THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: . ILSE GRIFFITH
INTERVIEWER: Esther MacMillan
PLACE: Oral History Office, Institute of Texan Cultures
DATE: February 3, 1983
EM: In the early thirties, the United States was in the
throes of a Depression. Writers even called it the Great
Depression with capital letters.
hardship.
It was a time of great
I understand that you faced this bad time in Corpus
Christi, was it?
IG: Yes.
EM: And I understand that you enjoyed it . Now that's
interesting !
IG: Yes, I enjoyed it because it's always a pleasure when
you're up against a problem, you find a very nice way of
solving it ... not only your own but the whole community's.
And the community works together, it was a pleasure .
EM: How did you do it? How did you go about it?
IG: Let me, first of all, tell you that Corpus Christi at
that time was not so much a grain-growing country as it is
now. They grew more vegetables.
EM: This was when, Ilse?
IG: 1930's. I don't remember if it was '31 or ...
GRIFFITH 2.
EM: The beginning of the ' 30 's, wasn't i t?
IG: About the middle. A great many people came to Corpus
Christi because the climate was good and there was a way ...
you See Corpus Christi was unusual. First of all, you could
feed your family because you could always catch fish. Now
the mullets, we called them muddy mullets, you didn't eat
those but they were wonderful to feed your animals ... cats
and dogs .
We had one man who was very good with the cast net. He
used to go out and catch all these .
Then we would always have ... I know in our particular
yard, probably the only one with trees that near the Gulf ,
we had this great big iron pot . We'd put in all of these
fish ... shrimp, crabs, everything .. . we could get all the
carrots, onions we wanted. We always kept a pot going back
there.
EM: What was your fuel? Wood?
IG: Yes.
EM: And you kept the pot going?
IG: Yes. And then as people went home, they could stop and
fill their bucket and go home with some good food. We tried
later but we neVer could get a recipe.
EM: You used just what was caught that day.
IG: Caught that day and kept going.
EM : What else d i d you put in it? Onions, carrots ... any kind
of herbs? Seasonings?
IG: Not many; there Were some. Mostly bay leaves.
EM: I bet it was good .
GRIFFITH 3.
IG: It was good; especially when you're hungry ; especially
when it was free.
Now at that time the great big shrimp were not a commercial
product. When the shrimp boats would corne in, they would
throw these big shrimp to the side; these jumbos. You see
the market in St. Louis, Chicago, used cocktail shrimp. So
the little boys would go down there and ... you know how they
talk about barbecued shrimp. We did that out in the back
yard always. We had all the shrimp we wanted. Free. Bucke ts­full.
EM: You say that you kept a big pot going all the time and
people could come take some. How corne you were providing
people with this food?
IG: Well, it was not only ... we had friends, one or two and
all. But, as I say, it was a challenge. It was fun.
EM: Were you trying to feed the poor people?
IG: No, these were not the poor people; these were the
people who lived in the neighborhood.
EM: Ah, I see. Neighborhood people.
IG: Neighborhood people, the people who lived in Del Mar ...
the rich people. You were broke in a $50,000 horne. The
horne that one day would sell for $100,000. But you still
didn't have money to buy food.
EM: Did your neighbors retaliate in kind? Did they supply
something , too?
IG: Yes, what we used to do was to gather our nicke:Ls; and
I mean nickels; I don't mean anything more. We would all
gather together like Mabel Stuart and all of us, and we'd
GRIFFITH
IG: have 20¢, 25¢ to buy coffee . Or a loaf of bread.
EM: And then you'd share it.
IG: Yes, you'd share it .
EM : It was that bad!
IG: It was that bad.
EM: What was your dad doing at that time?
4.
IG: I didn 't have a dad. I was married and had two boys.
EM:
IG:
Oh this was ... of course.
This was in the 30 's.
And I hate to admit it, but I used the boys to great
advantage. The bakery would give us day-old bread ... that's
another story. The day-old bread. So we would go by, this
was the Episcopal Church did this ... we'd go by the bakery
and Coleman and Lou were little boys and they were real
cute, I think, Buster Brown hair cuts and little khaki pants
rolled up, little khaki shirts rolled up and they would
get out of the car and go over to the window and get the
bread and the girls would look at those cute little boys,
and they always looked so expectant, and always got more
bread. (laughter)
EM: Free!
IG: Oh yes , this was free, too. We would gather this bread
and take it out to a Community Center. This Community Center
had been built by Mrs . Griffith years before out in the
West End .
EM: Your mother-in-law?
