town once a week (Saturday) and staples (flour, meal, salt, etc.,) were about the only foodstuffs we got at the store. We had our own eggs, rendered our own lard, and of course produced our own milk and churned our own butter . One thing we did buy in quantity was tins of sardines—we loved ‘em, they only cost about a dime, so a can or two was supper many a night. Sometimes Vienna sausage. We had fried hot water cornbread at almost every meal.

To supplement our income Mom did the usual butter and egg thing, as well as to go back to school and get re-certified as a teacher, and Dad, my brother and I cut stick pulpwood on our place. Dad also hired out his welding and carpentry skills. My aunt sewed my shirts from feedsacks, and I wore my brother’s hand-me-down jeans and overhauls.

Funny thing, for the longest time I didn’t even know we were poor. Thankfully, parents lived long enough to enjoy some wealth, thanks to what was under their land.

I wouldn’t trade my early years for anybody’s.

Mom made a casserole with tuna and green peas with that macaroni and cheese that we loved and now She can't remember how She made it. Lots of stories about growing up poor not enough time.
Ron

NOT knocking anyone's "tough times", but I haven't read anything in what's been posted so far that I would characterize as "tough times". Having money to buy tuna, mac and cheese, spam, Cokes, pizza, etc doesn't sound like hard times to me. I don't think anyone born (in North America) since the early/mid '30s has a clue as to the meaning of "tough times".

I got out of the USMC in 83, worst possible time. No work at all unless you were a registered nnalert in good with a Committeeman at least. I cut firewood- $25.00 a full cord, delivered, and I'd stack it for $5.00. I trapped and hunted a lot and ate lot of muskrat and beaver. My Mom owned a bar and restaurant and I took care of the lawns, fields, garbage, plowing, sanding, etc. in exchange for rent in one of her apartments. Had good friends that helped me out. Also had my recently deceased fathers gun shop and ran that some. Finally got a job in a body shop and then for a contractor and then a good lumberyard before getting a real career job.

I didn't have it bad at all really. I just wasn't going to be a burden. We grew up building our own stuff, the only hired help was the TV repairman. Mixed lots and lots of concrete, pounded lots of nails, picked lots of rock. Today we do about the same, I'm still driving a 95 Chevy or Jeep and my newest tractor is a 68 DB. We fix, we build, we raise our own.

JDSeller
Your story of life reminds me so much of my own.
But only from the Childs View.... My Father was
a farmer/logger/builder & @ 29 years old with
a pregnant Wife (me) & 3 other children had a
accident with dynmite lost his eyesight for
life. Never did I or my brother & sisters go to
school in dirty cloths, none were new but always
clean. We always ate, maybe not what I wanted
but ate & ate Well. Since the accident, dad
didn't look at his handicap as a problem on a
inconvience. He built a Chicken Coop, 104'x 36'
2 story, graded the site with his own dozer
Mom Steering it & Dad operated it. We had 7000
laying chickens, we all did the work , mostly
dad. Then he started wood working again (BLIND)
& did Chickens including butchering called out
birds every week. Dad built gun cabinets
/china hutchs / ceder chest / Kitchens /
haywagons / silage wagons / roofed house's
overhauled engines BLIND. Never did we get
federal assistance & I remember many times the
only money he had was the Money in his pocket
which amounted to 10 to 40 dollars. When times
were bad God came through, by inspiring a
friend/neighbor or church with something that
was what we really needed. After a few years
We signed a contract with Scotch Game Call Co.
of New York to make Box Turkey calls, to the
tune of 10,000 calls per week? Us Kids
Fainted.... He did it, made it work, his
sacrifice of steady work for us Kids is
unmeasured, he passed away in 1973 of a stoke
at the age of 46.... He is with me always.

RLA

mom nearly always had a pot of beans on the stove when i was growing up. arriving home from school i was always hungry and i would hear mom holler, take all the bean juice you want but don"t eat the beans, they are for supper. had many of after school snacks of white bread, bean juice and onion. at meal time she would add water back to the pot of beans to go with the corn bread and taters. still one of mine favorites today at age 65.

To be honest,some things are so rough that you just try to block them out of your mind. I've pretty much managed to do it. There are just little bits and pieces of bad memories floating around in there.

I wouldn't call most of these stories bad or tuff times but lean times. Seems most are looking back on them with fond memories.

My childhood was pretty good. My lean times came during the Carter Regan recession. I was young and had a wife and a baby. Joined the Army in 74. A private didn't get base housing, had to be E4 with over 2 years for housing. Was illegal to get any "assistance". SO the wife and I did without things to make sure that food was on the table, the kids had shelter and clothing and good stuff for Bdays and Christmas. We drove old cars, didn't have a new TV until 82 cause the kids were more important. Our stereo was a cheap cassette player, old record player and AM FM clock radio. I worked on peoples cars off duty and did some work for farmers while stationed in KS plus did a lot of hunting. Also came home every 6 months while in KS and helped dad on the farm. Also butcherd a cow and took home coolers full of meat.

In the late 70's early 80's they at first made it to where a service member could draw food stamps and then full welfare (military pay was about 13.5% behind the cost of living). Pay was such that an E5 Sergeant with a stay at home spouse and 2 kids qualified for food stamps. WE never used em cause we didn't need em. Wife was a stay at home mom but we were careful. A lot of my peers were in trouble. Mostly cause of debt. New cars/furniture/stereos/TVs ECT. By the mid 80's pay raises (some caused by the fact the news media reported at service members could draw welfare) Made it to where my wife and I could afford nicer stuff for ourselves, but the kids always came first!

Wasn't bad times......don't regret a thing....raised 7 kids on a soldiers pay. Never drew "assistance".

Sure we had lean time. But they were good times.

Rick

One year I brought some pears from our trees at the farm to share with my co-workers. They weren't "picture perfect" and my co-workers turned their noses up at them. I never brought anything from the farm again.

Grew up in Detroit in 40's and 50's. Dad came up from south before depression. Actually ate fried rats and gravy on several occasions. House cost 5200 including coal furnace. We had to cut as much wood for starting and then transfer to coal which cost around 20 bucks a ton. No stoker. Hand fed. No regrets. Dave

You are probably right , but I don't believe this was to be a contest.

A bottle of Coke was 5 cents in the 50s but my first job in a factory paid 85 cents an hour Union shop..Some of you may have never seen hard times but most of us have.An old friend said this .Some people have chicken on Sunday but have to eat the feathers on Monday.Most people wont even talk about hard times, the memories are too painful.Gallup poll found 18.6% of people in the US dont have enough food.