Elsewhere, needy couples engaged in marathon dances, clutching each other, dragging their feet in slow foxtrots until they collapsed or survived as winners. Well-heeled couples shed the depression willies by jitterbugging, jiving and shimmying in classier dance halls. As I blew fluffy seed heads of dandelions apart, I listened to idle bench-warmers exchange remarks near the gazebo in Patterson Park. They were sharing misfortunes with each other, caught up in the crosswinds of the depression, chartless, with no goals, no viable options. To a man, they agreed to tread water until the brain trusts in Washington invented government- sponsored work.
Life goes on.
Trust God and the corner grocer. I did the thirties. Immobilized by sudden furloughs and terminations, many a displaced breadwinner in my old Sheep Hill enclave tightened his belt and sought day labor jobs, the soul in his stomach hungering for permanent employment. As a compensation for the privations of a lean decade, a number of parents permitted their sons to keep homing pigeons in backyard coops. It too was a time when self-reliant hausfraus took in laundry to tide over the shallows of a lagging economy.