Anyone fifty years old and younger has probably heard many stories about those years of the great depression, but unless one has lived through those years they are only stories. My trip through them was during my formative years between ten and sixteen years of age. They left a very strong influence on the way I look at the economy and in the way I do business transactions. It has left me with a very conservative attitude and it makes it hard for me to understand much of the thinking of modern times. Maybe it has left me with a sort of ball and chain or perhaps in a financial rut that has been hard to climb out of. It is said that a "rut" is a coffin with both ends removed. I hope that I'm not dead financially. At the time I did not understand just what was going on , It seemed that it must be just the normal way of life and that it was necessary to scratch and struggle for everything that life had to offer. I was so busy scratching that it was hard to see business opportunities when they practically fell on me. I have been remembering some of the events of those years, some are a little vague and I'm not exactly sure of the details but if you will excuse me for any stretched imagination I'll put them down as I remember them . It will give a little of the character and hardship that those involved had to go through.
This first one is of a neighbor and my dad. L. D. Viebrock was just in his twenties and trying to get started in farming. He had just lost his father in a terrible farm accident, and had come up with some unexpected but necessary bills that he had no money for. He went to the bank for a loan of a few hundred dollars to tide him over. The bank indicated that they would not loan him that much money without having a co-signer. He asked my dad to co-sign the note for him, being a good neighbor my dad did knowing full well what the consequences would be if the note was defaulted. I had not yet become a teenager at that time but I can remember some conversations about it. As hard as L.D. tried he could not generate the money to pay note off when it came due. It was one of the hardest things L.D. ever had to do to come over to my dad and say that he would default the note and that my dad would have to take responsibility for it. Times were very hard and money was extremely scarce but my dad scraped the money together to pay the note off. This is as much of this episode that I can remember. I'm sure that L. D. reimbursed my dad in later years when he was financially able. I was around my dad for nearly fifty years after this incident and I doubt if he ever mentioned or spoke one word about it. To him it was a closed matter and forgotten. I have wondered if maybe this incident may have influenced L.D. in giving us first chance at buying this place when he had decided to sell.
In the late nineteen twenties my dad had just finished building the new barn and had put an excellent herd of cows in it. Selling raw milk to local dairies was just becoming common at that time. A small dairy from Muskegon started to pick up our milk and bottle it and sell it door to door. It was a good arrangement and very profitable until the depression hit. Ira Purchase was the dairyman getting the milk. He was very good Christian business man and he took his obligations very seriously. Our barn was inspected {inspections were rare at that time} and approved. He said that our milk was the best going into the city of Muskegon. Things were going very smoothly until the depression hit. Mr. Purchace was having trouble collecting for the milk that he delivered and in turn had trouble paying my dad for the milk that he picked up. He would miss one check and then a short time later he would be behind another until his debt to my dad was several hundred dollars , an awful lot of money in those days. He finally gave up the dairy business. For the next several years he would come whenever her could scrape together a few dollars and pay off the debt in small sums until every last penny was paid off. It took him several years to do it but it was sure appreciated, and spoke loudly of the integrity of the man.
This story is a bit different so maybe I should not give any names as some people might be embarrassed , Maybe I should let sleeping dogs lay. Most of the participants are now long gone but some second and third generations are about. After Mr. Purchase stopped getting our milk we started selling to a dairy in Ferrysburg. It was a one man operation . Maybe it was the times or it might have been the lack of business ability of the man but he soon began to get behind in his checks. He fell behind several hundred dollars until his bill was over a thousand. There was another family that wanted to take his dairy over so they started passing rumors to his customers that our farm was run down and that our milk was not fit to be on the market. { We had a very good rating from Muskegon a short time before so the stories were not true}. This family was also a upstanding church family and made a big show on Sunday. Finally our milk man gave in and sold to him. I thought those tactics rather uncalled for . To this day I cringe at doing any business with even the second and third generation.
The dairyman who owed my dad the money went into bankruptcy and we never received a penny of what was owed. My dad gave up the milk cow business at this time. In a way it was good for me as it gave me time to go into football my last two years of high school.