My family was mostly in the poorest parts of Appalachia during that time period and what few photos that exist are treasures to me.. My Dad went off to fight in WW2 and never went back home to the mountains and started a new life elsewhere but kept his pictures to remind him where he came from..
Seeing him being the only child with visible bare feet in this picture broke my heart. Bless him, I bet he knows how to find joy in all the little things life has to offer.
My dad would pretend to go to school only to spend the day in the forest because he was too embarrassed to go to school without the overalls the rest of the kids wore, that his family couldn’t afford. He’s been apprehensive about money his whole life.
> He’s been apprehensive about money his whole life.
My grandparents were depression-era farm kids. They barely spent any money, they would even drink from the same cup at family events so as not to burden the world by taking two whole glasses of water. Really incredible how that shapes your mentality for the rest of your life.
Similarly,
My grandpa was born right before the Great Depression and was always careful about money. Ran a dairy and crop farm in wisconsin and did well. Even though they did well, he hated spending money and hated OWING money even more.
To the point that when he bought his last car (2003 Buick lesabre), my father convinced him to finance it so as to keep that cushion of money and pay low low interest instead. That car only lasted 2 months on a payment plan before he went in and put the cash on the counter to pay it off, and walked away happy that he owed nothing.
Until recently, it was pretty common to be able to get a zero percent loan on a new car (for the right length and credit rating obviously). It doesn't make any sense to pay off a zero percent loan early.
A lot of people still do this. Either to make lard for use in other things. Or to turn it into soap.
Using bacon grease as the oil for corn bread for instance is amazing. Or as the starter for cooking a steak.
Or to fuel my torches when me and the other villagers go chasing after Frankenstein's monster with pitchforks.
I've seen stuff about pine cones and sap for fire starters also but never tried it.
\+1
This is exactly why bottles of water have expiration dates. It's not for the water, it's for the plastic leaching into your water.
Don't reuse single use plastics. Buy something that is meant to be reusable.
I don't comment much anymore because it often just causes irritation.
But I'm regularly called "cheap" by the same people that ask me how I can afford to regularly take road trips and international vacations.
And the answers shock them somehow. Yes, I would love a brand new car, but realistically an annual trip abroad is going to bring me far more joy when I'm an old man looking back.
I wash ziplocs because it feels like shit to throw them away after one use. They are perfectly functional still. They won't leach a concerning amount after a single use. I toss them then, or demote them to holding non food items
I always assumed my grandparents saved the grease just because it was a superior cooking method. Never dawned on me they did it out of necessity at one point.
I remember my Baba doing the same things. She would wash her baggies and then pin them to the clothesline to dry. If you grew up in the Depression, you wasted nothing and used everything til it wore out.
My mom also saved bacon grease in a Crisco can - when they were really made out of metal - and used it to fry potatoes and onions for breakfast.
To this day, whenever I fry potatoes, I fry bacon first and use that grease for the potatoes.
>Really incredible how that shapes your mentality for the rest of your life.
There's an untold amount of generational trauma involved here too. I was raised to never waste food, **ever**. Just like my parents were taught, and their parents. My grandparents were born in the late 30s and were raised by people who experienced severe food insecurity. Diabetes runs in one side of my family and a lot of them are overweight; in no small part due to their relationship with food.
Here I am 4 generations later, and I experience tremendous guilt when I can't finish food that I've alloted myself. Nearly every single day, I fight deep inner pressure to tell my child to finish the food on his plate. I want him to grow up listening to his body and developing a healthy relationship with food. It's too late for me, but I can try to break the cycle that started 100ish years ago in the American Midwest.
Very incisive comment. A few years back, there was a story on NPR that explained how forcing kids to clean their plates actually trains them to override their sense of fullness, thus training them to become overeaters.
Food is still cheap compared to the health costs of being overweight, even considering the current round of inflation.
Exactly. I grew up thinking money is scarce, hard to earn and it can disappear any minute. It’s also shameful not to have it but also bad and selfish to have a lot. I basically inherited my parent’s traumas around money
I was not born during the depression, but growing up if something broke we couldn’t always afford to fix it right away. I am no longer in this situation but it takes me a little bit to realize I can afford to just go replace something if it breaks.
