February 17, 2004
Verna Hughes
At last I will make an effert to tell you bout the depression. Hope you can understand what I am trying to say. Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma had a drought that is where the song came from:
Dear ole Okie if you see Arkie,
tell him Tex got a job for him out in California
digging oil wells now all you need is a shovel
Now those three states was the Dust Bowl. We did not get any rain and only showers. We would be working in the field, whirl wind would come and pick up the plants. then we had to haul water in for garden and flowers. The whirl winds were strong enough to almost pull off your clothes. The dirt was so deep and dusty on the rode the wagon wheels would throw dirt into the wagon. We had a creek run thru our land. That is where we got water for our laundry. Cattle 25 head, mules, horses and 6 head of goat got their water there too. Bread 10 cents, shoes, 75 cents to 1 dollar. That was expensive because we only got a dollar a day for labor of any kind. People were dieing with T.B. Then in 1933 we got a new president, Roosevelt. Things began to change. Like testing cattle for T.B. killed the ones that had T.B. paid $20 dollars for the ones killed. All ours were ok but neighbors lost some. He (Roosevelt) is the one that started the W.P.A. so pour folks could live, the commodities was started. They come from other states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas didn’t have anything. We didn’t get any of the W.P.A. but we made money when the prices went up on Cotton, corn, potatoes, and fruit garden. That was after we began to get rain.
Hope you can make sense out of this. If you picked 100 pounds of cotton, you got a dollar, took me all day to get that. Things sure got better after the rains came back. We sold eggs, 10 cents per dozen, honey 25 cents per quart, sold milk, chickens, turkeys, pigs, veggies was an improvement. That is why Roosevelt had to die to get him out of office. And they set the term date to 2 terms for the president.
By, by, your shrinking grandma