IG: No, no relation. She was a lady who owned a farm. I
wish she had been because she was a lovely person . But she
GRIFFITH 5.
IG: had built this little Community Center and as the
people didn't have enough money to go to the downtown churches,
gradually would drift out to this little Community Center in
their gingham dresses and all this. And, of course, didn't
have any money to give to the church so they went out there
and they had little Bible classes.
And Mrs. Munds ... he ended up bishop. We always called
him the Dupont's private bishop. He went to Delaware. But
anyway, she read very well. We found that people out there
needed entertainment. There was none in town; couldn't
afford it. She would read to them . She started reading
to the children; then the older children came by to pick
up their little sisters and brothers and pretty soon the
older people came by to pick up the children. You s ee , no
one had work; they weren't working.
And then the men and the women would come to this Center
and she gradually read things that were ... well, Saturday
Evening Post was oUr best source because they had those
Terhune dog stories, adventure stories and all that. And
the men, especially, just loved it.
We'd have this whole yard full of people and read to
them . Everyone in Corpus Christi, when they saw this little
particular group arrive, they 'd say "What do you want today?"
And we'd say, "
have you to give!"
EM : Who did you go to?
And the answer was, "What
IG: Oh, people like the Kings and the Millers, Dr. Heaney,
doctors, bankers.
GRIFFITH 6 .
EM: People had a little money.
IG: A little . And wanted to do something. They were all
very generous . There was no problem there . They shared .
That is the whole thing: it was a matter of sharing .
It wasn't giving; it was sharing.
So that was one of the things we did . I remember one
time Mrs. Munds was out there; this group of women was
sitting around making quilts and , of course, we ' d go around
and the stores would give us these short pieces. All cotton
in those days. And they made quilts . One day she went out
and asked what they were going to do. "Oh, we're making
these for the poor people." She came in crying. She said,
"Are there people poorer than these?" See what we l earned?
EM : Sure. Did you f eed these people while they were being
read to?
IG: Yes, that's where we distributed the bread. I don't
remember what else. When it comes to food, this is another
deal. This is a project that the Junior Chamber of Commerce
started. There was a hardware store in Corpus Christi,
Cage Hardware Company, who had, we discovered, a little
cannery . People f~m the country used to come in and can
their meats and all and their vegetables because, of course ,
they had the retorts, they had the gas and these big vats
to wash stuff in. They offered us these facilitie s, when
it wasn't being used by their customers , which sometimes
would be 11, 12 o'clock at night.
At that time, fa rmers would bring in produce and I have
GRIFFITH 7.
seen many a truck load of cabbage, cucumbers, all that sort
of thing, dumped in the arroyas ... the arroyas are those
ditches that run out into the bay. And they'd go south of
town t here ...
EM: How do you spell that?
IG: A r roy a ... ditches.
All of this would be dumped .
EM: Why? Couldn' t they sell it?
IG: No market. There was a Produce company, Charlie Coleman,
had bought ... would buy what he could sell, etc ... You could
go down there to the railroad where this stuff was being
packed and pick up a good bag of onions any day of the week.
Now this is another thing, people didn't even have
enough money to buy gasoline . Cash money wasn't around.
Nobody had money. It was great .
EM: Got you right down to basics, didn't it?
IG: Yes. So we discovered this cannery. You could buy
tin cans for a penny apiece. The banks were del i ghted to
give you $10.00; you could buy 100 cans.
EM: They just gave it to you outright?
IG: Oh yes. The merchants and people like the Kings and
Millers, Dr. Heaney .. . we could always get $10.00 from him.
We would get these cans. Now Charlie Coleman , who was the
produce buyer there, whenever he had any surplus, he would
call us and tell us. The farmers would bring these ... you
could always find the stuff.
I remember one time someone came in a nd told us that
they were harvesting a carrot crop a few mi les out of
GRIFFITH 8.
IG: Corpus. So we all got together to see how much money
we had to buy the gasoline to go out there. We all went
out and picked up ... you see the cut carrots, the crooked
ones, were not acceptable to the shipper. So we would get
bushels of those ; bring 'em in; and can 'em.
The first time I ever went out there, Mr. Thornton said,
"You're an authority on canning ." I said, "I am?" He said,
"Yes. Here's your book." Handed me a book: "Commercial
Canning. "
But anyways , we'd have all these ... you see, we had a
place where we could wash these things. You had a retort .
One of them held 60 cans , another one 200. You could boil
these things .
