Depression Era

[Beaners]

I posted some of this on another thread on another board, and thought I'd share it here too. I think this is as good a spot as any for it, but if it should be moved, feel free.

My great-grandfather was born in 1900. In 1930 he started a pet cemetery and boarding kennel. It wasn't always easy to come up with the money for the mortgage on the 10 acres with a creek, but he did it. One month, he had gotten to the day the mortgage was due, and was $20 short. There was nothing he could sell to earn the money, and no one to sell it to. There were no jobs that he could work to earn the money. He didn't know what he was going to do, and so he just prayed. About an hour before the bank closed, a man came to the house and asked if he could board his two dogs for a period of time. He offered to put down a deposit because the dogs would be staying for so long. The amount? $20.

He also had a lot of small side-line businesses. He sold tonics to a local feed store. One of the most popular was his bird tonic. It was supposed to get rid of mites and worms and increase sheen, according to the bottle. It was really just red wine vinegar poured into a small bottle and labeled.

When my grandfather was still young, my great-grandfather bought sheep to clear the fields of the pet cemetery. He didn't want the kids to spend all of their time mowing because he had work he wanted them to do. But the sheep kept wandering off. So he bought a goat, because someone had told him that the sheep would follow a goat. But he bought the most broken down goat you have ever seen. When the weather would get hot, the goat would keel over. My grandfather and his sister had to take a stretcher and carry the goat up to the creek next to the house to revive it. While they were gone, the sheep would wander away. Once the goat was back on its feet, they had to chase the sheep back home. The goat died eventually, and my great-grandfather sold the sheep.

He never believed that any man should be paid more than $2 a day. That caused a bit of trouble when the minimum wage laws were changed, and the family convinced him that he really did have to pay his employees the amount the law prescribed. But he would let anyone willing to work hard work for him. He didn't care if they just got out of jail, he didn't care if they were a drunk, if they showed up and worked like dogs all day, he would pay them. But he begrudged anything over that $2 a day. My grandfather still gets calls from the local prisons asking if he can give some of the newly released guys a job, because they have his father's name on file as someone who would hire them.

Even though there was never really a steady stream of income, my great-grandfather pulled ends together until they met. He would board dogs, and groom them too. At that time, he would mostly take care of hunting dogs for people. There are lots of pictures of dogs that look like Irish Setters and Brittany Spaniels. There is even a picture of my grandfather as a child with a Saint Bernard that was twice as big as he was. They sold eggs from the chickens. Everyone in the family worked odd jobs. If they weren't working somewhere else, they were working at home. When my grandfather was still a boy, he had to build a dam that would hold back part of the creek by the house. I don't know quite how he got it done, but that dam still holds.

Kayleigh

[clovis]

What wonderful stories!!!!! Thank you for sharing!!!!!