Photo essay of the Great Depression

Actually, I needn’t have gone to the internet for this … I’ve got an album of my mother’s family in Parsons, Kansas during the 1930’s that would do almost as well. It’s no wonder none of them ever had a sense of humor.

The only thing these people had going for them was a greater self-sufficiency … they knew how to grow and prepare their own food, make their own clothing, and cars, if you could afford one, could be fixed with a little tinkering and some bailing wire. They also hadn’t yet learned to ‘need’ so much … iphones with data plans, tattoos from hell and piercings, SUV’s to carry one person and a McMansion with a room for everything.

My grandfather, Joshua, with the help of my mother, built their own small house while living in the chicken coop ( built first ) and then garage ( built second ). My grandmother, Della, hiked up the hill to Mrs Rice’s to do the laundry. Mrs Rice had 12 children.

I see too many people now, in economic distress that have almost none of the skills mentioned above. This frightens me.

Some look at the following photographs and just see the past. I think we could be looking in the mirror.

NOTE: Many of America’s finest photographers came out of the WPA ( Works Progress Administration) effort to document the Great Depression. These included names like Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and others.