The Great Depression for Kids by Cheryl Mullenbach

Author:Cheryl Mullenbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2015-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

A “jungle,” or homeless camp, near St. Louis, Missouri.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8b27090

5

GROWING UP in TOUGH TIMES

Patience Abbe was 12 years old in 1936. Her friends were movie stars. She had traveled all over Europe. And, along with her two brothers, she had written a bestselling book titled Around the World. It was the midst of the Great Depression, but Patience had an enviable lifestyle. Her dad was a noted photographer who captured images of stars and political figures around the globe. He took his family along on his trips; that’s how Patience happened to write her very funny but insightful book about life on the road.

At about the time Patience was roaming the world with her family, a 15-yearold boy who called himself “Happy Joe” was traveling too. But he was riding the rails across America looking for work. Originally from New York, Happy Joe hopped freight trains to carry him from town to town.

“Dad lost his job. Nobody could get work. Then I lost my job. When I read they were hiring in Detroit I went there. I stayed there for a while. Then I just traveled,” Happy Joe explained.

Dressed in a man’s coat that he pinned up to keep it from dragging on the ground, Happy Joe slept and ate in outdoor camps near the tracks, where he could easily hop the next train. There were other boys and girls at the camps, or “jungles,” as they were called. These kids were in similar situations. Most had left their homes because their families were in stressful situations.

“Texas” came from a family with seven kids and two parents who wanted to work but lost their jobs. When Texas lost his job as a shoe shine boy, he took off so there would be one less mouth to feed. “Since then, I just been traveling,” he said.

A young girl called “Spit” claimed she left home because “Mother never liked me.” Vera from New Jersey was tired of her mother’s flightiness when it came to marriage—she had been married 11 times, and Vera just couldn’t tolerate another stepfather. Jennie from Pennsylvania left home when her mother died. “Dad tried to keep a home for the four of us kids. I was willing to work, but nobody hired me. I just sort of scrammed.”

Life for most kids during the Great Depression fell somewhere between the experiences of the Abbe family and those of the homeless kids who rode the rails.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.