Wasps in the Bedroom, Butter in the Well: Growing Up During the Great Depression

In 1934, the industrial town of Hopewell, Virginia, was riding out the Great Depression nicely. Near the confluence of its rivers sprawled the "silk" mill, busily turning out a desirable new fabric called rayon. But when strangers arrived, bent on unionizing the plant, violence ensued and a night raid destroyed the machinery and the town's livelihood with it. Eighteen hundred and fifty-eight coveted jobs-gone. The child, only two, knew nothing of this disaster. But as her parents' Depression odyssey began, she noticed the moves and began to understand that they were somehow connected with her daddy's job, which kept changing. From house to house and town to town they moved-finally to the depths of the country, where the toilet was outdoors and the lamps were lighted with matches. Throughout the Depression, her little family, unlike many, had a roof over their heads-but sometimes wasps squeezed in through gaps in the siding and sometimes the butter had to be kept in the well. You will laugh and you will cry as you enter this period between two great wars that tested America's citizens-toughening the weak and sometimes destroying the fainthearted. The author's parents, who lived this story, were not fainthearted. Poor though they were, they were abundantly rich in all that really mattered.