Memories of a Young Woman, based on an interview of Revo Young

Memories of a Young Woman

Based on an interview of Revo Young
by Megan Wilson on December 6, 1997

As the large grandfather clock chimed eleven, I sat in the dining room and listened. I listened as her experiences of The Great Depression unfolded from her memory. Throughout the interview she created a vivid picture for me of the circumstances and setting of the depression. Memory by memory, she tells of how life was. She tells of the tramps, the dances, the lack of money and jobs, and the experiences of being a teacher.

I was born in Joseph, Utah, in 1907; I'm 90 years old. We didn't pay much attention to the depression. We lived in a farming community in Utah, and it didn't seem to make any difference to us.

We lived in the town of Joseph, where we had a farm, so for a while it didn't affect us very much, and we didn't know much about it. Of course, we had tramps come and people like that, but we'd always known about those. We didn't know much about the depression until about 1933. Then there was a great drought in Utah, and then we felt the depression because we were farmers.

The depression started in 1929, so I was 22 years old. I was teaching school. Oh, my goodness! It was one of my first years teaching. I had about 30 to 35 students in my classes. My wages weren't what you'd call great because I had taught a whole year for seven hundred and fifty dollars; that was the year the depression hit. Then as the time went on, people couldn't pay their taxes and wages were cut, so I was not receiving very much money.

When the depression hit, life changed for us because I was the only wage earner in the family and my mother was a widow, and we had a big family and I was the only one getting wages at all. The only money we had was the milk check which would come every week, which was about five dollars. And so I was really the bread winner in the family at that time.

There were seven children. But there were only six children at home, I guess. In my mother's family there was one sister that was living in California and they had a real serious time, and they came home to live. My brother was married, but they were having a struggle too.

I wasn't married during the depression because, in my contract I had said if I was to get married, I was dismissed. Women weren't allowed to work, especially if they had a husband. So that was a good reason not to get married.

A few things that we did for fun was to go to dances. Dances are different than they are now, though, because we just danced together and danced waltzes and two-steps and rumba and all of the dances. A lot of people went roller skating. I didn't roller skate. We went to plays and all kinds of things like that. We had parties.

Things were very cheap. But that didn't make any difference 'cause we didn't have any money. Twenty-five cents then is as much as five dollars is to us now it seems like. I had a funny thing happen, I went to Christensen's Store and they had a sale. I went down and bought a pair of house shoes for, I think, forty- nine cents. I was bragging to my sister about them and she said, "No wonder, one has a high heel and one has a low heel!" (Laughs.)

We didn't have it that bad. But some people were really in bad circumstances and there was no work for them. Prices were low, but they didn't have money.

Things got really bad, before they started to get better. The government tried to help people; some people were able to get jobs, but a lot of people weren't. My mother was, of course, the head of the family, and the cattle were already selling for seven cents a pound for steers and the government had us call the cattle; they had us kill them and they gave us three cents a pound for them. That would be a big steer that would bring about thirty five dollars. It was really bad.

My older brother was married and he tried to get work, but because mother had a farm he couldn't get on government W. P. A. It was bad.

We grew hay, beets, and grain on the farm. We had to feed the cattle. We had a sheep herd. We had pigs. We had turkeys and things of that sort.

We also had movies, and they would be about ten cents. They were beautiful movies, but in our town they were only once a week. And we tried to save our money to go. Sometimes we'd even go with dates.

Well, I'm sure that the next depression would be harder than our depression, because people are using credit cards and using credit, and they have much borrowed money. A banker told me that during the depression a big loan was two thousand dollars. Now he says they don't bat an eye asking for half of a million dollars. When another serious depression hits, there would be lots of sadness like there was in the first depression. The rich people who lost all their money just committed suicide. It was just terrible.

I knew people who lost their homes and lost their farms, lost everything. Our neighbor talked to us, and he had a government loan on his home, and he thought that the government would never take his home, but they took their home, and they thought they'd still stay, and they put up a tent out in the middle of the street hoping that the government or somebody would have pity on them, but they eventually had to move away and find work someplace.

There were lots of people who moved away, and lots of people who lived in cities who came home to live because they were able to have gardens and stuff like that. So there were lots of people on the move.

I didn't travel to the cities very much, except when I had to and we'd go up for UEA.

The cities were just the same as it was in the country, except there would probably be lots of bread lines and things like that. That I didn't ever see, but I know that was going on. If there was a job opening, there would be maybe 150 applications for one job.

There would be a lot of people searching for places to go. Lots of young boys. We had always been used to tramps and people looking for work and something to eat. We'd have people come to our house quite often, but we lived in the town. We were farther away from the railroads, where there'd be lots of people. But we still fed lots of people.

We finally felt that things were approaching normal, just before World War II.

Because I lived through the depression, I think I appreciate money more and I appreciate having work, and I appreciate those who are not as fortunate as I am.

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