Dad vs the Great Depression

by Betty Erickson of Woodbridge, VA

Dad’s woodcraft business was snuffed out when Dr. Simpson had the deputy sheriff claim his tools. Dad was unable to pay overdue doctor bills and he was unwilling to “sweet talk” Dr. Simpson into extending time. After his tools rumbled down Front Street in the back of the deputy’s truck, he reached for the telephone. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

Mother was waiting. They drove to the courthouse and had Dad’s name removed from the house and truck titles. In Mother’s name only, Dr. Simpson couldn’t claim those possessions for unpaid bills.

After three hours of stomping-mad anger, the challenge of launching a new career rekindled Dad’s spirit and unleashed creative juices. Long after midnight, he slid between the sheets and wrapped his arms around Mother.

“You awake?”

“Wide awake.”

“Mind being a farmer’s wife?”

“Depends. Who’s the farmer? And what’s he farming?”

Dad believed he’d learned enough about farming in high school to get by until “horse sense” kicked in. If he could get his brothers to pool resources with him, they could build a mushroom plant and begin harvesting by the first of the year. Depression times caused folks to view mushrooms in a new light – not a mere side dish with a juicy steak, but a protein-rich steak substitute.

Dad’s brothers saw his plan as a way to fight The Great Depression, and his mother, our feisty, little Scottish grandma, said to count her in.

After Dad and his brothers built the mushroom house and packing shed, they designed and built a six-bedroom home that added a touch of elegance to Scotts Valley. The exterior was white frame and the roof, red tile. The house wrapped around a wide, red concrete patio. A huge rock fireplace in the living room was the source of heat. At bedtime, we’d stand by the blazing fire to roast our frontsides and backsides, and then make a dash for bed.

Along one side of the patio we had three bedrooms and an extraordinary bathroom – Dad’s creation. He swirled orange and green colors in smooth concrete and poured a “marble” floor. With left over mixture, he refinished an ancient lavatory. Dad found a stained-glass window the width of the bathtub and installed it above the tub. Brilliant colors streamed through the window in daylight. And apparently, no one could see inside at night when the light was on. If peeking had been possible, I would have remembered!

Grandma ruled like a benevolent matriarch. Mother or Aunt Lil drove her to town for groceries and supplies every Saturday. Dad and his brothers tended mushrooms and shot jack rabbits and deer for recreation and meat. I loved the two-room country school where I could peek ahead and look behind as different grades recited with the teacher. The mushroom farm yielded a modest profit and farming became routine. Dad couldn’t do routine. When he asked his brothers and Grandma to buy out his share, no one was surprised.

I was ten when we moved from the spacious family home to what Dad called “our estate beside a mountain stream.” In reality, it was a two-room cabin. Folks couldn’t see the cabin from the road but they could follow the path through Mother’s lavender cosmos and down earthen steps to our door. Inside, they’d see a rosewood piano, a Philco radio, a bookcase, Dad’s two-tone brown easy chair (with antimacassars pinned on the back and arms to cover scruffy spots), and a maroon-colored sofa where my sister and I slept. (Dad and Mother slept in the kitchen.)

Mother needed more “elbow room” so Dad cut a hole in the kitchen wall and pushed the bottom half of the bed through the hole every morning. The kitchen sink had cold water only so we fired up the wood stove for washing. On bath night, we’d set the tin tub by the stove, pour in boiling water and add cold to get it just right. Our outhouse was a shack twenty steps from the back door. Inside, we had a wide board with a plate-sized hole to sit on.

We didn’t always have that outhouse, though. The summer they tore down the Felton house, Dad stopped by and asked, “Need junk hauled away?” They didn’t. But Dad stayed to lend a hand and they paid him with a toilet, a shower stall, and enough lumber to add on to the back of our house. He plumbed in the toilet and shower.

“Best Christmas present I ever had,” Mother said.

“It’s July,” I reminded her.

“I’m having Christmas this July,” she said.

On my eleventh birthday, Dad bought a boat. “Lucky for us she has a hole,” he said. (Holey skiffs sold cheap.) Dad got a glob of asphalt from a road crew and patched the hole and showed me how to row on one side and tip the paddle like a rudder to steer. I loved gliding downstream watching patterns of shade and sun dance on the water. The only sounds I heard were bird conversations, oar dips, and splashes from jumping trout and diving frogs. Sometimes I tied a stick to a piece of line with a hook and worm on the end. I caught small trout but Dad caught a real whopper.

The day Dad got his big one, I found him at the edge of the stream holding a pitchfork.

“Sh,” he warned.

What’s splashing?” I whispered.

“Dinner,” Dad mouthed and held the pitchfork ready. When dinner came close, he stepped into the stream, slid the fork under the fish and heaved it up on the bank.

“How’d a steelhead get in here?” I asked.

“They go upstream to spawn,” Dad explained as he corralled the flopping fish onto the cleaning stump. “They go back to where they hatched to lay their eggs. Then they die. When they trespass on my property,” Dad said pointing to the ‘No Trespassing’ sign, “they’re in trouble.”

I heard Mother tell Grandma she was “scared spitless” when rains turned the stream into a raging river that “licked the foundation” of the cabin. During high-water time, Dad stayed nearby to make sure our house stayed put. Once when he was keeping an eye on the water, he ran a wire through the wall and put in a switch so he could turn the radio on in the next room without getting out of bed. “Someday,” he promised, “radios will have pictures and we’ll see radio characters.” I’d squint at light from tubes searching for Dobsy and other radio people and wonder how long “someday” would take.

It took nearly ten years, but pictures appeared as Dad said they would. Depression passed, as he knew it would. Dad managed The Great Depression the same way he farmed: intuitively. He listened to Depression’s pulse and worked with it, ad-libbing his way out of poverty. Only a clever man like Dad could turn a two-room cabin with an outhouse into an estate with indoor plumbing in the middle of The Great Depression.