Published: October 30, 2008 01:41 am      

ECONOMY: Lockport lessons from the Great Depression

Good neighbors and families, more than government, helped the children of the 1930s survive the Great Depression, which started 79 years ago this week.

Black Thursday was Oct. 24, 1929, followed by Black Monday and on Oct. 28 and Tuesday Oct. 29. There were long-lasting consequences of the stock market crash that didn’t see an upturn until World War II.

With today’s financial markets volatile and the world leaders jittery, families in 2008 are concerned that there will be another recession or depression and perhaps wondering what the children of the Great Depression did to survive.

Back then, neighbors would provide food, merchants would put charges in the book that may never be repaid, relatives let families move in. Kids played street games and families moved north, from coal mines to steel plants.

Ed Klem caught a job through the landlord at the cemetery when he was 13. He dug graves, cut the grass and buried people for 12.5 cents an hour. The boy earned six dollars in six days.

Agnes MacFarlane Betsch had a grocery store. “A number of people told me that my mother was a saint because our grocery store had a big book with people who had credit,” said Ray Betsch. “I was quite young. When they finally sold the store, there was thousands of dollars out on credit that never materialized.”

Betsch, 85, served as mayor of Lockport for two terms from 1972-75 and 1986-89.

“People helped each other,” said Bud Niethe. “My family moved in with my aunt. They were fortunate. They had a job throughout the Depression. You helped family. Everyone was in the same boat. Everybody was helping everybody.”

That meant that aunt and uncle, mother and father, and children shared a three-bedroom home. Then another uncle, who lost his job, moved in.

Ed Klem grew up in a little town near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. There were five coal mines in the region, and the miners would listen to the radio to see what mine would be hiring.

“Nobody was working,” Klem said. “Some children couldn’t go to school because they didn’t have shoes to wear. If you put in two days a week you got $10 or $11.”

His father, Fred Klem, was injured in a mine cave-in and was out of work nine months. The church would send a basket of food once a week.

“There was no compensation. You were on your own,” Ed Klem recalled. “My mother scrimped. We had a nice Jewish merchant there and he put everything on the book. She would go and get a loaf of bread or baloney or meat to make soup. We had a lot of soup.”

Fred Klem made up his mind, he was getting out of the mines and came to Buffalo to find a job in 1940. He worked at Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna.

Ray Betsch was born in 1923 in Lockport, where his father became the superintendent of streets. “People were out of work and used to go out to the city garage and line up,” Ray said. “He would give them one day a week and I think they gave them a dollar a day. They had long lines waiting to work one day a week.”

Joseph Betsch had a farm on Checkered Tavern Road, and Ray’s father had barrels of apple cider, hard and sweet, in the basement which he sold for 25 cents a gallon. Men would work for him on the farm and be rewarded with a gallon of cider.

“People helped each other. You knew your neighbors,” the former mayor said. “We knew everybody up and down the street and for blocks around ... We played football, baseball, unorganized. Night time we played games, kick the can, stick hockey, king of the hill. One was called Relieve-O.”

Relieve-O was a team hide-and-seek game where children would hide in the neighborhood and try to storm home before they were caught. “You go and get hid, just staying hid didn’t accomplish anything,” Betsch said. “If you didn’t get caught, after a while it would get boring so you would holler “RELIEVE-O!” and let them know where you were and let them try to catch you.”

Josephine Valery Evoy, a “Depression Baby” recalled that her father got a job as a projectionist at the Palace Theatre when he was 13. “During the Depression, nobody had a job. He’s the only one who could get a good job,” said Josephine.

George Valery earned $5 a week and gave the money to his mother. Josephine’s grandmother would have the vaudeville acts, like the Sons of the Pioneers, come to her house for Italian cooking. She came from Italy and the family name was changed to Valery from Valerio. “They loved my grandmother — she made spaghetti,” Josephine said.

Folks on a farm may have been cushioned from the crash. Zilpha Petty, who was born in 1919, grew up on a dairy farm on the Southern Tier. “There was always talk of Depression that you hear as a child,” she said. “We had milk. We had eggs. I can’t say I was deprived. I don’t remember going without things. We lived pretty simply. We went to a one-room school and everyone about the same as I was.”

In Lockport, children from Lowertown would load up carts and go uptown to sell vegetables door-to-door. The money was used to run the household.

Katherine Meloon, 82, was born in a small town in Missouri in 1926 and got a job at a defense plant at Harrison Radiator after she graduated from high school in 1944.

“There wasn’t much in Missouri. Things were better here, better than they are now,” she said. “We had enough to eat, but we didn’t have much, like all the rest of the people. Nobody had much in those days. I think we are in a Depression now. They call it a recession, but I don’t believe that.”

“You helped out relatives,” said Niethe who worked at Harrison Radiator for 25 years. “Obama wants the government to do everything for you, from cradle to grave.”

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott at 439-9222, ext. 6246.