Of Spoiled Brats and the Depression

The thought struck me in the middle of a lovely conversation last year with Mrs. Donna Leightner, age 92, that I am a spoiled brat. Like others of my baby boomer generation, I have had a relatively easy existence. I don’t know the meaning of being hungry or of doing without in any real way.

Donna was telling me about the effects of the Great Depression on her and her family. She graduated from high school in 1934. Through her entire high school career, she lived in town with other families because the five miles from her father’s farm to town was too great a distance to transport her back and forth to school. Of course, there were no buses to pick her up at her door. He could not afford the gasoline nor the time taken away from his farm chores to accommodate his daughter. She, and other students like her, earned their keep by helping out their host families with household tasks throughout the year. She stayed with her own family on weekends.

Donna had one pair of shoes. She had to take care of them as they were for school and church and whatever else came her way. I am ashamed to say how many pairs of shoes I have….shoes for every occasion, tennis shoes, boots, flats , heels and sandals. They line the floor of my closet. The year of Donna’s graduation, students did not have caps and gowns, nor did they purchase class rings. The superintendent did announce that girls were expected to wear a white dress and white shoes to the event. Donna recalls that her heart sank. “How were my parents going to do that for me? They just didn’t have the money” she said. Her parents provided her with the dress and shoes. “For years I wondered what they gave up. But I felt like a princess. “

Donna said she did have nice clothes, in large part because her grandmother made them. Her grandmother was a gifted seamstress who remade hand-me-downs for Donna. “That’s just the way it was”, she remembers. “Everyone was in the same boat.”

Stories of my own Grandma saving string and plastic bags and margarine containers filled my mind. It drove her crazy if we walked out of a room without turning out the lights. She (and Donna) had known real hardship and they wanted to be prepared to combat it if it came again. They wanted to ward it off if they could.

Compare this tale of thrift to our modern day explosion of spending. Many young adults feel they NEED cell phones and laptops and SUV’s and plasma TVS and mini-mansions and they need them now, never mind that their income will not support all those luxuries. They buy them anyway and hop onto a ferris wheel of activity to pay them off. Are they happier?

Donna smiles at her memories and her eyes twinkle with pleasure. She recalls her family and her church and her singing with joy. She chats about her best friend in high school and their adventures which included rolling a car during an AWOL trip from school. She tells me that the bedroom set in the small room off her living room is the only one she has ever had. Married 69 years to Del who is gone now, she says, “We conferred about each purchase and we didn’t buy things we didn’t need.”

“I have been so blessed”, Donna laughs. And I get the feeling that indeed she has as she has blessed me with a look into a past that could teach us all a thing or two about courage and restraint and sorting out life’s priorities.