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JB: So Joe, I'd like to pick up, in 1929 you were just ten years old, and this is of course when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. I was wondering how the Depression affected your family or if it did at all or if it affected your schooling or your plans for the future?

JF: Yeah. My father was, as I said, was a finish photographer -- or, finish photo engraver, and his business relied on advertising, of course. And apparently that's one of the first things that companies cut back on when the, things were, the economy's slowing, as they say these days. But he was, I don't think he was ever out of work more than a week. They were such a good, they did such good work, and then so they got a hefty chunk of what, what little bit there was left in Baltimore. But of course we didn't have, I'm sure that my father had to take several pay cuts because there were some, one Christmas that I remember, the only gift I got was a, was a red wagon, a wagon I could ride in, that, my, my uncle, who was an artist for the Hearst newspaper in Baltimore, the paper was giving a wagon away for prescription -- for subscriptions, and somehow my uncle got my father one of these wagons, and he gave it to me for, for Christmas. I remember that was one of the tough Christmases we had.

But my mother, my mother was, with the mother she had, was very frugal, and she could make a dollar go an awfully long way. And she never wasted any money, and we never wasted any food. It's funny. I was talking to my daughter's fiance's father, and he said, the other night we were, had a Father's Day party at my daughter's house. And he said to me, he said, "When you were growing up, did you always have to clean your plate because there were starving" -- I can't remember the nationality he used, but I said, "No, we didn't have starving Norwegians. We had starving" -- what the heck was it, that we had. Not Albanians, but any rate -- so he said, "Well, we had these starving Norwegians out here on the West Coast." And that was always the same around our house, too: "Think of all the people who are starving around the world, and you're leaving all of this food on your plate." So we pretty much belonged to the clean-your-plate club. It didn't affect my schooling at all. I was in public school, so there was, there was no extra cost there.

But we knew it was all around us, and we could -- the man across the street had a, the one Italian who lived near us for a while, he was a shoemaker and a shoe repairman, and his business virtually went to hell, and he had a lot of, lot of problems feeding his family. And there were other people around the neighborhood who had some problems. Because it was pretty, it was very severe. But even as young as I was, I, and it went on until -- when I finally found a job, why I, in 1937, it was still so strong in my mind that I did everything I could to hold on to that job. And I wasn't about to have left for any, any reason at all because once you had a job, you kept it. You held on to it. But I used to cut, cut grass for money and things like that. Twenty-five cents for cutting a lawn. I cut the same lawn for three years running at 25 cents a shot, which shows I'm not much of a businessman. But for 25 cents it's amazing what you could do in those days.

But my Uncle John, who was a, had a lathing, lathing crew for house building, that went to pot, and he was, he was having lots of, lots of bad times. So we were helping him. My, my father's, a good many of my father's brothers were out of work, so we were helping my grandmother. And it was, it was not a, easy times.

SF: How did, how did people explain this awful economic time? Was it the government, other countries, or just bad politicians or just something that the economic system has to occasionally endure? How did people see that?

JF: I'm, I'm not aware of who, who was taking the blame for that. I really, I think, I think the folks in my family were happy to see Roosevelt elected president because he was, he did, he took action right away on the banks and so forth. But I'm, I'm not really positive as I could say what the ordinary, the ordinary man felt was behind all of it. It was just the Depression was on us, and whether people looked for a reason for the Depression, why I don't, I'm not sure. I mean, I had, I had a lot of other things on my mind like baseball and football and so forth, and trying to get through school.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.