Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #083095-2
Dayton Jewish Center
Dayton Ohio
August 30, 1995
THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1929-1939
Facilitator: Marilyn Klaben, Recorder: Faye Neace, Transcriber: Holly Bergman
Participants: Stanley Blum, Maryan Caplan, Tony Dallas, Art Dicken, Mary Dicken, Millie Dlott, Lenora Fahrer, Sarah Itzkowitz, Florence Katz, Leonard Katz, Lucille Marshment, Shirley Mazer, Marilyn Shannon, Sylvia Siege.
This session lasts approximately 33 minutes.
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added. * Note: About 11 minutes into the audio portion of the session approximately 1 minute of audio was lost. Fortunately, the missing contents of the tape was transcribed and can be found below. This missing part has been highlighted in italics.
Art Dicken
The color brochure that you showed had a picture of a building, with people waiting in line for handouts, food or whatever; I remember that building. It was on the corner of Fifth and Stone Street, which is no longer there; the area has been taken over by the Convention Center and the Neon Theater. But I remember passing there and seeing all of those people there, not knowing at my age, what they were doing there. I asked my dad and he told me that they were waiting for food handouts. I remember somebody saying at that time, "They're giving out cheese and raisins today." How true that was, I don't know. My father was unemployed and we had relatives living with us and my mother worked cleaning office buildings. We always had food, some kind of food. It wasn't gourmet food, but it was self-sustaining food.
Mary Luben Dicken
We were not rich, but I guess I didn't feel the Depression like I would because there were three people working in our family. Because when I was born, 18 years after my brothers, my two brothers were working and my father. But I do know that we lost our house, in spite of that, and hadda rent after that. Also an aunt had left me, I think it was like, five hundred dollars, which was a gold mine in those days. And it was put in the Franklin Savings and Loan which, in 1929, went bye-bye. But 20 or more years later, remnants of that focused again, and we were married, and we were able to put a down payment on our first car from that. Because I was the baby, I didn't really realize how serious everything was, except that I knew that was going to be my money some day and I felt it through that. I know the fact that we lost our house hit me too. I was very young, as you all were. I think that bank became People's Bank, and it changed into many other banks before we lined up and got just a small part of the original.
Sarah Blum Itzkowitz
We never had to go hungry 'cause my dad had a grocery store, so we always had food on the table.
Millie Dlott
I'll tell you a little interesting story about my father-in-law, may he rest in peace. He was a big sport. And Jewish people bought live chickens to cook at those times. And someone would kill the chicken, and he was known as the shochet. So it was the Reverend Zussman, the family is still here in town. Well my father-in-law was a big sport, it cost ten cents to kill the chicken. So he would give them the dime for the chicken, and he give 'em a ten cent tip, which was unheard of. Well one day, my father- in-law was going down Jefferson Street, and he was pretty happy because the bank just closed and he owed 'em two thousand dollars, so he wasn't too sad about it. But when he got to the door of the bank, the Reverend Zussman was banging on the door, banging on the door. He said, "What's the matter, Reverend Zussman?" He says, "I've got ten thousand dollars in this bank." That was the man he was giving the ten cent tips to!
Shirley Mazer
I don't remember a lot of the Depression, but I know that my father had two men's clothing stores on the west side. And I know that he lost one. I do remember them talking about that we were eating the inventory during that period of our life. And we got through it. I remember the Wright Brothers, and the bicycle shop, which were all right there in that Third and Broadway area. I was born on what was Samuel Street at that time; it's now called Steele Avenue. Right across from St. Mary's Church which faces on Xenia Avenue. I remember driving back there one time, and being amazed at what I thought was a big house as being a very, very tiny place.
Marilyn Shannon
I was born during the Depression, I really don't remember anything about it except what my parents tell me. And my parents were married May 1, 1933. And some time before that, I guess it was earlier in 1933, maybe you will know, the banks closed. I don't know if that was throughout the whole country—this was out in New Mexico. [Others confirm the banks closed in 1933.] The reason I mention that, is that they were just ready to become engaged, and my father had the engagement ring in the safety deposit box in the bank. The banks closed, so he wasn't able to get it. They got married, and whether or not the banks reopened in time for him to get the ring out I don't know, but they were married May 1, 1933.
