The Great Depression

Daddy was killed in a car crash on the highway. He always drove too fast. Our world changed substancially as a result. We lost the automobile agency and our house, including the grand piano which mother never forgot. We moved into a smaller house. Mother took a job as a clerk which did not pay very much. I worked after school for peanuts. We were not the only ones hurt by the economy. The Great Depression was on in the 1930s. Millions of people were out of work. One of those who prospered was Andrew Mellon, the secretary of the treasury under Herbert Hoover. A populist from Texas who was serving in the U.S. House, Wright Patman, sued Mellon and forced him out of office. He went to England where he wore kneebritches as ambassador to Great Britain, appointed by Hoover. Nowadays he is regarded as a philanthropist because of the museum he left behind in Washington, D.C. I always thought of him as a Tory. I really did not get my head on straight until I served in the Army during World War II. I came home to be a journalist. Mother was upset because she wanted me to do something that would make money. She finally became reconciled.