Today’s recession nothing like ‘Great’ one

This spring I heard a lot of chirping, besides that of the birds. The main topic of the news media is our deep recession. As a survivor of the real Great Depression, I can view this setback so far as a pussy cat one.

This “can’t do without” generation should be compared with my “always do without” generation.

You have a depression when you have holes in your shoes with cardboard inserts, holes in your pants due to wear and tear, no food, no heat, no health insurance, no transportation and not even a penny to buy a roll of toilet paper. We used free orange wrappers from California that were used to wrap their oranges. Our east side grocer would save them for us.

We suffered in the early 1930s because my immigrant parents Carmella and Giovanni Lacivita from Agnone, Molise, Italy, were too proud to go on relief. No one in our good old U.S.A. should have to suffer like we did. Friends and relatives that were on relief fared much better than my four-member family, even though they had much larger families.

Plant a garden

Our 300 tomato plants, 100 pepper plants, eggplants and zucchini saved our necks. My advice to the younger generation is, start planting gardens, because you can’t eat the beautiful flowers and shrubs. Cook at home like our great Depression mothers did. I don’t ever remember eating out — fast food or restaurants.

Recently I had to wait 45 minutes to be seated at two of our major restaurants. You call his a major recession? My book “Rag Man, Rag Man,” has stories about the real Great Depression. The only milk we could afford was a nickel a gallon skimmed milk from the nearby Clover Leaf Dairy, which was destined for the hogs.

My friend Morris relates a great household tall tale of those tough times and how his mother improvised. She she would gather the children around the kitchen table and say, “Children, tonight we are going to have scent of a chicken soup,” which meant she would pass a bare naked headless chicken over a pot of boiling hot water.

I don’t want to experience the good old days ever again, and neither does Morris.

X Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree who has been inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.