We’re not in a modern Great Depression

COLUMBUS — I’ve heard more times in recent months than I care to remember that we’re in the worst economic downturn since the days of the Great Depression.

From a certain perspective, it’s true. People are losing jobs or taking pay cuts. They’re losing homes and paying for more health care out of pocket (when they can actually afford the health care). Many are barely scraping by.

I assume that’s even more evident out in the hinterlands of Ohio, far away from the BWMs and Lexuses and the fancy-suit-wearing people who drive them around the Statehouse everyday (though, anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen no decrease in their numbers).

But are we really in a 21st century Great Depression?

Reading a recent compilation of memories posted by the Ohio Department of Aging, I think not.

Earlier this year, the state agency asked for stories from elderly Ohioans who lived through the hard times of the 1930s. More than 300 people responded with their memories. You can read them for yourself online at aging.ohio.gov.

It offers a stark contrast to how we live today.

Big gardens

Back then, people felt lucky if they had beans to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They grew big gardens and canned their produce. They made their own cottage cheese. Sometimes they begged bones from the butcher, claiming they were for the dog when they were really going into the family soup pot.

“After working in the mill all day my dad came home to a supper of baked beans on toast — one Campbell’s regular size can divided among the three of us; two slices of toast for dad, two for mom and one for me,” wrote Mildred Redman Dieter, an 81-year-old from Youngstown.

Back then, people made their own clothes, sometimes tearing the seams out of hand-me-downs to make dresses, sometimes turning potato sacks into pants.

They set traps to catch muskrats and rabbits, selling the skins and eating the meat. They made their own lye soap and lived in small houses without indoor plumbing, electricity of heating.

And Sears and Roebucks catalogs weren’t for reading.

“Our wash lady and her family of 12 kids were evicted from their home when they no longer could afford to pay the rent,” offered Joy Thomas, an 80-year-old from Canfield. “We found them with the 12 kids — heads shaven to discourage lice — living in a tent in the woods, fishing in the creek and picking wild blackberries for food. All were barefoot and shirtless and hollow-eyed, hiding behind trees when we approached them with a box of sparse food and clothing. They were so grateful they all cried and we rode all the way home quietly in silence, wondering why we were so lucky.”

And back then, people seemed more willing to try to make it on their own.

As N. D. Zimmerman, an 82-year-old from Cambridge, put it, “The generation of the 1930s was more self-sufficient than now. ... The main source of help was you. … They made do with what they had. They worked, when it was available, shared when they saw a need, and communicated with each other. There was no two or three hours each day watching TV or computers (because they did not exist!).”

X Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s statehouse correspondent. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at Ohio Capital Blog.