After we got all this stuff canned, we divided it between
the Red Cross and the Salvation Army . They distributed it.
Now one time, a man brought in a wagon, drawn by horses,
of black eyed peas. What are you going to do with a load
of black eyes peas? The Salvation Army had one of these
houses that had sort of an L shaped porch in the back. And,
of course , the yards down there with this concrete, shell
concrete, ... they were all pretty well mashed down . So they
put lights out in that yard, rolled a piano out on the porch,
all these lights, we got a bunch of wash tubs and you had
all the help you wanted. They all came and sat around there
all night shelling peas while they did the entertaining.
I remember one little black boy, marvelous tap dancer, 10,
12 years old. I've always hoped that he went commercial,
professional. And then they'd sing . Somebody would read;
GRIFFITH 9.
IG: they listened to sermons; while they shelled peas.
EM: What did you do with the peas, once you got them shelled?
Did you can them or distribute them?
IG: We canned them. If they wanted to they could take any­thing
home.
EM: When you say "they" ... who are they?
IG: The poor people. I hate to say poor because they were,
a lot of them, who at one time had things .
EM: Mostly Mexican-Americans?
I G: No. A cross section.
EM: Did you have blacks down there?
IG: Yes. Not too many. The town didn't have too many.
EM : Mexican-Americans, some Blacks and some Anglos.
IG: Lots of Anglos. That's another pleasurable thought
back is that they forgot their prejudices. A hungry person
will. They did and there wasn't that problem . Now out in
this little Community Center they were mostly white because
it was in a white section ... small houses, mostly those.
They were the ones who drifted from the downtown churches.
You see, the Presbyterian Church, and Mrs. Griffith
was a Presbyterian, the trouble there was ... Corpus Christi
went on a big boom in the 20's and at that time the financing
was you paid so much down and in 7 years you had what was
known as a balloon mortgage and suddenly 4, 5 thousand dollars
came due and you didn't have it. So you were foreclosed on.
Until the government took over and they put in amortized
mortgages. The homeowner's loan came in or what ever it
was called.
GRIFFITH 10.
IG: But anyway, the Presbyterians and I think it was one
of the Methodist churches, they were so saddled with debt
themselves that it took all they could do to keep their own
heads level so they asked us, the Episcopal Church, if we
wouldn't take over and help on this. It was a community
affair. There were other churches; they all helped as much
as they possibly could. I wish I could remember the father's
name; he was a young chap; he would come out there and he
could tell jokes; he could entertain those people until it
wasn't even funny. So we had a great deal of cooperation.
And it was kept on a fun l evel. There was no feeling, at
least we didn't, that desperate ...
EM: There wasn't!
IG: No. Because you were doing something about it. Those
I worked- with, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, those boys
are now bank presidents and that sort of thing. No, as
long as you do something, you don 't. And it was a challenge,
and for some reason, I don't know, we didn't seem to mind.
It was fun.
IG: For instance, the girl, I had help, who could afford
help? This Mexican lady showed up with her little daughter
who could speak English. She wanted a job. I'd never seen
her before. So she came in and wanted $2. 50 a week. She
didn't want any more money. And I never did know why she
only wanted $2.50. But it got to be rather interesting.
She did all my work. If she knew I was having a party, a
lot of friends over to eat this goop I told you about in
the yard , why suddenly all of her relatives appeared and
GRIFFITH 11.
IG: Of course, later I discovered that her husband was
in jail, in the penitentiary . At a dance, he and his friends
got into a hassle, they had too much near beer or whatever
it was, home brew and he just cut a little deeper than the
others and the man d i ed.
But it was just great, Gregoria, she did all of this.
EM: You had two little kids . Was your husband still alive
then?
IG: Yes, he was working for the engineering on PWA projects .
EM : Public Works Administration.
IG: Not the shovel people; they were building schools.
EM: And Works Progress Administration.
And he was paid by the government?
IG : Oh yes.
EM: A government employee . So you had a little money
coming in.
IG: Yes, a little money coming in.
EM: Not a big fat salary , though.
IG: No . It was adequate. You could manage on it. And
managing was the fun. You know youth is crazy; you did these
things .
EM: This is typical American "can do."
I G: Exactly. I'll always think back and when I say I'm
not afraid of a depression, I'm not. Look at the waste
that 's going on, now. There was always something you could
do. Doing it together; finally the people in Corpus
realized that they were not the only ones who were broke.
That was a bad thing in the beginning of the Depression and
GRIFFITH 12.
