Growing
up near Hudson, Beatrice Gebert was seventeen when the Depression hit. During
those years, she married and had six children.
What
do you remember about
the great
depression?
The first thing that
happened was people were laid off and there was no work.
Then the money was saved to pay for food stores and feed stores, like for
cattle, and they couldn’t get the money from the bank and we couldn’t get
our own money from the bank. After
the election, the banks shut down in 1933 and then we had no work for people so
they would help each other. I lived
on a farm and we had potatoes and vegetables and we would trade for other things
that they could give us. People
would trade with their neighbors. My
grandmother was a nurse; so I would go with her and help the sick, I was about
seventeen. This is now when the
banks are closed and you couldn’t get any money, not even a penny.
If you had money, you couldn’t take any out. My dad was a businessman,
he was in the cement business, and he couldn’t get his money out.
The wages were three dollars a week for most people and that was with
room and board if they came to live and work on the farm. People worked for
food, they would help you and we would give them food and actually some of them
in town were getting ten to fifteen cents an hour or two dollars a week and
three dollars a week for housework. The
doctors took food too, like potatoes and meat and something if you didn’t have
any money because nobody had any money. To
survive, we helped our neighbors and they helped us.
On the farm we had plenty of food.
How
old were you when the Depression hit?
I was seventeen.
How
did you travel?
There weren’t to
many cars, there were horses.
Did
you live in Wisconsin?
Yes, in St. Croix
County. We lived near Hudson.
What
is your biggest memory of the Depression?
My biggest memory is
when my grandfather went to the store and they went to the bank because they had
money in the bank and they couldn’t get any out. Not even a dime, when it shut down, it shut down.
What
was your reaction when Roosevelt died?
I felt bad because he
was a good man and he thought,
when he was president the first thing he did was
create the WPA and the CCC camps, and my brother was in charge of a big one up
there and they dressed in Army suits and he was a leader.
He worked in some of the forests up north.
Is
life better now or back then?
We had a lot of fun
back then. We made up our own games
and we had a social community where we lived and the people would get together
and once a month they would have a party. Somebody
would have a little play, we would sing and dance and everybody brought a little
lunch and that was our social time.
What
was the greatest invention in your judgment?
Electricity.
When you get to be 91 you can’t remember straight.
What
were your favorite movies back then?
I remember, I
didn’t go to too many movies but I do remember Bing Crosby and then there was
another with horses, his name was Roy Rogers.
We read a lot.
Did
you know anybody who was in bootlegging?
No, I just heard
about it, the Chicago gang. We used
to go to northern Wisconsin and one time some people stopped at our place and
they needed a tire and we told them to go three miles to Stetson Ville to get
one and my brother went with them to show them and he looked behind him and saw
all these guns and he didn’t know what to do, he was paralyzed.
He went and got the tire and put it on for them and they went back north
or where ever they came from but we didn’t know whom they were.
Who
were your favorite sports heroes?
Babe Ruth during that
time. Of course there were local
ones as well.
Did
you ever see him play?
No, my dad and others
went. In those days you didn’t
take kids.
What
kind of education did you have?
Through high school
and through nursing.
Did
you work during the Depression?
Not much because I
had all these little kiddies, six. I
had six children by that time, the Depression ended in 1938.
We learned to trade with neighbors and friends and where we lived we ate
a lot of fish because you couldn’t buy anything because there was no money.
Did
you listen to Roosevelt’s radio addresses?
Oh yes, quite a few
times.
What
do you remember about it?
He talked like he was
talking to your family, he was a good speaker and he made you feel like you were
home.
Do
you have any real bad memories of the Depression?
The bad part was that
you couldn’t get any money out of the bank, not even a penny. Nobody had any
money because you couldn’t take it out of the bank. The farmers didn’t have it as bad as others because we
could plant gardens; we had stock and all that stuff.
Did
your family have any stocks?
Yes and he got the
money back. We had stocks in
Northern States Power in Chippewa Falls and then there was another power company
in Ashland. I
can’t remember which one it was, the electric company too, but
they said we would get the money back in twenty-four years. But my granddad went
to the state of Washington, he didn’t leave any papers, and what could we do,
we didn’t have the papers. Did I
tell you that shares were five and ten dollars?
Now what do you call them? In
those days they were called shares. In
New York, these big guys would come out to the small towns and sell these stocks
and people figured they could give ten dollars.
They did this before the crash. If
some young people were down and didn’t have a place to stay or eat, they would
come to us farmers and we would help them out, give them a meal or something.
What
shows did you listen to?
We didn’t have TV
we only had radio. I remember when
TV came into Wausau. My sister
lived in California and they had TV in the late 40s.
By that time things were getting better.
Did
you lose anybody to World War II?
No, but my uncle flew
a plane, went to Canada and flew with the Canadians against Germany and he had
his leg hurt real badly. My brother
was in the Navy and he went and joined up in 1942 and he served on the
California, the flagship. My
younger brother, who is now 70, was in the Marines, he was a medic in the
Marines and that was during World War II and my son was in Korea.
Were
there any heroes during the Depression?
