Transcript

Kyler:

How old were you during the time of the “Dirty Thirties”?

Mrs. Crawford:

I was born in 1926, which meant that I was four in 1930 and fourteen in 1940.

Jeb:

Did you have a job during this time?

Mrs. Crawford:

Yes, I did. I lived on a farm and in the summer, I would work for the neighbors during harvest and helped in the house. This included babysitting, but I didn’t have a steady job.

Kyler:

What was it like living during this time?

Mrs. Crawford:

We didn’t have electricity, running water, or a bathroom. We had a cistern that we’d get our water from. The water would run off the house and into a filter and into the cistern. If we ran out, we would have a load of water hauled in. We didn’t have a furnace, but when I was about fourteen, we got natural gas running through our farm. Before that, we just had wood stoves. We also had a cook stove that mother cooked on, which was fueled by wood. On the side of the stove was a place for the warm water that we used for washing dishes and stuff like that. We did not have a bathroom so we went outside to a toilet. We had a house, but no modern conveniences.

Jeb:

How did this part of history affect your life?

Mrs. Crawford:

It really affected my life because you become very frugal. Many times we would run out of toothpaste and be forced to use soda. If there was food left over, you didn’t waste it. You would eat it at the next meal. We didn’t have much money, but every Saturday night, we would go into town to the drug store. They had wonderful ice cream cones that were a nickel apiece. We didn’t have much money because there wasn’t any money. One time, I had a pop sickle and we were coming home from town. It said free on it and I forgot. I threw it out the window and every time we went down that road, I just knew that stick was still laying there some place. Back then, that was terrible because you just didn’t have much. We didn’t have our own ice cream except for Christmas time. We would milk our own cows for the cream. During the fourth of July, my parents would go to town to get ice. Then, they would bring it back home to put it into the icebox. When the ice would melt, you would have to empty the pan to keep it from overflowing onto the floor. We would use the ice to make ice cream in one of those ice cream freezers. We always had good food since mother canned a lot. That’s why I don’t like potatoes to this day. We would have meat, potatoes, vegetables, and one dessert, which was sauce or homemade pudding. When mom made a cake, she would have to start with the eggs and flour. My parents raised their own chickens. My birthday was on August 11, a day later than my brothers. One of us would get a cake and one of us would get fresh fried chicken. Mother couldn’t make both.

 Kyler:

What were the working conditions like?

Mrs. Crawford: 

At that time, WPA (Works Progress Administration) became popular. It was a lot of young boys who were out of high school and didn’t have jobs. That’s when they built things such as sidewalks. Today, you will even see things that have WPA on them. They got paid for what they did and it was government. It is like welfare now. My dad would never go on the WPA. People who did got their fruits and vegetables from the government. I always thought that they got the best goods. I would ask my dad why we didn’t go on the WPA. He wouldn’t take welfare because he was a very proud person. There was only one teacher who was required to teach. The others weren’t needed. If you were married, you quit and stayed home from work and took care of your family. There weren’t the amount of working mothers that there are now. See, your grandpa was very poor. He lived in town. Anyway, my dad used to grow grain and one summer it didn’t rain. On July, you could just look up at the sky and it was black because of the grasshoppers. They would swarm in and over the crops. One day, the wind came up and we had a dust storm. It got just as dark as night. Mother put wet towels in the windows because our windows weren’t real good.

Jeb:

Describe your house.

Mrs. Crawford:

Well, we had a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. We had two bedrooms downstairs. One of them belonged to my parents. The other was Denny’s when he was home and it was my mother’s sewing room. We also had an upstairs. The only way that we could heat it was by a register in the floor and the heat would come up through that, but it was pretty cold though. We used to take flat irons with us to bed because it was cold. We had two bedrooms upstairs and an attic used for storage. We thought it was fun to get in there. Our kitchen used to be a post office. We lived eleven miles out in the country. There was a pantry too. We didn’t have a T.V. in the winter or a radio all the time because of the batteries. In the winter, we would play several games of cards. Just think how educational that was. We had a nice house.

