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Originally Posted by CAllenDoudna
This thread was supposed to be about the 1910s and 1920s but I see it has become about the 1930s instead.
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My mother was born in 1910 in Saskatchewan, but the family relocated to Buffalo, NY in 1914 and then to a farm in Western NY in 1918. Their life in the city seems to have been solid enough, her father was a small scale builder/developer. The family photos - both formal and informal - show parents and children a bit over-clothed in the summer, even at the beach. The father's family were from Co. Tyrone, strict Presbyterians, members of the Orange Order and saw Catholics, Jews and blacks as inferiors. Three of the four daughters internalized this attitude.
Life on the farm was not as prosperous, my grandfather being a good enough farmer but a poor money manager, even though he had hired hands, one of whom was resident in his own little house. They lived near a tiny village with two Protestant churches, and a public school that had until recently been a private academy. Her mother died of what was apparently ovarian cancer, she spent her last months in a deep fog of morphine and heroin. (Heroin was withdrawn as a medication the next year.) It had been a difficult marriage as she had been vain, given to snootiness, spent too much money on clothing, etc. She had been raised in a small city, and hated the farm with a passion. Within a year my grandfather married his first sweetheart whom he had jilted to marry his wife. She was kind and good-natured, took over the bookkeeping of the farm and joined in the farm work. My mother and two of her sisters were very indifferent students, but it was not a problem for their father as girls were expected to marry and have children and manage a home for a husband. A fourth daughter went to business school, she borrowed the money from her father and repaid it. He did not consider this a laudable route in life for a woman (despite the fact his second wife had done the same for years, and he benefited from her education.)
Their life revolved around the farm year, the few events in school and their church. Most farm work was done by hand or with the aid of horse-drawn machines. Two of my aunts told me that they reached the age of leaving high school without knowing the mechanics of sex and reproduction. My mother's attitude toward sex was so primitive that I remain convinced that my sister and I were conceived by Immaculate Deception.
When my mother married my father, who was a Catholic, my grandfather for the rest of his life addressed him only by his surname, despite the fact that he was the only son-in-law he liked. The other three sons-in-law were Protestants and were addressed by their first names. An aunt gave me the obvious and simple explanation when I asked why as a teenager: "He did not address Catholics by first name."
My father (b. 1911) was one of seven children. Their father and mother came from farms near Buffalo, NY. She was fifteen or more years younger than him. He was a very poor catch because his only siblings were two sisters, one a bit "slow" and the other flat-out mentally ill, neither rarely left the house.
My grandparents moved to a neighboring small, but prosperous town, where my grandfather was a carpenter. Their household was skimpily furnished, but the kids seem to have been dressed adequately and to have had a very happy childhood. One child had polio, but survived with one leg stunted.
When the town mandated indoor plumbing and an end to outhouses on their street, my grandfather resisted. He installed necessary visible evidence of compliance, but no fixtures in the home. My grandmother solved the issue by conniving to tip over the privy with two of her sons so that it tumbled into the ravine behind it.
All the children but the last born were expected to get a job and leave home. My father was invited to leave school when he reached his junior h.s. year because he was a lousy student and a troublemaker. He and an older brother then worked for the AT&T Long Lines division stringing telephone cables across the Midwest. His scrapbook of this period is interesting...mud roads and streets everywhere, the country roads impassable with knee-deep mud when the snow began to melt. Whenever they got a day off, they all wore suits and ties.
This family were Irish-American Catholics, and the parish church was a focus of their family life. The children were raised never to curse or use profanity. And even in adult life, though they were less religious - especially my father who was only nominally Catholic, none of them used curse words.
Both of my parents always described their childhoods and adolescence in glowing terms, and never expressed any resentment about the lack of the amenities they later enjoyed; nor did they complain about being expected to do considerable manual labor for the family or to earn pocket money.
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