Christmas After All
Page 11
In 1936 Roosevelt was reelected by an overwhelming majority. The New Deal was working and America was gradually lifting itself from the depths of the Depression. It has been said, however, that World War II was as effective as anything in helping the country break loose from the Depression’s grip. All of American industry was called into action to produce the arms and supplies needed for war and to stop the dictator Adolf Hitler on his march across Europe.
The Swift family’s home, 4605 North Meridian, is based on this house where author Kathryn Lasky’s mother grew up. Built in Indianapolis in 1920 by Lasky’s grandparents, Sam and Belle Falender, it housed Sam and Belle, as well as Lasky’s mother, her four sisters, her brother, and chickens, sheltering them all through the Great Depression.
The radio programs of the 1930s provided relief from the hard times of the Great Depression. There were science fiction shows, comedies, and dramas — quite similar to today’s television programs. Jack Benny and Groucho Marx, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Sam Spade and Dick Tracy were just a few of the radio personalities and characters that American listeners loved.
The 1930s are known as the Golden Age of Radio. Approximately 40 percent of all American homes owned at least one radio. Ed Wynn, who was a comic and an actor, starred on a popular radio program as the Texaco Fire Chief. This photograph shows Graham MacNamee and Wynn recording an episode of their show in the National Broadcasting Company’s radio studio.
The Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, a national historic landmark, was one of the first “deluxe movie palaces” to be built in the midwest.
Featuring films with stars such as Clark Gable and Greta Garbo, the movies provided a glamorous escape from the hardships and poverty of the day. Adults and children alike would line up to see romance, comedy, and horror films.
Hollywood’s film industry experienced a boom during the 1930s. Indeed, people flocked to the movies because they were inexpensive and entertaining. Greta Garbo, the actress who starred in more than thirty movies and became an icon of the times, influenced the way young women dressed. Berets and cloche hats, sunglasses, and false eyelashes became important elements of ladies’ fashion as women tried to mimic Garbo’s look.
After the stock market took a dizzying plunge on October 29, 1929, a day known as Black Tuesday, banks and factories began closing down almost daily throughout the nation. By 1932, one-third of the American workforce was out of work. Some wage earners were forced to sell personal belongings on the street, or fruit from their own orchards, to earn a meager living.
Many families had to do their Christmas shopping from outside the store windows during the Depression. Because 12.5 million American men and women were out of work, most luxury items cost too much. As money and essential items were scarce, people could not afford to exchange traditional Christmas presents. Rather, most had to be resourceful and accept that the holiday season would not be the same as it had been in the past.
This ad from December 1932 depicts America’s mood at the height of the Great Depression. Readers are encouraged to buy a Christmas tree — even if they cannot afford one — to save themselves from the despair of a holiday season with no brightness in sight.
Soup kitchens opened and bread lines were a common sight. Hunger and malnutrition were becoming serious problems. In this photograph, a line of men wait outside a soup kitchen opened by mobster Al Capone in Chicago, Illinois.
The Girl Scouts, as well as other charitable organizations and individuals, brought baskets of food and Christmas cheer to destitute families living in shantytowns during the holiday season.
Individuals and families who had lost their means of income left their homes behind to squat in these shantytowns that were nicknamed Hoovervilles. President Herbert Hoover received the brunt of the nation’s blame for allowing the Great Depression to occur, which continued to worsen Americans’ lives at an alarming rate.
The occupants of these shantytowns built makeshift homes out of whatever materials were available — tin, wood, tires. Often the homes were not safe for habitation.
While the nation was grappling with the economic ramifications of the Great Depression, the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and the southwestern plains of Kansas were faced with the worst drought in history and strong winds that began blowing in 1931 and lasted most of the decade. The winds swept enormous dust storms across these lands, which were known as the Dust Bowl. Many people fled the area, often heading for California.
This modern map shows the approximate location of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Molasses Crinkles
Ingredients:
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/3 cup granulated sugar for decoration
1. Cream the shortening and the brown sugar. Stir in the egg and molasses and mix well.
2. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. Add the flour mixture to the shortening mixture and mix well. Cover and chill dough for at least two to three hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350ºF (175ºC). Grease cookie sheets.
4. Roll dough into balls the size of large walnuts. Roll balls in sugar and place three inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake at 350ºF (175ºC) for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool for one minute before transferring to a wire rack to continue cooling.
Makes 3–4 dozen.
Molasses Crinkles were a popular dessert during the Depression and today.