Leonard Katz
We have a rake that we inherited from her father. It was put out during the WPA days; it has a WPA written on it. So it has to be since '33. I was born in a little town in New Jersey, and I really didn't realize what was going on with the Depression, 'cause we had plenty to eat. But I remember, they used to have coal cars that went through town, and some of the kids used to jump on top of the coal cars, and throw the coal down, and then they'd fill 'em up buckets and bring 'em home so they'd have heat in the house. Another interesting thing from the little town I came from, it was organized by Baron de Hirsch, who was a Jewish philanthropist. And when it was started, it was originally for Jewish farmers. It was about ninety-five percent Jewish; and now it's about five percent Jewish.
Florence Katz
Speaking of the little rake that my husband spoke about, my father was in the scrap business in Dayton. And I'm presuming that the rake came from the scrap yard. However, during those times, again, I did not feel the Depression. I was very young, my parents had moved from the east side of Dayton to Dayton View, and I was young enough to be, like, in the fifth or sixth group of youngsters who went to Jefferson School. My sister Sylvia Siegle Marcus was in the first class of youngsters who went to Jefferson School. The interesting thing about that period of time, is that we had relatives in Columbus, and we had relatives in Cleveland, who thought that Jake Siegle in Dayton was very, very wealthy! And so, when any of them got into difficulty, they came to Dayton. They did not live with us, I don't know where they lived, but I know at one time my father had Uncle Will working for us, and Uncle Harry working for us and a man from Columbus, Sam Blassburg working for us. His sister's husband and son worked for dad; thank God there was a little left over for the family! But he was truly supporting all of those people during the Depression.
Again, I didn't suffer at all. The thing that I do remember, and I really think it's funny now that I think about it; I attended Steele High School. And I got an allowance of twenty-five cents every day. Ten cents of that had to go for car fare to Steele High School and back home. We lived on Cambridge Avenue. And fifteen cents of it went for my lunch. Biltmore Hotel had been built then, and they had a counter—a food counter, soda fountain counter—and they had coca-colas for five cents and grilled cheese sandwiches for ten cents. So that took care of my quarter. But, when the weather was nice, and I felt that I was able to walk from Steele High School to my home, I did, and I saved the nickel. And if I could do it five days a week, I had a quarter at the end of the week. And I couldn't think—all this wealth, what am I gonna do with it? My mother had taught me to sew, and there was a family in town, and there are still Katzes in Dayton. But there were two brothers, Harry Katz and Nathan Katz, who had silk shops. Now Saturday, that was the day that my mother could take a vacation from her chores with the family, and she and I used to go downtown, and she would say, "Well, what are you going to do with your quarter? Do you want to buy a piece of material from Mr. Katz?" And she'd go into the store with me, and Nathan Katz would be there. A darling man, that was Paul Katz's father. And she'd say, "Nathan, do you have any remnants?" And he'd say, "Yes, what do you want?" She says, "Well Florence needs a yard of material so she can make a blouse. But all she has is a quarter." He says, "Darling, don't worry!" Everybody was his darling, even the people who were the carriage trade from Oakwood, they were all his darlings too. And he'd take out a lovely piece of silk that was the end of the bolt, and maybe there was a yard and an eighth that he couldn't sell to anybody else. And he would sell it to me for a quarter. And I would make myself a blouse. And I tell you, I didn't feel the Depression, I had a beautiful silk blouse to wear, and I was very, very thin, so sometimes a yard of material was sufficient to make a skirt. I had an outfit. So there I was, in the depths of this Depression, almost being dressed to the hilt.
