When I see a documentary or read a memoir of those hard times, I remind myself that this was suffered through without the safety net of social programs that we have to hold us up today. No crop insurance, no program payments, no SNAP for anyone...there was true hunger and real misery.
When Mike and I are at our daughter's home, we are back in his parents' newlywed cottage, too. The bones of the original three rooms are very visible, and the house in 2012 is barely on the electrical grid.
Extended family that lived across the common yard were still doing laundry with homemade lye soap, in kettles over an open fire, in the mid-seventies. That had prompted me to call home, and tell my mother that I had "married the Clampetts."
We have all the comforts of modern life there now; but, I can easily remember how his mom and dad lived, not but a notch above subsistence. We just saved the smokehouse," just in case", and hope to salvage the chicken coops this winter.
I think we in our late fifties are the last generation to have had any experience with pre-chemical, pre-technology, and pre-petroleum farming. If you ever stared at the south end of a northbound mule, you know what I mean.
Can you imagine people working that hard for their meals these days?
