Residents Compare Economic Crises

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Editor's note: This is the first in a series that compares residents' thoughts on today's economic crisis with that of the Great Depression.

News traveled slow to Mingo. And when it did the stories of Wall Street's turmoil didn't affect Virginia Conrad Hamrick's family. Hamrick was 9 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929.

Few jobs outside of farming and large sums of money didn't exist in Mingo, Hamrick, now 88, recalled. Because so many in the Mingo area relied on the land, she said they led a simple life.

Her family maintained the farming lifestyle throughout the Depression, allowing them to continue the life they always knew. On the self-sufficient farm, Hamrick's family raised cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and a garden full of vegetables, which were canned for the winter months.

"We never went hungry," she said.

Other than raising livestock to supply themselves with food, she said her family also sold the animals to butchers and stores to make money.

Turkeys they raised were shipped to Baltimore, Md., by rail during the Depression. To prepare the turkeys for shipment, Hamrick said she and her siblings helped hang the turkeys by their feet. Then, she said, their father would cut the turkeys' mouths until they were drained of blood. Then they wrapped the turkeys in newspaper and packed them in barrels.

Aboard a horse-drawn buggy, Hamrick sometimes traveled with her father to load the turkeys on the train at the Mill Creek Station.

They used the money from the animals they sold to purchase what they couldn't raise or grow. A small store in Mingo carried a supply of sugar and salt, and a local farmer milled the flour her family used, Hamrick said.

Once a year, Hamrick traveled with her family to Elkins. During those trips she remembers seeing open store fronts.

The rural area of Mingo required them do without many of the modern amenities of town. Fashionable, store-bought clothes weren't a part of Harmick's childhood. Her mother and older sisters made what she wore.

Her family didn't have to worry about paying electric bills because they didn't have it. They used kerosene lamps and a cave to store food that needed to remain cold, she said.

"That was our cellar," Hamrick said with a smile.

Another plus for her family during the Depression was keeping their money in The Bank of Mill Creek. To Hamrick's knowledge, The Bank of Mill Creek was the only local bank that did not falter. Throughout the Depression their money remained tucked safely in The Bank of Mill Creek, she said.

Even during the years of the Depression, her father was able to purchase their first car - a new 1932 Ford Model A truck. She said it's likely the money raised from selling livestock helped purchase the truck.

"We thought we were in seventh heaven," Hamrick said.

When she got older, Hamrick remembered when Franklin Roosevelt became president and enacted legislation that created jobs in the Tygart Valley. Although no one in her family worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, she said many jobs were created in Valley Bend, Dailey and Arthurdale.

Because she was only 9 at the start of the Depression and somewhat sheltered from the financial troubles, Hamrick couldn't compare and contrast the troubles of 1929 to those of today.

She does say those who farm and rely on agricultural methods are likely to fare better during the current economic crisis than those who don't.

As a youngster growing up during the Great Depression, Dr. Thomas H. Cox was not too much aware of the economic situation either.

Cox, who grew up in Huttonsville, said, "I was only 5 years old when it struck in 1929. I had no clue that a depression was going on. I thought we were rich.

"As I grew older, however, I did become more aware that times were hard, mostly from listening to my parents and those of my friends talk about it," Cox said. "At that age, my friends and I had other more important things on our minds like riding our bikes, and later on girls became our fancy."

Cox said his first realization that things were bad was when his father came home from work one day and told the family that his pay check had been cut to $125 a month.

"I don't know what it was before that; I just remember him talking about his salary being cut," he said.

"My dad had a car, something that few others had. I'm not sure, but his car may have been provided by the company," Cox said, adding that his father used the car for personal travel as well as business.

"In 1939 we went to the World's Fair in New York," he recalled.

"There were a lot of people working on the Works Progress Administration during that time," he said. "I did not work on the WPA and they had a similar program for young people called the National Youth Administration."

According to Cox, he did not work in that program either.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the people in the rural areas had it much better than those living in the urban areas," Cox said. "I think it was very traumatic in the cities because the people in the rural areas had plenty to eat and we had a warm home. It was heated with wood or coal, but it was warm.

"We had good clothes to wear. They weren't fancy, but they were kept clean by my mom and were warm in the winter," Cox said. "I remember as a boy that I couldn't wait for it to get warm enough in the summer when we could take off our shoes and go barefooted. The soles of our feet would get tough as leather, almost. Then we'd get a new pair in the fall before school took up again.

"We may have been poor back then, but we didn't know it," he said. "You've heard the saying, 'You don't miss that which you don't know exists.' That's the way we were. We didn't know about a lot of the things that other people had, much of which they lost during the Depression. But I thought we were rich."