American History 2
4-5-13
Dr. Billy Akins
The Great Depression As we all know, the Great Depression was a severe economic depression. It was world wide and happened in the years before World War II. The greatest of despair for the community that I live in was the years from about 1930 until 1934. My family has lived here forever, just above Tellico Plains in the mountains is a little community called Coker Creek. This is where my family has lived for years and years. Even at the time of the Great Depression. Including my Great Aunt Lucille. She had jus turned eleven years old. Her worst memories came from the years of the depression. It began when she was eleven and lasted until she was fifteen. This paper is written in our words from her memory. She is 94 years old now. Her daddy dealt with banks a lot during the depression. He did not lose much money (mainly because they had no money to lose). "Mostly we just had enough money to buy our food, and if there was any extra cash daddy kept it at home put away" Lucille stated. Back in those times when she was a little girl and if you wanted something, you either worked really hard to get what you wanted or you just did not get it. Plain and simple. They did not just go over to the bank and borrow however much money they needed. They had an account at the general store to buy things that they needed for every day use, and when payday came around the family pulled all of their money together and pay all of their bills first. Lucille stated that "we were dirtfloor poor well before the depression hit so we never really felt the affects when Wall Street crashed." They knew it was going on because of hearing about it on the radio stations. They kept up with the news, but all the bad things they were hearing of on the radio seemed to never reach them. In all reality things were worse for them before the depression hit, they were just use to living the way they did and did not realize that the things they were hearing on the raido was not as bad as they were living. The family lived in the small, rual community of Coker Creek, TN. What was known as that time as a farming and logging area. "The main jobs in our area were timber harvesting. There were several sawmills around in our area" she stated. Almost each and every mill was family owned. These family ran business's provided lots of jobs for people in our community and people on the outside bringing timber in. Job shortages did not happen, and people in this community did not realize what the panic was around the world. They thought everyone was timber cutters or sawmillers. In there line of work there would always be jobs. This community did not have job shortages like they were talking about around the world. With the community being as poor as it was, the affects did not even bother the people. That is how poor these people were. Although wages were not a lot during those times, her daddy was still able to provide enough food for the family. "We always had bacon, ham, apples, potatoes, and lots and lots of beans." She told me how her mother made the best bread she had ever ate. Food was in a very short supply and they had to have some stamps to be able to buy some of the things that they needed. They were fortunate enough to live on good ground that had great soil. They grew their own food in a garden. They would work hard during the spring months getting it all planted, then during the summer months when it was time to harvest the food they picked it all. After picking it they would can all the food they could, or find some way to store their food. They were self sufficient. Her daddy cut timber and hauled it and made more money that a lot of the other locals did. They were a lot better off than most of the people in their community (but they were still very poor). As a matter of fact, her daddy loaned money to people that would come by and need some help financially. Back then peoples word was as good as