[Ayoob_Reloaded]

Here are links to pics of GD http://history1900s.about.com/library/p ... ession.htm

Dammit

[pup55]

Good work.

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/new ... 101a_2.htm

Re-read this article, and instead of the word "margin" substitute the word "mortgage" and instead of the word "stock" substitute the word "real estate".

It becomes an article (from the perspective of someone in 2015) about the year 2006.

[J-Rod]

Well, I don't know if any of you remember a post from awhile ago regarding my grandmother. She's a depression survivor, 80-something years old, and still pretty sharp of mind, at least for now. She loves to ramble on and on for literally hours, many of the stories I have heard I just humored her by lending an ear. These days the stories take on a new meaning, and I listen with real intent. I've started recording her, (without her knowledge, if i told her she would clam up) and am going to try my hand at compiling something of a book.

It's a bit hard to do, considering the stories aren't always told in a way that makes for easy transcription, jumping around and such. I figure that once I get enough stuff recorded I'll be able to piece things together in a decent way, or at least as a collection of stand alone stories. Here's one that was fairly linear, and I transcripted almost word for word.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ean Bag

When you don’t have much to start out with, sometimes it’s the littlest things in life that bring you joy. It then becomes all that much harder to lose what’s left. We begin this segment with Thelma at a young unspecified age, in the foothills of Appalachia.

“Roosevelt was the best president we ever had. He came from a family of wealth, and so did Elenaor, and yet he went out of that class, and went down to the people who had nothing. He would go to West Virginia university and hire these students who hadn’t graduated, but were higher classmen and he could give them money, like WPA but for students.

-skip backwards to the young years-

We had to go down to First Club (sic) to get in this arts class. So, this girl was sent in to teach us how to weave baskets, so we made those for the first two or three days, and the next project we had to do was to draw. We were to try to blend colors that compliment each other. We were each supposed to draw a picture of anything that we wanted to draw,
but try to keep our lines straight, and have it be something we believed in. So everybody sits down at their little desk, and you know me, I drew a butterfly. Orange, yellow, black
on the wings, course on just a small piece of paper. These were all turned in to the teacher, who would look them over, and then the kids would raise their hands to show which one they like the best. I won with that picture. So what I won, was a beanbag.

So I went home, and of course us kids enjoyed throwing it at each other, get them in the head, or the back, you never knew where the person was hiding and you’d get hit. (I assume this is where the term “beaning” someone came from. You learn something new every day. That’s a saying I have picked up from this wise woman.) But we had a lot of fun with the darned thing.

Well one day, it come up missing. And I looked and I looked all over, I knocked on people’s doors and asked “Have you seen my beanbag?” It was just a little printed piece of material, with the beans in it, and nobody had seen it. Well, I finally decided that it’s gone, maybe it went in the river or something. So, one day I was making a run for one of my sisters (Thelma is the 13th child in the family, born on Halloween.) or maybe it was for the black man who had commited suicide. (This is from another story this session that will be transcripted later.)

I found the material lying against the wall of one of the coal houses, but it was empty. It was all wet and dirty, but I recognized the material. I bent over to pick it up, and sure enough, it was my beanbag. I ran back home to momma, and said “Mom! Mom! What happened to my beanbag?” She said “Well, it’s empty.” “Yeah, but what happened to it?”
“Well how would I know?” she replied. “Wouldn’t you know if one of the neighbors had beans or not?” “Well there’s lots of people that live in those shanties.” So of course I keep bitching about the loss of my beanbag. So finally, that evening my mother was doing something, oh right she was checking for lice in our hair. We’d have to sit on the ground, with her in the chair, and she’d part our hair like this, and we could hear the snap of the shells pop as she went through. (gross.) After she did all she could, she’d rub kerosene on our heads. Well I’ll tell ya JP, I’ve had a hard life.

Anyhow, I said “Mom, you ever find out what happened to my beanbag?” “Haven’t you forgotten about that yet?” was the reply. “No, it was mine.”
“Well let me tell you something honey, there’s a lot of people that don’t have any food. They’re not as lucky as we are.”
I really didn’t know what is was like to be hungry, because we had different ways of finding food, and just simply making do. We had a small garden, my brothers hunted for squirrel and rabbit. The government had also built a community building. So I didn’t really have that kind of problem. I hadn’t connected the fact that other people were starving to death, and they would see my beanbag as food, and not a toy.

It took me a long long time to know what it was like to really be hungry. And the girls (family) yell at me for feeding Stoney so much. (Her very large dog, beast has to weigh in at over 100lbs.) I said I will never, ever have anything around me that can’t eat. I think that the cruelest thing that can happen is to be without food.”

[anneliese-nyc]

My relatives told me of hard times . Lard sandwiches and soup made of whatever was available. Many had gardens and trees that bore fruit in their area. Hmm for the Deep south there would be more of pecan pie and orange marmalade. For the Northeast there would be more of apple pie and cranberry compote .There are many lost arts ...such as sewing, canning, gardening etc. All these have to be relearned if we are to surive, or let me say...if we survive whatever the government at the time deems to do with millions of excess people.

