The Depression

Freda Hanson

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Freda Hanson was in her twenties during the

Depression years. She and her husband,
Arnold, were newly married and farming.
They started their family and learned
valuable lessons about managing resources.
Those lessons made them stronger.
How old were you during the depression?
In my twentys. I was twenty when I got married.

What is your most memorable experience during the Great Depression? What was one thing that
stands out in your mind?
I know the lesson I got from it. You think its the end of the world, but you never give up. No matter how
bad anything gets, dont ever let anything get you down. Keep trying, and go forward and dont think
about what you could have had. Just have a goal, a goal to reach.

What was your goal?

After the depression, my goal was to get my degree in education. When I graduated, parents couldnt send
their kids to college. We had a county college. All you had to go for was one year. Then you could teach
country school, and thats what I did before I was married. Then later I boarded the country school
teacher, so I knew what it was like in the depression.

After I raised four children, I went back to school. By that time, they needed country school teachers real
bad. I had it handy. I walked to County Normal. You had to have two years now. You could teach seven
years with that degree. Then you had to go on campus in La Crosse, thirty- five miles away. I wanted to
keep on teaching and working on my degree. I went to summer school, and I went to night school. They
had a class once a week in our town. I went to that class. I went to Saturday school. I got my degree when
I was 55. Then my advisor said, Freda, youre just foolish if you dont keep on. I had extra credits that
I had taken. I got my Masters when I was 60 years old. I went to school all my life, just about.

We were never hungry but a lot of people were. In the cities, well, even some farmers, they committed
suicide. People would invest, and then they lost all their money. The banks closed. It was very real. My
dad lost his money in the farmers bank. The doors just
You think its the end of the
closed, and nobody could get in or get any money. Then the
farms started to be foreclosed on. I happened to be up to my world, but you never give
folks when their neighbor came, and he was crying. He said, up.No matter how bad
Theyre going to foreclose on me. Then he got a loan from
anything gets, dont ever let
a lawyer, but later, the lawyer got the farm. The same thing
happened in my husbands family. His older brothers farm anything get you down.
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The Depression

We had $35 saved up to pay

the medical expenses. We hid
it in a book. My husband put
it in the bookcase along with
other books. We put that one
book in there and thought
that nobody would ever look
there...

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was foreclosed on. My husbands dad loaned him money,

and as a result, all the children in the family were affected.
It was very bad.

When we got married, it hadnt hit everybody yet. It was

just getting bad. We lived on his home place with an
administrator that was very good to us. We had a great big
garden. This was a big farm and we worked very hard. It
was a big change from what it had been. Here we were,
high school kids, before, and then, his dad bought him a
new car. My dad bought me an old car so I didnt have to
walk to school. We had it pretty good, and when the depression came, change.

My dad and mother fed people from the city. Its very real to me what they went through. Both my
husband and my dad hired men who had had real good jobs for fifty cents a day. We had lots of food
because we had a big garden. We had a big orchard and a lot of apple trees. We had raspberries and a
strawberry patch. We went berry picking in the woods, blackberry and other berries and gooseberries, and
we canned all this food. I had to learn to bake bread, ten loaves at a time. You couldnt buy anything in
the store. You didnt have money. Youd better stay home and work. We fed the people. This one man
who worked for my dad, his family had to live at the next-door neighbors. Who was his sister. She fed
them canned tomatoes and peanut butter because she was a widow lady and didnt have much money.

My dad was able to keep his farm. We had an old garage up by the barn. Id go up there often. He had
cubbyholes in the wall where you put all kinds of things. We never knew it, but he saved his money in
that garage. Nobody trusted anybody. You couldnt buy anything on credit. He was a farmer, and he also
was a mechanic. He worked for the Buick garage. He saved his money, and we never knew that he had
enough money to pay off his loan at the end. One day, he came out with this big flashlight that he had in
one of those cubbyholes. He showed us where hed hid it. People were stealing in those days, too. So he
was saving money in this old garage that nobody would ever know was there. He had rolls of bills in the
flashlight. As I remember, there was a thousand dollars he had saved to pay off the farm.

Our oldest daughter was five years old when Catherine was born. Before Catherine was born, times were
getting better. We had $35 saved up to pay the medical expenses. We hid it in a book. My husband put it
in the bookcase along with other books. We put that one book in there and thought that nobody would
ever look there until the doctor came to deliver her. All the children except Lois were born at home. We
didnt have a hospital. The doctor came with the nurse to
our house, and we gave him the $35. When he left our
house that day, we were so proud. Then my husband made
homemade wine, just a treat. Dandelion wine it was. He
wanted our doctor to have some. The doctor said, Oh no,
I cant drink that because I have to go to the next one. He
was busy delivering babies! He said, I dont dare drink
anything now!
In those days, you never went to town unless you had to
go. We would make our own ice cream for parties. We

'2004 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications

Marilyn Hanson, Eugene Henry, and Arnold Hanson

making icecream in 1935.
Hanson, Freda

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The Depression

always had the relatives come for birthdays. First, my husband would go to town, and hed get a big hunk
of ice at the icehouse. Hed bring it home, and hed take the tobacco ax or the big ax and crush the ice in
a gunnysack. Thats how we could make ice cream. We had all kinds of milk and cream, whipped cream.
We had lots of eggs; we had a big chicken house.

