Payback Time

Last night I started reading "A Nation in Torment," a book written by Eddie Ellis, who was a friend and mentor. It's about the Depression. The foreward to the second edition, which Eddie wrote in 1995 (he died in 1997) was chilling. And it made me miss him dearly. He wrote of the need to understand history so that we don't repeat our mistakes, and how much the nation's status in 1995 (homeless people, the gap between rich and poor) reminded him of the set-up to the Depression. I wish Eddie was alive. I wish I knew what he thought about the economic situation of today. We need the wisdom of people who lived through the first one badly right now.

The Depression created many personal tragedies. People not only jumped out windows; less dramatically, they also died from heart attacks caused by the financial strain. My father-in-law's mother died from the tragedy of having her five children taken from her and placed in orphanges because she couldn't support the family (her husband had died as the Depression began). My late grandfather lost his college scholarship (funded by an insurance company he worked for part-time) and had to go to work to support his family (he wound up putting his brothers through college and never got to finish his own education). My grandfather (in his early 20s) drove a milk truck in Chicago, when people had their milk delivered to their homes. He told the story of a destitute family on his milk route who had no choice but to abandon Chicago and head for Kentucky, where they had family. They had no money even for gas. My grandfather loaned the father $5. That father mailed that money back to my grandfather once they got to Kentucky, one precious dollar at a time. It was a terrible time. No one now can imagine the desperation.

Somehow I feel this all ties in to this blog, to the search for things that are made by hand, that aren't a product of mass consumption. For every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this economy is going to force the issue. We've overconsumed, and now there's going to be payback.