Jeanne has once again graced us with her memories. Thank you for sharing!
The Great Depression and World
War II
For the past week I’ve been watching “The Roosevelts” on TV,
Ken Burns’ latest serial about American life.
I was born in December of 1934, and FDR was the president throughout my
childhood. The events portrayed were
happening as I grew up.
Until I was
seven we lived in Northeast Portland.
The Great Depression was apparent everywhere around us. Fortunately, my dad always had a good job; we
lived in a nice house and had plenty to eat.
That wasn’t true for some of our extended family. I remember my mom making food boxes for my
dad to deliver to aunts and cousins who had no work. There were abandoned houses in our
neighborhood because families had to move out due to the lack of
employment. Almost every day single men
would knock on our door and ask my mother if they could work for food. Sometimes she had no work for them but fed
them anyway. They would sit on our front
steps, balancing a plate on their knees and silently eat whatever she served
them. I was four or five years old and very curious about these people, but I
don’t remember them acknowledging me in any way. It seemed to me they were slightly
embarrassed by their circumstances.
One time
when I was riding in the car with my dad we stopped at a light and there on the
corner was an older woman, sitting on a couch with all her belongings piled
around her. I had never seen such a
thing. When I inquired about it my dad
said she had been evicted by the sheriff because she didn’t pay her rent. I asked my dad where she would go. He didn’t seem too concerned or interested, but
I was very upset by it. When I was
older, I realized he must have seen similar circumstances all the time as he
drove around Portland.
In April of
’42 my parents bought a house in the country.
We sat on a hill overlooking Tigard, Bull Mountain and the Coast Range
mountains. At that time we were really
out in the country; all the growth in that area occurred after the war. I think my parents moved there because people
believed there was a real threat of the Japanese invading the west coast or at
least bombing the cities. No one knew
what might happen, and people and the government became very irrational as
witnessed by the interment of the innocent Japanese-American citizens.
In school
we learned what to do in a bombing raid (get under the desk; stay away from
windows) and were paired with another student who lived very close to school so
we could go to their house with them if there was time. I decided right away that I would run the
mile to my house rather than be with strangers.
Every
residential area was assigned a Fire Marshall for their district. This was a neighbor who came around periodically
to make sure you had a bucket of sand, a shovel and a fire extinguisher in case
of an incendiary bomb attack. No outside
lights were allowed at night and windows were covered with blackout shades so
no light was visible from the outside.
Car travel at night was restricted, and cars that must be out had
special headlight shades installed.
All kinds
of good were rationed and some weren’t available at all. Meat, sugar, butter, and coffee all required
ration stamps to purchase as did shoes, tires and gasoline. Many people had Victory Gardens.
We observed
more signs of war as time went on: convoys of hundreds of Army trucks and jeeps
going form Camp Adair near Corvallis to Fort Lewis, squadrons of bombers coming
and going from who knows where.
Everything was “Top Secret”. “Loose Lips Sink Ships” was the motto of the
day.
One day my four-year-old brother
was playing outside by himself. He came
tearing into the house, his eyes huge.
He pulled on my mother’s clothes, “Mama, mama, look! There’s ……..somethin’!?
The “somethin’” was a huge blimp form the Tillamook Naval Air Station handing
right over the house so low my mother said you could clearly see the people
inside.
It was an interesting
and scary time. Then we entered another scary
time when school kids once again had to practice for attacks. It was called “The
Cold War.”
Jeanne R.
1 Oct 2014
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