Did you have a dairy farm?

We had a diversified farm. We raised tobacco too. We milked 25 cows alone sometimes, and the two of
us did it by hand. We got a milking machine after the second child was born. We were probably the only
ones in the neighborhood with a milking machine. Sometimes it would be ten oclock at night by the time
we got done with chores in the summertime. The farmers exchanged work for corn shredding and
different things. If he came home late, then we would have to milk the cows. We had a little tiny radio.
You didnt sit around for entertainment. By the time you were through working, it was time to go to bed.

You asked what I remember the most. Well the storm of 1933 was in the depression days. The tornado
only hit a small area. We could have been killed. We were just lucky. Five of us were in the milk house.
We couldnt keep the door entirely shut. Both sheds went and landed on the door of the milk house. We
couldnt get out until afterward. There was a big two by four that went right above our heads. We didnt
know it until afterward. Five of us standing there could have been hit. This was when Marylyn was a
baby. My husband had wanted me to take the baby to the house. I had to take the baby along to milk
cows, and while she was small enough, I put her into a bushel basket.
As she grew, we brought the
big washtub to put her in. I wouldnt go to the house with her. When the storm started, we didnt have
time to go anyplace. It just all went black.

Later after the storm, when we got to the house, all the windows were out on the north side. There was
hail embedded in the siding of the house. The hail and the ice just went right through. Even upstairs in
the bedrooms there was hail. Our babys bed was full of ice because her bed was in our bedroom and it
was by the window. A lot of times I had left her there sleeping while I went to the barn milking. We were
lucky that time. The men took these great big shovels from the barn, and just shoveled up all this water
and ice.

We went to my folks house near town. They didnt even know there had been a tornado. They said we
looked like drowned rats. We were soaked. We couldnt even sleep in our house. All of our crops were
beat right into the ground. I thought the world had come to an end. We just
lost everything.

To start rebuilding, we had to get the crops planted. This was July 1st.
Now this is the depression days, 1933. So, the Fourth of July, I just
thought, Oh, I just cant. We always went on a picnic for ourselves. I
was going to prepare fried potatoes for the workers planting the corn and
at noon, here came a car. My mother came with fried chicken and pie and
everything. After they got the corn planted, we had to drive probably
twenty miles to find new tobacco plants. They had extra tobacco plants
because all the tobacco planting had been done, and they had not been hit
by the storm. So, we had to milk the cows by hand in the morning and go
way over there, pull the plants, and come back. We got through it.
Arnold Hansons 1929 Model A
Ford cost $749.

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Hanson, Freda

There was this man that we

hired who came off the highway
looking for work, and he stayed
with us six weeks. One day, he
stole our pickup.

The Depression

WPA workers were something else.

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One of the later years, I would say it probably was

1935, WPA workers were all we could get for
tobacco harvest. They kept looking at their time
because they were working for the government; the
government was helping pay for it. We had to pay
something, and all we got left from the whole
tobacco crop that winter was $150. We had taxes.

There was this man that we hired who came off the highway looking for work, and he stayed with us six
weeks. One day, he stole our pickup. Two days before he did that, he tried to call me into the garage. I
had the baby in my arms, and he said, Come on in here, come on up in front of the car. He said, I smell
smoke; I want you to see what it is. I was smart enough not to go. My husband was way out in the field.
The hired man kept insisting. Just then, the neighbor man drove in. He saved the day. Oh, I was scared.
I didnt know what to do. This guy had been real good all the time. He was too good to be true for six
weeks. Two days later, we were scheduled to go to Madison. We left for Madison in our big car, and when
we came home, our truck was gone. We got robbed, and we never saw the hired man again.

I have to tell you about the winter. In the depression years, there was so much snow in the winter and no
rain in the summer. It was just all dry. In the winter, there was only one snowplow in our township, and
the men worked day and night. The farmers would stay up if we knew they were coming to our place in
the middle of the night to plow out the town roads. My husband would shovel our driveway, and we had
a long driveway. There was a country store not too far away from our house, and there was a drunken
man who was staying with his sister. He came walking home at night on top of all the snow, and the plow
hadnt come through yet and the snow was hard, real hard. He came to our driveway and he fell right
down because it was shoveled out. We laughed. He didnt kill himself. He didnt even break a leg but it
sure sobered him up!

