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GORDON GREB |
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MY LIFE IN 1934 |
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ON $40 PER MONTH Struggling for an Honest Dollar  A thriving public soup kitchen during The Great Depression |
of TheColumnists.com
After the Big Crash
of l929, we were hit by an economic tidal wave that swept everything
before it from coast to coast. Daily newspapers told the story--
bankruptcies had wiped out investors, people lost their savings
in failed banks, and small entrepreneurs saw their customers
disappearing.
My father was one of them. He lost his business and ultimately our home. The Great Depression struck us like a bomb. My father, Walter, and mother, Irene, both 38, couldn’t believe what was happening. As my dad said later, “It hit like a ton of bricks.”
My parents, along with our neighborhood friends, reeled from forces they couldn’t understand and were dumbfounded about what to do. No wonder. Even the best minds in the country were befuddled. Millions were out of work and faced an uncertain future for reasons nobody understood.
This tragedy of the time played no favorites. We saw this sudden downturn crushing employers and employees alike--small merchants, tradesmen, shopkeepers, and small businessmen. I can remember seeing empty store windows in shopping areas near where we lived and factories with closed doors, their windows broken, on the way to town. You answered your doorbell to find hucksters trying to sell you something. Then soon you were doing the same.
Without a steady job my father was unable to keep up the monthly payments on our house. We faced eviction although the loan officers realized their real estate market was dead and they had no new buyers. Since they couldn’t sell, the bank agreed to let us stay on the property as long as we’d pay rent. I think it was $20 per month. But where was our next dollar coming from? That was the question.
My father never turned down a job. As long as he remained healthy this man took every honest offer that came along. I can remember him delivering newspapers house to house, unloading ice door to door, repairing broken cars, or pumping gas. Anything to keep us going.
Because my dad had learned to play the guitar, banjo, and violin from his own father, he got the idea of organizing a four-piece hillbilly band. At night in bed I could hear “Pop’s” fiddle, Slim’s percussion, Whitey’s guitar, and Herb’s bass violin, practicing into the night. Now ready to perform, “Walt’s Hay Bailers,” as they were called, went anywhere for pay. Sometimes they played at small dances in private homes. Other times on stage at movie theatres, fairs, and on radio stations.
Once I joined my dad at the Capitol Theater, wearing my Tom Mix cowboy outfit. We won first prize playing, “They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree” and “The Old Spinning Wheel.” I played my violin and father his guitar.
While these musical ventures contributed something, none of it added up to a living wage. As things got worse, our monthly income sometimes fell as low as $40. As $20 went for the rent, these were really tough times. But somehow we managed.
My mother’s frugality was amazing. Since living costs have risen at least 30 times since then, it’s hard to compare with today. In those days we had no safety net. There was no unemployment insurance or Social Security checks and no housing allowances. In those days that support system hadn’t yet been invented, although it would soon come under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Prices on everything were low. But what good was that for 13 million people without jobs and no money? You could see hungry men on breadlines and lining up for soup kitchens. Fox Movietone News showed farmers and dairymen dumping cans of fresh milk in the street because they were getting next to nothing for what they produced. They were angry and were saying, loud and clear, something must be done.
Occasionally I had a piece of good luck by being called over to my neighbor’s house. Mrs. Hurst was a wonderful middle-aged lady who always told me, “Gordon, someday you’re going to be President of the United States.” Her husband was still employed, helping run the Oakland-San Francisco ferry boats and was better off than most. She would pay me a nickel to run to the store for a pound of sugar, can of beans, or bottle of milk.
This supplemented what I got shopping for my mother. Whenever she sent me off with 10-cents to buy a pound of hamburger or eight cents for a loaf of bread, I got the left-over pennies. Sometimes it was enough to buy a Snickers, Milky Way, or Hershey bar at Mr. Norton’s Candy Store. By careful budgeting, my mother and I could stretch our nickels and dimes a long way.
How my mother became so adept at finding ways to feed her family I’ll never know. The Economics Department at the University of California should have awarded her an honorary degree. Her knowledge of money management was self-taught, since she had been an English Literature major at San Jose Normal School (now San Jose State University) who had never taken a business course in her life.
During the early years of the l930s we
lived in East Oakland. This was a rapidly developing part of
the city--a residential neighborhood close to shopping, schools,
and transportation. Our house was new in l923 when my folks bought
it–a two-bedroom, one-story bungalow with one bath. It was
wood-framed like most residences which ran down the block between
Foothill boulevard and East 14th street. They were built by individual
contractors who never thought of mass producing subdivisions.
