Too True Tuesday: Unexpected Consequences of Thrift in the Thirties

   My Dad alerted me to this hilarious story from the Great Depression. Found on: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/30s-memories.html

This is a story my great grandmother Louise told me - and that her daughters affirmed as absolutely true and the funniest thing I have ever heard happen in my life.

During the depression my great-grandmother did these things to support herself and her 4 daughters; Marjorie, Joanne, Jackie & Jill. They made wedding trouseaus and dresses etc., for those who were still wealthy, knitted everything from lace to wool, kept a large garden, and raised geese and ducks for eggs and down which they would stuff into pillows for sale.

At the end of the garden harvest time they would turn the geese and ducks loose to clean up all the little leftovers and eat bugs.

Her neighbor, Harry, supported himself by making 'bathtub gin' in his basement- which involved using a great deal of corn, part of which Louise would provide from the garden. At the end of the booze making process there would be a lot of what they called 'squeezings' - basically alcohol soaked corn mash which Harry would dump into a pit and bury. Well one morning Louise and her daughters got up to find every one of the ducks and geese laying all over the yard and garden- dead. Not knowing what happened - and in a panic - Louise decided that the least they could do is strip the down feathers from the birds to stuff into pillows so as to prevent a total loss.

Putting all 4 girls to work- plus a few volunteer neighbor ladies- they had succeeded in stripping about 30 birds and tossing them into a pile behind the shed - when suddenly a goose walked - rather unsteadily and completely bare- out from behind the shed and proceeded to go up the path toward the house.

Then another - and another followed, all bare and weaving from side to side. The ladies jumped up and ran behind the shed where more of the birds were kicking around and trying to push themselves up onto their feet. Walking out a bit past the shed to round up the birds, Louise found a huge pile of corn mash, unburied and stinking to high heaven - with duck prints all through it. Here the birds were stinking drunk and completely comatose from eating old corn mash. A few had died, but most were alive. So now what to do? Ohio has bad winters and she had about 30 ducks and geese who were basically stripped bare and would never survive the cold. Well they did the only thing they could think of at the time- they went from stripping feathers to knitting wool sweaters for every one of those birds, using all the leftover wool yarn they had. Louise told me that years Christmas goose had the 'most interesting flavor' she had ever experienced.