'Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without'

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) - Walt Gray was 9 when his father died just before the start of the Great Depression. By age 10, Walt was peddling magazines on the streets to help his family make ends meet.

"No one's had to buy me a pair of shoes since I was 10," the retired Meridian, Idaho, salesman said.

Howard Johnston's family weathered the early Depression years in a tent on the Boise Bench.

He went to California hoping for work but didn't like it there and hopped a freight train home, taking advantage of a government program that helped feed destitute hobos.

"It took a week," the 97-year-old Boisean said. "The engineer told us to sign and we'd get coffee and a plate of beans once a day _ if that."

Margaret Anderson, now of Emmett, Idaho, says her family survived by raising a garden, hogs, cattle and chickens. She made a three-piece suit out of chicken-feed bags.

Eagle, Idaho, physician Charles Howarth's father was killed in a coal mine in Ohio. But one of his saddest memories is of desperate people scavenging for coal that fell from trains to heat their homes.

The four are among those responding to a request to share memories of the Great Depression _ and their insights on how it compared with today's economic meltdown.

Many of the responses were hand-written on both sides of notebook paper or stationery _ lingering evidence of the Depression mindset lauded in the "Make it do, or do without" verse cited by a 95-year-old caller and used as the headline for this story.

One letter came with stamps saved since 1966. If they learned nothing else, Depression survivors learned thrift _ a virtue whose paucity they say is causing many of our problems today.

Boisean Oma Owsley was 12 when the Depression began. Her family survived largely by living off the land.

"Every night, my Dad and I went hunting for foxes, opossum and skunks. ... We had berries and wild greens, and I picked our barnyard bare _ dandelions, thistle and other things we could eat." They picked corn that farmers hadn't gathered and ground it to make corn bread.

"This is the first time I've told this, the first time to steal," she wrote. "I did it because I was hungry." When her father found work in Idaho and the family moved from Arkansas, her mother needed all their money _ $30 _ for the trip.

"She said I'd have to kill my pet rabbit and we could eat it on the way. ... I did it with tears streaming down my eyes. I'll never forget that day."

When June Carver's father died in 1931, she and her mother were left on their own. Carver was 4.

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Her mother ran a struggling tourist business in California, selling gas and renting cabins. Even at 25 cents a night, many remained empty. Money was so tight that when her mother's car hit a squirrel, she skinned and cleaned it with her manicure scissors.

Now 82 and living in Cambridge, Idaho, Carver can "still see us eating that delicious squirrel gravy." Times were even harder after her mother's disability payment fell from $42 a month to $8. When Carver needed shoes, her mother killed a chicken and walked 4 miles to sell it.

Neighbors were so worried about the destitute widow that they arranged a match with a widower. The marriage lasted 45 years.

In 1933, Dewayne Berges' father went to collect his $1-a-day pay and didn't come home. Berges never saw him again.

Without him _ he was thought to have been killed in a car crash in Denver _ his wife was left to support eight children.

"She baby-sat and took in laundry," Berges said. "When I was about 12, I worked on a farm for $3.50 a week." Like many Depression-era families, they had a garden and root cellar. They fed their chickens weed seeds. Berges' mother canned to help the family get through the winters. To stay warm on winter nights, they burned corn cobs.

"Nobody had any money, but we managed to have some good times," he said. "My mother was a little redhead who never once complained. She lived to be 93."

Fruitland, Idaho's Kent Gist doesn't remember his Midwestern parents having any money at all during the Depression.

"No one did," he said.

His father farmed; his mother raised turkeys. The Dust Bowl decimated their crops, which were successful just twice in 11 years.

"If you got a crop, the price wasn't any good. My mother would gather what wheat she could, soak it overnight, and that was breakfast." What heat they had for the house came from wood.

"I still remember the day Dad got a cross-cut saw and didn't have to cut all the wood with an axe anymore."

Most of the Depression survivors who contacted the Statesman say things were much worse then.

"This is paradise," Gray said. "We have 6 to 7 percent unemployment? Then it was over 20 percent." A few disagreed.

"I'd call this a depression," Johnston said. "I haven't seen this many people laid off since the '30s."

If we are in a depression or entering one, they say, at least two societal changes have made us less able to cope with it. One is that we're more urbanized. Countless farm families survived the Great Depression by growing their own food.

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"Electronics doesn't produce a lot of meat and potatoes," Gist said.

The other change is one of expectations. We're used to having more, living easier.

"I went to college with a suitcase, hatbox and tennis racket," Boisean Juanita Neher wrote. "My grandkids need a trailer to haul electronics and refrigerators."

"We didn't have the big houses and luxuries to lose," Anderson added. "We didn't know any better."

Some blamed their generation for shielding later ones from hardship and, as Gist put it, producing "a populace that hasn't had much experience with adversity."

"Life is so easy for them," Gray said. "They think they deserve a good living even if they're criminals."

The survivors' tips for handling hard times: Simply put, live within your means and learn to do without. If you don't really need it, don't buy it. Save for emergencies and avoid debt, especially credit-card debt.

Even with today's dire economic news, some of those who survived the Big One see a silver lining.

"I think we have more intelligence this time around," Johnston said. "With all the information and technology we have, maybe we can learn from the last one and come out of it quicker this time."

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© 2009, The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho).