INTERVIEWEE: Clara Anderson Jensen

Sevier County Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Clara Anderson Jensen
INTERVIEWER: Kimberly Jensen
DATE: December 4, 1997
PLACE: Richfield, Utah
SUBJECT: The Great Depression

Kimberly Jensen: This is Kimberly Jensen, and I am interviewing Clara Anderson Jensen, my grandma, on her memories of the Great Depression. The date is December 4, 1997, and the place is at her house in Richfield, Utah.

Kimberly Jensen: Grandma, just tell me about where you lived, your family, what your dad did for a living, and stuff.

Clara Anderson Jensen: I lived in Emery, Utah, and I was the youngest in a family of four children. My brothers and sisters were all a lot older than I.

Kimberly Jensen: What year were you born?

Clara Anderson Jensen: I was born in December 6, 1924. What else?

Kimberly Jensen: What did your dad do?

Clara Anderson Jensen: My dad was a farmer; he grew alfalfa and grain, and he had some cattle and sheep.

Kimberly Jensen: So you weren't very old when the stock market crashed. Did any of the older kids live with your family still?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Oh, yes sure, they all were home in 1929.

Kimberly Jensen: Did any of them have to take jobs to help support your family?

Clara Anderson Jensen: No, actually, we weren't hit hard by the depression. We had always been out of debt, and we didn't have any debts when the depression came.

Kimberly Jensen: Do you remember any of your neighbors or your friends that it hit really hard?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Yes, I remember that some of my friends' parents had no employment whatsoever. I remember at least one of the families moved to California thinking they would be better off in California than they were in Utah, but they soon moved back because they realized that here they at least had a home and a garden and things like that, where in California, why, they did have those things to take care of their family. I know that a lot of them were really, really poor.

Kimberly Jensen: So some of your friends moved. Do you ever remember hearing about the suicides and things that were happening around the country?

Clara Anderson Jensen: No I don't. remember hearing that. I read about it though, later.

Kimberly Jensen: Did you ever have any money of your own or did everything you earned go towards your family?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Well, I remember we didn't have a lot of money. I remember that probably I had very little money of my own. I remember that probably once a week I'd get a nickel to spend. (Laughs.)

Kimberly Jensen: Were all your clothes homemade by your mom?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Actually my older sister made nearly all of my clothes. But, again, I had nice clothes and we never had to go without that I remember of in my own home. I do remember that I had friends who really didn't have as much as I did.

Kimberly Jensen: So did your family have to help out a lot of people? Your dad didn't give out loans or anything, did he?

Clara Anderson Jensen: No. He didn't give out loans, but he did a lot of helping, helped his brothers and his good friends. My dad was in the bishopric at the time and I know that he always helped. The ward really struggled, and they did lots as a ward to help the other people in the ward.

Kimberly Jensen: Did a lot of kids have to drop out of school to help support their families?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Not that I remember. Actually, the town was only around 800 people, just a really small town. I don't recall that any children were deprived of schooling for any reason. Probably, a lot of them didn't go to high school and very, very few people went on to college.

Kimberly Jensen: But you went on to college, didn't you?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Yes, but that was after the depression. My older brothers and sisters went during though.

Kimberly Jensen: Did you have a job during the depression? Were there any jobs, where you lived?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Very few jobs, since it's just a farming community. There were coal mines, and the people that didn't own their own farms had very few jobs available to them. They had to work for the farmers in order to have a job, but there weren't very many jobs like that.

Kimberly Jensen: But there were basically a lot of farmers?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Most people in the area were farmers or ranchers and most people had their own farms.

Kimberly Jensen: Did your mom work at all to help?

Clara Anderson Jensen: My mother never worked except in the home, but she was a very efficient homemaker. She did a lot of things for herself like making her own soap and quilting. She always took care of the garden; we always had a big garden. We canned a lot of fruit. She would dry a lot of food, like corn and things of that sort. Our home was very self- sufficient since we had a home and a farm; we grew nearly all of our own food. I don't remember us buying anything but things like sugar, and I remember we had to buy kerosene, and probably salt and spices, things like that out of the store, but we had our own eggs, and our own milk, and our own butter, and our own meat and vegetables. What we grew we preserved. We were very self- sufficient that way.

Kimberly Jensen: Is there anything I've missed that you'd like to talk about?

Clara Anderson Jensen: I remember when I was in grade school the government started the first school lunch and our school lunch consisted of some kind of soup or beans, or some kind of dish like that, and milk, and probably bread. I remember that was our school lunch and I'm sure it was important for some of the families. Probably everybody participated, I don't remember how much it cost but it was . . . maybe a quarter. Something like that. I also remember that with that nickel that I had I could probably buy a soda pop, ice cream, candy bar, Popsicle. Few things cost more than a nickel at that time and they were about the same size that they are today.

Kimberly Jensen: They just cost more today.

Clara Anderson Jensen: (Laughing) We could buy a hamburger for 25 cents, gasoline was about 25 cents a gallon.

