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Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

Would our children survive?

By: Brian Huycke

20/03/2009 10:47 AM | Comments: 0

Doris Peschel (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

My parents badly wanted to impress upon me how bad things can get if a person does not shape his own destiny. I tuned out my mother's stories about how they just got by in the dirty '30s.

I am deeply afraid that millions of Americans and (in the near future) Canadians will soon experience just how bad things can get.

We are not talking about a single terrible experience here, like when your cellphone breaks down. Think rather of no cellphone and no satellite dish plan. Think of being threatened with eviction from your home and facing extremely tight budget restrictions for very essential food items. Consider the curtailment of many services in the city combined with high crime and few people in the police force. Think of the end of all your dreams.

However, how can I talk about it? In the '30s I was not even a gleam in my father's eye. Rather, I went to interview 94-year-old Doris Peschel.

In 1930, when Doris was 15 years old, the financial world was grinding to a stop.

Question: Doris, I know you didn't call it a depression at the time but can you give me a general account of what your personal world was like in 1930?

Answer: Well, you could feel the anxiousness in people and it kind of crept into your bones and stayed there. For years I don't ever recall not being afraid, I think I was afraid of my own shadow.

Q: Did all this build up gradually or did you just wake up one morning and BOOM, your world was in ruins?

A: No, it was gradual, but each month it got worse. At the beginning, we only thought we were going through tough times. My father owned a half-section of land eight miles east of Wheaton, Minnesota, and we grew corn and wheat and raised chickens, ducks, pigs, and geese. It seemed like each month we worked longer and harder but we were no further ahead.

Q: You lived on a farm so that implies that you had enough to eat, does it not?

A: Yes. My mother could make a meal out of practically nothing and still have leftovers; at least that is what I like to tell people. However, remember that the price we were getting for our major crops of corn and wheat fell to very low levels. In addition to this, it did not rain much for several years. We used to eat the farm animals but soon the eggs and chickens and geese were being sold to keep shoes on our feet and clothes on our backs.

Q: Before this interview started, I remember that you said you finished high school. Could your parents spare you leaving the farm?

A: My father held education in very high regard. Our family scraped together $3 a month so I could share a single room with another girl in Wheaton. During September I stayed and helped on the farm and then caught up after I enrolled in late autumn.

Q: Did you start to have a better social life when you started high school?

A: No. I wish there were words to help you understand. On the farm, we all worked every hour of daylight and sometimes after that too. If we were not harvesting or planting, we were tending to the horses or the animals. They had to be fed and sometimes nursed. There were hams and sausages to make and these had to be smoked and then stored in barley lest they go bad. Work never ended, not even on Sunday. In school, I strived to catch up because I started late each year and then I kept my nose directly to the grindstone. There was no time for fun or sports or drama clubs or the like. As far as I recall those things did not exist. School was a job like any other.

Q: But by then there must have been light at the end of the tunnel?

A: There was no light, only a tunnel. In 1933 my father lost the farm.

Q: So how did you keep going to school?

A: A family in St. Paul, Minnesota needed a maid in the summer. I was the oldest and I already knew how to cook and bake and the like, so off I went.

Q: Can you give me some little summary of what your life was like after you graduated high school?

A: Franklin D. Roosevelt started the Works Project Administration, the WPA, and I went to work as an auditor in Wheaton and later in the town of Grey Eagle. Then, before I could escape to San Francisco, I met my future husband Gordon. We were married on Feb.14, 1942. I went on to have two children, Joan, born in 1949 and Joseph in 1952.

Q: Doris, do you have one final thing to say about the depression years?

A: I suppose. You know, as immensely proud as I am of my two children, I have to tell you that I've had one heck of a better time in these last 20 years then I did in my first 20 years.

All that wasted time. As a child, there were no birthday parties, play dates or anything in the way of childhood interactions. We just worked. Before I was married, I had never been to a dance. I had never been kissed or out on a date. Depression means the end of hope. You only think of survival. These kids today, I don't think they have the stomach for it, but I do wish them my best.

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