With the Season Of Holly Daze about to land on us with both feet, and a cudgel of "Buy, Buy, Buy" to beat us into submission, it has come to my attention that more than a few of us are in what we like to delicately call "a financial bind".
The community has stepped up for so many of our members, to offer whatever they could...from actual hard cash, to love and encouragement and support. Again and again, I am reminded why I've been reading here for so long, why I finally took the plunge and signed up to have my say.
Come for the politics, stay for the community.
There is also the reminder of how hard people strive to do more with less. My mum taught me a few things about that.
Hop over the Puddle of Orange Crush, and we'll kibitz a bit about it.
My mum grew up during the Great Depression, which was not, as it turns out, all that great. She learned some hard, bitter truths, much as some people (including yours truly) are learning today. Being poor sucks.
She learned some pretty cool things, too. Banding together is safer and more fun than trying to do it all on your own. Be careful what you spend your available resources on:
Use it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do, or do without.
My mum lived in a building with all sorts of people, including her best friend, Dot, who was a school teacher. Teachers have never gotten rich doing that job, and Dot was no exception. She was dedicated, committed, and broke most of the time, as were most of the other building residents. But they were smart, too, and at least once a week, pooled their meagre resources to have a pot luck supper. Everyone got at least one hearty meal a week, and they looked after each other the rest of the time.
And, like all of us...they had an incredible sense of humour about things. It kept the worst of the worry at bay, was a great release of tension and stress, and gave my mum some....interesting...stories to tell me, once I was old enough to hear them.
The same went on in the rest of the country, it seems. Take a gander at a few of the movies from that era that actually mentioned what was going on:
From 1936:
One of the best for being honest about the plight of the poor, but with the added benefit of being a screwball comedy with Carole Lombard and William Powell (most famous for the Thin Man movies...and being the object of a serious crush by yours truly.) Just for fun, though...
This is the outtake reel from the movie...it wasn't all doom and gloom!
From 1941:
Meet John Doe is a Frank Capra classic, a little heavier than most of the escape movies of the time. It was before Pearl Harbor, when the world threatened to go up in flames, but it took a hard look at the corporate robber barons and at the great humanity of regular people:
The 1930s also brought us the classics everyone knows...The Wizard Of Oz, for example...pure Hollywood escapism! But it holds up well for all of the young at heart.
For a more detailed look at the movies of the 1930s, take a gander at this web site, as time permits.
Trust me, you'll be there a while!
Music did its part, too. The Number One song of the 1930s was this one, by one of my favourite orchestras:
This is one of the most famous dance sequences, ever...from Top Hat in 1935:
Cab Calloway made this one so much fun!
The rest of the list of the top 100 songs of the '30s is here. It is more than worth a look, since many of these songs have been made and re-made over the years.
While the Great Depression wasn't so great, and certainly was a Depression, people got by the way they always do. By banding together, laughing when they could, crying when they needed to, and just getting from one day to the next.
Most of the stories my mum told me cannot be repeated in a family forum. Turns out a few things about that are true, too:
Human nature hasn't changed much at all!
The peach doesn't fall far from the tree.
We find our comforts where we find them, and no one should ever be shamed for being poor. I can tell you from experience, it's not like we woke up one morning and said, "Y'know...poor sounds like a fun thing to be!" sheesh.
Some men (and women) are more fun than we should be allowed to have, especially during the really bad times....and in the good times? Katie bar the door!! :-D
Music is the universal language.
Kindness matters.
Oh. Bathtub gin. It's a real thing. And, sadly, it's the one recipe she did not leave me! From Wiki:
Bathtub gin refers to any style of homemade spirit made in amateur conditions. The term first appeared in 1920, in the prohibition-era United States, in reference to the poor-quality alcohol that was being made.
As gin was the predominant drink in the 1920s, many variations were created by mixing cheap grain alcohol with water and flavorings and other agents, such as juniper berry juice and glycerin. Because the preferred sort of bottle was too tall to be topped off with water from a sink, they were filled from a bathtub tap,[citation needed] as well as sometimes distilled from and fermented in a bathtub. Hence the name, 'bathtub gin'.
Many gin cocktails owe their existence to bathtub gin, as they were also created in order to mask the awful taste.
We, too, will get through what often seems like an impossible burden of horrors...wars ready to kick off in a trice, the great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, broken governments, rotten people who will trample over anyone and anything to get what they want, and all the social injustice that threatens to overwhelm us.
We'll get through it the way we always have...with grace and humour and music...and Love.
Just a little thought or two to get you through the Holly Daze.
So what gets you through the tough times? Or, do you have something else on your mind? Whatever, whichever, come kibitz a while.
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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