Morton Fahrer
We were never real desperate, as the story goes, but I can remember my dad talking about in the twenties, he had a fair sized plumbing shop; we were plumbing
contractors in Dayton. And he never thought he'd ever have to go back to work with his hands again, in the trade. But he got hit pretty hard, '29, '30, '31, them days. He went back to work for the ..., he was lucky to be able to save his house and the business. He had some real estate, that went, but one way or another, you managed to keep going. I was lucky. In junior high school, well I was in the first class that went through Colonel White when it was a junior high school, I went to the seventh, eighth and ninth grade there. I guess it was in eighth grade, I got a job workin' after school and Saturdays, pants store downtown. I used to go down after school, take the bus down, or the streetcar, and used to take the pants over to the tailor's and wait on the customers, dust and what have you. But I was luckier than hell, I had a paycheck every week. That's something a lot of kids at school didn't have.
Stanley Blum
I was born right in the middle, I guess, of the Depression, in '29. I don't remember the Depression as the Depression, I remember the time, very vividly. I do remember that on Rogge Street that a lot of the Jewish families were moving to Cambridge Avenue or Dayton View. And that I can remember my sister, that someday her great dream was to be able to get off of Rogge Street, because that somehow represented to her that we were the victims of the Depression. And I never quite understood that, even though I knew that things were tight, and that I got hand-me-downs from aunts and uncles, both from Cincinnati and from Dayton. And that my mother, every scrap of whatever, I mean either she made a quilt out of it, or she made a new blanket, or she would make me a shirt, or she would make something, that everything was always very tight. And I can remember that in order to save the nickel, that I would walk downtown in order to see the great downtown. Of course in those days, the downtown was quite crowded. And I do remember, sort of in the recesses of my mind, a lot of people who were looking for handouts, or that little signs about that they would work for food or what have you. I also remember, on Rogge Street, that there was a project by the WPA, because to me, that was a real boon, because I made lemonade and sold it to the WPA workers as they were working there. And I asked my father what the WPA was, and he told me that this was a way to try to help the people who had suffered from the Depression. So I asked him if he had suffered from the Depression, and he had said that, well, he had had a store in Cincinnati, and both because of illness, and I guess because of the Depression, the store failed and came to Dayton. Well my father was a huckster, a fruit peddler. So I used to go to market with him, and I remember going to Zimboch's on St. Clair Street, and to the offices of the Donoffs and all the others. And remember also that one morning, about three o'clock in the morning, it was, that one of the merchants, I don't remember now which one it was, asked me if I wanted to make some money. Even though I was all of six years old, I decided that yes, anything that I could make some money. They took me in a truck to the railroad cars, and I was sort of the pivot person, in that they would hand me a watermelon, and I would turn around and hand it to somebody else out of the railroad car. And that there were groups of people standing around the railroad car with their little baskets, waiting—hoping—that somebody would drop something, because if they would drop it, then people could run and go to get this.
A lot of memories are coming back. During that particular time, when the Federation had their place on 59 Green Street. I can remember Mrs. Fisher, she was the social worker there. I remember going there with my mother, and they got a pair of shoes, and thought wasn't that really very nice that they would give me a pair of shoes there. And then they had organized picnics during the summertime. The bus would pick us up and we'd go to Eastwood Park, and swim and everything. It was a kind of an equalizer, because I can remember a lot of people that USED to live on Rogge Street, that now were someplace else, that they were coming, and that there was this kind of equalizer because of the Jewish picnics, and we had a great time. One of the things that in order to help out, what I would do is to go around the community collecting Coke bottles or whatever other kind of soda bottles there were. We got two cents for each bottle. And that I would save those, and I recall feeling that, you know, after I would maybe get fifteen, twenty cents that I was really quite wealthy, because then I could go to Patton's, which was a store on old Bell Court right behind Patterson School, that I would buy Guess Whats—they were a little package of candy and a little prize inside the package—and that I would hand those out and feel like I was some sort of real philanthropist. It was a period where there was a very mixed kind of feeling in my family, that I never really thought of it as a bad period until later. As I got older, then I realized how poor we were. But I'd had no idea at the time, because I thought everybody did this. I thought it was just a kind of, this is the way to conserve things. It's like ecology today, you have to save everything, that's the way we were then. The first ecologists, I guess.
