I'm going to keep this short and sweet people. - enough with the Great Depression references already. I get that things are not going that well right now - my husband does mortgages, trust me, I get it. But...
We are not at 25% unemployment. That's 1 out of 4 families without jobs (and the extent of my math skills.)
We are not suffering a drought that destroys farms and livestock and exposes us to real life starvation (not just the kind my kids talk about when they get off the bus. I'm pretty convinced that the school lunch lady is not actually feeding my kids, but rather taking our money and sending it to some Swiss bank in preparation for her flight to hair net freedom.)
We are not living in converted railroad cars, or tents, or chicken coops - although my family may be in a van down by the river soon. (It's what I like to call "the VW housing authority").
My grandfather lived through the Great Depression and I think he still lives with it. He never throws anything away. When we moved from California to Oregon we found scraps of wood that he'd strapped together and stacked in the storage space in our garage - just in case. (It was comforting to learn that we'd been living in an unlit woodpile for 5 years.) He can find more meat on a chicken wing than I thought existed on the whole chicken. He repairs his shoes with duct tape until there is more duct tape than shoe - (unless Grandma finally "persuaded" him to buy a new pair, and by persuaded I mean chasing the garbage man down as he is leaving the street so that there is no chance of my Grandfather retrieving his haute footwear.)
So...until I am literally digging through the city dump to find food and clothes like he did, I think it's a bit "after school special" of me to act like I understand his childhood suffering. I don't. I hope I never will.
Just remember as you look as these photos that we might be suffering a lot of things right now, but none of them is the Great Depression.
(ps- No need to thank me for the ray of sunshine that is this post.)
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5 comments:
It's so true! And if people would just continue to spend the money they have, instead of giving in to the herd mentality and freaking out, a lot of the businesses that are suffering wouldn't be, and then people wouldn't be losing their jobs.... It's all a big circle, people! Just make good decisions and live your life!
I agree with the Laundry Queen. I wonder how much of October's drastic consumer confidence numbers are due to all the bad, bad news, rather than consumer's own budget realities.
It's true. As bad as things may get, it will never compare to that. Or anything our grandparents, even our parents may have lived through. However, I do wish my food storage was just a little further along...
I didn't mean to imply that there aren't families out there actually suffering at this time...just that fear may guiding the rest of us.
My comment wasn't meant to discount the true suffering of those who are having troubles either, I am just bugged that the whole thing is snow balling and effecting those who shouldn't be.
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