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The Depression changed all relationships between US citizens forever, and allowed the odd discovery of my distant mother

The New York Times recently entertained us with an inviting review of what it called “A Square Meal, a culinary history of the Great Depression,” featuring the post-election days of Herbert Hoover and his dreams that led he and his family to preside over “multicourse” banquets at which dinner jackets were required. Dinner jackets soon began to disappear.

In 1928, the New York Times reminded us the other day, Republican Herbert Hoover, about to become president, told U.S. citizens that the nation was “nearer the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land!” 

For those of us with a thin grasp of history, Wall Street’s now infamous “black days” were about to begin with “Black Thursday” – October 24, 1929. Five days later, world-crushing “Black Tuesday,” October 29, occurred as 16 million shares of stock were traded in a blind rush of panic selling. An omen of the future, a “bread line,” sprung up in Detroit, Michigan, November 2, 1929. Non-stop, it began serving 1,500-3,000 people a day.  

Like most thinly well-to-do U.S. citizens, my parents were immediately gauzed in oblivion. They were returning from the west coast where they’d taken in Tijuana bullfights and selling highly-valued pure-bred “chow” dogs to wealthy Californians. Unfortunately, my father came from a family of male alcoholics: his father, grandfather, great grandfather and he were all boozers. But his older male relatives were also successful businessmen who now-and-then disappeared to wrestle with their demons. He embraced it. As the depression took savage hold of society, he was a wrecked victim, locked in an often conquering assault.  

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