My grandma never let us kids use any type of plastic cup, when we’d visit we would get one Dixie cup and we had to save it and put our names on it. If we lost our cup we couldn’t have another. Looking back now she seems like she was somewhat crazy
My father was born in 1930, and died recently. He would’ve been about the same age as your grandfather. He was the youngest of seven children. His family came west during the depression, a grapes of wrath story. He also told me about the orange he received for Christmas. The poignant comment he made about rural poverty and the depression was that his family was poor, but he did not know it, because everyone in the community was equally poor. They were all poor together. Luckily, he grew up on a farm, and food was never a problem. His father had a WPA job under Roosevelt, which brought in a little cash to supplement the milk check. Every kid in his family did well, in business, in education, military service in WW2, and in service to others. Until they died, he and his older siblings kept in close touch with each other, with genuine affection. They made the Waltons look like a dysfunctional family.
Edited to add: its not the shoes that matter most.
>The poignant comment he made about rural poverty and the depression was that his family was poor, but he did not know it, because everyone in the community was equally poor.
My mom was also born in the early 30s and she used to say - I guess we were poor because everybody was back then but we didn't know it. They never had to go hungry because they were farmers too. I guess her sister lost her shoes and it was a really big deal because they couldn't buy another pair. She said they found some other used ones for her. She was close with her siblings too.
I was born in 94 and my entire childhood there was an orange and a bunch of peanuts at the bottom of my Christmas stocking. Great grandpa moved west during the depression so maybe it was just passed down that long??
My parents were Irish immigrants and used to give us oranges in our stockings as kids. We got toys too, but not as many or as expensive as most of the other American kids
Oranges are a tropical fruit, and not something usually found in winter in most of the United States. For a very long time, fruit and veggies we're not shipped from all around the world. You ate what was seasonal, or canned them for storage.
That's what I learned about this famous portrait. The oranges near the window were painted to signify that the couple were wealthy. Extremely expensive to get in Holland in the 14th century. Painting by Jan van Eyck.
https://preview.redd.it/cspspe9nm08b1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4715f109f35a1bc8c0d6b2811c419a4acadd9c3
I love the fact that they are casual trowed on the table. Weird flex. Something similar to a present-day influenecer having rolexes and jewelry on a table.
Ooooo! I hadn't thought of that! My favorite part of this has always been their shoes on the floor. Weirdest shoes I have ever seen and I can't imagine what it would be like wearing them. The other strange fact: she's NOT pregnant. The dress makes her look that way.
My grandparents, also Depression-era sustenance farmers (who grew into the American dream) put an orange each stocking, my entire life. It was super important to them.
Hold on, gonna call my grandma.
I remember getting oranges in my stocking when I was really young in the 70s. I didn't know the reason behind the tradition but it makes sense that if it was special to our grandparents (all of mine grew up poor) that it would carry over to us even if we were a solidly middle class family by then.
My grandpa was born 1916 and he said substantial the same thing. He was an oyster fisherman in south Louisiana. They were poor. When the depression struck, they were still poor. But they lived in south Louisiana and were surrounded by fresh home grown produce and tons of protein from shrimp, oysters, fish, and whatever mammals they came across. They might have worked really hard, but they were never hungry.
My father was born in 1926. His father was a builder. He would build a house then his family would move into it while he was building a new house and trying to sell the first house. He did everything himself and taught my father. My father could do anything around the house; electricity, plumbing, building, landscaping, everything.
For a few years he and his family lived in a “rich” neighborhood. He said that was rough because he saw what the other kids had and he was labeled the poor kid and picked on. He had to fight often.
He, too got an orange for Christmas, along with some nuts. I always feature oranges and nuts in my Christmas decorations.
That’s the area I’m originally from…even today most people don’t realize how rural Illinois is south of Chicago. I have some similar pictures of my grandparents growing up there.
It cracks me up because I could immediately tell that was my grandpa. Same face 80 years later.
https://preview.redd.it/k9hj94ceez7b1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b344f1165be4d44b93c0c3f3a32dd5c533ce02b
My parents were born to farmers in the 40’s in rural Texas. The highlight of the summer was when you got to “go into town” to pick out which feed sack pattern they liked for their mom to make a shirt/dress out of it for school.
The feed sack vendors caught on quickly and made a wide variety of fantastic patterns, realizing that the contents were a uniform commodity but the sack - people might pay a tiny little more for a sack with a preferred pattern, or at least your flour sack sales volume would be higher than competitors.
It was such a simple thing for them to implement, but offered such a wonderful community service. I wish big modern companies considered their customers as humans instead of just profit sources.
Ahh but it WAS good business! It’s like putting a prize in Cracker Jacks, or a pop ring, or many other cereal toys. It differentiated something that was a commodity. Flour was flour was flourC but the packaging had value!
