Season's Greetings From The Boys From Marketing!

[BlueTrain]

Cars last longer too.

I'm 70 now and I'm always a little shocked when I see death notices in the paper from someone my age or worse, even younger. It worries me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Car engines last longer. -- but when they fail, they fail catastrophically. I drove the Plodge over 300 miles with a shattered piston -- I don't think you could do that with a modern car.

Car bodies, unless you went for the undercoating, still rust out alarmingly fast. At least in the Northeast they do.

 

[MisterCairo]

Car engines last longer. -- but when they fail, they fail catastrophically. I drove the Plodge over 300 miles with a shattered piston -- I don't think you could do that with a modern car.

Car bodies, unless you went for the undercoating, still rust out alarmingly fast. At least in the Northeast they do.

I have never seen a Ford Focus that didn't have rust, regardless of how new it is. You'd think they'd investigate the paint, undercoat and application processes.

 

[Stearmen]

I think a big part of the whitewashing in the '70s had to do with the popularity of "The Waltons," which, while a well-written entertaining show, offered a highly selective image of what it was like to live thru the Depression. The Waltons, by early 1930s standards, were not poor. Not in any way whatsoever. They owned land, and a large home, and a working family business that paid enough for them to live on, they had electricity -- which the overwhelming majority of rural families did not have until the REA got going -- and they always had enough to eat. The result was a distorted image of the Depression for people who didn't know much about it -- if what they saw on TV was "the Depression," well, it -- and the system that produced that depression in the first place -- couldn't have been that bad after all.

I watched "The Waltons" regularly all thru its run, and enjoyed it for what it was, but I knew that it was nothing like the real Depression. I've always thought there ought to be an updated version for HBO or something, with a bit more authenticity. Call it "The Wyckoffs," and have it tell the story of a desperate family crammed into an Old Law tenement on the lower East Side. Pa is a laid-off fur cutter who jumps a freight train to go to Washington to join the Bonus Army, and comes home with a lung full of gas for his trouble. Ma does piecework in a sweatshop and is scared to join the ILGWU for fear she'll be beaten and fired. The youngest son dropped out of school to hustle on the streets, and is a pickpocket known as "Jimmy the Dip." The middle son plays piano in a bordello, and hopes if he works hard enough he might get a job at Poily Adler's. John Boy, the oldest, is an idealistic street-corner Communist who leads hunger marches and wants to write plays like Clifford Odets, but all he can get is a copyreading job on the WPA. Two of the daughters quit school to hire out as maids for wealthy German families on Vanderbilt Avenue, while the other changed her name to "Brenda LaRue," lied about her age, and got a job as a chorus girl at Minsky's. Grandma and Grandpa rarely talk, because they're still traumatized from fleeing the Cossacks back in the old country. And Ike Godsey runs the ex-speakeasy where Pa goes to drown his sorrows each night.

In general, if you lived on a farm that was not affected by the dust bowl during the 30s, you were better off then most city folks. Both my parents said they never went to bed hungry, plenty of pork and eggs to eat. Now, none of them were any where close to over weight, but they worked hard, my Dad said, boot camp was a breeze! Lights out soon after dark, to save kerosene and up at dawn. The Waltons did lay it on way thick, but there were some good aspects to it. Having said that, neither of my parents, or any of my Aunts And Uncles ever expressed a desire to go back to the 30s!

 

[Stearmen]

The more telling stats are those filed under "life expectancy by age," meaning how much more life might the average person expect if he or she survives to age 10, and 20, and 30, and so on. Those numbers have indeed been going up -- pretty much across the board -- for more than the century and a half that more or less reliable data are available.

Attributing that increase to any one factor would be folly, of course. But many millions of people live into their 80s and beyond these days who not so long ago would have croaked in their 50s and 60s if not for the medical advances of recent years.

I have talked to others who tell me my findings in the mortality rate of my ancestors is what they found. Tracing mine back to around the 18th century, if you take out child mortality, the biggest killer, farm accidents, easily curable ailments like pneumonia, and a couple to wars, our family consistently died between 70 to mid 80s. Look at the founding fathers.

 

[Stearmen]

My grandmother could tell you who in our reasonably small town had affairs, who had "gone away" to give up a baby, whose very young "sister" was really a daughter, etc. It all went on. And my grandmother should know as I found out after she died that she had had a multi-decade affair with a married man.

 

[tonyb]

... there were some good aspects to it. Having said that, neither of my parents, or any of my Aunts And Uncles ever expressed a desire to go back to the 30s!

Pretty much the sense I got from the folks a generation and two ahead of me as well.