My husband and I had to walk about a quarter of a mile to the road to town, which was five miles away.
He would carry a case of twelve-dozen eggs to trade for groceries. Your milk check wouldnt buy
everything. He also carried Marilyn. We only had one child then, and she was going on two years old.
He carried all that, and I trotted along beside him. We called my folks on our country line, where all the
neighbors could hear everything you said. Theyd say when they were going to come pick us up and, the
cars werent fast and the roads werent that good in those days. Then, we would walk and meet them so
we could go to town to get our groceries. We probably had to leave some and come back because you
bought 50 pound sacks of flour at a time and then used the flour sacks for dishtowels or diapers or
whatever you needed them for.

In the grocery store, I would stand there and look at the

bananas, and we could never buy bananas. I longed for
bananas. You only bought what you needed: sugar, flour
and coffee. You baked everything. We never went hungry.
We didnt have anything, but we werent missing it
because we didnt know what it was like. We hadnt had it
before as young married people anyway. In the city, they
had great big bread lines. Ive talked to some real nice
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Hanson, Freda

The Depression

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people who said they helped serve the people

in the bread lines in the cities. Someone said, I
never knew what a depression was because we
never lost money.

There was a man who worked for fifty cents a

day for my dad. His wife was a seamstress. She
made Marilyn a little coat and a little hat to
match out of my coat that I couldnt wear
anymore. She made that, and she gave my
mother a beautiful plate and ladle. My mother
Ole Torger School 1937, teacher: Clara Hauge.
did a lot of things for her too. They became real
good friends of ours in later years. Hed had a real good job. It wasnt in the big city. They had to live
with her folks and store their furniture in a big chicken house. It was just awful what people had to do.

You were a teacher during the Great Depression; how did the Great Depression affect kids coming to
school?
Marilyn went to country school in the depression. I boarded the country schoolteacher and I knew all
about that because Id been a country schoolteacher, and I had paid for my board and room for a week.
We charged five dollars for the week for board and room. She only got seventy dollars then in the first
few years in the depression but it went way down to forty-five dollars. When I was teaching, I got the
highest wage; it was ninety dollars a month. Then everything started going down, and pretty soon you
couldnt even get a job.

Did you listen to the radio or watch TV?

We didnt have TV, but before I was married, before the depression, we listened to the radio every night
when Id come home after walking home from my school, and we sat at the supper table. Two men (two
brothers who farmed there) had to turn on their little radio. It was Amos and Andy. They couldnt eat
supper without Amos and Andy. Im telling you, when I got married, we didnt have time for any radio.
My folks didnt even have one. After we got married we had a little radio, but I dont even remember us
turning it on.

You werent thought of much if you didnt work hard six days a week. I was brought up that way with
my folks; you didnt think much of anybody if they wanted to go fishing instead of farming. We had
people like that, relatives. I married into the most wonderful family. They were so jolly. They were
Norwegian. I had a lot of Norwegian friends. I had to learn that if you are going to eat and cook, you are
going to have to learn their ways. So I learned to make rolepolse. We had lutefisk and lefse. This was our
entertainment. Wed go to church and listen to a Norwegian sermon every other Sunday. Then it would
be English on the other Sundays. I didnt understand a word of that Norwegian. After church, wed have
great big meals. Wed either have somebody at our home for dinner or go to someone elses house. It
would be long after one oclock by the time we got back. That was our entertainment. It really was. You
never spent money for entertainment.

On Sunday night I didnt have to make supper. Thats the only time I got out of cooking. On Sunday night
my husband and his brother made supper, and it was milk mush. I never did learn to like it. Of course,
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The Depression

You cant imagine how

scarce a dollar bill
was...He had a five-dollar
bill. We never even saw a
five-dollar bill. That made
such an impression on me.

to be yellow.

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some of my kids never learned to like molsa, which I learned

to like. I thought Id die the first time I ate it. Now I learned
to make it. They would make this milk mush, which takes
two to make. You boil the milk in a big kettle; then one
person stands and sifts the flour in. Then, you put this milk
mush on a plate, and then they put lots of good butter in the
middle, then sugar and cinnamon. Then, you eat it with cold
milk in a bowl. Marilyn just loved it. She was real little and
she grew fat on it. I like cornmeal mush and corn bread. It has

Then, for the big Christmas gathering, we went to the relatives house. We went between Christmas and
New Years. We went to the neighbors too. We each brought something. We had lefse and lutefisk.
Lutefisk is this big long white fish thats been treated. Wed have to buy the lutefisk. Usually it came from
Minneapolis. Today, it is nine dollars a pound. It isnt worth that really. Its a tradition from Norway. Back
then; we could buy it for nine cents a pound. Wed take a lot of it, and then the men shared in the cost of
it. Theyd take out their billfolds to pay for it. You cant imagine how scarce a dollar bill was. Thats what
my husband had to pay for it. His older brother is the one that still had money; hed lost his farm. He had
a five-dollar bill. We never even saw a five-dollar bill. That made such an impression on me.