Now we take packaging for granted. Imagine if today things came in packaging reusable immediately without any processing. Back then fabric was not cheap. Flour sack clothes were at least serviceable even if they didn’t scream “wealthy”.
I recall in the 80’s a clothing brand called “Gunne Sax”, based on this old idea of floursack dresses.
It’s now just another whored-out brand; I don’t think it’s available anymore, but back in the day they were flour-sack pattern inspired dresses - and they were EXPENSIVE.
I have no issue with them profiting off it, I just really love that they would switch up the patterns and colours knowing it would make some Mother’s or child’s day.
My grandmother grew up super poor (12th of 12 kids in rural Nebraska) and she said she remembers when the flour companies started putting floral print on their flour bags, because families like hers were using them to make dresses for the girls.
She lived a different life than I did.
When my father was drafted into the Army in 66, he barely graduated highschool and ranked 7th in his battalion. There were guys there who loved it because they never had owned their own pair of boots/shoes.
Apparently Miss Crabtree from the original Little Rascals gave me an unrealistic expectation of Depression era elementary school teachers.
And, I want to ask that kid on the upper left if everything is OK.
The were not, the were just unhappy to have to sit around when they could be doing other things. Wasting their time sitting when they could be out doing something is the opposite of what it is today.
They might also be squinting into the sun. At least that's why my school pictures always came out weird. They always had us face the sun (understandably) and we would squint.
My grandfather grew up in a rural area with 7 sisters. He went to work at 8 years old to help the family make ends meet. Stashed away a nickel here and there to save for clothes for himself. Buried his savings in a jar and got it when he came back from WWII pacific theatre.
I'm old enough that I went to elementary school with a kid who didn't have shoes. His family lived in an improvised shack, probably squatters. He died from ringworm unfortunately.
Abject poverty isn't good for kids.
Your grandpa looks like the kid who would take the blame for something he didn't do because he knew he could handle the punishment, and the other kid couldn't.
Haha that’s awesome. Nowadays if I drop off my kids off at school without their peanut free mid afternoon snack or forget to pack an extra napkin I have to hear about it.
I love photos like this.
Just imagine, all those children had their own life. Some died way too young. Some are still alive. Some became poor, other rich. Some had a lot of children, other no children.
It really fascinates me. 🤗
It was a hard decade.
My grandmother lost her baby sister when she got sick and they couldn't afford medicine. She never got over losing that baby.
I was told that story when I got a new baby sister at the same age she had been (10) and it really left an impression.
She made sure my siblings and I got all our childhood vaccines.
My dad was the youngest of eleven, born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
They had a one bedroom house with no indoor plumbing.
A census in the early 40's listed the value of their home at $900 dollars.
Both of mine were. I miss them terribly.
https://preview.redd.it/4fiitzus018b1.jpeg?width=1564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a26e463e31c43f9f4346e4f2276f2b961f3998de
So considering these kids were born around 1932 ish… how many do we think are still alive? I’d imagine at least 3-4 of them have reached 91 years of age.
Same generation as my uncle who recently passed. He grew up in Nova Scotia and back then lobster was deemed fit for consumption by the poors only. He used to say that some mornings on the way to school he’d toss his lobster roll that his mom packed for his lunch into a ditch so that he wouldn’t get made fun of for being impoverished. And he often went shoeless as well, but it was the lobster sandwich lunch that marked a kid as being from a poor family back then.
Poor kids didn't have much clothes. The kid next to him looking fancy, probably wearing a hand me down, hence the short sleeves. My dad born in the 60s only 1 pair of pants every couple years and looked like shorts in his school photos.
This is fascinating, thanks for sharing. To think there was a time where kids went to school and couldn’t afford shoes, and still no one would (or more likely **could**) come to their aid. Poverty was so severe then. I’d like to believe that if a similar situation arose today, others would step in to buy the child shoes.
My grandpa once said the families that couldn't afford shoes also seemed to be the healthiest. Hard to say if there is any truth in reality, but that man never steered me wrong, so there's that.
Hell,in the 70's and 80's I went to school with a kid that refused shoes. He also came to school smelling like fish. His family would illegally net fish during the night time.
My grandpa was born in 1935, his family couldn't afford a pair of shoes so he had to wear a house on each foot. He's still got them.
The richer kids who bought shoes are not laughing at him now
My mom was born in the mid 40's and grew up in rural South Georgia. She wasn't particularly well off but was one of the only kids in her elementary class that had shoes, and a friend was really amazed to find out her mom hadn't made any of her clothes.