 

[sheeplady]

In general, if you lived on a farm that was not affected by the dust bowl during the 30s, you were better off then most city folks. Both my parents said they never went to bed hungry, plenty of pork and eggs to eat. Now, none of them were any where close to over weight, but they worked hard, my Dad said, boot camp was a breeze! Lights out soon after dark, to save kerosene and up at dawn. The Waltons did lay it on way thick, but there were some good aspects to it. Having said that, neither of my parents, or any of my Aunts And Uncles ever expressed a desire to go back to the 30s!

I think I'd add to that: if you owned a farm "free and clear." My grandmother's father and mother lost 2 farms during the depression (bought 3; held onto the third). My grandmother was sent away to be a maid for the middle class undertaker at age 12. My great-grandfather died on his third farm at age 89 (they think- he lied about being younger to work in the coal mines between farms).

There was never enough to eat with the tax man and banker breathing down your neck. If you actually work a farm, you realize that if the animals still sort of alive when it gets on the truck, that's tax money paid and better than a full stomach, any day. Now, if the animal's dead... then you feast. But, you pray that slaughter truck comes and it will sort of get on under it's own power. (Yes, that's the meat you eat, even today, it's not all nice healthy animals prancing around green fields.)

 

[BlueTrain]

Referring to cars again, modern cars, that is, it isn't so much that they fail catastrophically so much as they either work or don't work. But some later models, mine included, have something like a cut-off feature that supposedly prevents serious engine damage when something needs attention. It is accompanied by a warning messages that says something like "Service engine NOW!" And it means it, too. It's remarkable that they are so trouble-free, relatively speaking. They also have rather long service intervals.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think I'd add to that: if you owned a farm "free and clear." My grandmother's father and mother lost 2 farms during the depression (bought 3; held onto the third). My grandmother was sent away to be a maid for the middle class undertaker at age 12. My great-grandfather died on his third farm at age 89 (they think- he lied about being younger to work in the coal mines between farms).

There was never enough to eat with the tax man and banker breathing down your neck. If you actually work a farm, you realize that if the animals still sort of alive when it gets on the truck, that's tax money paid and better than a full stomach, any day. Now, if the animal's dead... then you feast. But, you pray that slaughter truck comes and it will sort of get on under it's own power. (Yes, that's the meat you eat, even today, it's not all nice healthy animals prancing around green fields.)

There was a lot of tension and violence in farm country over mortgages. Many "independent farmers" were little better off than sharecroppers thanks to predatory mortgage-holders, merciless foreclosure laws, and depressed prices for commoditites, and this led to a situation that came very close to revolution in parts of the midwest. The Farmers Holiday Association movement engaged in various militant acts of terrorism, including attacks on trucks taking goods to market, spiking of roads, mob attacks on participants in foreclosure auctions, and in one case, the abduction of a foreclosure judge from his courtroom and his near-lynching. The whole situation was a powder keg waiting to be touched off, and as flawed as the AAA was, that was what defused the crisis.

 

[ChrisB]

In "The Homecoming", a TV movie which spawned "The Waltons", they lived under consideraly more spartan conditions.

 

[Fading Fast]

All one needs to do is read "The Grapes of Wrath" or see the movie. As a kid, that one shook me to my core and I grew up in a home where the depression was still a palpable fear despite my childhood spanning the '60s ad '70s. My family's depression was a city / town one where jobs went away, businesses failed and people lost their homes.

Both my mother's and father's family (and my mother and father as children) experienced the loss of a home and one of the two lost a business and the other held on to their very small one by the skin of their teeth. They moved into, effectively, tenements and worried about food - and didn't eat luxuriously, but they did eat. That fear enveloped our home when I was growing up.

But that did not fully prepared me for the hell the Joad's went through. After reading that, I was ready to take on a city / town depression, but there was no force on earth that would or will get me on a farm. "Walton's / Schmaltons" - "The Grapes of Wrath" will set anyone straight on that.

 

[BlueTrain]

Another good movie from the same period that depicted more or less accurately living conditions for small farmers was "The Southerner." The main characters were tenant farmers growing cotton. Made in 1945, it began with the family arriving at their new but very run-down home with granny in a rocking chair on the back of the pickup truck, just like the Beverly Hillbillies. They had a run-in with a neighbor but that got worked out, only in the end, a storm destroyed their crop.

An interesting thing is that the man, Zackary Scott, who played the husband, also appeared in the movie Mildred Pierce, also in 1945, playing a totally different character. I thought he played the farmer part very well.

And on a side note, there was a musical group back in the 1930s that provided string band music for horse operas called "The Beverly Hills Billies.'

 

[Fading Fast]

Another good movie from the same period that depicted more or less accurately living conditions for small farmers was "The Southerner." The main characters were tenant farmers growing cotton. Made in 1945, it began with the family arriving at their new but very run-down home with granny in a rocking chair on the back of the pickup truck, just like the Beverly Hillbillies. They had a run-in with a neighbor but that got worked out, only in the end, a storm destroyed their crop.