I think that the one
I remember is Marilyn Monroe because she lived next to my aunt.
There were quite a few other ones as well, I just can’t think of them.
Did
you ever travel by airplane back in those days?
Yes, I was with a
general from Marshfield and I flew in one of those bomber types and that was
before I was married around 1928. This
was after World War I and they were boxy. I
like to fly, get on in Milwaukee and fly straight to Florida on a 727.
What
did you think of Lindbergh’s flight?
That was something; I
knew where he lived, out of Minneapolis. That
was something when he crossed the ocean. We were hoping that he would make it.
Did
you own an automobile?
Oh yes, during the
Depression there was the Model A. We
had a Chevy and what do they call it now, it was made in France and he, my
husband, had a mail route and he worked for the Post Office for twenty-six years
so that helped us too.
Were
you married during the Depression?
I got married in
1930. We knew that something was
happening because of the way things were going and when the banks closed that
was 1933. It lasted until 1940
depending on where you lived. I was a farmer unlike the other side of my family
who were mechanics and things like that. My
second oldest son was in the service right after high school and I helped him to
work with his uncle on the railroad and then when he was drafted, he was a
signal corps man, he lived underground and they lived in a silo with guards
around them.
What
do you think of technology today?
The computer thing
will last just so long like the other stuff that was invented, it will last just
so many years and then there will be something different.
When I taught at Colby High School they would come in and listen to this
program to get ideas of what to do and then the next two days we would give a
test. How 
much did they remember?
They hadn’t read the article that went with it and they just got things
off of the computers and that is a bad thing about computers, you can’t run in
and get the answer from a computer during a test.
They are good in their ways, my daughter works at the courthouse and she
is the bookkeeper for Marathon County and that is the best thing that happened
according to her.
What
did you think about Prohibition?
We didn’t know
anything about it, I do know it was the eighteenth and it passed.
Sometimes I wish it were back because people drink too much and they
can’t handle it. I am not saying
take everything away because beer in those days wasn’t called alcohol like
whiskey and others. That was your
bootlegging stuff.
Should
the drinking age be 21 instead of 18?
I can’t figure out
whom the guys were that keep moving that around. They would lower it and then the same group would raise it.
Eighteen to nineteen and then twenty-one, I remember that.
What
did you think about flappers?
In 1927 I wasn’t a
flapper. We had hamburgers and
stuff when we went out. I don’t
think I did anything wrong. Out in
the country we didn’t have flappers.
What
was your reaction to the events of Pearl Harbor?
All our ships went
down and my brother was over there at that time and he was on a little vacation
and he went on this little island and he met a Japanese boy who told him the
Japanese were coming tomorrow and my brother was up in the Navy and he called
headquarters and they told him that the kid was dreaming but when they came that
day they weren’t dreaming. It was
on a Sunday that it happened.
Did
you have a favorite song back then?
There was a lot of
music in those days and the polkas. You
are my Sunshine, Home on the Range; I like that mountain song that John Denver
sang. We didn’t have too much
time to listen with all those kids. Everybody
had big families; we had nine, seven boys and two girls.
What
other jobs have you had?
I have been a nurse
and went to NTC and got my training in a hospital. I still go out and do that once in a while.
Then I went back to school and became an assistant librarian and teacher
aide. I worked till I was
seventy-five.
Did
you like Hoover or Roosevelt better?
That is a real
personal question. I don’t know
too much about Hoover, was he the one that built the dam or the other one?
The president, he lied, he said everybody had a roast or chicken in a pot
and told us how good we had it and all these people were laid off and didn’t
have anything. I didn’t take it
personally because I was busy with the little kiddies.
Did
your family blame Hoover for the conditions?
No, it was people in
the office and the big shots.
What
did you think of John Dillinger?
He drove past our
place one time up north. He was
trying to do good things when we thought they were bad things. You do things based on how the times were.
Was
he a hero like many people thought?
I didn’t think
about that, I just thought he was a man who was trying to find his way and he
was a minister when he was young. He
saw how the times were going and he was going to make money.
Was
the Depression destined to happen?
There is going to be
change every fifty years, first they go way up to the peak and then they start
going down and
down and people can’t buy anything and nothing works if you
don’t have any money and if you have a little land and a place you can make a
living. There is a way.
Was
the Depression beneficial?
The neighbors got to
know and help one another so things like that were good.
It united people and brought people closer together.
The men worked hard because they had some kind of work.
I wish they would plant more trees now.
Will
we have another Depression?
You have to watch how
many people get laid off and see that they don’t put all their money in
whatever you call them. I think
people learned a lesson and know that they have to put things away for a
“rainy day”.
What
did you think of the Ku Klux Klan?
We were so far north
that it didn’t affect anything around here.
It was terrible, it was worse than gangsters. I was a busy person and I didn’t put my mind on those
things. You can read about that at
the library.
What
about Al Capone?
He had a lot of money
coming, from that stuff coming out of Canada, you know, go past Superior and get
it. One thing that he did with the money that he made was he bought the poor
people food and fed them in Chicago.
Oral
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