How could people whose families struggled to make ends meet every day manage to look back on their childhood with such fondness and claim they hadn’t a clue they were poor at the time? For answers to those and other Depression era questions and stories, we need look no further than members of The Greatest Generation right here in our own county — and our own families.
Once we get those precious nuggets of information and history, we should write them down or capture them on tape. At least one local library is looking for a collection of such stories — the kind of stories that get told at family picnics, around the Sunday dinner table, during long drives to a vacation destination and fishing trips. Those stories are worth something — not in dollars but in memories. Priceless memories.
The Monroe Historical Society is asking residents who have Depression stories to share those yarns as well as photos with their local museum. Folks already gather at the museum to swap stories. Beth Stucker, president of the historical society, thought it might be wise to write them down so future generations could read about them and reflect.
The idea sounds similar to the much larger-scale Veterans History Project created by Congress in 2000 to collect and preserve audio, video and oral histories along with letters, diaries, photos and more. That national project is being managed by the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. Its Web site, www.loc.gov/folklife/, is an excellent source of information on how to gather and compile such histories, even if you don’t plan on submitting it to the Library of Congress.
It doesn’t require expensive equipment or savvy technology skills that still intimidate so many of us. It does, however, require the art of storytelling — a quality in each of us whether we know it or not.
Monroe and other communities in our county are full of people who lived during the Great Depression and World War II. Their stories are out there just waiting to be told — and perhaps more importantly, heard. If you’re a baby boomer or a Generation X, Y or whatever, this is no time to procrastinate. Nobody lives forever. Fortunately, their stories can survive.
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