Kimberly Jensen: Did a lot of people have cars?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Not many; we always had a car. A lot of people didn't have a car, and that's one of the things my dad helped other people about with. He would drive them to other towns. One of the things that was interesting about Emery was that the Emery Ward had a picture show, a movie house; they had it in the ward chapel. It was only ten cents for children to go. They had it twice a week. It was sponsored by the ward and it provided the ward with entertainment and paid the ward budget, completely. Part of the revenue they used to send missionaries out into the field.

Kimberly Jensen: Yeah, it was probably hard for them to send out missionaries.

Clara Anderson Jensen: Very few people, not many missionaries went from Emery. I know my parents were in charge of the picture show. We just called it a picture show. My parents collected all of the money and ordered the films, and things like that. That was part of their ward calling and it was very unusual activity. Some of the other wards copied this after that time (laughs). It started out with silent movies and before I was grown, why they had sound and color.

Kimberly Jensen: That probably really helped with entertainment for the unemployed.

Clara Anderson Jensen: Actually for a dollar a month the whole family could attend. So if it was a big family, and they were poor, they could still go to the movies. They kept it within the boundaries of people's incomes.

Kimberly Jensen: There was probably a lot of helps for people who were unemployed there [Emery]. How has it charged your attitude? Do you think you are you more thrifty than a lot of people?

Clara Anderson Jensen: I notice that I'm a lot more careful with money than my children, and my grandchildren ( laughing). I think part of it was going through that period of time, and also my parents. Like I say, they were always very self-sufficient, never going into any kind of debt. What they told me, more than the depression itself, affected my life. The teachings my parents gave me made me the way I am.

Kimberly Jensen: What advice would you give the youth of today if they were faced with the same kinds of problems that the depression had?

Clara Anderson Jensen: My advice is still the advice my parents gave me, the advice that the church gives today. Stay out of debt. Live within your means. The people that were affected worst were the people that had big debts. One thing that was interesting is that my sister, my older sister, had a teaching certificate and taught school during the depression, and she received 100 dollars a month for her teaching. When she got married, she lost her job because women were not allowed jobs in the teaching profession if they were married.

Kimberly Jensen: They were supposed to stay home?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Not necessarily stay home, but there were so few jobs that they were given to married men in preference to married women. I don't know whether it was the law, but at least it was their custom not to hire married women. So she couldn't teach as soon as she got married, even though she was a good teacher.

Kimberly Jensen: That's maybe why older people you talk to always talk about their old maid school teachers? (Laughs.)

Clara Anderson Jensen: (Laughing) Well, I don't know. My brother taught school, too. He taught in . . . the only job he could get was in Wayne County. He taught in a little town in Wayne County that isn't even there anymore. It was called . . . [Caineville] I can't remember (laughs) down by Hanksville, but it's not there anymore. Anyway, the only job he could get was that in a one-room school house. He taught eight grades. He and his wife lived in the school house and they didn't even have a car when they went to Wayne county. My dad, when he found out how remote the town was bought a car and took it down there, so they could get out. (Laughs.) Then he gave up school teaching and got a job being a policeman in Provo, and that was. . . unusual. My sister's husband didn't have a steady job, so my father helped them start their own business. They started a service station in Emery and it became very successful. They needed the help of my father to get them started.

Kimberly Jensen: Was there a lot of sadness during this time?

Clara Anderson Jensen: I don't remember it being an unhappy time. In a little town, like I say, we had our own picture show, and they had dances all the time. That was part of the recreation; and since it was a Mormon community, why, everybody went to everything. I was quite small during the Great Depression. From 1929 to probably 1939, during that period of ten years, there were a lot of people who didn't have money, but from my viewpoint the people weren't greatly unhappy. I know people didn't have money.

Kimberly Jensen: You didn't get bums coming through Emery looking for jobs?

Clara Anderson Jensen: Not really; we were pretty small. It's not a main highway. The government started PWA, Public Works Administration, and I do remember that they gave jobs to people in the town and they improved the water system and they also graveled the roads through town. They made the roads through town better during that time, and that was a government project. Also I remember the CCC camps; that was when I was probably like, you know junior high age, and there was a CCC camp probably about 30 or 40 miles from Emery, and they worked on projects like building bridges and roads in the forest and areas like that. A lot of them were boys who had come from the city, young men who had come from the cities, who didn't have jobs. That was another government project. That didn't affect my family much.

Kimberly Jensen: Tell me what you were saying before, Grandma.

Clara Anderson Jensen: I had a friend who went to college with me and during the depression she lived in West Salt Lake. Her father had no job. They lived in just a little shack of a house, and she remembered when they had nothing to eat except beans; that was the only thing they had to eat in the house. Hardly anything, she said it was such a struggle to even exist and they had to rely on other people to give them food and things in order to survive. It was really hard for her to remember that situation. In your grandfather's family there were eleven children, but they did have a farm and they did have a garden; they had their own pigs and cattle and chicken and milk cow. They never went without food; that was something that never happened in their family, but they probably had just very basic clothes. The children never had any money to spend unless they could get a job somewhere else. The family just didn't have money to give them. They never really suffered to the extent, that they had to rely on other people. They didn't have anything but basic things. One of the reasons was that your great grandfather had a bank debt of a thousand dollars and during the depression they were never able to pay anything but the interest on the loan. Is that it?

Kimberly Jensen: Yeah, thanks, Grandma.

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