Kyler:

How was your school?

Mrs. Crawford:

The same teacher taught all grades first through eighth. My mother would pack our lunch and we would walk a mile to school. The school was heated with a stove that coal was put into. When I graduated from eighth grade, I went to town to do housekeeping. I loved school though. We also had an indoor swimming pool in the school.

Jeb:

Were you and your family depressed during this time?

Mrs. Crawford:

No, nobody had money. I would think my mom and dad would be depressed because they didn’t have any money or crops. Where my parents went, we went. They never left us kids home alone. During Christmas, my parents would give us each a toy, a game, and one year we got a kickback. Then, they had company when we went to bed and we would lay and watch them. They actually broke the kickback because we had to get it fixed. A kickback was when you put marbles in and the marbles would go down and you would get that many points. We had a lot of guests. We would go to church on Sunday and my mother would tell me that she was going to invite so and so over for dinner that night. Otherwise, we would be invited to somebody else’s house. We would go sledding three-fourths of a mile east of our house. We had neighbor kids that we would play outdoor games with.

Kyler:

What was the dust like around you compared to other people?

Mrs. Crawford:

It was general. It was as bad at our farm as anywhere else. Nobody had any water. There were no pretty yards. We were excited when they got green and we actually got to mow them. It was part of farm life I guess.

Jeb:

What were the crops like?

Mrs. Crawford:

We always had grain and corn. We would cut the grain, or oats off and put them into bundles and shock it. Today, this is done with combines. Then, about 10 or 12 farmers would come and do the threshing. The mothers would come and make big dinners for them, which was a lot of work for the women. I remember every year my parents would pick their own corn. Mother especially liked doing that with Dad. They would be tickled if they got some considering the conditions. They always planted crops and a garden. Mother even canned sour plums.

Kyler:

What were the conditions of the road?

Mrs. Crawford:

Our roads were made of mud so we wouldn’t get to go into town if it rained. There was one time that my parents hadn’t been into town in six weeks. There were about four neighbors who got together and rode to town on a horse and wagon. They went in eleven miles to get groceries. I know my mother had her own meat, milk, bread, and butter that she churned. I know dad had to get flour, sugar, and bananas. We always got bananas. Mother always made cookies. I loved going to our friend’s house because they were with the WPA and got goods.

Jeb:

What did your family have to do to keep the dust down?

Mrs. Crawford:

No, it was impossible with the South Dakota wind. Everyone thought that the world was coming to an end when the sky turned black. People started planting trees to create a shield from some of the dust and wind.

Kyler:

How was the economy affected?

Mrs. Crawford:

There was no money. When we went into town, Mother would give me 50 cents. On Thursday night, there was always a “take a chance movie”. We did a lot of ice-skating since it was free. We always felt that the people who lived in town looked down on us. They didn’t feel that way, but we did. During this time, my dad bought his farm and other people were losing theirs. As the economy got better, people gradually bought back their farms again. However, some people had already lost one and weren’t going to buy and lose another. There was no social security back then. My grandpa and grandma retired and went to town when they were wealthy. Their dollar kept getting smaller as the economy got better. We went to Sioux Falls once a year to go to the fair before school started. We usually got to go to Okoboji and we would take our picnic lunch. The economy was better in some places than others. I think it was the farmers and little people who were poor.

Jeb:

Do you remember any of your friends?

Mrs. Crawford:

Yes, I sure do. Yeah, I still write and see most of them.

Kyler:

What times do you remember as your worst?

Mrs. Crawford:

I guess I would say that I hated the hard rain because it made the roads muddy and you weren’t able to go any other places. We never got to take vacations and I never stayed in a hotel until I got married. They weren’t terrible because everybody had things that way. In this time, I remember we were quarantined when my brother Denny got polio. The house was fumigated and our family went to Sioux Falls. It was confining, but we didn’t see it that way.

Jeb:

What other major or special events do you remember about this time?

Mrs. Crawford: