Scenes of Yesteryear-Christmas, 1930s-01/05/07

I suspect that there is a time in everyone’s life, especially in the later years, that a person spends a few moments in thought about the early years of their childhood. That is very true about me when it comes to writing this column over the past forty years, and when the story I had hoped to write about needs just a little more research. I’ve found that the day after New Year’s celebrations is not the time to do research. An out-of-town library that I had hoped with have the staff to help me with that research on my chosen subject is on “vacation hours”. Unfortunately those hours do not match my needs to meet this deadline. So please pardon me for taking the easy alternative by looking back at life as I lived it in the 1930s. I was four-years-old when the stock market crashed in 1929 to spark the Great Depression, a period of financial lows until the advent of World War II jump started the economy. My father, Cecil M. Russell, was the Menomonie correspondent for the Eau Claire Leader newspaper, a job that paid him about $15.00 a week for his daily output of three to five stories... By 1934 there were four youthful mouths to feed each morning, noon and night, there was always the struggle to pay off the $5,000 mortgage on the little house at 505 West Twelfth Avenue. Always resourceful, my father found a variety of ways to feed our family. We feasted on at least six varieties of wild mushrooms, along with the walleye pike that were always waiting to be hooked at the mouth of Galloway Creek on the Red Cedar, two blocks from our home. It was painful for me to watch him toss a live turtle into a vat of boiling water to provide soup, and I cringed when he beheaded a chicken in our backyard. I always spent, it seems, nearly fifteen minutes trying to capture the beheaded fowl whose legs never seem to get the message that the end had come! Invariable the fouled fowl would head-lessly run down the steep bank behind our house making the capture very difficult. Occasionally dad was paid for subscriptions to the Leader with half a hog, a leg of lamb, perhaps a couple of dressed-out chickens, or a daily allotment of eggs for a few weeks. However I can recall many a major meal where cow’s tongue was the main course, and many breakfasts consisted of a bowl of cut pieces of bread mixed with milk and a dash of sugar. With Dad’s yearly income of about $800 a year, plus his income as an officer of Company A, 128th Infantry of the local National Guard unit, there was very little left for some of the niceties of a comfortable life during those hard times. There were two movie theaters in Menomonie, the upscale Orpheum located in the 400 Block of Main Street, where the first run “A” movies were featured for the price of twenty-five to thirty-five cents a ticket. Down on Broadway, in the 500 block, was the Grand Theater, that was not so grand, a fact reflected in its popular name, The Bloody Bucket. It was to home of “B” films and westerns. On weekends the major film at the Grand was preceded by serial films like “The Green Hornet” that appeared in ten short episodes flashed on the screen for ten weeks. Every week there was an inescapable event that left the viewer hanging until the following weekend only to be introduced to a new threat to the hero. Unless it was a major film at the Orpheum our family rarely went to the movies. An exception was “Gone With the Wind”, a film that was so long that there was a twenty minute intermission to allow the projectors and the operator to cool down and reload the reels of film. Another “exception” was when Menomonie film star “Skippy”, the chimpanzee who played the role of Cheta in the Tarzan films starring Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissuller. Owned originally by Menomonie native Erna Brown and her husband, “Skippy” is still living in his seventies, smoking his daily cigar, in California! For the most part entertainment for the Russell family was provided by the Philco radio that was propped up on top of an old pump organ that had been converted to a desk. It was via this little box that kept me entertained on Sunday afternoon every fall listening to sports announcer Russ Winnie, sponsored by Wadam’s Oil Company, broadcasting the Green Bay Packer’s football games. It was Winnie’s description of the action of such players as Clark Hinkle, “Buckets’ Goldenberg, Arnie Herber, Cecil Isbelle, “Tiny” Englebretson, Johnny Blood (McNally), and best of all, Don Hutson, the premier pass receiver for the Packer during those early years. His record stood for fifty years before broken by the pass- happy teams of today. After school and a handful of chores, we were permitted to listen to such classic fifteen minute long radio shows like “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy”, and “Pretty Kitty Kelly” and catch occasional episodes of “Myrt and Marge”, the tale of two ladies in show business and based in Chicago. Both Myrtle and .Marge came to Menomonie to pick up a carload of Menomonie-made brick to make an outdoor barbeque to match the Menomonie brick in their home! In the evening the family would listen to the controversial Boake Carter, the top news broadcaster of the time, and then listen to broadcasts of the Jack Benny Show, Joe “Wanna buy a duck” Penner, Eddie Cantor shows and the Lux Radio Theater, presented by Cecil B. DeMille, every Sunday evening. Whatever problems bothered us in the 1930s were often put out-of -sight and out- of -mind by the brief escapes while listening to the radio. This somewhat frugal life definitely was obvious at Christmas. during those years of the depression. Gifts were part of the celebration, but not in the numbers found under the Christmas trees to many households of today. More than one or two gifts per person under the tree were a rare occasion at the Russell household. After Midnight Mass at Grace Episcopal church on Christmas Eve the Russell family would walk the ten snow-covered blocks back to the comfort of our modest home, tired and easy to convince to get to bed. The sooner we went to bed the sooner Santa Claus would come. I had doubts about the evasive Santa for some years, but enjoyed the occasion to watch my siblings enjoy the moment. On this particular Christmas morning in 1925 there was one present for each of us displayed under the tree. My sister Barbara received a nurse’s outfit and appropriate kit; My brother, Joel, found a doctor’s kit, stethoscope and all, in a kit that, thankfully, did not include surgical items! I got what I wanted, a real football that appears in this picture as over inflated as my perceived abilities to play the game. In any event we were all very satisfied with what Santa brought us that day. We didn’t know, or cared, some of our friends of more affluent families. We knew we’d soon be playing with their “stuff” very soon!

Cutline, You had to sit real close to the radio to overcome the static that seemed to be part of every program. Even static-free programs found all family members sitting very close to the receiver to hear the programs.

Cutline... You can tell by my smile that I was very pleased and content with my gift of a football from Santa. This is despite the fact that the ball of imitation leather looks like a dirigible that could never be airborne. I know it never got far when I threw it!