Sylvia Siegle
I was in Louisville, Kentucky, during the Depression, and I have many memories because I think I'm the oldest person here. I remember going down on the streetcar and passing the place where people were standing in line to get soup, soup kitchens. And that was really quite a revelation to me, to think that people who didn't have enough to eat, that they had to stand in such long lines; they went all around the corner, you know. One of the things that really hit me was, just like on this [Dayton Stories Project] pamphlet, "we were sorta poor, but I never knew." I think that that was what ran through all of us. We grew up in a time, everybody was poor, so we didn't know any different. I remember taking milk bottles back to get a refund on the milk bottles, 'cause the milk was delivered every day. Of course there weren't groceries like we have today, there were corner grocery stores. Everybody went every day to buy their groceries. We had a bread man who came and delivered bread every day, and the milk man. And then there was a produce man who would come by. But we had an ice box, and of course they delivered ice too. You put a sign out in the window, of how many pounds of ice you wanted, and turn it around. And I remember when my aunt and uncle moved to a much—oh, I thought it was the most elegant house—the thing that I really thought was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, was that they had an ice box in their kitchen, and it opened up to the outside and the iceman did not have to come in the house. He could give ice from the back porch into the icebox.
I graduated high school in February 1930, and I went to work the next day. In 1932, I was working for the Farm Credit Administration, and that's when Roosevelt came into office. And I remember so distinctly the Fireside Chats, and how he declared a moratorium on farm loans. And from the little old place where I worked, I don't know, maybe there were a hundred or two hundred people, that gradually we had to move out of that building into another building, 'cause we were processing all these loans for Kentucky and Indiana and Ohiah and Tennessee, from Louisville. It was heartrending to read some of the letters and some of the situations that people were going through, you know. But I was married in April 1935 and came to Dayton, and after a few months later I decided I needed to do something, and I took a civil service test. And today's paper reminded me of that, because sixty years ago was the beginning of social security, and they called people who had taken the test, even though they weren't processed yet, to come to help set up the social security and type all the cards out. And I was amazed at all the foreign names. Names that I never heard of, you know it was really and eye-opener to me.
Maryan Dorfman Caplan
Everything that everybody says just plugs in when you mention Jane Fisher, 59 Green Street. She was the J.C.C. of that period. I think I took ballet lessons down there for something like ten cents a lesson. Of course ballet lessons for me was like teaching an elephant how to tap. I remember several things about the Depression. As others said, you didn't realize that you didn't have anything. The fact that we took two oranges and divided among three kids, or took two eggs and divided among three kids, well, that's what you got. Scrambled eggs, who needed a whole egg for herself or himself? So my brothers and I shared, and I don't think my mother and dad ever got anything out of it. Course, like a lot of other families, I never knew that there was anything but wings on the chicken until I was grown and bought my own chickens. My father always got the breast. During the Depression, my mother used to buy tickets. She'd get five tickets for a dollar, and each of them was worth a quarter. And when people would come to our door, to ask for a meal, we didn't give them anything—we didn't have that much—she would give 'em a ticket to go down on the line and get it. And I didn't realize that you needed—I saw everybody in line, but apparently in some of the lines, maybe for a good meal, you needed a ticket. And my mother used to buy strips of tickets. And we didn't have any money; I remember my step-grandmother giving my father money, gave him five dollars for a family of five, and she'd go, "Spend it wisely, Charlie, spend it wisely," as though he would take his five dollars and do something different. But around that time, the Good Samaritan Hospital was built. I remember my father's anguish; he'd made a pledge of something like twenty dollars, and he found himself unable to pay it all off like he wanted to. And how he scraped together quarters and 50 cents to fulfill his pledge for the Good Samaritan Hospital. I don't know the year of it, but I remember it was around that time.
