Ticking Time Bomb

There are some of us left, people who lived through the Great Depression. I was born in 1930 but remember much more than most because my photographic mind, which kept a record of everything. A local university student came to my house and interviewed me about the Great Depression. I heard a great university medical school professor say once, “The body does not function the way it is described in books”. Books cannot describe pain. History books cannot describe the realism, stupor and shock of the Great Depression.

I truly believe the wantonness of the Great Depression prepared America for WWII, when unspoiled, tough citizens had to mobilize in the war effort. Perhaps, to some extent, the great depression going on now is preparing citizens for what lies ahead in WWIII, which began with the attack on the East Coast (911) just as WWII began with the attack on the West Coast (Pearl Harbor).

It has not sunk in yet, a profane society, a culture thriving on lies from government, steeped in greater lies from the secular media, America drowning in unpayable debt. Not just the $15 trillion admitted, but an iceberg of over $100 trillion. We see the tip of the iceberg but not the $17 trillion entitlement , social security payments, $15 trillion entitlement drug payments, $37 trillion entitlement medicare payments, $36 trillion entitlement Medicaid payments, etc. It certainly has not sunk in that $707 trillion in derivatives, mortgages bundled, sold all over the world to banks, this started with Goldman Sachs and now comes ex governor-senator, president of MF Global, Corzine, who does not know what happened to his $1.5 billion that just “disappeared”. He was robbed, probably by the government which he supports.

I well remember the”Hoover carts” (carts pulled by farm mules, when the few automobile owners could no longer by gas) the boarded up storefronts, starving farm animals, church yards, school yards, streets filled with buggies and wagons, my father resoling our shoes. At the beginning of the Great Depression over half of the population lived on farms where wildlife, fruits and berries, and garden crops were plentiful. I still remember my mother cooking hominy in a large black wash pot from corn which I had shelled with the hand sheller. This hominy was given to neighbors, particularly black people who suffered most, along with potatoes from the “potato hill”, even so, 9 million Americans starved to death.

My first “retching” memory were stories of aunt Catty, my grandfather's sister for whom my mother was named. She was the teacher in the three roomed school, preacher at the local Quaker church. All my family were Baptists except her, she having married a Quaker, who, conscientious objector, was killed as an ambulance driver during WWI.

She had $600 dollars, mostly the veteran's death benefit ,in the local bank, a fortune at that time, banks failed. She stood in line all day outside the bank, trying to get her money. She had come home very ill unable to go to a bathroom, laid down on the bed and died. Her family still believes that the banker used her money to scoff up one of her brother's farms. During that depression, or the present one, you either float or paddle. The elitists, such as bankers, like today's welfare recipients, were and are the floaters unconcerned with hard work, saving, just living off the toil of others. Like today's college students, indentured servants, borrowing money, no jobs then, it was the cotton mill workers, tenant farmers. My mother and grandmother talked about aunt Catty teaching and preaching, long dresses, aprons and shawls, which she would remove one at the time during the day.

You can read the history of what happened, migrant slave workers jumping from windows at a fire in NYC but in Eastern NC , and I will never forgive the Baptists and evangelicals who saw the human enslavement, brought on by the democrats, Jocephus Daniels, of the Raleigh-News & Observer, FDR cohort. Most have forgotten the communist agriculture stabilization programs, acreage control, healthy crops cut down in the fields, totalitarianism. I remember my mother and grandmother standing by the road as healthier corn and cotton crops were destroyed, pigs killed. At the school house, barrels of rotting apples, sorted and given to students. Cheese and other commodities along with a $2 parity check, given to poor farmers.

It may be the military, earthquakes, starvation, but God has a way of whipping people. Nothing has changed. Asian producers of Nike sport shoes working for $1 a day, living in horrendous conditions as the elitist in America spend $4.5 billion to market the shoes... much like the cotton mill barons, tobacco warehouse men, elitist bankers, who got rich during the Great Depression.

In spite of perishing men, morally and spiritually, Jesus died for sin... all sins. A retired full Colonel, veteran of WWII, Korea, injured neurologically, continuous jerking motion, owned a restaurant, heard me speak at a meeting held there. He said, “I want to talk with you.” Across a table, our cups of coffee, he said, “Can Jesus love someone like me?” The love of God got people through the Great Depression and every other of life's situations.