I’ve Danced My Life Away
Memories of the Great Depression
ED: Do you have any memories of the Depression?
FS: Vivid! Everyone had a very hard time, very hard.
My father was a marvelous provider. Even with one arm, he had big, big gardens, and my mother canned and worked very hard right by his side. He used to go out in the country and buy half a cow or sheep. He had to build a meat room on the back of the house in the shed. We had plenty to eat, but we didn’t have much of anything else. My mother made all of our clothes. We were poor like everybody else.
I remember when my father put electricity in the house and when he put town water in the house. There already was a sewer, but the sewer was put in this town way back when my mother was young, so we always had had a sewer but we didn’t have town water. We had a well out back. I remember very well when the telephone came.
I think I was away at school when they had the bathroom put in. That’s all I can tell you because I was thrilled when I came home and found they had a bathroom in the house. Before that we had a flush toilet in the cellar, which was where everybody put their flush toilet. My grandfather lived in the room up over the kitchen. My grandfather Alexander was the last Civil War veteran that lived in town. He also had the Boston Post Cane for a time because he was the oldest citizen. The ell of the house was the kitchen and a pantry, and my grandfather had the upstairs, and of course we had to go out back to the bathroom, out in back of the barn.
We always had cows and pigs and chickens, even though it was right in town. There were no zoning laws in those days. My father was brought up on a farm, and he felt that it was important to have good milk for the kids, and eggs, and we had two pigs usually every year and killed one in the fall. I can remember going out in the meat room. In the blacksmith shop he made big hooks, you know, all the way across this area, and I remember all those carcasses hanging up there. We had plenty to eat. My mother used to make sausage and cottage cheese and butter and everything. I had a nice life. It was a nice life - good parents and we were well provided for. Warm, we were always warm. I remember when we had stoves in the house and when the first furnace was put in, of course. It was in the cellar with a big grille in the hallway and I used to go stand over that when I was cold. He had hot water heat put in later. I can’t remember when that was either, but my memory is faulty sometimes.
ED: Do you remember any of the businesses where your parents would go, where your family bought groceries, if at all?
FS: Oh, my goodness! It was wonderful! Camden used to be wonderful, but now it’s all t-shirt places and art exhibits and all that. It’s not the same, not the same. We bought our groceries very often at Carleton Pascal’s, which is now (pauses)-
ED: French & Brawn, isn’t it?
We bought our coal from Willey’s and from George Thomas and our oil after we had oil put in the house. My mother and my father provided food a lot, so we didn’t have to do an awful lot of shopping outside. My mother always sewed all of our clothes, even sewed things for my father. We were pretty self-sufficient, and I guess I learned that from my mother. I’m pretty self-sufficient too.