Oct. 6, 2008
MANN TALK: Deja Vu: Hoover, Then Bush II
By Perry Mann
I recently mentioned to my daughter that a downside of having lived so long is that I lived through the Great Depression and it appears now that I may have to live through another.
I remember picking up the Charleston Gazette on the porch at 1009 Main St. the morning after the election between Herbert Hoover and Alfred Smith and seeing on the front of it the picture of Herbert Hoover. My father was a Republican so it was good news for 1009.
I also remember the Bank Holiday in 1933. I remember it vividly. My mother and father were at the breakfast table unaware that I was listening. I can hear my father now say, “I would rather die than go to that bank today.” He knew that it would not open again. His bank, the Security Bank and Trust Co., and six others of the eleven banks in Charleston failed. Only four survived. And there was no FDIC to cover the losses of depositors.
My father was born in 1899, one of ten children only six of whom survived to adulthood. His education was limited to eight grades in a one-room school located on a ridge that even today is far from beaten paths.
His father was Allen Marshall Mann and his mother was Lockey Melissa Webb Mann. In 1893 they acquired about 100 acres of rocky forested land on Big Bend Mountain and built a house near a spring and began the rest of their lives. They cleared land, hauled rocks, built barns and outbuildings, cultivated the land, got livestock and produced enough to survive but not much more. Life from dawn to dark was arduous work, skimping and saving, and doing unto neighbors what they wished neighbors to do unto them.
My mother was born in 1903, the next to the youngest of ten children all of whom reached adulthood. Her father was Erastus David Ferrell and her mother was Arminta Judson Carden Ferrell, who lived to be 92. Erastus inherited from his father an estate of many acres of bottom land along the Greenbrier River. He was land rich. Thus my mother never knew want or skimping and saving. She received her higher education in an academy at Alderson, WV.
My father left the farm in 1918 via the C&O Railway for Charleston where he gained employment in a day-and-night bank on the West Side. Credit was easy in the Twenties so he bought a house on Russell St. In the spring of 1920, he married my mother and in the spring of 1921, I was born in the cottage on Russell Street.
Times were good. My father went to work for the Security Bank and Trust Co. located next to Frankenberger’s clothing store. He bought a Rickenbacker automobile. Then he moved to 1009 Main St. in a newly constructed and spacious house and he bought a Packard, the Cadillac of that day, all on credit. My mother, in particular, charged and spent as if the good times would last forever. They had serious arguments over her spending.
Eleanor Mae was born two years after I was and Doris Ann was born two years after Eleanor. I went to school at Glenwood Elementary. My mother dressed us in the latest fashions and spared little in outfitting herself and her household. She bobbed her hair and began to smoke. She was with the Roaring Twenties in spirit and in practice.
Then came October 1929, and the stock market crash. The first sign of trouble in retrospect was that we moved from the elegant house. Then we moved again to the East End into an apartment. There was no longer an automobile. The arguments over finances mounted and became more hostile. In 1932 FDR became president and in 1933 he declared a bank holiday. My mother and father were not only bankrupt but my father had no job, no house, no car and a huge debt. Also, deflation was rampant causing debtors to have to pay the inflated debts of the Twenties with the deflated dollars of the Thirties.
The Depression was too severe a strain on my parents’ marriage, which was shaky from their basic incompatibility. So they divorced and the situation became worse. I had over the years gravitated toward my grandparents with whom I had spent many summers. I found a security there that I didn’t find in my family. So in the spring of 1936, while attending Roosevelt Junior High School, I decided to seek help.
I went to see Virgil Flynn, the principal. I told him how unhappy I was and how desperate the situation was at home and asked him to allow me to go to live with my grandparents, even though the school term was six weeks from its end. Mr. Flynn, before me, got my report card and filled out every subject with a “C” and wished me well. I got the two dollars to pay the fare on the C&O to Hinton and went to live with my grandparents, a blessing of which I become more aware every year of my life.
Capitalistic greed and ideological rabidity generated Hoover’s depression and Bush’s has been bred by the same parents. In my father’s day there was an abundance of liquidity. It was loaned irresponsibly and recklessly. In my day, the same has happened and the result is the same.
The lessons of the Great Depression have lived with me and guided me all my life and the experiences of living on the earth earning my bread from it gave me a perspective that has helped to keep me solvent and ahead of game. But if my prudence has not been enough, I will, like Voltaire, retire to the land with my Social Security and a hoe so long as I can cultivate a garden with it --- and thank FDR in my prayers.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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MANN TALK: Deja Vu: Hoover, Then Bush II
By Perry Mann
I recently mentioned to my daughter that a downside of having lived so long is that I lived through the Great Depression and it appears now that I may have to live through another.