Kathryn Lasky says that of all the Dear America books she has written, this is her favorite and the most personal. Indeed, she took the experiences of her own mother’s family growing up in Indianapolis during the Depression as the basis of her story.
The house of the Swift family at 4605 North Meridian was indeed built by Kathryn’s grandparents Sam and Belle Falender in 1920 to house their lively brood of five girls and one boy. Minnie, Clementine, Adelaide, and Gwen are modeled after Kathryn Lasky’s own aunts, and Ozzie is modeled after her uncle. Kathryn decided that having to deal with five girls in one book was just too many, so she made the four Swift girls composites of her aunts and her mother.
The furnishings described in the house, the rooms, and even the chickens are all true to the way the house was when the Falenders lived in it. Kathryn Lasky says, “I never saw the house during the Depression, for I wasn’t born then. But I do remember going there when I was a toddler in the forties. I remember Jackie and the chickens. I remember my mother showing me the sleeping porch where they slept for almost half the year, and I remember the sunporch with its lovely handpainted murals of fruit and flowers.”
Kathryn Lasky also remembers her parents talking about the radio shows from that era and the movies, two for a dime, downtown. Lasky herself as a little girl was taken to Ayres tearoom for lunch and loved the chicken à la king.
Ms. Lasky says she has memories of all her aunts, but the most vivid are of her aunt Mildy, after whom Lady is modeled. “Aunt Mildy was kind of wild,” Lasky says. Clementine most resembles Lasky’s mother, Hortense, who did become a social worker and marry a man named Marven Lasky. Like Marlon he came from Minnesota and was terribly handsome and funny and smart. Lasky wrote about her father in another book called Marven of the Great North Woods, which won the National Jewish Book Award. And she earlier wrote about her father’s family’s escape from tzarist Russia in the book The Night Journey.
Kathryn Lasky has received many awards for her writing, including the Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for Nonfiction. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Christopher Knight. They have two grown children.
Ms. Lasky is the author of more than thirty b
ooks for children and adults, including, most recently, the Guardians of Ga’Hoole and the Wolves of the Beyond series, as well as the Daughters of the Sea books. She won a Newbery Honor for her book Sugaring Time, a National Jewish Book Award for The Night Journey, and the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for her contribution to children’s nonfiction. She has also written several Dear America diaries, in addition to two historical fiction books — Beyond the Burning Time, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and True North — for Scholastic. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following:
Cover portrait by Tim O’Brien.
Cover background: The Granger Collection.
The Falender house, photograph by Marsh Davis, courtesy of Indiana Landmarks.
Children listening to the radio, Superstock.
Ed Wynn (left), Culver Pictures.
Circle Theatre, Bass Photo, Neg. #218620F, Indiana Historical Society.
Lining up for the movies, Brown Brothers.
Greta Garbo, ibid.
Apple stand, Archive Photos/Getty Images.
Window shopping, Brown Brothers.
Christmas shopping ad, Indiana State Archives, Indiana Commission on Public Records.
Soup kitchen, Archive Photos/Getty Images.
Girl Scouts, Indiana State Archives, Indiana Commission on Public Records.
Shantytown, Culver Pictures.
Shantytown men, Archive Photos/Getty Images.
Dust Bowl, SSPL/Getty Images.
Map by Heather Saunders.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Minnie Swift is a fictional character, created by the author, and her diary and its epilogue are works of fiction.
Copyright © 2001 by Kathryn Lasky
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920.
SCHOLASTIC, DEAR AMERICA, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier hardcover edition as follows:
Lasky, Kathryn. Christmas after all : the diary of Minnie Swift / by Kathryn Lasky. p. cm. — (Dear America) Summary: In her fictionalized journal, eleven-year-old Minnie Swift recounts how her family dealt with the difficult times during the Depression and how the arrival of an orphan from Texas changed their lives in Indianapolis just before Christmas 1932. ISBN 0-439-21943-4 1. Depressions — 1929 — Juvenile fiction.[1. Depressions — 1929 — Fiction. 2. Family life — Indiana — Fiction. 3. Orphans — Fiction. 4. Diaries — Fiction. 5. Indiana — Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series.
PZ7.L3274 Ch 2001 [Fic] — dc21 00-067031
e-ISBN 978-0-545-46965-4
The display type was set in Horndon EF and AT Eccentric.
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
Photo research by Amla Sanghvi
This edition first printing, September 2012