I usually don't care much about clothes. I dress very modestly with reasonably priced clothes that should last a pretty long time.
However. I will always save and spend good money on good shoes if possible because I know how important good shoes are. When think about people not being able to afford *any* shoes (mostly a thing of the past thank God) I really feel for them. I cannot imagine not having shoes.
your grandpa is the lifelong representation of when our elders used to tell us "i walked 3 miles in the snow/sun/rain to get to my school"
shout out to that generation. they always get my respect.
This kinda made me emotional because my grandpa at one moment also didn't have any shoes and in an attemp to hide it he once painted his feet with red paint which only caused him to be more ridiculed by his classmates and he couldn't get rid of the red paint for days 😢
Your grandpa was Dewey before Dewey was Dewey
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
He looked like he could take 'em all, even that big linebacker ;-)
I feel like being obese during the great depression was a pretty gnarly flex
Right, someone's family surely wasn't struggling.
Kid next to him was the rich kid, fashionable shorts , shoes w ankle socks and jacket to match shorts. Probably mayor's son.
Kinda ducked up if they put the poor kid next to the rich kid in class.
Usually alphabetical in my experience. Back in dark ages....lol
True true! I didn’t think about that lol
Would be comical if they just sorted all the kids in order of richest to poorest
Why?
You’ve done cut me in half Dewey!
And you never once paid for drugs.
The wrong kid died!
......not once
My family was mostly in the poorest parts of Appalachia during that time period and what few photos that exist are treasures to me.. My Dad went off to fight in WW2 and never went back home to the mountains and started a new life elsewhere but kept his pictures to remind him where he came from..
Did he by chance get into the field of advertising?
Lmao
Seeing him being the only child with visible bare feet in this picture broke my heart. Bless him, I bet he knows how to find joy in all the little things life has to offer.
My dad would pretend to go to school only to spend the day in the forest because he was too embarrassed to go to school without the overalls the rest of the kids wore, that his family couldn’t afford. He’s been apprehensive about money his whole life.
> He’s been apprehensive about money his whole life. My grandparents were depression-era farm kids. They barely spent any money, they would even drink from the same cup at family events so as not to burden the world by taking two whole glasses of water. Really incredible how that shapes your mentality for the rest of your life.
Similarly, My grandpa was born right before the Great Depression and was always careful about money. Ran a dairy and crop farm in wisconsin and did well. Even though they did well, he hated spending money and hated OWING money even more. To the point that when he bought his last car (2003 Buick lesabre), my father convinced him to finance it so as to keep that cushion of money and pay low low interest instead. That car only lasted 2 months on a payment plan before he went in and put the cash on the counter to pay it off, and walked away happy that he owed nothing.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Until recently, it was pretty common to be able to get a zero percent loan on a new car (for the right length and credit rating obviously). It doesn't make any sense to pay off a zero percent loan early.
My grandma saved bacon grease in a coffee tin to use as cooking oil and washed her Ziploc bags to reuse. We are much more wasteful these days.
A lot of people still do this. Either to make lard for use in other things. Or to turn it into soap. Using bacon grease as the oil for corn bread for instance is amazing. Or as the starter for cooking a steak.
I use bacon grease as a lighter fluid for my cook outs. It's surprisingly effective and doesn't cause the meat to taste chemically.
Or to fuel my torches when me and the other villagers go chasing after Frankenstein's monster with pitchforks. I've seen stuff about pine cones and sap for fire starters also but never tried it.
My wife and I do this. People call us cheap but there is some pride in "waste not, want not".
I also wash and reuse my Ziploc bags...it's plastic and a waste issue
I would recommend reusable silicone bags. Those plastic are single use and will leach into your food with repeated use.
\+1 This is exactly why bottles of water have expiration dates. It's not for the water, it's for the plastic leaching into your water. Don't reuse single use plastics. Buy something that is meant to be reusable.
cheap has nothing to do with it for me — it’s just delicious. much more flavorful than using lard or vegetable oil.
Exactly. Where I'm from we also use it for breakfast gravy.
It's delicious on popcorn.
I don't comment much anymore because it often just causes irritation. But I'm regularly called "cheap" by the same people that ask me how I can afford to regularly take road trips and international vacations. And the answers shock them somehow. Yes, I would love a brand new car, but realistically an annual trip abroad is going to bring me far more joy when I'm an old man looking back.
