Hi Everybody!
I wanted to share something with you for Father's Day.
It's an old picture of a Depression-era sharecropper family with their first baby in early 1930, somewhere in southern Illinois. That's almost 80 years ago, and only 65 years after the Gettysburg Address.
Meet my grandfather, my grandmother, and my dad.
I just got this a couple days ago. My mom was going through some stuff and this just fell out of a stack of paper.
I am unsure why, but this pic has had a really powerful impact on me. I get wispy looking at it. This picture is a treasure. It has one of the clearest depictions of my family's heritage and "roots" I have seen to date.
It anchors me in history, tells me where I have come from.
Both of the families from whence I spring were up dirt-poor, just trying to survive in the aftermath of the Depression. I have, like many of you, grown up hearing the nightmarish tales of just having nothing to eat or wear.
My father's father, the man in the picture, would have been about 28 years old, with his wife and his first child, my dad. My father was born to them just a couple weeks before The Great Crash.
They were share-croppers. They had no permanent home. They lived on another person's farm for several years, helping farm the land, and may have even been somewhat migrant in the years before settling down and starting their family. A poor young couple with a new baby and now the worst stock market collapse in US history has just hit. Can you say stress?
Grandma and Grandpa literally lived off the land: they managed to raise all their food and the landowner apparently gave them a hog every year. They canned and pickled and had a root cellar.
Grandfather eventually got possession of 200 acres and started his own farm. He kept and worked the land for about 40 years. He and the young lady in the picture would raise 10 children.
My first memories of my these grandparents are from about the age of 8, when my parents returned from a 4 year assignment to Germany with the Air Force. We would often go and visit them on the farm. For years this was the way it was.
I have fond memories of the farm. Sometimes I would stay there for a few days at a time.
He finally sold the farm in the 1970's and "settled down" in a small house in southern Illinois and lived the rest of his life there.
My grandmother, young and thin in this picture, had 9 more children and when I met her after we returned from Germany she was very overweight and always sick. She gave everything for the family, including her health.
She had developed allergies to just about everything and was always at the doctor or the hospital. Grandfather tended to her until the end. It was hard but he did it without a second thought or a question. The large family remained fairly close-knit and there was ample help and support.
He lived many years after her death and passed away himself in the late 1980's, in his late 80's. He never seemed his age until he sat down and stopped talking - which was rare. He was particularly fond of fishing and was notorious for sneaking off in his car to drive from southern Illinois down to Arkansas just to go fishing. He may have migrated from Arkansas as a very young man.
The Sharecroppers children did reasonably well given the ultra-humble beginning reflected in this picture. My dad did 20 years in the Air Force then worked for a small hospital supervising laundry and housekeeping services. Dad's next younger brother apparently became a diplomat to Spain. Most everybody is retired now, though
When my mom and dad met and got married they were all still dirt poor. But dad grew up on a farm and is a machine when it comes to working. (The wife and I call him "the Old Robot".) He went to some business school and got a job doing accounting for a coal company before getting drafted into the armed forces. He and my mom worked and raised 2 kids.
My parents developed a sort of tradition of calling Granddad every Sunday, just to check in if they had not talked at another time. My wife and I now continue that calling my parents now that they are in their late 70's.
On a side note: things here in the 21st Century, as my parents reflect on them in their late 70's, are much like the Depression times, only worse given the politics of things that have happened (Team Bush) and contrasted with the potentials of technology undreamed of 80 years ago. According to them these are the worst of times compared with the aftermath of the Depression. I tend to believe them.
I wish I could just travel back in time and talk to the young couple in the picture for awhile...
OK...today is Dad's Day - Call the old man if you can.
Happy Father's Day!