Meixner Family History #26 - Epilogue Part 9

                                         The Great Depression Years

Early in 1929 Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as the 31st President of the United States.  Everyone believed that Coolidge-Hoover prosperity, as some called it, would continue indefinitely.  Then came the stock market crash in October of 1929.

Herbert C. Hoover, 1928? 

Credit:  Library of Congress
Source:  http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail339.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover

Fredrick Lewis Allen writes in his book, "Prosperity is more than an economic condition; it is a state of mind.  The Big Bull Market had been more than the climax of a business cycle; it had been the climax of a cycle in American mass thinking and mass emotion. There was hardly a man or woman in the country whose attitude toward life had not been affected by it in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope.  With the Big Bull Market gone and prosperity going, Americans were soon to find themselves living in an altered world which  called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, and a new order of values.  The psychological climate was changing; the ever-shifting currents of American life were turning into new channels."

"The Post-war Decade had come to its close.  An era had ended."  (1)

Even the weather conspired to deepen the depression.  In 1931 an eight year drought started and temperatures were hotter than normal.  In the areas of southwest Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle, the Texas panhandle, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado the land was devastated during this decade by drought and soil erosion.  Years of poor soil conservation by the farmers in the region set the stage for the disaster.  Huge dust storms called "Black Blizzards" blotted out the sun, destroyed crops, and made the area unbearable for people living there.  Millions of people were forced to leave their homes and move west looking for jobs.  John Steinbeck wrote his classic novel "The Grapes of Wrath" about the plight of the migrants as they moved west from this area looking for work in a time of great depression in the country.  His book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.  The horrible conditions in this area improved some after the passage of the Soil Conservation Act of 1935 and a concerted effort in the area towards soil conservation.  But their bleak situation was not alleviated until the rain came in 1939. (2)

Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas. 

Photo Date:  April 18, 1935
Credit:  NOAA George E. Marsh Album

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/c&gs/theb1365.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dust-storm-Texas-1935.png  

T.H. Watkins wrote "It was the worst of times, a terrible, scarring experience that changed this country and its people forever."

"Consider fear.  Even if they did not lose their jobs or go hungry themselves, even if the terror of want passed over them without touching them, most Americans felt its passage like a cold, unforgettable wind." (3)

I know The Great Depression had a profound effect on my parents.  They were 12 and 19 when it started in 1929 so they lived through it during their formative years.  As I was growing up I realized the depression had made an indelible impression on their lives and the way they viewed the world.  Surviving The Great Depression was a part of who they were.

President Hoover struggled for four years to make a dent in the depression. Unemployment in 1932 stood at more than 24%. (4)  Fear and hopelessness gripped the nation.  So in 1932 the nation voted for a change in leadership and in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States.  He would go on to be the only person ever elected to more than two terms as president.  He would serve until his death in April of 1945, a few months after his inauguration for his 4th term.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933.

Photo Date:  27 December 1933
Author:  Elias Goldensky (1868-1943)
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c17121.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FDR_in_1933.jpg   

In President Roosevelt's campaign for the presidency he had promised "a New Deal for the American people". (5)  At his inauguration he gave his famous speech stating his "...firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." (6)  After his inauguration, he moved swiftly.  "During the first 100 days of his presidency, a never-ending stream of bills was passed, to relieve poverty, reduce unemployment, and speed economic recovery." (7)  Some of the most successful New Deal programs were the Civil Conservation Corp (CCC), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) but many more programs were enacted, some more successful than others.  Conditions improved and unemployment went down but still stood at an unacceptable high rate of 17.2% in 1939. (8)  Finally, after massive spending by the government for the war effort in the early 1940s, the depression came to an end.

Other interesting events of the decade included the completion and opening of the Empire State Building in May 1931 in New York City.  At the time it was the tallest building in the world. (9)

Amelia Earhart became famous in 1932 for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  Tragically she and her plane vanished over the Pacific in 1937 as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. (10)  (I have read that researchers may have found clues to where she disappeared but no official announcements that I have seen as of this date.)

Amelia Earhart and Lockheed Electra 10E NR16020 c. 1937 

Source:  http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/earhart.newdocs/earhart.electra.jpeg)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earhart_and_electra.jpeg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart

Also, in this decade, the United States corrected a situation that had existed since it's founding.  The country did not have an official national anthem.  On March 3, 1931, "The Star Spangled Banner" was made the official United States National anthem.  The song came from a poem by Francis Scott Key titled "The Defense of Fort McHenry" written in 1814, during the War of 1812.  At the time of the battle Key's ship was being detained by the British.  He had gone out to attempt to obtain the release of a friend being held by the British.  The British would not release his ship due to their impending attack on Fort McHenry.  Key was forced to witness the British bombardment of Fort McHenry.  On the morning of Sep. 14, 1814, after a bombardment that lasted an agonizing 25 hours with more than 1500 shells fired into the fort, Key saw the flag of the United States still flying proudly over the fort and was inspired to write his poem.  The flag that provided Francis Scott Key's inspiration is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution. (11)

Flag that floated over Fort McHenry in 1814.  The flag has been restored and is now in the Smithsonian Institution.