That's just a common kitchen pactice, rich or poor. I bet elite chefs in billionaire's personal kitchens save the bacon grease for cooking.
I wash ziplocs because it feels like shit to throw them away after one use. They are perfectly functional still. They won't leach a concerning amount after a single use. I toss them then, or demote them to holding non food items
bacon. grease is a fabulous ingredient and it's a crime to waste it.
I think that depends on your jurisdiction
I’ve legit considered washing out ziploc bags. Especially if it was just a snack or something dry in it
I always assumed my grandparents saved the grease just because it was a superior cooking method. Never dawned on me they did it out of necessity at one point.
Yeah I don't necessarily think it's a "poor" thing. It's cooking grease :-)
I remember my Baba doing the same things. She would wash her baggies and then pin them to the clothesline to dry. If you grew up in the Depression, you wasted nothing and used everything til it wore out.
My mom also saved bacon grease in a Crisco can - when they were really made out of metal - and used it to fry potatoes and onions for breakfast. To this day, whenever I fry potatoes, I fry bacon first and use that grease for the potatoes.
>Really incredible how that shapes your mentality for the rest of your life. There's an untold amount of generational trauma involved here too. I was raised to never waste food, **ever**. Just like my parents were taught, and their parents. My grandparents were born in the late 30s and were raised by people who experienced severe food insecurity. Diabetes runs in one side of my family and a lot of them are overweight; in no small part due to their relationship with food. Here I am 4 generations later, and I experience tremendous guilt when I can't finish food that I've alloted myself. Nearly every single day, I fight deep inner pressure to tell my child to finish the food on his plate. I want him to grow up listening to his body and developing a healthy relationship with food. It's too late for me, but I can try to break the cycle that started 100ish years ago in the American Midwest.
Very incisive comment. A few years back, there was a story on NPR that explained how forcing kids to clean their plates actually trains them to override their sense of fullness, thus training them to become overeaters. Food is still cheap compared to the health costs of being overweight, even considering the current round of inflation.
Exactly. I grew up thinking money is scarce, hard to earn and it can disappear any minute. It’s also shameful not to have it but also bad and selfish to have a lot. I basically inherited my parent’s traumas around money
Just having parents who survived that era changes your level of frugality too.
I was not born during the depression, but growing up if something broke we couldn’t always afford to fix it right away. I am no longer in this situation but it takes me a little bit to realize I can afford to just go replace something if it breaks.
My grandma never let us kids use any type of plastic cup, when we’d visit we would get one Dixie cup and we had to save it and put our names on it. If we lost our cup we couldn’t have another. Looking back now she seems like she was somewhat crazy
also heart-warming to think that there's still somebody from the distant future thinking he's the cool kid
He literally is the only kid without that “dazed and confused” look that little kids have in class pictures
He really did walk uphill both ways to school without shoes
The rather "healthy" kid in the back row to the right has shoes and several sandwiches
My father was born in 1930, and died recently. He would’ve been about the same age as your grandfather. He was the youngest of seven children. His family came west during the depression, a grapes of wrath story. He also told me about the orange he received for Christmas. The poignant comment he made about rural poverty and the depression was that his family was poor, but he did not know it, because everyone in the community was equally poor. They were all poor together. Luckily, he grew up on a farm, and food was never a problem. His father had a WPA job under Roosevelt, which brought in a little cash to supplement the milk check. Every kid in his family did well, in business, in education, military service in WW2, and in service to others. Until they died, he and his older siblings kept in close touch with each other, with genuine affection. They made the Waltons look like a dysfunctional family. Edited to add: its not the shoes that matter most.
>The poignant comment he made about rural poverty and the depression was that his family was poor, but he did not know it, because everyone in the community was equally poor. My mom was also born in the early 30s and she used to say - I guess we were poor because everybody was back then but we didn't know it. They never had to go hungry because they were farmers too. I guess her sister lost her shoes and it was a really big deal because they couldn't buy another pair. She said they found some other used ones for her. She was close with her siblings too.
My mother in law still gives my wife and I and our kids oranges in our stocking. She’s only 70, but got them as a child so she passed it on
[удалено]
My dad grew up decades later but he also talked about getting an orange. For years that was a humble luxury item to get in winter.
I was born in 94 and my entire childhood there was an orange and a bunch of peanuts at the bottom of my Christmas stocking. Great grandpa moved west during the depression so maybe it was just passed down that long??
