Hard times: In Great Depression, they made do with less

Published 10:47 pm Wednesday, October 22, 2008

MARYSVILLE — Walt and Verla Bailey remember the hard times of the Great Depression.

They survived on food grown in the garden, stood in relief lines and found jobs with government-sponsored work programs.

Now, as the financial markets wobble again, Walt Bailey, 89, said he saw it coming.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said.

Tight credit, giant shifts in the financial markets and rising unemployment are reminiscent of the hard times in the years after the stock market crash of 1929.

In the 1930s, Bailey remembers collecting salvaged material from a Sumner Iron Works building in Everett that was blown down in a windstorm. His family used lumber and straightened nails to construct a home near Marysville.

Verla Bailey, 81, said her family survived by growing vegetables and raising a cow, chickens and a pig.

Her mother baked a half-dozen loaves of bread at a time, and her baking soda biscuits were favorites for whoever stopped by, including men stringing power lines.

Walt Bailey found work on Whiskey Ridge processing strawberries, then got a job with the National Youth Administration, a branch of the Work Progress Administration, or WPA. He went on to sign up with the Civilian Conservation Corps, best known as the Three Cs. He made as much $30 a month, most of which was sent home.

He had a week off before enlisting with the Army, where he survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. “I just got lucky, I guess,” he said.

In 1947, the couple married, and three years later paid $1,350 cash for the property they still call home on Whiskey Ridge, up the street from where Verla grew up. Half the money came from an Army bonus, the rest was borrowed from a relative.

With hard times bearing down now, the Baileys say people may need to become self-sufficient again, growing their own food. Programs such as AmeriCorps may need to be expanded to help keep people in work, they say.

But the couple, who just celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary, isn’t too worried about their own financial fate.

They’ve put their home up for sale and have a buyer interested.

Whoever buys the 5-acre parcel likely will not pay cash. The Baileys are asking $2.1 million.

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.