Life Story Samples

Writing sample 1:
The Depression was really upon us in 1933. Dad was a carpenter, working on such major projects as the Minnesota Theater and the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis. However, his work was often seasonal and his wages were low. It was the bankruptcy of the Foshay Tower project that brought the Depression home to us.

Working hard together to make it through
Staying alive and warm during the Depression was no easy task. Dad could rarely find work, and when he did it was usually a swap for rent or groceries, since nobody could pay him in cash. He did a lot of work for Herman’s Market, about three blocks east on James Avenue, and we got most of our groceries there.

Heating the house was a problem. At first we lived in the upstairs unit, but after the first year we had to move downstairs. The downstairs tenants moved out, and heating the entire building just for us was out of the question.

The City of Minneapolis had paved many of its streets with cedar blocks about twice the size of a standard building brick. Any heavy rainfall caused entire sections of the street to float up, leaving large holes. So during the Depression the Works Projects Administration (WPA) was busy repaving those streets. The old paving blocks were given away to anyone who wanted them, and Dad hauled several trailer loads of them home so that we could burn them for heat.

Dad and the boys paid a weekly Saturday visit to the streetcar company’s dump and screened the ashes that were cleaned out of the streetcars at the end of each day. Their furnaces were very inefficient, so a lot of the coal was only partially burned. They shoveled the ashes through screens, and after the small ash had fallen through they picked out the cinders and loaded the rest on the trailer. This process took about half a day and was a dirty, miserable experience for them all.

When Mother needed some thread for mending, she sometimes unraveled scraps of fabric to get it. Dad cut cardboard to fit inside our shoes to cover the holes in the soles. This was common at the time.

Despite all of this, my mother and father usually remained calm and seemed happy. More and more I admire the strength of my parents and the love they had for each other and each of us children as they shielded us from the pain of “doing without” and taught us that there are things more important than material goods.

Writing sample 2:
Trading in Harper’s Ferry

In Harper’s Ferry, a town about three miles away, there was a general store where you could buy overalls and yard goods, as well as groceries and many items needed for farming. My mother and some of us kids would go down there in the buggy and trade our butter and eggs for the things we needed. Usually we bought mostly staples—things like flour, sugar, and coffee. We bought our flour in 100 pound bags. Dad and I and my brothers got our clothes at the store in Harper, and Mom bought fabric to make clothes for herself and the girls. This wasn’t like today’s grocery stores, where you shop on your own; instead, most items were behind the counter. We told the clerk what we needed and he brought it to the counter.

Harper’s Ferry had a population of about three hundred in those days. The town had a pool hall, some taverns, a post office and a blacksmith shop. Later on there was a gas station which also did repairs. Since cars were so much simpler then, most problems could be fixed at the station. At times there was a doctor in Harper’s, but usually they only stayed for a while and then moved on. Then we had to go to Waukon or Lansing if we needed medical help. When our animals were sick, Dad had to doctor them himself, because there was no veterinarian. Luckily, he was pretty good at it.

Dad builds our home
In 1920, Charles and Carolyn bought sixteen acres about a mile and a half north of North Kansas City on a road that had been surveyed, but not paved. The family first moved what they called a “shack” from the property across the road onto their land. They lived in the shack while my father built a new home. They hauled drinking water from a neighbor’s spring, and washed and bathed in the creek on the property. Our new home was not quite finished when my brother, their only son, Charles Robert (“Bud”), was born in the shack on November 15, 1921. My mother, a woman who was one of four girls and whose first three children were girls, wouldn’t believe she had delivered a boy until her mother told her it was true.

Dad actually built and wired our house himself. It had three bedrooms, one of which could only be accessed by going through another. Once the house was finished, my parents fenced the property, dug wells, and put in an orchard and a small vineyard. The entrance to their new home was from the “old telephone road”, later renamed Holmes. This home has now become part of Kansas City and is to be found at 634 N.E. Russell Road.

Our farm and garden
On our 16-acre farm we raised laying and frying chickens as well as milk cows. We harvested pears, apples, peaches, cherries, and grapes. We had a strawberry patch, and there were plenty of wild berry bushes on our land. Every summer and fall, my mother, with the help of Grandmother Thompson, canned much fruit and made delicious jams, jellies and butters from the harvest. Our garden yielded tomatoes, beans, corn, and many other vegetables. Best of all, we picked popcorn, which we popped every Sunday evening for our supper—along with our dessert. (Dinner, the main meal, was usually after church, around 2 or 3 p.m.)

Sunday dinner at our house
Every Saturday Mom killed, scalded, plucked, and cut up three or four chickens for Sunday dinner. My sister Carolyn remembers that most summer Sundays on our way home from church, Mom would stop at a little filling station and pick up a large block of ice. Dad used it for making delicious ice cream, using the rich cream from our four cows. First the ice had to be chipped into smaller chunks, and then placed in a gunny sack and pounded with a wooden mallet until the pieces were small enough to fit around the 6 quart container in the hand-cranked freezer. Rock salt was added, and then Dad and Bud would turn the handle. At first it was easy, but as the ice cream froze, the handle became more and more difficult to turn. When finished, the ice cream had to “ripen” for a little while before we could eat it.

We always seemed to have company for Sunday dinner—aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends. We were better off than a lot of people during those Depression days because we had the farm. Once Carolyn asked my mother why we always had a lot of people come to eat Sunday picnic dinners with us out on the lawn, but we rarely went to others’ homes to eat. She replied, “Perhaps because we have food.” At those dinners she served fried chicken, homemade rolls, mashed potatoes and her wonderful milk gravy. All this was accompanied with fruits from our orchard and fresh vegetables from our garden, as well as her delicious jellies, jams, and pickles.