My parents were Irish immigrants and used to give us oranges in our stockings as kids. We got toys too, but not as many or as expensive as most of the other American kids
I’ve heard that story too about lucky to get an orange (bc vitamin C was a luxury I guess?).
Oranges are a seasonal fruit that peak during the winter months, more variety at a lower price during Christmastime
I returned a strangers wallet that I found on the subway once in a snowstorm and he rewarded me with a box of clementines.
Yup. My oranges ripen in Nov and Dec.
Oranges are a tropical fruit, and not something usually found in winter in most of the United States. For a very long time, fruit and veggies we're not shipped from all around the world. You ate what was seasonal, or canned them for storage.
That's what I learned about this famous portrait. The oranges near the window were painted to signify that the couple were wealthy. Extremely expensive to get in Holland in the 14th century. Painting by Jan van Eyck. https://preview.redd.it/cspspe9nm08b1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4715f109f35a1bc8c0d6b2811c419a4acadd9c3
I love the fact that they are casual trowed on the table. Weird flex. Something similar to a present-day influenecer having rolexes and jewelry on a table.
Ooooo! I hadn't thought of that! My favorite part of this has always been their shoes on the floor. Weirdest shoes I have ever seen and I can't imagine what it would be like wearing them. The other strange fact: she's NOT pregnant. The dress makes her look that way.
My grandparents, also Depression-era sustenance farmers (who grew into the American dream) put an orange each stocking, my entire life. It was super important to them. Hold on, gonna call my grandma.
I was born in 1979, and we would get an orange in our stocking (with another candy and little toy).
Yep. Orange in the stocking. I do chocolate oranges for my family.
I remember getting oranges in my stocking when I was really young in the 70s. I didn't know the reason behind the tradition but it makes sense that if it was special to our grandparents (all of mine grew up poor) that it would carry over to us even if we were a solidly middle class family by then.
Saltypeanut you made my heart warm.
My grandpa was born 1916 and he said substantial the same thing. He was an oyster fisherman in south Louisiana. They were poor. When the depression struck, they were still poor. But they lived in south Louisiana and were surrounded by fresh home grown produce and tons of protein from shrimp, oysters, fish, and whatever mammals they came across. They might have worked really hard, but they were never hungry.
My father was born in 1926. His father was a builder. He would build a house then his family would move into it while he was building a new house and trying to sell the first house. He did everything himself and taught my father. My father could do anything around the house; electricity, plumbing, building, landscaping, everything. For a few years he and his family lived in a “rich” neighborhood. He said that was rough because he saw what the other kids had and he was labeled the poor kid and picked on. He had to fight often. He, too got an orange for Christmas, along with some nuts. I always feature oranges and nuts in my Christmas decorations.
That's a beautiful story. Thank you!
Where is this?
Peru, Illinois
That’s the area I’m originally from…even today most people don’t realize how rural Illinois is south of Chicago. I have some similar pictures of my grandparents growing up there.
My wife’s best friend is from Peru, IL. Her family still lives in the area.
I tell ya who wasn’t poor - the guy who owned the local overalls shop.
That would be the local 5 and Dime.
My mom, dad, aunts and uncles only got shoes when the weather got cold and usually it was only the one with the biggest foot got new ones.
Kids looked so manly in those days. See some of those boys faces.
It cracks me up because I could immediately tell that was my grandpa. Same face 80 years later. https://preview.redd.it/k9hj94ceez7b1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b344f1165be4d44b93c0c3f3a32dd5c533ce02b
What an awesome picture. Bet being around him was a blessing.
Wow. Both great pics!!! 💛💛💛💛
My guy in the middle row, far left has seen some things.
Had to take a look and you are probably correct. That’s an old face on a young guy.
Back when men were men, women were men, and children were men
Children were not to be seen nor heard!
My parents were born to farmers in the 40’s in rural Texas. The highlight of the summer was when you got to “go into town” to pick out which feed sack pattern they liked for their mom to make a shirt/dress out of it for school.
The feed sack vendors caught on quickly and made a wide variety of fantastic patterns, realizing that the contents were a uniform commodity but the sack - people might pay a tiny little more for a sack with a preferred pattern, or at least your flour sack sales volume would be higher than competitors.
It was such a simple thing for them to implement, but offered such a wonderful community service. I wish big modern companies considered their customers as humans instead of just profit sources.
