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GORDON GREB |
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MY LIFE IN 1934 |
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Down and Out in Oakland |
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 The 1933 inauguration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a signal to millions that the era of hard times was over...or was it? |
just around the corner?
of TheColumnists.com
The Great Depression was on but Mother Nature certainly didn’t seem to know. It was New Year’s Day 1934 and the sun rose cheerfully over the Oakland foothills with a new kind of optimism. The old year was over but not much else. Perhaps an anxious mother–like my own--looked out the bedroom window next to her sleeping husband and wondered, after a night of listening to the celebration over the radio, could this sunny day be a sign that their years of Hard Times were over?
As those of us awake on that morning squinted
through our bedroom windows at the bright sunlight, it was easy
for us to hope a new day could be a new future. At least it represented
something out there to cling to. For months on end too many of
us–yes, I was a 12-year old boy who felt like everybody
else--thought our chief worry was whether we could survive any
longer. After all I saw my own mother pinching pennies to make
ends meet and my unemployed but willing father trudging the streets
in hopes of being employed. But whatever anybody did, despite
all of their best efforts, each seemed about as effective as
a Navaho Indian rain dance or Tom Sawyer rubbing his rabbit foot
for good luck.
Newspapers tried to keep our spirits up. In one effort to prove
the worst was over, the Oakland Tribune repeatedly ran stories
and photographs of downtown merchants gathered around a big hole
someone had dug in a vacant lot, posing for the press photographers
with forced smiles, pretending they were about to bury Old Man
Depression. These brave-hopefuls had brought along a dummy which
they ceremoniously blamed as the culprit who caused it all. We
were led to believe that by digging a grave, throwing this stuffed
puppet into the pit and covering his raggedy form with dirt would
somehow lift our spirits.
Chambers of Commerce originated and tried this stunt with some kind of regularity in towns and cities around the San Francisco Bay Area. But the number of store customers became fewer and fewer because ordinary families didn’t have any money. There were other attempts to jump-start the economy with positive thinking. None of them worked as long as our empty stomachs were rumbling and work for the willing was practically non-existent.
What we heard repeatedly over the radio after the Wall Street Crash of l929 was Herbert Hoover’s unrealistic promise, “Prosperity is just around the corner.” To men like my father who wanted work but couldn’t find any, these stunts and predictions didn’t help us one bit. We remembered all too well that Hoover also said, “The poor will always be with us.”
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...scouting for prosperity |
That’s why people had lost confidence in nearly all politicians but with one notable exception--Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom they elected to the White House on November 8, 1932. If there was one place where the bright sunshine of a New Year’s Day offered a few rays of hope to a desperate family, it was probably through the windows of the home of my parents, Walter and Irene Greb at 2615 64th Avenue in Oakland, California.
What buoyed their day, and perhaps the coming year, was the country’s new leadership. President Roosevelt had been in office less than nine months and already good things were starting to happen.
Happy days began to return to America the day we heard FDR’s startling inaugural address on March 4, 1933. Despite the fact a showery rain fell on the nation’s capital that spring day when Roosevelt took the oath of office, he rose to stand before his solemn audience and speak to them in a firm and clear voice. Never wavering in his delivery nor wincing as he planted himself before the microphones.
Despite the pain of heavy metal supports wrapped around his crippled legs, which none of us were aware of at the time, Roosevelt was like a knight in shining armor. Despite the gloomy weather, which reflected the mood of the country, they listened attentively to every word--those who were gathered beneath the podium in the nation’s capital and everyone listening from coast to coast by national radio hookups.
It became immediately evident that Roosevelt
was a leader who knew how to fight, not only as a man who had
to overcome personal suffering and a severe physical handicap
to stand where he was but as a man determined to bring the whole
nation to its feet along with him. Roosevelt told Americans across
the land to be brave, not be disheartened by fear itself, because
the Roosevelt administration knew what the people were going
through and he intended to act on their behalf.
He proved he knew their plight by saying: "Values have shrunken
to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has
fallen…farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings
of many years in thousands of families are gone….a host
of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and
an equally great number toil with little return… Only a
foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment…Our
greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable
problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished
in part ... as we would treat the emergency of a war…"
My Dad and Mother listened carefully to every word, since they were counting on this new president to lead a desperate nation out of our gloom and despair. Until then we had no way of knowing where to turn next and who would give 13 million unemployed and often starving people a real reason for hope.
My Dad smiled at the conclusion of the speech, saying, “I think we’ve finally got the right man in the White House.”
Roosevelt’s assessment of the situation had raised his spirits. What my father needed as soon as possible was–as did millions of men like him--a steady, good wage-paying job. FDR gave the unemployed confidence that somehow that would happen. Both of my parents voted for Roosevelt although my father for some unknown reason had originally favored John Nance Garner of Texas when the Democrats held their 1932 Convention in Chicago.
After casting her ballot my mother laughed, saying “Wait till my brother Charlie finds out I’ve voted Democrat,” she said. “He has always voted Republican. But who knows? Everybody’s broke now.”
What lifted the spirits of many was the new administration’s efforts to put the country back on its feet with the National Recovery Act (NRA) and what became known as Roosevelt’s New Deal. Merchants soon put NRA signs in their store windows carrying the slogan, “We Do Our Part,” and Hollywood added the NRA symbol to the start of each movie.
Roosevelt was more than a masterful orator.
You felt he was talking to you personally when he went on the
radio. Whenever he had a message to deliver, nearly everyone
turned on one of the major radio networks to be sure they didn’t
miss it. On a summer evening you could walk down the street and
hear his voice coming out the windows of nearly every home. No
matter where they were or what they were doing, people stopped
everything to hear what Roosevelt had to say on his “Fireside
Chats.”
Although the Great Depression is long gone
and relegated to the history books, I have a pretty good memory
of those days--and not only because I lived through them. Those
days are indelibly etched on my brain because I kept a running
account of my feelings and activities in a diary.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
©2006 by Gordon Greb. This column first posted Oct. 2, 2006.
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