Date of Photo:  Published 1914
Source:  National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial, Baltimore, Maryland, September 6 to 13, 1914 (1914).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Spangled_Banner_Flag

In June of 1813 Major George Armistead arrived to take command of Fort McHenry.  One of the very first things he did was to order a flag for the fort.  He wanted the flag to be "...so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance." (12)  He ordered the flag to measure 30 feet by 42 feet.  When the British attacked the fort in September of 1814 this was the flag that was seen from a great distance by Francis Scott Key.  Major Armistead and his men held the fort, returning as many rounds of shells as they received.  After 25 hours of bombardment, the flag waved in victory and the British withdrew.  Armistead would be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel for his part in the heroic defense of Fort McHenry, and for the important role this defense played in winning the war. (13)

Yes, the last name of Armistead should be familiar to you.  Colonel Armistead is related to our family, although it is a distant relation.  But more on that topic at a later date.

A modern county map of Concho County showing the location of Harmon and Alice Meixner's "Old Home Place".

When I left off last time I had mentioned granddad bought more land in the year 1928 that would give him 640 acres or one section of land.  This is what made up the "old home place".  You can see the location in the map above.

The year 1928 was important for another reason.  Harmon and Alice raised 7 children and as children seem to do when they get older, they get married and leave home.  In September of 1928 their oldest daughter, Mary Lorena Meixner, married Joe Taylor Skipper.  In December of 1930 their eldest son, William Frank Meixner, married Naomi May Yarbrough.  Next to marry was Alice Alynn Meixner.  She married William Ross Bush in June of 1933.  My dad, Robert Harmon Meixner, left home in the fall of 1932 to go to college.  He went for a couple years then stayed out a few years to make enough money to return.  After he completed college in 1940, he married my mother Margaret Avis Galbreath in August of that same year.

Photograph of the Meixner family taken in the early 1930s:  Robert Harmon, Victor Rudolph, Alice Alynn, Alberta May (Peaches), William Frank, Emma Ruth, Mary Lorena, Alice, and Harmon.

1930 United States Census for Concho County listing the Meixner family.  Mary is the only one missing at the time because she married in 1928.

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Precinct 1, Concho, Texas; Roll: 2311; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 1; Image: 416.0; FHL microfilm: 2342045.
Source Information:  Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
Original data:  United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

I would think that granddad and grandmother felt the labor drain that took place during the 1930s with so many children leaving home.  Of course they had less mouths to feed but they also had less hands to help around the farm.  My guess is that granddad used more hired help to handle all the demanding jobs of farming.

They worked very hard on the farm and a lot of that work went toward raising the food they ate.  As hard as they worked and as large as the family was it must have taken a lot of food to feed the family.  Dad talked about how they got the work day started, "We always had a good breakfast and it was during the breakfast time that we received our instructions for the day's work.  We had almost anything eatable for breakfast some time or the other.  Alternately we had biscuits, flapjacks, corn dodgers, light bread, bacon, eggs, ham, steak, fried beans, oatmeal, cream of wheat, back-bone (out of the hog), spareribs, syrup, butter and bread, and you name it... fried chicken, etc."

"We did not have much horseplay around the table.  Dad always required us to wash our faces and comb our hair before we came to the table.  We did carry on a lot of little pranks like slipping a bean or two into some other person's milk or coffee." (14)  Nice to know kids were still kids even back then when they worked so hard.