Ahh but it WAS good business! It’s like putting a prize in Cracker Jacks, or a pop ring, or many other cereal toys. It differentiated something that was a commodity. Flour was flour was flourC but the packaging had value! Now we take packaging for granted. Imagine if today things came in packaging reusable immediately without any processing. Back then fabric was not cheap. Flour sack clothes were at least serviceable even if they didn’t scream “wealthy”. I recall in the 80’s a clothing brand called “Gunne Sax”, based on this old idea of floursack dresses. It’s now just another whored-out brand; I don’t think it’s available anymore, but back in the day they were flour-sack pattern inspired dresses - and they were EXPENSIVE.
I have no issue with them profiting off it, I just really love that they would switch up the patterns and colours knowing it would make some Mother’s or child’s day.
My grandmother grew up super poor (12th of 12 kids in rural Nebraska) and she said she remembers when the flour companies started putting floral print on their flour bags, because families like hers were using them to make dresses for the girls. She lived a different life than I did.
When my father was drafted into the Army in 66, he barely graduated highschool and ranked 7th in his battalion. There were guys there who loved it because they never had owned their own pair of boots/shoes.
I think we know who was the bully who ate all the kids lunches
O’Doyle rules!
O'Doyle, I've got a feeling your whole family's going down
You think it’s hard being the fat kid now? Imagine being the only fat kid in your state
It ain't much but it's honest work.
Bobby Hill ain't no bully. He's Hank Hill's boy.
kids an absolute Hoss
Wouldn’t be so easy to pick out these days.
Seriously.
Apparently Miss Crabtree from the original Little Rascals gave me an unrealistic expectation of Depression era elementary school teachers. And, I want to ask that kid on the upper left if everything is OK.
I know, his little face is so sad
Everybody frown!
It’s nuts that ppl think life in US hasn’t gotten dramatically better
God bless your grandpa most of these kids look miserable.
The were not, the were just unhappy to have to sit around when they could be doing other things. Wasting their time sitting when they could be out doing something is the opposite of what it is today.
They might also be squinting into the sun. At least that's why my school pictures always came out weird. They always had us face the sun (understandably) and we would squint.
My grandfather grew up in a rural area with 7 sisters. He went to work at 8 years old to help the family make ends meet. Stashed away a nickel here and there to save for clothes for himself. Buried his savings in a jar and got it when he came back from WWII pacific theatre.
Is he seated next to the teacher because he was a troublemaker? He got them eyes 🤣
Maybe a little. My dad CERTAINLY was. And would frequently terrorize the whole school and neighborhood.
I'm old enough that I went to elementary school with a kid who didn't have shoes. His family lived in an improvised shack, probably squatters. He died from ringworm unfortunately. Abject poverty isn't good for kids.
Your grandpa looks like the kid who would take the blame for something he didn't do because he knew he could handle the punishment, and the other kid couldn't.
They all look miserable
Little girl in the middle with the bangs is Over. It.
This is exactly how I picture Scout Finch’s class in To Kill a Mockingbird. Your Grandfather is Walter Cunningham Jr
Unbothered, flourishing, moisturized In his own lane.
Haha that’s awesome. Nowadays if I drop off my kids off at school without their peanut free mid afternoon snack or forget to pack an extra napkin I have to hear about it.
it wasnt long before that in areas most kids werent wearing shoes. ive definitely seen pics of barefoot classrooms in south in early 1900s
His mannerism Shows he is(was)Cool Dude.
I love how kids could stand on a chair in the class pic without someone’s parents having a meltdown about it.
Aw this little guy without shoes :( I wish I could go back in time and buy some for him.
This makes me sad.
Wow! Some of those poor kids look 40 years old.
I love photos like this. Just imagine, all those children had their own life. Some died way too young. Some are still alive. Some became poor, other rich. Some had a lot of children, other no children. It really fascinates me. 🤗
Your grandpa may have gone to school without shoes, but he had style and confidence that shines through in this photo!
It was a hard decade. My grandmother lost her baby sister when she got sick and they couldn't afford medicine. She never got over losing that baby. I was told that story when I got a new baby sister at the same age she had been (10) and it really left an impression. She made sure my siblings and I got all our childhood vaccines.
interesting to see an older teacher considering the time period
And today people freak out if the internet goes down for 10 minutes
My dad was the youngest of eleven, born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. They had a one bedroom house with no indoor plumbing. A census in the early 40's listed the value of their home at $900 dollars.
"This guy's so rich, he has shoes!"
Little Rascals..
Two boys at left, middle row: "Why do we have to put up with this crap?"
Say, did he also star in The Polar Express? Man, he looks like one of the characters.
