Chapter I: Home
"I feel guilty now knowing that everything I had, I took for granted. But at that time it seemed because we had gone through the Dust Bowl and the Depression that we had it rough. We did, of course - my father lost the house and eventually the property, and a lot of our family friends had moved out of the Dakotas in order to find work somewhere else. But you know, even though it wasn't ours, the house was still there, the property still sat, and our family friends were still alive. We hadn't yet experienced what it was like to be in a world filled with war like England, where family homes were gone in an instant, like France where people's property was taken from them or like Poland where your friends disappeared overnight. I mean, it was troubling. [pause] But to be honest with you I don't think anyone cared beyond the borders of their own fences. And that didn't seem to bother me, either."
- Gary Phillips, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Even by the beginning of the Second World War, as German Panzers roared through Poland, Japanese infantry burned and raped through China and Italian soldiers marched across the vast desert wastelands of Egypt and Libya, the United States through some miracle still found itself at peace. To its 130 million people, this was not a surprise, even though the First World War had transformed the once fledgling America from a large regional power to a great power almost overnight. Upon its entry and the subsequent destruction of the Central Powers in France, a conservative, secular and isolated people suddenly found themselves at the center of world affairs. The victory over the German, Austrian and Turkish empires had transformed the American military from a small, division-sized element to a mighty multi-million man army with modern tactics and leadership. But due to the Wall Street stock market crash and the subsequent economic depression, the United States had now sunk back to its pre-war tendencies. To the people of America, the problems of European and Asian nations were now dwarfed by the inability of American families to put bread on their tables for their children.
The Great Depression had inflicted heavy economic damage on the United States. Beginning in 1929 on what was known as "Black Tuesday", the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to lose an unprecedented 33% of its value in less than 24 hours. The market itself lost over $14 billion in one day, marking the largest loss of value to a public market in American history. The collapse of the market and the abrupt and violent end to the period knowing as the "Roaring 20's" affected every single American family from coast to coast, for better or for worse.
"It was a rough time," says Gary Phillips, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota native. "I was born in 1919, right after my father had returned home from the war in Europe, and spent a lot of time helping my father and my brother on the farm. We had about 250 acres of different crops on our property, and during the 1920's prior to the banks closing we had made a great living. But after the crash and the years of drought after it, it just ruined us."
Gary Phillips and other people like him growing up during the 1920's in the Midwest had been destroyed by what was later called "The Dust Bowl". Already crippled by the Great Depression, the severe droughts and dust storms that occurred from 1930 until as late as 1940 destroyed the only economic survivability most people had living on the Great Plains.
"There was no way to undo it," says Robert Childs, of Rapid City, South Dakota. Born in 1913 to a Lutheran deacon, he was relatively fortunate during the Depression. "A lot of the farmers around Rapid City had everything invested in either the banks, their lands or both. When both failed, a lot of them either displaced from the state in search of more farmer's work or went to work in the factories in Minnesota or Nebraska. There was nothing left for them, and thankfully for us, most of them turned to God for answers. My father, being a preacher, found that he was never out of work, and for that we were grateful."
Jeremy Pollock of Minneapolis, Minnesota, born in 1921, recalls the vast displacement of Midwestern farmers to urban centers. "It was amazing,the amount of people that had moved east from the Dakotas and the mountain states to work in factories. My small suburb had doubled in population, from 1,000 to about 2,000, in less than 2 weeks. They brought everything with them, which, to be honest, was not much, but their presence was welcome, and after about a month they fit right in."
Although the Dust Bowl had ruined the agricultural business of the Midwest, the urbanized super centers of the east coast, where the Depression had arguably started, had also been likewise affected by the economic downfall of the United States. New York City, Boston, Newark and other New England business capitals had been turned into overnight slums. For the lower and middle class, it made little difference other than the quantity of jobs, but to the once powerful bank owners, once rich in their wealth, it seemed that fate had played its ultimate melody of irony. They had been turned to blue-collar defense, industry and commercial jobs, working off of the mighty oceans and the few businesses left that surrounded their cities.
Edward Lankton was born in Lower Manhattan in 1922. His father had died in an automobile accident a few months prior to his birth and his mother had been ridden with illness and depression ever after, turning to a bottle and cheap drugs to ease her stress. He, like many other New York orphans, found that the Depression made no difference on his constant scoundrel lifestyle, but instead provided some amusement for his otherwise heartbreak story.
"It was almost comical," he comments. "These big rich bankers you would have never seen outside of their offices working on all of these strange, blue-collar, manual labor jobs. I distinctly remember one showing up to the harbor one day in search of a job in a nice, Italian-made business suit. When we asked him why he wore it, he said it was because it was the only pair of clothes he had left. From then on he wore it every day, and by the end of the month it was full of so much grease, oil and dirt that he eventually looked just like the rest of us."
Johnny Foster, a Boston resident born in 1920, also had similar experiences. "Boston harbor was packed with no-job workers everyday," he remembers. "It was easy to get work, but it was hard to get work that paid well. My mother and father had a terrible time finding good paying jobs, even though my mother was a teacher and my father was a skilled craftsman, both with college degrees. Both were forced to manual labor jobs that, in their old age, prevented them from bringing home pay that mattered to our family of six children. I was the middle child, so I was still able to work and helped my mother around the house. With a little bit of sacrifice, we were able to squeeze by. I don't really know how we did it, it seems impossible today."