I was three years old when we moved, so I have no memories of
it. Later I learned from my parents that we had lived on Adams
street, near Lake Merritt, because it was close to where my father
ran his business on Broadway. He finally elected to move his
shop to the Melrose District of East Bay for its better location
on East 14th street. Buying a new home nearby came next.
When he was single, Walter H. Greb worked in an office in San Francisco. He clerked at the headquarters of the Southern Pacific Company on Market street until l917. When the U.S. entered the European war in April and was recruiting young men for an American Expeditionary Force (AEF), young Greb volunteered to go. He was 21 years old.
Trained at Camp Lewis, Washington and assigned to the 18th U.S. Army Engineers, he was shipped to France, where his outfit kept supply trains running to the front lines. Promoted from sergeant to 2nd Lieutenant in the autumn of 1918, the war ended before he could pin the bars on his uniform.
Honorably discharged and back home, Brevet Lt. W.H. Greb wasted little time in wooing petite Irene Agnes Benbow away from the family farm in Irvington. Soon they agreed on a wedding date. But before tying the knot, the couple had to solve a problem.
When war veteran Greb returned to reclaim his old job at SP in San Francisco, it was no longer there and the company had no vacancy to fill. So, young Walter had to look for another way to make a living.
Years earlier, he had helped his father run a fleet of jitney buses from San Francisco to San Jose. Walter, now 24, believed there was a good future in America in the automobile business. Realizing they needed to run on rubber tires, he decided to sell them in downtown Oakland (which, with luck, could have become another Les Schwab). His hunch was right because Walt’s Tire Shop was a thriving business until the 1929 crash.
During the depth of the depression, jobs were awfully scarce. My dad left the house every day, looking for work. Despite their worries, my parents tried very hard not to burden us. Mom and Pop always tried to be cheerful and uncomplaining. Although young, my brother and I were not exactly dumb. We knew we were poor but hated to think so.
Everybody was happy when dad came home and told us he had a new part-time job. Whatever it paid, my mother tried to squirrel away extra nickels and dimes in sugar bowls for an emergency. She always kept something hidden away for our household budget. The thought of stealing never entered the minds of any one of us.
My mother couldn’t afford to buy us new shoes or get any resoled, So she fitted pieces of cardboard inside our old shoes and sent us off with the holes covered. This, however, was a temporary fix that didn’t last. By afternoon my artificial cardboard soles had worn through and I could feel the pavement on my stocking feet.
My mother never spent money for postage stamps to pay the bills. She went on foot the 5 to 10 blocks each week to pay the water, gas and electric bills in person at their local offices. She bought groceries only where she got good value for money, usually at stores like Piggly Wiggly, or locally owned places around Havenscourt and Seminary avenues.
Our meals at home were simple. For supper Mom prepared hamburger patties, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a helping of peas, carrots, or vegetables in season. Always fish on Fridays. Milk was for the kids and coffee, adults. Dessert only on special occasions. We had everything on the table which was affordable, nourishing and certain to sustain a hardworking husband and her two boys.
I often heard my parents talking worriedly about where the next dollar was coming from, even though the door was shut to their room. While this concerned me and my brother, my folks never knew it. They never openly revealed their strain.
Though money was scarce and my mother had to economize everyway she could, she never skimped on feeding her family, saying, “Never be ashamed of being poor if your clothes are clean and you work for an honest dollar.”
HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE THIRTIES BETTER:
CINEMA:
“The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) John Ford's film, based on John Steinbeck’s novel, is considered to be the most moving and accurate screening of the plight of the dispossessed in the Great Depression.
“King Kong” (1933) This huge ape symbolized what we faced in the Great Depression-- an angry, out-of-control monster, powerful enough to destroy us all.
“The Wind,” (1928) Great dust storms struck the Midwest in the early thirties, driving farm families from their homes and reducing them to poor migrant labor. In one of the last great silent films, Lillian Gish plays a lonely wife, driven nearly mad by the unrelenting dust storms.
THEATRE:
“Death of a Salesman” (1949):
Playwright Arthur Miller’s famous drama brings to the stage
the tragedy of a disillusioned salesman who, despite a lifelong
struggle, never achieves his American dream. It won New York
drama critics’ awards, a Pulitzer, and remains an American
theatre classic.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
©2006 by Gordon Greb. The soup kitchen photograph is courtesy of the San Francisco Dept. of Public Works. This column first posted Oct. 16, 2006.
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