Do You Remember When? (synopsis of on an interview of Joe Gentry)

Do You Remember When?

Based on an interview of Joe Gentry
by Leah Warner on December 11, 1997

The dusty, black and white photos stare vacantly into the untouched sitting room of Joe Gentry. Their antique, placid faces marvelously reflect the vivid memories Joe conveys as he jovially and fondly retells the saga of the Great Depression.

Joe Gentry

I was born here in Richfield on July 21,1917 in my Grandfather Erickson's place. That's where Ted Yowell lives. That's an old house, there. My grandparents moved there in 1906 and my mother grew up in that house.

Some of the most pleasant memories I have are when I could go up to Beaver and stay with my grandparents and hear the train coming along. I felt bad when they took that away. You could hear that whistle and it just made everybody happy. The line went through Marysvale, when it was prospering, but they had that terrible flood in 1983 and just took out a lot of the railroad. Just figured it was too costly to rebuild it.

I was around twelve years old in 1929. That's when the stock market crashed. My mother told me about it. Up until about 1935, it was pretty tough growing up. Like someone said, "We were broke, but we weren't poor!" We had a farm, and chickens, and cows, so we never went hungry. Money was hard to get, though. My mother's brother-in-law, Claude MacIntire, was in charge of finance and western loans. He went haywire. Of course, he came out all right. When it happened, I was only twelve, and the rest of the kids hardly knew anything about it.

My dad was a good provider, and like I said, we never went hungry. He actually helped some of those old guys in town by giving them a little employment. Dad went to a little packing plant and he'd get them to work out on the ranch. He had Barney Pottingham, quite a character. He paid him five bucks in cash and the rest was in beef! Barney'd say, "I gotta have tea and coffee and tobacco or I can't work!" So Dad brought it to the ranch for him.

We were out to the ranch quite a bit. But, we mostly just liked to roam the hills. We had a little reservoir, kind of our own private swimming pool. It was cold water, but quite invigorating!

My lifestyle changed, of course. But, things were still ducky. I graduated Beaver High School in 1935. Then I went up to Brigham Young University. I don't know how I ever got by, even though your money went farther. Tuition for the whole year was $86.50. You can't get that kind of tuition anymore. I went down to Sears Roebuck, bought an iron, and I finally learned how to iron my own shirts. One of the girls upstairs showed me how to use it. President Roosevelt helped out when I went through BYU. It was called NYA, National Youth Administration. You had to fill out a form and say your dad was pretty poor, and they helped you out. Then I got a job as a janitor. Enough to get by. During the fall season, I'd help some of the students pick apples, help the farmers, and get a little money that way.

Back home, our neighbors all seemed to get by pretty good as far as I could tell. Our neighbor across the street was a banker; he, well, he was okay. But, a lot of it was tough. Many of our neighbors had small dairy herds, and that's how we got our milkshakes. One of them, Wallace Yardley, was my Aaronic Priesthood teacher. He done a lot of good for me.

The Depression kind of made a tightwad out of me. When I went to BYU, I had to watch money so dang bad. I had it tough. But now when I look back, I'm glad I did have it tough; you appreciate things more. If you have things too easy, you don't appreciate them. I envied the kids who could afford to board at the boarding house. But the worst part was that I had to eat my own cooking.

Some of the best advice I can give young people is to realize that our free agency is the greatest power on earth. There's nothing to stop you from digging in a little harder. A lot of these that got so far in life, they had it tough to begin with. They all had one thing in common, and that's persistence. Take, for example, Zane Grey with his western novels. He was turned down by publishing companies, but finally he had a hit. After that, he could work any place. Just one example.

It's also hard to believe about John Wayne. In a Paul Harvey story, he was just a skinny kid, and he was picked on by a bully. He came past the fire station, and a fireman there asked him what was wrong and he says, "Listen, don't run from that bully anymore. I was a professional boxer in my time. You stop by the station and I'll show you a few lessons in boxing. So he did and, boy, the next time the bully came after him, he stood his ground. And you know about John Wayne. Seeing his picture, it's hard to believe he was a skinny kid and that he was picked on.

Also, know what you want in life. My only trouble was I liked too damn many things and I had an awful time in BYU deciding a major. I think I got the most good out of my freshman English under Mrs. Elsie Carole. She had us read hearty things like The Luxury of Integrity. Not everyone can afford that. Do you notice how some have to advertise, to tell the world that bad products are good. Near the bottom of the whole thing are politicians. This article I read said the lowest of all are the corporation executives. They've sold their souls so bad that they don't even dare take a bath without getting the approval of the company!

Something else that has helped me is that I love music very much. Learn to type when you're young, too. I'm glad I learned to type in high school. When I came back, I used to work for a resort hotel. When I came here, I didn't have any job. It's a good thing I went to church that day because Art Tucker, the manager of the radio station of the time, said, "Joe, can you type?"

I says, "Yep," so he had a job for me. That helped me during the depression as well.

But, you gotta be doing something. I don't like that word retirement. Take that out of your dictionaries. Just keep on going. I just hit the big eighty and heck, I feel more like sixty! When I was your age, you'd go hell, oh, excuse me, good gosh that's a long way off, it'll never come. But it does come, things change. It is hard to believe. I've enjoyed life more in my sixties and seventies more than any other time in my life. When you're younger, you do a lot of stupid things. We're young and foolish. George Burns said, "Youth is great, but it's too bad it has to be wasted on the young!"

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