EXCERPTED:I Wonder What the Poor Folks Are Having Tonight? Episode #8

I grew up in a household where we had measured discussions about serious things. I assumed everyone did, but when I eventually began school and advanced in the grades, I discovered that not every family was like ours. Many of the kids I grew up with never talked about such things at all. I was astonished by this. Some didn’t even know if they were Republicans or Democrats or something else. It was yet another way I found to appreciate our happy and interesting home life. I still seek that kind of conversation, but it has been hard to find. It’s even harder to find today.

One of the most important lessons I heard from hearing the folks talk about their growing up years was about whether it could happen again. Obviously a war could happen because talk of nuclear war was common. But what about the Depression? Could that happen again? They assured us that it could. It was awful and it could happen again. That opened up a whole new world of concern for me. If it could happen again, what were we doing to prepare for it? How could we be in a better position than my mom’s folks had been when it hit them? What had caused it? Could the same things cause another one?

The folks had some answers for what had caused the Depression, but I wasn’t convinced. Our school books said it was caused by overproduction and people buying too many stocks on margin, but that didn’t satisfy me, either. I began a quest to really understand what had caused it. That quest took me to college and to grad school looking for answers. The Depression shaped my life because the folks had cared enough to talk about serious things at home.

Over the years as I studied economic history I grew more and more concerned about a return of difficult economic times. There was the oil embargo and the inflation of the 1970s. We had a period of price controls in the early 1970s. There were stock market ups and downs, the Cold War, and a terrible war in Southeast Asia. I became more and more alarmed about when we might see a return of those economic difficulties of the 1930s.

In short, I adopted much of my parents’ ways of thinking, and from those ideas I began to look back to simpler, more practical ways of living. These columns are a result of their willingness to talk about the world they knew growing up. When you have Depression parents, you hear them speaking nearly every day, even long after they have passed into the next life. We were so lucky they shared their experiences and wisdom with us, and we have all been the richer for it.

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