Entry 3

Jane Yoder and her son Tom

I first reacted to these entries by thinking that a coat is truly not an object that can have a great importance in someone’s life.  After she kept describing the coat, I realized that these people lived during the depression struggling to keep warm and that a coat is what can make those people happy.  As she is describing her story, Jane says, “I remember this incident of that Indian blanket coat.  Oh, because Katie came home with it and had it in her clothes closet for quite a while.  And I didn’t have a coat.  I can remember putting on that coat in Sue Pond’s house.  I thought, oh, this is marvelous, gee.  I took that coat home, and I waited till Sunday and wore it to church.”  The one positive memory that she has about the Depression is the happiness that she had when she wore that coat.  She did not care if the coat made her look awful during church.  She only cared about the feeling of being warm when they were so cold.  One coat can have enough sentimental value that it will allow for a person to have the will to live in a time where so many people struggled to stay alive. 

Peggy Terry and Mary Owsley

            My first and major reaction to this story occurred when Peggy said, “My husband was very bitter.  That’s just puttin’ it mild.  He was an intelligent man.  He couldn’t see why as wealthy a country as this is, that there was any sense in so many people starving to death, when so much of it, wheat and everything else, was being poured into the ocean.  There are many excuses, but he looked for a reason.  And he found one.”  When I later read on to discover that he blames the government for the Depression I was surprised.  It was not fully the government’s fault, so he should not blame the government for that.  The banks were giving away too many loans that so many people could not pay back.  The banks should have not given away the amount of money that would later put them in the whole because they cannot give money back to others.  Also, the American citizens are also to blame because they are spending and spending due to credit, and do not have enough money to pay back the companies.  The roaring twenties and the optimistic times led so many individuals to believe that there would never be a downfall in the economy.  Peggy’s husband should not have blamed the government because the majority of the blame should be put on the citizens for lacking safety while making investments and spending money.