Being a child of much older parents, I was often reminded of “the Great Depression.”
There’s weren’t tales of bank failures, of going without food or loosing the roof over their heads. This wasn’t my parent’s experience.
My mother, though considerably less affluent than my father had been raised in Kansas, and later immigrated to California. My maternal grandfather had been a well digger and worked with his hands his whole life. Mother’s stories were of frugal want borne with dignity.
My father, born in 1906, the son of a prominent Los Angeles dentist might just as well have been from another planet. In fact he was: Planet Hollywood.
Family lore tells of their meeting through my dad’s best friend, Harry Cottingham (ever after known as Uncle Harry) who had just married a beautiful woman from Modesto. When my father asked the rhetorical: “Are there any more like her at home?” The answer was a resounding “Yes!” because my mother was an IDENTICAL TWIN.
Theirs was a whirlwind romance. Both were engaged to others: my mom to a boy who had made her a Cedar Hope Chest (she kept it) and my father to “the red headed gal from Texas.”
They met in September 1934 and were married on December 10th 1934, an engagement more like a tornado than a whirlwind.
It was a brave, if not rash act, their marriage. My father, though a graduate of Business College and working with a good salary, didn’t own any property. My mother was “Hollywood beautiful” but only had a high school education and had worked at J.C. Penny’s in Modesto.
They moved in with my dad’s mother. Not an unusual occurrence in 1934 or inconvenient since the widow Ethel Beazley lived in a Victorian mansion with a separate “apartment” for my folks.
My father always worked for very wealthy men. He was good with figures and as trustworthy as the rock of Gibraltar is solid. The work was steady, if not lucrative. His employers were rich, not him.
Here’s where the years of the Great Depression showed their influence.
My folks knew it was important to never waste; be it food, money or time.
My father NEVER was without a job. He would work all hours, miss vacations, and sacrifice his happiness for theirs. His was a life spent at the beck and call of others. And he hated it.
But he never quit. And he never went out on his own.
He kept track of his bosses’ millions in plump portfolios but never invested or dallied in the stock market. He was given a shot at some uranium profits once but it was a flash in the pan. They owned just one home in their lives, but rented mostly. .
After their honey moon cruise to Alaska, their travel consisted of trips to Catalina and Balboa Islands in Southern California where they spent most of their lives. Late in their lives they went to Hawaii, once.
They died as they lived: free of debt and in the care of family, not the state.