An interesting thing is that the man, Zackary Scott, who played the husband, also appeared in the movie Mildred Pierce, also in 1945, playing a totally different character. I thought he played the farmer part very well.

And on a side note, there was a musical group back in the 1930s that provided string band music for horse operas called "The Beverly Hills Billies.'

I agree, Scott pops up in a bunch of movies and, usually, does a very good job, but for some reason, he never seems to have broken out into really big stardom.

In the HBO remake of "Mildred Pierce," I though the actor who played the Scott role carefully studied how Scott played it as he - more than any of the other actors in the new production - played it very close to how it was done in the original movie.

 

[sheeplady]

I think the other thing to consider is that so many farms ended up supporting more people than originally planned, too, with families headed "back" to the farm to shelter the depression and young people not leaving as they had no where to go.

The dissatisfaction of farmers continued well into the 1950s. There was a protest near where I grew up where farmers dumped their milk and the State Troopers fired into the crowd.

 

[Stearmen]

There was a lot of tension and violence in farm country over mortgages. Many "independent farmers" were little better off than sharecroppers thanks to predatory mortgage-holders, merciless foreclosure laws, and depressed prices for commoditites, and this led to a situation that came very close to revolution in parts of the midwest. The Farmers Holiday Association movement engaged in various militant acts of terrorism, including attacks on trucks taking goods to market, spiking of roads, mob attacks on participants in foreclosure auctions, and in one case, the abduction of a foreclosure judge from his courtroom and his near-lynching. The whole situation was a powder keg waiting to be touched off, and as flawed as the AAA was, that was what defused the crisis.

The only Robin Hood type action that Bonnie And Clyde did during their lifetime, was to burn mortgages when they robbed a couple of banks! Mind you, it was only a couple of times.

 

[Stearmen]

All one needs to do is read "The Grapes of Wrath" or see the movie. As a kid, that one shook me to my core and I grew up in a home where the depression was still a palpable fear despite my childhood spanning the '60s ad '70s. My family's depression was a city / town one where jobs went away, businesses failed and people lost their homes.

Both my mother's and father's family (and my mother and father as children) experienced the loss of a home and one of the two lost a business and the other held on to their very small one by the skin of their teeth. They moved into, effectively, tenements and worried about food - and didn't eat luxuriously, but they did eat. That fear enveloped our home when I was growing up.

But that did not fully prepared me for the hell the Joad's went through. After reading that, I was ready to take on a city / town depression, but there was no force on earth that would or will get me on a farm. "Walton's / Schmaltons" - "The Grapes of Wrath" will set anyone straight on that.

Funny side note, old Joseph Stalin bought several copies of The Grapes Of Wrath to show how bad it was in America. He premiered it in Moscow, which was the one and only showing in Mother Russia. The reason was, when the Russian's came out of the theater, they were all saying the same thing, "even the poorest Amerikanski has an automobile!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

They were only quoting Will Rogers, who declared in a 1931 radio broadcast --

"So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of it than any other country ever had on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. The potter's fields are lined with granaries full of grain. Now if there ain't something cockeyed in an arrangement like that then this microphone here in front of me is—well, it's a cuspidor, that's all."

The "Grapes of Wrath" movie, bowlderized as it was from the original book, became kind of an ink-blot test in which you could see whatever you wanted to see. It was one of Hitler's favorite movies, because, he argued, it showed how utterly degenerate Anglo-Saxon Americans had become, and how easy it would be for the Aryan superiority of the Wehrmacht to crush an American army full of malnourished Okies into the ground.

He wasn't quite right about that, of course, just like he completely underestimated the Russians, but it *is* a fact that the most common reason for men being rejected by the American draft which began in 1940 was malnutrition.

 

[Fading Fast]

To this day, I believe farming is - oddly as we all were farmers once - the one business that is much better off if individual owners sell out to large corporations. Farming can go through terrible years where weather, disease and commodity prices continually conspire against it. It takes a lot of capital in the bank to survive that and few individuals or "family farms" can maintain that big a cushion. But corporations can budget through all that and do.

I know there are many examples of family farms that have survived and thrived for centuries - and more power to them, I wouldn't ever force anyone to sell or buy a farm. But at a high-level, farming, IMHO, is better left to corporations that can take years of losses. Maybe "The Grapes of Wrath" scared me too much as a kid and my ideas on farming are all wet as I'll admit, other than the occasional look-see at a farm here or there, I have absolutely no first hand experience with farming.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The dissatisfaction of farmers continued well into the 1950s. There was a protest near where I grew up where farmers dumped their milk and the State Troopers fired into the crowd.

Such incidents are why, since 1935, wholesale and retail milk prices in Maine are strictly regulated by the Maine Milk Commission.