Talk about eating when you went to Steele High School, there was a place across the street, Eat More, they had steak sandwiches, smothered steak gravy, for I think they were 19 cents for the whole meal. Now I don't know where you got your extra nickel, or where I got my extra four cents, but we used to eat those smothered steak sandwiches. But if we had had time, and we never had time during lunch period, on Third Street there was a cafeteria where everything you could eat for 32 cents. And I used to look forward to that, but we never had enough time during lunch time, to get over to eat for 32 cents. Of course, who had 32 cents, unless you would walk? We did a lot of walking, and it really wasn't very far from Cambridge to Steele High School. But the Depression—entertainment was cheap, movies were a dime, maybe, and then you could sit through from the beginning of the afternoon, to almost the next day. And we used to get free passes, because during the days of the Riverdale Theater, when that was built, we used to take the little handbills out, and take 'em all around, the three of us, my two brothers and I. I used to visit Sarah's home when they lived on Fifth Street, before they moved out to Dayton View. And her mother used a broom to sweep the floor. And when she moved out to Cambridge Avenue, she got a carpet and an electric sweeper. And we were all so impressed, with this electric sweeper. It was just like this week you were poor, and you saved everything for Cambridge Avenue.
Lucille Marshment
I lived on North Main during the Depression, at Hudson and Main. What you all said, I would duplicate it, because one of the gentlemen was born in '33; that's when I graduated from high school. We did have enough food, I mean I can't ever remember having a problem with food, or anything like that. But when we went for lunch from Steele, we'd go down to the YMCA on Monument there, and we got mashed potatoes for three cents, and stewed tomatoes for three cents, and some other little kind of meat for a nickel, so we did better than you did. Everybody was in the same boat, there wasn't really any problems. You just knew nobody had much money, and you just went along with it. But the soup kitchens I remember were on Fourth and Jefferson, rather than Fifth and Jefferson. The Mayfair Theater was on Fifth, used to be called the Lyric. Then the Strand was on South Main between Fifth and Sixth, and that was four floors of movies, and that was a good old movie house, but they did burn down. Well, they used to have stage shows at all the movies, Lowe's and Keyes and Colonial. They'd have a movie, and you'd have vaudeville. It was kinda neat, too. I wish they had some of that back again. All of those downtown movies are gone. And Victor sodas, they were SO good.
Tony Dallas
I wasn't around, but my parents were. My father's family had a Model T truck and they had a Model T car, one engine between them. Every Saturday night, I guess, they would take the engine out of the truck and put it in the car to drive to church. My grandfather worked in a windshield factory in Detroit, and he basically worked three days a week, I guess. So he opened up a windshield factory in his garage, and my father helped 'im. A sort of specialty windshield shop for bulletproof windshields, and windshields for fire trucks, that sort of thing. And it was just the two of them working in their garage. They used to correspond with somebody in New York; when there was something they couldn't do, or they needed a special part, they would correspond with this factory in New York and they would ship them stuff, and similarly sometimes a project would get shipped down to them or something. And they'd get these envelopes with this picture of a big factory on it. I think they might have had some similar sort of seal on their stationery, with a factory on their stationery. My father was in seminary in New York, this would be towards the end of the Depression, I guess. And his father had said to look up this factory, because they needed some part or something or other. Looked for this address, walked up and down the street, couldn't find the place, and finally he went to where the address was, and it was this little loft. He went upstairs and there was one person hammering away on a bench, on windshields.
Mary Dicken
Maryan reminded me, with the chicken parts that she mentioned... Mother would put the chicken parts on the table, and then she'd always say—like I told you before, I was the baby, really spoiled baby—and she'd say, "Let the baby pick." So my brother would jab his fork in the neck right away, and right away I thought that's the best part of the chicken. From then one, that was what I thought, and he always had the best parts and I thought I was it.