I remember picking up the Charleston Gazette on the porch at 1009 Main St. the morning after the election between Herbert Hoover and Alfred Smith and seeing on the front of it the picture of Herbert Hoover. My father was a Republican so it was good news for 1009.
I also remember the Bank Holiday in 1933. I remember it vividly. My mother and father were at the breakfast table unaware that I was listening. I can hear my father now say, “I would rather die than go to that bank today.” He knew that it would not open again. His bank, the Security Bank and Trust Co., and six others of the eleven banks in Charleston failed. Only four survived. And there was no FDIC to cover the losses of depositors.
My father was born in 1899, one of ten children only six of whom survived to adulthood. His education was limited to eight grades in a one-room school located on a ridge that even today is far from beaten paths.
His father was Allen Marshall Mann and his mother was Lockey Melissa Webb Mann. In 1893 they acquired about 100 acres of rocky forested land on Big Bend Mountain and built a house near a spring and began the rest of their lives. They cleared land, hauled rocks, built barns and outbuildings, cultivated the land, got livestock and produced enough to survive but not much more. Life from dawn to dark was arduous work, skimping and saving, and doing unto neighbors what they wished neighbors to do unto them.
My mother was born in 1903, the next to the youngest of ten children all of whom reached adulthood. Her father was Erastus David Ferrell and her mother was Arminta Judson Carden Ferrell, who lived to be 92. Erastus inherited from his father an estate of many acres of bottom land along the Greenbrier River. He was land rich. Thus my mother never knew want or skimping and saving. She received her higher education in an academy at Alderson, WV.
My father left the farm in 1918 via the C&O Railway for Charleston where he gained employment in a day-and-night bank on the West Side. Credit was easy in the Twenties so he bought a house on Russell St. In the spring of 1920, he married my mother and in the spring of 1921, I was born in the cottage on Russell Street.
Times were good. My father went to work for the Security Bank and Trust Co. located next to Frankenberger’s clothing store. He bought a Rickenbacker automobile. Then he moved to 1009 Main St. in a newly constructed and spacious house and he bought a Packard, the Cadillac of that day, all on credit. My mother, in particular, charged and spent as if the good times would last forever. They had serious arguments over her spending.
Eleanor Mae was born two years after I was and Doris Ann was born two years after Eleanor. I went to school at Glenwood Elementary. My mother dressed us in the latest fashions and spared little in outfitting herself and her household. She bobbed her hair and began to smoke. She was with the Roaring Twenties in spirit and in practice.
Then came October 1929, and the stock market crash. The first sign of trouble in retrospect was that we moved from the elegant house. Then we moved again to the East End into an apartment. There was no longer an automobile. The arguments over finances mounted and became more hostile. In 1932 FDR became president and in 1933 he declared a bank holiday. My mother and father were not only bankrupt but my father had no job, no house, no car and a huge debt. Also, deflation was rampant causing debtors to have to pay the inflated debts of the Twenties with the deflated dollars of the Thirties.
The Depression was too severe a strain on my parents’ marriage, which was shaky from their basic incompatibility. So they divorced and the situation became worse. I had over the years gravitated toward my grandparents with whom I had spent many summers. I found a security there that I didn’t find in my family. So in the spring of 1936, while attending Roosevelt Junior High School, I decided to seek help.
I went to see Virgil Flynn, the principal. I told him how unhappy I was and how desperate the situation was at home and asked him to allow me to go to live with my grandparents, even though the school term was six weeks from its end. Mr. Flynn, before me, got my report card and filled out every subject with a “C” and wished me well. I got the two dollars to pay the fare on the C&O to Hinton and went to live with my grandparents, a blessing of which I become more aware every year of my life.
Capitalistic greed and ideological rabidity generated Hoover’s depression and Bush’s has been bred by the same parents. In my father’s day there was an abundance of liquidity. It was loaned irresponsibly and recklessly. In my day, the same has happened and the result is the same.
The lessons of the Great Depression have lived with me and guided me all my life and the experiences of living on the earth earning my bread from it gave me a perspective that has helped to keep me solvent and ahead of game. But if my prudence has not been enough, I will, like Voltaire, retire to the land with my Social Security and a hoe so long as I can cultivate a garden with it --- and thank FDR in my prayers.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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