All across America, families were sacrificing what little they had left to sustain themselves. Despite President Roosevelt's "New Deal" and the small improvements that resulted, American families were still no better off than they were during the beginning of the Depression's spiral in 1929. In Rural Valley, Pennsylvania, Jacob Porstman's family of three was forced to give everything they owned to simply survive.
"My father was a banker," says Porstman. "and his troubles never ceased to end. He was well liked in Rural Valley, as it only had two banks at its center. When the market fell, he was without a job in a month and he went from a well-respected business-man to a universally-hated scoundrel. We sold our home, our land - everything - and had to move to Pittsburgh for government housing. Our family reputation was ruined, but we somehow took comfort that we still had each other. I was an only child, born in the summer of 1916, and even though I was well within working age, there just wasn't enough jobs to go around."
On the western coast, improvements in the economy were showing their worth. The dense forests, precious metals and booming harbors of California, Oregon and Washington enabled those living there to sustain themselves without having to sacrifice everything they owned like the Portsman family in Pennsylvania.
"We were very fortunate," says Bradley Victor, the son to a police officer in San Francisco, born in 1919. "The harbor and the northern forests provided a lot of economic relief for California during the Depression. The Japanese-American and Mexican-American farmers in places like the Sacramento Valley were still hard at work and we were completely unaffected by the Dust Bowl because we were west of the Rocky Mountains. It was an easy living, and we lived very easy."
The loggers of Oregon, despite the destruction of some logging companies due to bankruptcy, also found that they had nothing to worry about. So long as the forests of the Pacific northwest existed, so would they, and an abundance of forested counties still remained.
"There was no difference between the post-war and the Depression, at least to us," remarks Sam Allori, born in Astoria, Oregon, in 1921. "There was no shortage of logging, there never had been. We continued right on through and the money kept coming. I don't necessarily feel cheated, perhaps just blessed that I was born, worked and lived where I was."
Despite the United States' economic downfall and the international crisis developing well beyond its own borders, Americans in America lived and endured as they always endured. Life went by, however poor, rich or dirty that life might be - and the optimistic, hard-working American attitude that had developed the nation into a free republic still found itself harvested in the depths of the country's darkest times.
"It was a wonderful way to grow up," says Gary Phillips. "I wouldn't have traded it for anything, even though we barely had enough money to feed ourselves. We made the best of what we had. If anything, it was a valuable life lesson that we didn't necessarily take material possessions for granted. If it got hot, or cold, or wet, or if the crops had all died from the dust, we took it in stride and hoped we would learn by our mistakes the next year. We knew what we had to do was all to survive, and we just simply did what we had to do."
Robert Childs had similar experiences. "You know, even though I couldn't afford to go to the nice, fancy private schools even through my father's wealthy work, I still had a wonderful childhood. Being a deacon's son, I would come home and we would read over the words written in red, or my father would take me with him as he'd visit the usual church crowd around the town just to check up on them and see how they were doing. I met some great people during that time and a lot of my experiences growing up during the Dust Bowl made me who I am today."
"There was really an aura of small-town life all around you," says Frank Thomas of Fayetteville, North Carolina. "Even if you lived in a large town, it was still an enjoyable, clean atmosphere. No one locked their doors, we never had a problem with crime. We would cool off down by the lake or get an ice cream cone, or help mother around the home with chores. It was a nice, clean little village tucked right in the middle of the south, and we loved it."
"You live in New York. You're at the center of the world, or at least what the world seemed like to you," says Edward Lankton. "You're worried about keeping your job, or about Johnny on 3rd Street and his ma because she's sick, or about the mayoral elections coming up next month. You're not worried about what's happening in Europe or China or any of the stuff like that. Besides, why should you? Nothing bad ever happens to America, and if nothing bad ever happens to the country, then nothing bad will ever happen to you. And that's the way we lived."
But nothing would prepare the United States or its people for what they were about to experience. Across the vast oceans that made its borders, evil empires sought to crumble its people and all that it stood for. And ordinary men like Frank Thomas, Gary Phillips, Sam Allori, and millions of others like them would be asked to do extraordinary things in extraordinary times. For towns like Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and San Francisco, California, their "auras of small-town life" would be changed forever.
A farmhouse in central Iowa in 1934. The Dust Bowl of the Midwest that lasted from 1930 until as far as 1940 in some places had destroyed the only economic livelihood that existed for Gary Phillips and other people living on the Great Plains.
A "job line" in Boston Harbor in 1935. Men like Johnny Foster would wait in these lines in order to receive a "ticket" to work in the harbor for a day.
A homeless woman in a shanty near the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Men like Jacob Portsman of Rural Valley lived like this until they could receive permission from the United States Government to live in government provided housing.
A line of workers waiting to change their state residency in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Jeremy Pollock and other men like him witnessed the massive exodus of people from agricultural areas to urbanized factory cities.
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