Among other things, an interesting phenomena in the year 2008 was how such a variety of current subjects began being compared the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the era of Franklin Roosevelt.
I grew up in that era, on a farm in Northeast Georgia. The three needs for survival – food, clothing and shelter, were of great concern for many. This might be an indicator of things to come.
My family always had plenty to eat, but I recall reading about soup lines in other places… particularly big cities like Chicago and New York. I still have newspaper clippings from that era.
During that period, in all the houses I knew about, the kitchen was the largest room in the house. Ours was a very large room, with a fireplace and wood stove at one end. There were pantries and a number of cabinets and wooden bins on legs, that held things like flour and cornmeal bins. And everyone always had a large harvest style table in the center.
Usually in the summer, my mother would can around 800 to 1000 cans of food for the winter. She stored them in a storm cellar where the temperature stayed constant and did not freeze. Then there was the smoke house where meat was cured.
Today we have rising food costs and talk of scarcity of food. But there is still plenty of supply on grocery store shelves.
In the late thirties, as the economy began improving, we entered World War II. In the early forties, when so much was directed to the war effort, there was rationing of food and other items, like shoes. We had to have vouchers, or stamps, issued by the government to purchase certain items, like coffee, cocoa, tea or sugar, as I recall.
We always had plenty of wonderful foods mostly grown on the farm with the exception of staples like salt, soda, baking powder, sugar, coffee and the like. This lifestyle was not easy, in fact, it was a lot of work, but we grew up so healthy.
The two largest meals were breakfast and lunch. For the evening meal we were only allowed a bowl of cornbread in milk before bed. My mother said we should not have a lot of heavy foods to digest, like meat, before going to bed. Cornbread was a staple for lunch and the evening meal every day.
Living in North Georgia, not far from the resort town of Helen, Georgia, there is a Nora Mill Grainnery that has been in business since 1876. The cornmeal is stone ground, from locally grown corn, either yellow or white, and is great tasting and so nutritional. It is a legendary staple in Southern cooking. They also have speckled grits, biscuit and pancake mix, plus a variety of other products one can order over the internet at www.noramill.com. Hot biscuits from home-grown wheat in the morning are great.
As the economic crisis looms over us, and we begin the year 2009, we don’t know if there will be a shortage of food or rationing ahead. While we still enjoy plenty, it might be wise to think about the possibility of that happening.
Also, here in Georgia, and probably other states, there is an agricultural Market Bulletin which advertises food and products directly from the farm and grower, like pecans, peanuts, sorghum, honey home-grown beef, eggs, etc. I personally use it as a resource for farm grown products. They are better than products imported from other countries which are stored in warehouses before they appear on grocery store shelves.
I think it is a smart idea to have a reserve of other necessities, in the event that we do face a grocery store shortage of food. Things like cornmeal and oatmeal are inexpensive, nutritional foods. I recall reading stories, during the depression, about day laborers building roads living on daily rations of just oatmeal.
As of today, there is still plenty of food inventories in the grocery stores, but the instability of the economy and the shaky paper dollar, who knows what the future holds. No one I dare say.
Listening to the Mike Huckabee Show, I heard a funny remark: “If it goes thru a car window, it’s not food.”
Having lived through the last Great Depression while growing up on a farm, and watching how my parents dealt with it, instilled hard work, frugality, insight, foresight, and just plain common sense in me. We enjoyed plenty as a result, while many others stood in soup lines. It was a lesson to me, I think about in retrospect, hearing and watching the signs of the future.
We can’t trust what the news pundits, Keynism economists and politicians tell us. There is a lot of misinformation intertwined in their entanglements of semantics. It’s our individual responsibility to act in our best interest, to stop, look, and observe what is happening.
Perhaps it is not a good time to turn one’s nose up over a pan of hot cornbread, a pot of speckled grits, or a pan of homemade biscuits, or southern soul food.
The great philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon said, “For whatever deserves to exist, deserves to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.”
Eat well, eat healthy, stay well and
LET FREEDOM RING
JUST ME
AC
