Comments on: MAKING HENS MEET

By: Tim Richardson

Tim Richardson — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:54:05 +0000

Hey Mike, I have tried to email you and it bounces back. Here’s the site you requested: http://www.TheRichestPeopleinAmerica.com

Would also love to have you linked to me and the World’s Biggest Blog Party. Perhaps you and Olive can participate and blog about something she cares about.

Links:
http://www.RichestPeopleinAmerica.com
http://www.TheWorldsBiggestBlogParty.com

We are looking into it, Tim. Want to know more about that this blog party means. Mike the helper

By: Joared

Joared — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:39:06 +0000

Mike and Olive, you might enjoy visiting this blog written by an 85 yr old living in Colorado now: “Golden Lucy’s Spiral Journal”
http://mucholderthanu.blogspot.com/

In her most recent post, Weds., July 25,2007, she talks about memories of the Great Depression and her family’s experience.

By: Christina

Christina — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:19:39 +0000

Hi Mike and Ollie,

Sorry I haven’t been by and left a comment in a while. I’ve had a lot going on in my life, but I have thought of you often. I am finally getting the chance to catch up and read everything and watch your videos. Fabulous! I can’t personally identify with the depression stories because, although we were never wealthy, we never lacked for anything we needed while I was growing up. I have been much poorer at several times on my own as an adult. I have had to choose between buying food and buying gas for my car to get to work. I rode a bike to work for a while. Fortunately these very broke times were short lived and right now I can make ends (or hens) meet. My grandparents went thru the depression, and it is such an obvious difference in attitude - they save everything and fix everything while the mindset today is typically “throw it out and get a new one.” In fact, these days it is often cheaper to replace something than it is to fix it.

I wish you both well and remain an avid reader of your terrific blob!

Christina, for goodness sake don’t feel guilty about it! I sense a bit of that. Wwe live our nad based lives and if we have time, we fly a little. I’m the same.

Yes. it’s true things are not made to fix now. There is less room to intevene, and that’s a worry. We are more and more in a world we can’t control ourselves. Cheers, Mike the helper.

By: Wendy Rogers

Wendy Rogers — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:46:49 +0000

Hi Mike and Olive
Been a bit busy lately so I just got back to the blog. Wow! that ghost town story is pretty special! At least you saw it Mike, and the story lives on even if the town doesn’t.
wendy

Thanks, Wendy. I now have some fascinating info to add to the Talbotville story. Mike the helper.

By: Suzz

Suzz — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:41:55 +0000

Hi, Olive and Mike, I don’t have any stories, I just want to say how much I enjoy this wonderful “blob.�? Olive, these stories would be lost without you to tell them, and Mike, we would not have them without your recording them. Mike you make Olive’s stories even more personable with your comments and photos. I added a link from my blog so others can find you. I hope there will be many more fascinating tales to come.

Suzz, I went to your blog. You are very droll. I reccomend a visit, folks. Her recent post is about mobiles as we call them or cell phones as they call them in the States. Here’s a bit of what Suzz writes in the pesky things..

“Have you ever wished for a magic wand to wave and mutter “cellphone-usring-ossameos�? (Why, yes, I am a Harry Potter fan. Why do you ask?) to change all the ringtones in the surrounding area to one tune?

Can you just imagine all those people scrambling for their phones, looking at the Caller I.D, then slapping the device against their free hand as they try to figure out what went wrong? Can you also imagine what the sound would be like if all those phones chirped out “I Like to Move It�? from the movie Madagascar or the sequence of cannon fire from the 1812 Overture?

Have you ever wondered why the people who get the most calls have the most difficult time finding their cell phones? You’ve seen them – women digging in the bottom of large purses or men patting jackets and back pockets.

Then there are the people with their phones clipped to belts or onto, not in, purses. They are usually the ones who don’t get many calls.”

Suzz has also written a very amusing story about her first driving lesson from her Dad in the family plymouth. This in the blog, As Time goes by, and there is a link to that blog on the side of our blog.

By: the Razzler

the Razzler — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:00:17 +0000

Dear Olive and Mike,

I always enjoy reading your posts. I think what both of you are doing is great!!

There’s so much to appreciate in life!! :)

Thanks Razzler, glad to see you back with us. Mike the helper

By: Alli

Alli — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:19:37 +0000

We love you, Olive!

Thanks, Allie. Mike the helper

By: Kristin Park

Kristin Park — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:08:14 +0000

Olive, your blog is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing your stories of the Depression. When my grandmother was alive, she used to tell us bits and pieces of what life was like during the Depression in the heart of the Dust Bowl. She lived on a farm in Oklahoma (in the US) with her parents, brothers and sisters, until her father had to move them to the “big city,” Oklahoma City, to find work. My grandmother wasn’t able to go to college since it was too expensive, so she got a job in a department store where she met my grandfather. When I was a little girl, I remember watching, horrified, as my grandfather would put an enormous amount of butter and jelly on his toast at breakfast. He said it was because he still remembered what it was like during the Depression when he couldn’t afford butter or jelly. Not having basic food like that was so hard for me to imagine.

I blog about depression too, but a different kind of depression — postpartum depression. I’ll spread the word about your fantastic blog!

Best,
Kristin
http://ppdsurvivor.blogspot.com

Kristin, that’s an eduring image, your grandfather and the massive spearding of butty and jelly on his bread to make up fo rthe days of deprivation. I’ve heard too about people of that generation who were hoarders and savers because the depresion taught them to be like that, and they could not throw the habit. Mike the helper

By: Eric Stamper

Eric Stamper — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:01:52 +0000

Just a quick link showing some of the posters around at the time telling you to save your grease…
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/exhibits/ww2/services/salvkitch.htm

By: Eric Stamper

Eric Stamper — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 11:56:22 +0000

Hi Mike and Olive,
I enjoyed the post as usual. I remember when I was a kid, my father told me stories about when he was a kid. He was born in 1935 and said when he was little that they used to save up all the fat drippings from whatever they had cooked. Every so often someone would come around and collect all the drippings from the neighborhood for the war effort. Supposedly, there is glycerine in fat drippings which the government utilized to make explosives, as well as antiseptics of a sort.
I remember going to see my grandmother (his mom) at her house which she lived in until the late 1970’s when she finally moved. No plumbing in the house at all. She had a chamber pot and an outhouse about 100 yards out back. I utilized both when I got to spend the night with her on occasion. She used to babysit my siblings and me and always took 2 or 3 gallons of water home every couple of days for cooking and cleaning. Hard to believe she lived like that until almost 1980 when she finally got a house with plumbing and an inside bathroom.

In australia when I was a kid, Eric, we used to save silver paper for the war effort. I can rremember going home for school and patriotically scouring the bushes beside the railway tracks for silver paper that apparently could be made into something to help us win the war. Mike the helper