MySource:Srblac/Journal Review Article

Living through war, depression

Lets begin with the end of the First World War late in the fall of 1918. My family, meaning my father, mother and four children, lived in Mellott. I remember being carried on my father's shoulders, in the middle of the night, to the train depot to see a troop train bringing soldiers home from Europe.

We moved to Crawfordsville the next year and I started school. So the 1920s had just arrived on the scene. The age of the "Flappers" and on into the 1930s and the age of the "Great Depression".

The 1920s were the years of the Charleston, short skirts, and bare back tops. There was a comic strip called "Boots and her Buddies"). Boots had a very short, cute hair cut and you had better believe the "Boots" haircut became very popular -- even I wore one. The stock market crash of 1929 brought on terrible hardships, especially for the working class and the middle class blue collar workers. Wages went down and working hours increased. I worked for Montgomery Ward -- 2 hours a week at 23 cents an hour -- $11.96 was a week's wage.

After the crash Hoover had taken a battleship and gone fishing! Roosevelt was elected in 1932 (my first year to vote in the national election). FDR gave us the NRA (National Recovery Act). Of course I loved him. 40 hours a week and a $1 per hour! I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

The WPA (Works Progress Administration) program by government put laid off workers back to work rebuilding roads, putting in dams, cleaning roadways, mowing and picking up trash. Also building outside sanitary toilets for use in public parks. Anything to "prime the pump" to get America back to work.

Also, Social Security came in under Roosevelt. This was not ever to be touched by any later administration and never was until President Nixon came to office. That is exactly why Social Security is in trouble as of today.

I liked Roosevelt enough to vote for him four times. Of course the war, gradually building in the 1930s and finally hitting us in the 1940s, helped the economy because of the war equipment necessary and the enlistment of additional troops needed.

My sister, Donna Reichard, enlisted and took her training in Des Moines, Iowa. Upon graduation, she had the privilege of going to Officers Candidate School or going overseas with her platoon.

She chose to go overseas and served in Africa, Italy, and France. Donna served in several different areas, but most of the time she was a writer on the "Stars and Stripes" newspaper.

Lester Peebles served in the Seabees. Being a Quaker, he did not want to bear arms, so he enlisted in that branch of the service. That division was stationed in England was kept busy repairing equipment damaged in the war -- everything from land artillery to battle ships.

Rationing of gas, sugar, tires, etc. became the order of the day for all Americans. Being farmers, we had a little more attainable gas than city folks, but we surely did not waste any. I remember being very careful to conserve our sugar allotment each month. Flour was always in short supply also.

War is always very devastating, but the years after the "crash" evolving to the actual start of World War II became the time of economic recovery to the demand for fighter planes, tanks, guns, and ammunition.

This part of the country had a great recovery with Stewart Wagner in Lebanon (Indiana) making ammunition and Allison's building plane engines.

America had a very difficult burden to bear with the combining of Pearl Harbor in the Pacific and then entering into the war in Europe. Long were the years and hard to bear. How much terrible if our cities and countryside had been bombed over and over as in Europe? I'm sure all of America is thankful we were spared from the terror and destruction those countries went through.

Having been a teenager in the 1920s and seeing the hardships the working class went through just to make a living -- long hours and low wages -- and the benefits that came with the Roosevelt Administration made a Democrat out of me.

I have voted for some Republicans, but I think I have always lived better under the Democrats than under ultra-conservative Republicans. However, to each his own. That's the American way!