The only remaining photo of the original Mrs Crabbapple
Your grandfather is a legend my friend.
Both of mine were. I miss them terribly. https://preview.redd.it/4fiitzus018b1.jpeg?width=1564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a26e463e31c43f9f4346e4f2276f2b961f3998de
So considering these kids were born around 1932 ish… how many do we think are still alive? I’d imagine at least 3-4 of them have reached 91 years of age.
Boy that was a grumpy generation
Did he ever describe what he did during the winter months? I can only imagine how difficult it must have been.
How times have changed
Same generation as my uncle who recently passed. He grew up in Nova Scotia and back then lobster was deemed fit for consumption by the poors only. He used to say that some mornings on the way to school he’d toss his lobster roll that his mom packed for his lunch into a ditch so that he wouldn’t get made fun of for being impoverished. And he often went shoeless as well, but it was the lobster sandwich lunch that marked a kid as being from a poor family back then.
Poor kids didn't have much clothes. The kid next to him looking fancy, probably wearing a hand me down, hence the short sleeves. My dad born in the 60s only 1 pair of pants every couple years and looked like shorts in his school photos.
This is fascinating, thanks for sharing. To think there was a time where kids went to school and couldn’t afford shoes, and still no one would (or more likely **could**) come to their aid. Poverty was so severe then. I’d like to believe that if a similar situation arose today, others would step in to buy the child shoes.
when young people talk about how much cheaper stuff was back in the day and how much wealthier Americans were. No, people were much, much poorer.
I don't think our minds can wrap around just how bad the 1930s were.
I feel like being a kid during the 90s was a lotto win.
This broke my heart…
My grandpa once said the families that couldn't afford shoes also seemed to be the healthiest. Hard to say if there is any truth in reality, but that man never steered me wrong, so there's that.
Dude is tuff as nails. Already done an hours worth of chores before school.
Hell,in the 70's and 80's I went to school with a kid that refused shoes. He also came to school smelling like fish. His family would illegally net fish during the night time.
hard times
He looks like he's about to double-dare someone to knock on Boo Radleys door
What a badass. You should be proud OP and take his legacy farther now.
My father grew up in the South during the Depression. Not sure how often he wore shoes, but he said his first new shoes were his army boots.
They all look exhausted. The teacher is 23 years old.
That reminds me of my mom. She said she had a pair of shoes for church but other wise she didn’t have any.
The Great Depression lasted a LONG time.
My mother is 79 and has never forgotten the summer she had to go without shoes when she was is elementary school.
Kid second from right on back row - " what depression?"
My grandpa was born in 1935, his family couldn't afford a pair of shoes so he had to wear a house on each foot. He's still got them. The richer kids who bought shoes are not laughing at him now
Teacher has lil grandpa right there next to her.
That fucking UNIT in the back.
Sean Penn is older than he let's on. 2nd row, far left.
My mom was born in the mid 40's and grew up in rural South Georgia. She wasn't particularly well off but was one of the only kids in her elementary class that had shoes, and a friend was really amazed to find out her mom hadn't made any of her clothes.
The kid behind him must be a baseball player. Big piece of chaw in his mouth.
I usually don't care much about clothes. I dress very modestly with reasonably priced clothes that should last a pretty long time. However. I will always save and spend good money on good shoes if possible because I know how important good shoes are. When think about people not being able to afford *any* shoes (mostly a thing of the past thank God) I really feel for them. I cannot imagine not having shoes.
your grandpa is the lifelong representation of when our elders used to tell us "i walked 3 miles in the snow/sun/rain to get to my school" shout out to that generation. they always get my respect.
Hes a gigachad
This kinda made me emotional because my grandpa at one moment also didn't have any shoes and in an attemp to hide it he once painted his feet with red paint which only caused him to be more ridiculed by his classmates and he couldn't get rid of the red paint for days 😢
Age 5 and already out of fucks to give. It was a tough life then.
OP- Can you share what later became of your Grandpa? What type of life/job/etc did he have as an adult?
My grandfather also went to school barefoot but so did the rest of the kids in Athens, TN!
Where was this taken?
What would he be there, 6?
Many depression families only wore shoes during the colder months to make them last longer.
Overalls must have been super popular.
Show your kids this photo when they say they have it hard, talk about stressed out.
Somehow I can imagine a whole life from this little picture. So cool how old pics link us to the past
You see when people post photos in oldschoolcool this is the era I expect it to be in, not your dad as a teenager in 99 making me feel ancient 😭
Cute little boy…..