Lately, all I hear is "Oh dear, we may be entering a recession. What will we do?" Are you kidding? I've lived through one. What you will do is you will survive!!! Just as we did.
I was aged between 5 and 10. We had a nice home in northern Maine when it began. Dad had fought in France in World War II, and when he returned he built our house--a big one, with wrap-around porch, a garage, a barn, an ice house and apple trees. The car was a nice two-seater with a rumble-seat. He also bought a small farm outside of town, with a shed and resident cow and pig. We were living well.
When the recession hit, everyone (it seemed) had lost their jobs and money was scarce. People in our small town couldn't buy groceries or clothing. We were lucky--we had all the milk, butter we could eat--and all the vegetables our garden could grow. But clothing , as for many others, consisted of hand-me-downs and home-made dresses or shirts made from flour sack material. We children picked potatoes in the fields to get money for heavy school clothes--the winters in Maine were cold--sometimes as low as 30 degrees below zero.
Mom baked a large pot of beans and six large loaves of bread each Saturday. By the end of the week, the last loaf was beginning to show some little green streaks that would be good candidates for culturing penicillin. The remedy--scrape off the green, and toast the slices well!!
People were resourceful--barter was common--and we got used to foods no one thinks much about today--like corn meal mush and (my favorite!) pickled pigs feet. Life was an adventure. We children didn't realize we were "poor." So was everyone else. Looking back, we were rich in all the things that mattered--shared responsibility , family loyalty, and love. If we are entering another true recession, you will need all of these things--and I'm not kidding!
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