While relaxing in my dorm room, I saw a (201) area code pop up on my screen, and instantly, I knew who the call was coming from. Answering the ring with great excitement, I heard my grandpa’s voice.
“How are you sweetheart? I miss you so much! What is new and exciting in the life of Lauren Jolie?” My grandpa asked with a jubilant tone!
And after I answered these questions and caught up with him about a few other topics as well, I thought this would be a great time to ask him a couple of questions regarding my English Autoethnography and its topic of “Children of the Depression,” since I knew this was a community he was apart of.
As there was a brief pause in the conversation, without hesitation, I went for it, “Grandpa, how did the crash of the stock market affect you and your family?” Although I knew this would be an emotional topic for him to talk about, I was also aware of the fact that my grandpa would be touched and pleased to share his experiences with his curious and interested granddaughter.
And so he was… “Well Lauren, as you know, my father was a cap manufacturer to variety stores. He had a successful and prosperous company for many years, but two years after the market crashed, all the variety stores cut back on their purchases. My father’s company was one of the many that got dropped, and quickly he went out of business.”
My grandpa paused and took a deep sigh, and just as I was about to intervene, he continued.
“There was no source of money coming in to pay the household bills or the mortgage payments. The landlords quickly foreclosed on our house in Far Rockaway and my father was left homeless with three young children and a wife to care for.”
All I could do was listen, for I could not even imagine what that time must have been like.
“This one hurt, yet my father left no time to waste. He quickly picked himself up, dusted the dirt off of his feet and soon enough we were the new owners of a three-bedroom apartment in the Bronx that my father received a three-month rent-free concession for from the landlord. This house was not of comparable quality to our old home, for I went from living in a single to having a roommate in my older brother Irwin, yet I was happy I could call this place home. ”
I was beginning to realize that as much as I thought I truly new my grandfather, I didn’t. “Grandpa” I said, “I can only imagine the difficulty of moving schools as a young child.”
“It was difficult” he said “You know, this was a long time ago so some things are not all that clear to me, but I do remember the move between school districts feeling somewhat strange. I left all my play date friends and had to make new ones all over again. I had to start from scratch. As a young boy, I was always the tallest kid in class and had flaming red hair, so as you could imagine, I stuck out like a sore thumb.”
I listened intently with pain, my heart melted while hearing about the struggles of my grandfather’s past. With a brief pause in my grandfather’s dialect, I thought I would ask another question, “Do you have any story that you can remember and would like to share with me from this time?”
“Hmmmm” he said “Lauren have you ever thought of being a reporter?” He chuckled at his comment, yet soon enough he responded, “I do remember one day playing outside with my best friends Harold and Norman and wanting to see a movie with them for 17 cents. Can you imagine a movie being that price?” He asked me with an amazed tone to his voice. “Anyways, we were playing right outside my family’s apartment and I called to my mother who was watching us play out the window of her room on the second floor to ask for her permission to go to the movies with my friends. My mother responded by saying, 'Come up stairs and well talk about it.' When I went up stairs, my mother explained how we couldn’t afford to pay for the movie, every penny mattered and thus I did not go to see the movie with my friends.”
As I peeked out my dorm room window to see nothing but darkness, I realized that it was getting quite late and I should start wrapping up the conversation. I ended the interview by asking my grandpa how he believes his experiences during the depression has affected him today. He responded with two key points; work ethic and value of money. He mentioned a story about working after school in a factory for 50 cents an hour, which was minimum wage at the time, and saving that money every single week. My grandfather emulates his father’s work ethic daily, as the first one to work and the last one to leave. He has a never give up mentality and keeps a positive outlook on life throughout all of the trials and tribulations.
As the time got close to 11:30pm, I heard my grandma yell for my grandpa through the phone “Carl its getting late, let Lauren go to bed!” And so our phone call came to an end… but my night didn’t, if only my grandma knew the time I actually went to bed! But that’s another story!!
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