Consider the worst-case scenario: The expert wisdom of bankers, economists and politicians is wrong. We may be in for a long-term depression. Many stocks may never recover.
Dead and dying companies (including the sorely missed Rocky Mountain News) may not rise again. Americans may never live as high on the hog as we have in the past few decades. As in the 1930s, ordinary people under extraordinary circumstance will be fighting for food, shelter and dignity.
History — notably the Great Depression of the 1930s — offers survival tips. Hunker down and get ready for an extended family reunion. Hard times bring relatives together. Grown children, grandparents, in-laws and stray aunts and uncles may be moving in with you and promising to help pay the rent and utilities.
Today’s recycling fashion is far behind standard practices of the Great Depression, when nothing was thrown away. Cardboard boxes were prized as homes and old clothes were recycled as quilts. Rubber bands, paper clips and pennies were hoarded.
Federal programs were aimed less at bailing out corporations and executives and more at hiring the desperately out-of-work at the bottom of society. The emphasis was more on relief of immediate hunger, homelessness, sickness and suffering than on possible future economic recovery. Structural reform and government regulation — not bailouts, bonuses and retreats — were the prescription for corporate America.
If drought moves in as it did to exacerbate the Great Depression, get ready for those black blizzards again. My mother never forgot the dust storms that sometimes invaded even Denver during the 1930s. Her family put rags around windows, doors and other cracks to fight the invading dust. Likewise, they put wet rags or sponges over their noses and mouths to avoid “dust bowl pneumonia.”
For entertainment, head to your local public library. Instead of chain book stores and video rental stores, check out the free books, videos, DVDs, etc., at the library. Check out Depression-era classics such as John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” With this book in hand, you can consider joining that novel’s Joad family, packing up and heading for the promised land: California.
But today, the bankrupt Golden State is no longer the solution. Maybe your best bet is Colorado. If you worry about global warming as well as the Depression, Colorado is the Promised Land. While coastal areas are flooded by melting ice caps, Colorado will remain high and dry. Consider moving to Leadville, the nation’s highest city at 10,152 feet. Leadville has some of the cheapest real estate in Colorado and has been depressed for so long that its residents don’t even blink at hard times.
During these tight times, enjoy Colorado’s public parks, many of which were developed and endowed with comfort stations, picnic shelters, gardens and other amenities during the last Depression by New Deal agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Although the 1930s were this country’s poorest decade, federally funded employment programs created some of the richest public buildings — notably schools, town halls, courthouses and community centers.
The Great Depression left us a notable heritage we need to re-examine in these tough times, starting with the slogans:
• Make do or do without.
• Waste not, want not.
• The best is the cheapest.
• Save the Soil, Save the Forests, Save the Young Man.
And, of course,
• Hey brother, can you spare a dime? (But make that 10 bucks this time around.)
Tom Noel, who teaches history at CU-Denver, welcomes your comments at www: tom.noel@auraria.edu.
