redclfco
New member
With the REsession going down, I thought it might be a good time to pass on some stories of the GREAT DE pression so many years ago, to make those of us crying in our soup feel a little better about the current times...
My Dad's family hung onto the cattle ranch by raising turkeys, thousands of turkeys, and drove them all over the countryside; farmers welcomed them because they were a natural insecticide as they drove these birds through the fields of crops. My dad's family ate so much Turkey; he could never eat Turkey the rest of his life. We would serve white meat at thanksgiving, and he would turn around and feed it to the cats. These were cattle and horse ranchers, mind you. They did this to find a way to not sell the ranch and their stock.
My Grandma who lived in the foothills west of Ft. Collins, CO used a stick with a crook shaped hook to catch rattlesnakes, and gathered them into a great big purse with a snap lid. The family put them big 50 gal wooden barrels for keep and fed mice to them. Each fall when it got very cold, they would pack them up in crates, and ship them to somebody to milk the venom. Each fall after the temps went down, my dad said they had a trailer where they would dump them onto the floor in a heated shack, and pull them out of the ball of snakes to fill the crates, but said you had to work fast before they warmed up and got nasty.
Dad said that all the neighbors pooled the kids together in a sod house for sleeping arrangements during the winter months to avoid heating up the individual houses. About twenty kids in this sod hut. I saw that hut 35 years later, still standing, and had LESS square ft. than my kid’s bedroom!
Cigarette butts. The whole family smoked (cough, cough)..So Grandma would gather all the butts into a container, and when they were out, they all would set down and roll the smokes to keep everybody going (cough cough).
I have all these great cedar lamps made out of twisted cedar (juniper to you easterners) with the red streaks throughout the lamps. My grandparents made them during the depression. In order to finish these lamps, I have used sandpaper. In the depression, they used thick pieces of bottle glass, and scraped them down to the desired finish...
My best hunting knife was passed down to me from my dad, and his dad. It’s made from a hunk of sickle bar, then ground down, heated (tempered) and reheated, then sharpened into an 8" hunting knife.. It holds a perfect edge, has gone through more deer pelvises and ribcages then most knives have ever seen, yet stays sharp as a razor with a few passes on the whet stone. The handle is rubber cut some how down through old tractor tires,alternating black and sort of a dull black red as the colors of tires from those years. The entirre handle is hand made, and somehow laminated together, with a brass cap made from a radiator from an old car. It is in perfect condition, and will be passed down hopefully for many generations to come.
Things were rough in those days. Most families who lived around there ate all the deer, to the point where finding one was a real challenge. Rugs were made of old clothing, tied on a string them loomed into a round rug. Carp fish and suckers were not thrown back; they were eaten, along with anything else pulled from the lakes and streams. Soap was made from wood ashes, and nothing was wasted. Coffee was made, remade, and finally chewed like tobacco. I'm sure others out there have equal stories of perseverance and sacrifice.
These were tough days which the likes I pray America will never have to experience again.
Anybody out there have stories that may make todays little bump in the road sound a little better?
IMHO, America needs to pull themselves up by their boot straps here, and quit crying in our soup. We all need to stick together, Dems and Republicans alike if we are going to see better days!
My Dad's family hung onto the cattle ranch by raising turkeys, thousands of turkeys, and drove them all over the countryside; farmers welcomed them because they were a natural insecticide as they drove these birds through the fields of crops. My dad's family ate so much Turkey; he could never eat Turkey the rest of his life. We would serve white meat at thanksgiving, and he would turn around and feed it to the cats. These were cattle and horse ranchers, mind you. They did this to find a way to not sell the ranch and their stock.
My Grandma who lived in the foothills west of Ft. Collins, CO used a stick with a crook shaped hook to catch rattlesnakes, and gathered them into a great big purse with a snap lid. The family put them big 50 gal wooden barrels for keep and fed mice to them. Each fall when it got very cold, they would pack them up in crates, and ship them to somebody to milk the venom. Each fall after the temps went down, my dad said they had a trailer where they would dump them onto the floor in a heated shack, and pull them out of the ball of snakes to fill the crates, but said you had to work fast before they warmed up and got nasty.
Dad said that all the neighbors pooled the kids together in a sod house for sleeping arrangements during the winter months to avoid heating up the individual houses. About twenty kids in this sod hut. I saw that hut 35 years later, still standing, and had LESS square ft. than my kid’s bedroom!
Cigarette butts. The whole family smoked (cough, cough)..So Grandma would gather all the butts into a container, and when they were out, they all would set down and roll the smokes to keep everybody going (cough cough).
I have all these great cedar lamps made out of twisted cedar (juniper to you easterners) with the red streaks throughout the lamps. My grandparents made them during the depression. In order to finish these lamps, I have used sandpaper. In the depression, they used thick pieces of bottle glass, and scraped them down to the desired finish...
My best hunting knife was passed down to me from my dad, and his dad. It’s made from a hunk of sickle bar, then ground down, heated (tempered) and reheated, then sharpened into an 8" hunting knife.. It holds a perfect edge, has gone through more deer pelvises and ribcages then most knives have ever seen, yet stays sharp as a razor with a few passes on the whet stone. The handle is rubber cut some how down through old tractor tires,alternating black and sort of a dull black red as the colors of tires from those years. The entirre handle is hand made, and somehow laminated together, with a brass cap made from a radiator from an old car. It is in perfect condition, and will be passed down hopefully for many generations to come.
Things were rough in those days. Most families who lived around there ate all the deer, to the point where finding one was a real challenge. Rugs were made of old clothing, tied on a string them loomed into a round rug. Carp fish and suckers were not thrown back; they were eaten, along with anything else pulled from the lakes and streams. Soap was made from wood ashes, and nothing was wasted. Coffee was made, remade, and finally chewed like tobacco. I'm sure others out there have equal stories of perseverance and sacrifice.
These were tough days which the likes I pray America will never have to experience again.
Anybody out there have stories that may make todays little bump in the road sound a little better?
IMHO, America needs to pull themselves up by their boot straps here, and quit crying in our soup. We all need to stick together, Dems and Republicans alike if we are going to see better days!
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She always lived by the saying "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." All of the sisters moved to Washington D.C. during the war and never moved back to the mountains. They're all gone now, but during my life I saw a real spirit of determination and ability to endure hardship in them that was amazing.