Lenora Fahrer
Mr. Dicken, you spoke about the picture in front of the Fifth and Stone street building. That was, at the time that I can remember, that's where I worked. And it was the Montgomery County Relief Bureau. All those people were waiting to come into the building to get their relief checks, or they were waiting to get a voucher of some kind. I got my job the month after I graduated from college and I went to work for the Relief Bureau. And you know when I think back about it now, it was depressing times. Because a single person received a voucher of a dollar ninety-five to last a week. And a couple got two ninety-five and it went on up. Three ninety-five for three people, four ninety-five for four, and five ninety-five for five people. And if you for one minute think about what any of those people could buy for five dollars or six dollars to satisfy a complete family; I used to worry about, could they buy soap? Could they buy toilet paper? These were necessities as far as I was concerned, and how could these people possibly imagine out that pittance, to even keep themselves clean? It was really a dreadful time for some people. Some of those people standing out in front of the building were people who had lost their jobs. And I remember one of my clients was a man who had worked for Adlers and Childs, and he came to me dressed nicely, because after all, he worked in a store, he had to be presentable. And when I saw him, I thought, "Oh, my goodness. This man needs relief?" And when I talked to him, I really felt so sorry, because here he was let out. They didn't need him anymore, they were cutting down in the store. And he lived in a lovely section of the city, he lived over on Ferndale. And I thought, what a horrible thing to have to happen to individuals. To all of a sudden, in the height of this Depression, to just lose everything. And then, because they were so proud before, they lived nicely and maintained themselves well; it wasn't like coming into a lowly part of life, but it was just like, all of a sudden, all of these nice things were taken away from you. I can't imagine. I can't remember what his weekly salary was, could've been twenty dollars a week. And that was a lot of money. But thatwas that building, and then they moved to Sears Street, and I moved with them. But the vouchers were for much more, later on.
Stanley Blum
You know you suggest, people, what did they do for soap, and what did the do for food with such little money? I can remember going to the butcher shop. People were buying different cuts of meat, and what I would ask for was the soup bone, or the wing, lung, or for other parts. The liver, things that were really almost throw away items. I remember taking them home and my mother making really delicious things out of it. I remember a neighbor of ours, Mrs. Greenburg, who used to save the fat. And from the fat she made soap. You had to have a lot of ingenuity, and some people just sort of gave up, but a lot of other people, they seemed to work out and to try to find ways to make things go. Then they would go back and forth and they would share with each other. So that my mother would make the soup, and that Mrs. Greenburg would make the soap, and we would give soup for soap! Again, we thought that this is the way it was for everybody. We just didn't realize that anybody had it any different.
Morton Fahrer
When I worked in a grocery store, the people would buy a cheap cut of meat; and all the meat was basically cheap. But they would say, "And can I have a bone for the dog?" Which would be taken home and made soup out of that.
Sarah Blum Itzkowitz
My father and mother, in the grocery store, they didn't know how to read or write, but dad and my mother carried everything in their mind. We had a lot of people come in our store, and they used to give credit. And my daddy used to put it down, and people come back and always paid their bill. Even during the Depression and everything. They were very faithful at buying their products and their milk and their bread and everything. And my dad and mother kept their books; they were very, very proud, my parents. There was quite a few Jewish people in the Fifth and Western neighborhood, and I was born there. I was unfortunate, wasn't born in no hospital, I was born right there on the corner of Fifth and Western, which now is McGee Avenue. Which I'm very disappointed, and Harrison Street is all torn down. Like I say, it was Stanley and Millie's parents, we used to go to their market and buy produce, and we use to go to Virginia Cafeteria for breakfast and everything like that. It was quite an experience, living on the west side. It was very nice. My parents used to close the grocery store up and we stayed at Stanley's house for the holidays. My mother used to take all of our meals. For three days we stayed at Stanley's house, on Yom Kippur. [Stanley interjects that they lived only a block and a half from the store.] We had to close the store up, and my mother and father schlepped us all down there. And we stayed there every Yom Kippur, till they moved out of the Rogge Street.
Woman
I remember my brother becoming very ill, and he had to have surgery at Miami Valley Hospital. And when they said he could be released from the hospital, they called my father down to the credit office to pay the bill. He said he didn't have it, and they said, well they wouldn't release him. And he said, "You're going to have to keep him. I just don't have it." And then they FINALLY worked out with him, so that he could pay it out and be able to take him home.
Lucille Marshment
I think that time in history has a lot of positive aspects too. It brought a lot of people closer together, and even though there were some dire times, I do think that it was a more naive time in our history. Much different than it is at the present time. I look back with a great deal of fondness, on some of the things that occurred during those years. I can't say that it was all bad.