Dad listed in his book a few of the things that had to be done on a farm:  "There were dozens of jobs to do on the old farm."  You had to have "...expertise at using the ax, the hoe, milking the cows, feeding the hogs, feeding the horses, handling the horses and cows, plowing, harrowing, building fences, heading maize, pulling corn, riding a horse, building a surface tank, building a cistern."  You also had to be able to "...grub up a tree, to cut a tree down and cut it into stove wood lengths, to head maize, to shock different kinds of feed, to run a broad cast binder, to run a row binder, to sharpen different kinds of tools, to draw water from a well, or cistern and (know) how to treat the water that came off the roof into the cistern, to run a breaking plow and a cultivator, to run a planter, to harness and hook the teams to different implements and to the wagon, buggy or hack.  I learned something about building certain structures like a barn, a house, a chicken coop, a lot fence or corral, how to feed the animals, horses, mules, cows, sheep goats, turkeys, chickens, guineas, and even the dog and cat.  I learned how to butcher a hog, to cure the meat and smoke the meat.  Rendering the lard was generally my job.  I also helped my mother make lye soap.  Frank and I learned how to carry water from the old dug well or the bored well.  We carried water for the whole household for years.  I learned how to fix the wind mill.  It was my job to keep it greased.  We also pulled the pipe from the well to fix the suction rods or put in a new valve.  We patched the harness and the saddles on rainy or real cold days.  We learned how to place the bundles in the stack of hay, to place the bundles of hay on a bundle wagon, to sack oats coming off a spout from the threshing machine at the rate of five thousand bushels of oats per day. We learned how to clean out a dug well, we learned to bull dog a steer or a cow and how to milk a cow.  We learned how to pick cotton, to drive a load of cotton to the gin, we learned to clean a chicken or turkey, to build the fires in the living room heater and in the cook stove.  We learned to do the house work and the cooking.  We learned to dig a post hole and tamp the post in a straight line.  We learned to chop and hoe cotton and other field plants; we learned to sucker the corn and how to top the corn; we learned some of the work that is done in a blacksmith shop, and many other things."  In addition to all that I've mentioned before the fact that they built their own home, barns, fences, surface tanks, windmill, cistern, and made repairs on the house.  They also had a large garden to tend to and they canned the fruits and vegetables that they raised.

Dad concluded by saying, "On the farm we learned by doing.  We did not learn it out of a book, we simply watched the other fellow do it and did likewise.  Father and mother both taught us." (15)

Dad gummit, I feel like such a wimp!!  It is amazing enough to read through this list, which I am certain does not cover everything they did, but to try to imagine actually doing all this work, every day, all day long.  This makes me appreciate my parents even more.

It is hard to imagine the amount of hard work they did back then.  Somehow Harmon and Alice made it through the decade of the 1930s, the time of "The Great Depression".  They had three children still at home by the end of the decade, they had the joy of a grandchild that was born along the way, they paid for land during the hardest times imaginable, and yet they just kept on going, ready to face more challenges.  And of course the challenges would come.  In 1939 war broke out in Europe and the United States was drawn into it with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Next time: the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

References:
(1)  Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, N.Y. 1959, pg. 281.
(2)  http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/Dust-Bowl.htm
(3)  Watkins, T.H., The Great Depression, America in the 1930s, Blackside, Inc., 1993, pg. 12.
(4)  http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html
(5)  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-new-deal/
(6)  Ibid.
(7)  Ibid.
(8)  http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html
(9)  http://history1900s.about.com/od/timelines/tp/1930timeline.htm  
(10)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart
(11)  Sheads, Scott Sumpter, Guardian of the Star-Spangled Banner, Lt. Colonel George Armistead and The Fort McHenry Flag, Toomey Press, Baltimore, MD.
(12)  Ibid., pg 33.
(13)  Ibid.
(14)  Meixner, Robert Harmon, Sr., Memoirs of Robert Harmon Meixner, Sr. July 10, 1910 – June 13, 1994.  Unpublished.  Compiled by Margaret Avis Meixner, pg. 22.
(15)  Meixner, Robert Harmon, Sr., Memoirs of Robert Harmon Meixner, Sr. July 10, 1910 – June 13, 1994.  Unpublished.  Compiled by Margaret Avis Meixner, pg. iii - v.

My Visit to The Meixner Family Home Place

                                              More Than An Old House

As I traveled the old gravel road and turned into an opening that led to what was once a parking area, I thought "Kay is not going to be happy with me".  I was driving into tall weeds and new mesquite growth that had thorns.  I was in Kay's car and I didn't want to scratch it.  As I drove through I could hear the scraping sound on the side of the car.  I pulled up in front of the old house and stopped the car.  It was getting on toward evening.  The day was gray and dreary.  A fine mist was in the air, and it was a little windy and cold.  I got out of the car and started walking toward the old house.  Weeds and grass that had grown up over time and unruly shrubs that had not felt the steel of a hedge trimmer in years were obstructing my path.  I pulled open a white picket gate and the picket I had grasped promptly fell off in my hand.  As I approached the house, I wondered to my self, "What can be left in a house, long since abandoned and left to crumble under it's own weight?  Wasps, rats and rattlesnakes most likely but is that all?"

A few weeks prior to the arrival at this old house I had planned a trip to Concho County with some other family members.  One item on the agenda was to visit the old home place where my dad lived when he was growing up.  I had not visited the house in over 50 years.  I wanted to hear what memories my brothers and sister had of our grandparents and of the old home place.  My brother got permission from the current owner to go by and visit the old house.  I thought it would be fun to compare those memories we each had and see how our memories might be different from each other.

Picture of the house located on the old home place.  My dad helped, along with the family, in building the house.  Built around 1920.

