Its all Trew: Doing more work has helped us overcome

My grandfather, who survived the Great Depression and Dust Bowl plus another recession or two before that, often said, "I blame most of the average person's problems on a family named Jones. Trying to keep up with the Joneses is always a losing proposition." During a recent Barbed Wire Collectors show in Shamrock, a few old-timers sat together and talked about their memories of coping with hard times. Here is a sample. One man said just after he started school in the second grade, morning and evening on his way to and from school he fetched the milk bucket off a neighbor widow's porch and milked her cow, returning the fresh milk to her back porch. He received a dime per day for this chore. He also said he was the only kid in his school with a steady job. Another man down in Collingsworth County earned 10 cents per day as a first-grader by arriving at his country school early enough to carry out yesterday's wood stove ashes and build a fire to warm the building for the students arriving later. A 15-year-old girl played piano for my father's dance band in the 1930s, earning 50 cents per night. Not much pay for four hours of dance music, however, she was the only girl in the school with a paying job and therefore the richest young lady in her class. I have written before about the mail carrier at Dime Box, Texas, who would leave you a can of snuff if you left him a dime clamped in a wooden clothes pin. The reason for the clothes pin? His hands were so crippled from arthritis he couldn't pick up a loose coin...AmarilloGlobeNews