EDITOR’S CORNER
Itry not to play the part of Grumpy Old Man too much. My tendencies are to be amused by most of what I see and experience.
One of the few things that sets me off, though, is when people—good people—have a brash opinion on a subject about which they are totally ignorant.
I actually read an author—yes, young, but that’s not an excuse—defi ne the Great Depression as a “time when people had to do without many luxuries.”
Excuse me? Luxuries?
Many people who lived through those times didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.
I guess today when you do without luxuries you buy the $300 smart phone instead of the $600 one.
Let me recall a couple of people who lived through those non-luxurious times.
My father taught me a greater economics lesson than I ever learned in any book or classroom.
Someone many years ago was complaining about bread going over one dollar per loaf.
Dad asked if they had the dollar. They did.
“Well,” he said. “What’s really cheaper, bread at a dollar a loaf when you have the dollar, or bread at a nickel a loaf when you don’t have the nickel?”
My wife and I just got back from a funeral in Missouri for a remarkable woman. Ida Shockley Ponzer was 94 and was Sue’s grandmother.
She was quite literally born in a tent the week before Christmas, 1923 , in bone-chilling cold Idaho.
She was the seventh of 10 children. Her name, “Ida,” came from the state. When you’ve already named six kids and are birthing in a tent, you probably don’t get too creative about things.
People who came to our wedding when Sue and I got married probably only remember one thing about that day—Ida dancing up a storm at the KC Hall.
When I told people here whose funeral I was going to, everyone who remembered that night immediately replied: “Oh, Dancin’ Granny.”
It’s obvious Ida conquered Rockdale in her one trip here, as she conquered most things in her 94 years.
Here’s the spirit of the kind of people who “didn’t have luxuries” back then.
Sue’s sister Lisa remembered an incident that defined Ida. Lisa was a little girl and they were in Ida’s car, an old VW Beetle with the fl oorboard rusted through. You could see the road underneath.
They stopped and Lisa saw Ida rummaging through her purse, the car seats, clothes and fi nding pennies, one by one.
Finally she scraped up enough change to go into the store, big smile on her face, and buy each of them an ice cream cone.
It was a triumph of the spirit. These are the kind of Americans who lived through the Depression.
One more thing. I don’t think you, or I, will ever have an ice cream cone that tastes that good.
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