Looking at the house now, it looked sad, run down, empty,and robbed of it's previous glory as our grandparent's and my father's home.  As I stepped inside the house I saw many years of built up dirt blown in through many cracks and crevices, and also evidence that maybe some kind of critter used this house from time to time other than the wasps, rats and rattlesnakes.  A piece of carpet rolled up here, ceiling tiles that had fallen in due to a leak over there.  The house had been stripped of furniture and appliances.  The old wood burning stove was long gone.

Interestingly enough, it didn't seem to matter to us that all this stuff was missing.  My two brothers could still envision grandmother Alice standing in front of that old wood burning stove, the room stifling hot, and the stove hotter still.  It was too hot for them to get close to, but grandmother was busy cooking, taking it all in stride like it didn't bother her.  And of course she had done that same thing thousands of times before.

My sister and brothers remembered how granddad could reach into the remnants of a fire and pick up a hot coal with his bare hand.  His skin was so thick from callouses that it did not even burn him.

My sister remembered sitting on the screened in front porch with grandmother.  In her memory the porch was much bigger back then when she was sitting with grandmother.  She said grandmother showed her how to weave a basket and how to make flowers out of pieces of women's old stockings.  They were dyed colors and then they used them to cover wire that they had twisted into petals.  She said they did not get to finish the basket but she still kept it for years.  She said maybe that early experience with grandmother Meixner was why she loves to craft so much today.

My cousin Claudia related several memories to me about our grandparents when I sent her an e-mail and asked her about her memories.  Her memory of grandmother when she was about 3 or 4 was as follows:  "I have one memory of Grandmother Meixner.  We were visiting on the home place and I had an accident in my underwear.  She put a diaper on me made out of a cup towel and washed my clothes and hung them on the fence to dry.  Instead of being embarrassed, I just proceeded to model my new 'outfit' for every one.  I can remember Granddaddy was sitting out on the screened in back porch of the house with all the men talking and mother about had a cow because I was prissing around in my cup towel diaper.  Granddaddy just laughed and laughed that big belly laugh I remember so well."

About granddad, Claudia remembers:  "My favorite memory of Granddaddy is the way he smelled.  He always smelled of tobacco and butter mints.  He kept both in his pocket and the butter mints in his dresser drawer.  Another one is when I was sitting in his lap as about a six year old and he asked me in German if I understood German.  He had a cigarette in his mouth at the time and I said I could understand him better if he would take that cigarette out of his mouth.  He laughed and laughed.  Of course, I had no idea what he was saying to me in German."

Wandering through the four rooms we wondered where everyone slept.  Two parents, 7 children, 4 room house.  After looking around, we exited through a door on the left or south side of the house.  At the corner of the house, just to the right of that door, was the old well or cistern.  That is one of the clear memories I had of the house.  Only it wasn't so clear after all.  I thought it was located in the right front of the house.  As it turns out we each had a different memory of where the old well had been located.  One memory it did bring back though was that looking down into that well always brought a scary feeling to me.  It was deep and dark and dangerous looking.  I probably formed that memory when I was very young.  I don't know why I was afraid of it.  Maybe my older siblings threatened to throw me in.  No, they wouldn't have done a thing like that, would they?  More likely my parents had admonished me not to be climbing on the ole well because they knew that would be very dangerous for me.  Unfortunately we were all so intent on looking at the well that none of us got a picture of it.

Further to the south side of the house was the old garage, the barn and even the out house.  We all had memories of the out house.  Probably not fond memories though.

Photographs of several pieces of equipment that I believe Dad and Granddad used in farming.

A little further away from the house I came across some old farm equipment.  My dad always talked about plowing with horses.  This equipment certainly looked like it was from that era.  I was very excited to see it because I believe it was the equipment Dad, Granddad, and my uncles used in farming.

I could have stayed and looked around for hours.  I loved being on this farm, feeling the presence of my Dad as he worked and played right where I was standing.  He spent nearly 20 years, on and off, living and farming on this place.  He went off to college at 22 but came back periodically to make money so he could return to school.  He continued to do this until he finished and left home for good at the age of 30.  Pulling back from my thoughts of the past and slowly coming back to the present, I realized the light was fading fast and it was getting colder.

My brothers, Jack and Harmon, me, and my sister Oneta.

We all gathered again out in front of the house.  We talked for a while before we hugged and moved toward our vehicles to leave.

Granddad Harmon Meixner standing in front of the Meixner home sometime around 1960.

As I looked back at the old house one last time, something was different.  The tin roof was bright and shiny, the paint glistened white.  A peach tree bloomed on one side of the house, and the yard was neat and green.  Laughing children could be heard from the front porch and the loud commands to an old plow horse were drifting in from the field.  Is that my grandmother I see on the porch waving?

As I had first approached the house I had asked myself "What can be left in a house, long since abandoned and left to crumble under it's own weight?"  The answer is simple:  Memories!  An old house might crumble and fall but the memories remain forever.