[Zardoz]

My dad was the only guy on the block who had a job at one point. When my folks would come home from buying groceries, they would pull the car into the garage and close the door, then quietly unload the bags and spirit them into the house, taking care that nobody saw them.

Imagine this: My folks planned a special little outing one week. On Monday they penciled in Friday night for a trip downtown (Peoria, Illinois) to get ice cream sundaes. Believe it not, that was a big deal for people during those brutally tough times.

It didn't work out. They got their sundaes, but the kid behind the counter had overcooked the hot chocolate syrup, and burned it badly. Their sundaes were awful. My mom mentioned several times how broken-hearted she was as an example of how such a minor little thing like an ice cream treat was so special during the depression.

[threadbear]

This isn't a story from the depression, but a story about surviving as a family in the Soviet gulag system, post war. I think the purpose of the thread is to describe great deprivation, and survival, so this fits. Very harrowing. How the world produces a monster like Stalin is a real curiosity. How a man this evil can actually rise to the top and control so many lives is beyond weird.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... b8d0b6dcbb

[Novus]

J-Rod, that story you just posted is almost word for word from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird." Why do you have to plagiarize and lie about something like this? It is good story but it is not yours or your grandmothers if she even exists. I have not read the book in over ten years but that bean bag story really burned itself in my mind. How long did you think it would be before someone remembered and outed you? Time to confess.

[J-Rod]

Normally, I'd just ignore a comment like that Novus. But since I have the audio handy....

http://jrodder.googlepages.com/Recording5.mp3

Her first story of that day was one I wish I had the recorder on for. It involved a guy in their town that decided to do himself in with dynamite around his neck. She's usually not that morbid when it comes to the stories.

[Novus]

Well then your Grandmother is a liar because it is pretty much word for word from the book right down to the mother's relpy.

[J-Rod]

Why so much vitriol? I don't have a copy of the book so I can't check myself. Although she seems quite sharp for the most part with current events and the like, maybe being that old she has assimilated a memory from a book she read as her own? I dunno. It's funny that you didn't even offer a slight apology for my "plagiarism" and a non existant grandmother. You got something against me?

I am guessing if I bother to post any more of them here, I can look forward to your popping in and questioning the validity of anything she has to say. I wasn't able to find a copy of Mockingbird online to search this beanbag story on. Last time I read that was 12 years ago, and I think it may have been cliff notes.

[Novus]

The whole peak oil...end of the world thing is starting to get to me. I can't tell you how angry I am at past generations. Nothing against you or your grandmother personally.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'T')he whole peak oil...end of the world thing is starting to get to me. I can't tell you how angry I am at past generations...

[Kfish]

Hey Novus,

Care to provide a page reference for that "bean bag" story from "To Kill a Mockingbird?" I've read the book several times and can't remember anything like it appearing in the book.

And if you can't find it, then maybe you'd better find an apology.

Kfish.

[J-Rod]

Well I spoke to my aunt yesterday, (Thelma's daughter) and she says that Grandma never read To Kill a Mockingbird, and that her long term memory is extremely sharp. Some of her dead siblings (remember she was the 13th child in the family) have also talked about this particular event. Apparently losing this bean bag was quite traumatic.

[mgibbons19]

I might point out that while getting your grandma's stories while she is alive is wonderful research, there are serious ethical issues to recording her without her knowledge. Especially if it is something you intend to eventually collect and publish. I love the idea but that is a research project I would not feel comfortable with, and no university's Human Subjects board would approve.

[J-Rod]

Maybe I misconstrued what I was doing. It's nothing I would ever publish for profit without her knowledge, and I certainly don't think I am a good enough writer to get to that point anyways. If I did, of course she would be presented with the book and asked for permission. She'll be informed about it in any case once I have plenty of audio. Her daughter is the one actually that suggested if I wanted to do this, that it's better she not be told she's on tape.

It's mainly a project to collect her thoughts and experiences into a book we can keep in the family, as well as the audio recordings. We all don't like to think about it, but she's old as dirt, I'd like to have stuff beyond pictures to remember her by. I only posted here because of the quasi relevance of the depression she lived through and the good chance of that happening again in the future. The audio I shouldn't have posted, but I don't like being called a liar and a plagiarist, with a make-believe grandmother.

[cmlek]

Hey JRod, I'm going to go ahead and apologize for Novus - I've read TKAM several times too, and I don't remember anything about a bean bag. I do think the stories you're recording are neat though, and I'd love to hear more.

Melissa

[Novus]

Since I can't find an online link I am just going to appologize.

J-rod, I am sorry I called you and your grandmother liars.

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'T')he whole peak oil...end of the world thing is starting to get to me. I can't tell you how angry I am at past generations. Nothing against you or your grandmother personally.

[rogerhb]

Was it from a book called "To Kill A Bean Bag"?