The merchants suffered just as much as we did. They were really good people in our town. We wanted
to buy an enameled round oak cook stove later when it was getting
a little better, and we knew we were going to come out of the
depression and all. We wanted to buy it on time, and I remember the
seller said hed love to sell it to us but he couldnt sell anything on
credit. We had to wait until we got our money. I got the first
refrigerator. We didnt even have an ice box those first eight years,
but now I got a refrigerator. It was gas run. Then, the Rural
Electrification Administration (REA) came in, and you had just one
light bulb. You didnt have electric appliances yet, but I got my
round oak stove, and I got my refrigerator. Thats when we moved
up to my home place. Then, we got our own milk route and we got
money every day. We didnt get rich, and we worked just as hard,
but we didnt have to milk so many cows. Franklin Roosevelt was a
savior to the farmer. There was one lady who didnt want to do
anything because she was a Republican. She didnt even want to Freda Hanon with her Star Coupe in 1928.
take the free food, but she did. She stood in line for it. Roosevelt did save the farmers. Our milk checks
got to down thirteen dollars for every two weeks. Roosevelt fixed it so the farmers could work in our area
in a stone quarry. It wasnt so many miles away. All the neighbors would go. My husband worked hard.
He got all the chores done, and crops werent much because we didnt have any rain until that tornado.
In 1936, we never had rain until the night Catherine was born. Then it rained, and then it wouldnt stop.
My husband worked in the stone quarry. That would help with the thirteen dollars every two weeks.

How did you feel about President Hoover?

Well, you see, this was just before the crash, so I wasnt too concerned then. Roosevelt came in, and as
young kids in high school, we should have paid more attention. I was looking this morning at my
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daughters bedroom where I slept. I was looking at the nice chest of drawers. That was the only piece of
furniture I saved from our first bedroom set; that bedroom set and the davenport we bought on time. It
hadnt hit yet. Then, we couldnt pay for it, but they trusted us. We paid what we could each year on it.
I think one of our girls has the sales slip that I saved. It took a long long time to pay it off. It was the same
way with our dental bills. It took many years to pay them off. Right now Im worried because there arent
so many farmers. They dont have those great big gardens or berry patches. I dont think they would be
able to feed the people from the cities if there were to be another depression.

In 1935, there was the Chicago Worlds Fair. We didnt have much money, and my husband and I went
alone. My folks took care of Marilyn. The brother took care of the farm. We took a picture going into the
fair. It only cost $1.50 to stay all night in a house because there werent motels around then. They gave
us breakfast too. It didnt cost much to go. We had a wonderful time. Youve probably never heard of
Sally Rand. She was this dancer with big feathers. Wed heard of her, and we got to see her. At home, we
were used to paying a nickel for a mug of beer, and at the Worlds Fair, it was a quarter. It was twentyfive cents for a mug of beer.

Do you think that life is easier now or it was easier back in the depression? Was it simpler?
Well, we were all in the same boat, and we worked together. We all had plenty to eat, and we were
healthy. But now, theres so much depression in people. Too many are being killed. We never saw these
problems. These people who are losing their jobs and are used to so much, how are they ever going to
stand it? I think its harder today for people. Its not for me because I think I have it the easiest Ive ever
had. Ive got four wonderful children who say theyll do anything for me. They do too much for me. I
told my husband when I was working, that if I ever get through this, Ill have ice cream every day.
Sometimes I have it two or three times a day. I always have it in my freezer, and I think about how we
could only have it at parties.

Wed haul our cream to the creamery in town that was five miles away, two or three times a week. We
had to separate the milk. There wasnt any sale for that good skim milk. Now we buy it. We would feed
the skim milk to the pigs. We also fed it to the chickens and the calves. What we couldnt feed, we poured
it right down the barnyard, just waste.

What do you think was the greatest invention?

The greatest thing in the depression was when REA came to
town and brought us the electric light. When I was going to
County Normal, I studied by kerosene lamp. I was like Abe
Lincoln.
N o w , Freda currently lives in Platteville, Wisconsin.
when the She has four children, 13 grandchildren, and
k i d s 20 great grandchildren. She is an avid reader,
c o m e , and she keeps in contact with her family via
they turn e-mail.
all
the
lights on.
If you ever learn any lesson, appreciate what you have.

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Hanson, Freda