IG: I imagine a bad thing in a lot of places. I think that's
why people left their communities; they were ashamed they
could no longer buy clothes; they were ashamed to admit ...
EM: Really?
IG: That is, of course, it is today.
EM: So they moved somewhere and were no better off.
IG: No· better off from where they were. One thing about
that period, a lot of people who came to Corpus Christi
and all, when you read about the Okies, they were not able
to help themselves where they were on account of the Dust
Bowl.
EM: Did this overlap the Dust Bowl years?
IG: Yes.
EM: I didn't realize that.
IG: It's all tied together somehow. Corpus being a nice
place to live and all; it was really ... it was great.
EM: How big was Corpus in those days?
IG: I wish I could remember.
EM: A fairly smallish town, wasn't it?
IG: Well yes ... not too, because the harbor was already in.
It had already gone into a deep-water port. And then oil
was discovered and that ruined everything.
EM: What do you mean, that ruined everything?
IG: All these beautiful fields of carrots and all, turned
into oil wells.
EM: You said that in the 20's Corpus had a big boom. Was
that the harbor deal?
IG: The harbor deal.
GRIFFITH 13.
EM: Things connected with water ... fishing, boats, things
like that.
IG: That's right.
EM: And then when the Depression came, those jobs disappeared?
People didn't go fishing? Commercial fishing?
IG: Oh yes, they still went fishing, sort of ... but not to
any extent. The fish market was pretty well damaged. For
instance, Charlie Gibson was a big fish merchant, wholesaler,
to the East. And he had a whole warehouse or store room,
freezer room, that he used to use but it was empty because
he couldn't ship the stuff so he didn't buy. But he had to
keep it cool. One time we got a lot of string beans in ...
this is a funny thing. That time we got in a lot of string
beans; somebody brought us sacks. We couldn't get the cannery
at that time, so Charlie Gibson said, "I'll keep 'em in
my cooler." Which he did. And when we got the cannery ,
we went in and canned all these string beans.
EM: Did you get everybody to get them ready?
IG: Oh yes. Snap ' em .
A number of days later, this hardware store had a great
big plate glass window ... faced west ... the whole side of the
building was plate glass. We made a pyramid of all these
cans to show what we had canned. I was still working in the
real estate office, Mr. Thornton called me and said, "Ilse,
come out here." And he was just laughing and having a good
time. When I got there , before I even opened the door, I
could smell this ... have you ever smelled rotten shrimp?
Horrible. So I heard this banging, this pow wow going ...
GRIFFITH 14.
IG: These string beans had absorbed this fish smell out
of that freezer and they were spoiled when we canned them,
they were sort of watery looking on the inside, but we
didn't know the difference. And they started exploding.
EM: In the hardware store window?
IG: Yes. In this pyramid with other things we'd canned.
So they just flew allover the place. We thought it was
funny. I tell you , it was an adventure . Another nice
thing about this was that the abatoir gave us all of the
beef heads and bones and things . The abatoir furnished
a lot of that stuff with these big kettles I told you we
had. Even out there we would cook soup, real strong broth.
And we canned that . We'd put carrots; we'd make a soup.
EM: You were not the only one who had a big iron kettle
in your back yard.
IG: Oh no.
EM: Did everybody have iron kettles?
IG: No, not everybody .•. but we borrowed a lot of them.
Ke ttles were still around. Yes, we used a lot of those
b ecause we would cook these ... the Salvation Army had this
little cottage and they did a lot of the cooking for us.
But we had all this abatoir ... you could scrape the bones
and have all this meat . It was great ! There was plenty
of food.
EM: There really was. Is n ' t that interesting .
IG: It is . It shows you what a community can do. Now
I haven't run into any of these people I worked with.
Some have moved away , but some, one of these days, I'm
GRIFFITH 15.
IG: going down and ..• Pitman was his name, he ' s now president
of one of the banks, I think . . . but he was then president of
the Junior Chamber of Commerce. They're the ones that did
this. And as I said, managed it ; ran the little ... ; it was
their project . And we all helped. The cannery, the feeding
of people .. .
EM: They sort of organized it.
IG: Yes. They organized it.
EM: Young men.
IG: Young men, and of course, lawyers, etc ... there wasn't
much business, you didn 't have anything to do . You coul d
go out there and do all of this.
EM: When you were distributing this largesse, did you have
people taking advantage of it? Poor people who came and
took advantage of your ...• ?
IG : If they did, we weren't conscious of it. Our whole
purpose was to get the food out. And in those days, there
was no advantage , as such , for this reason: if anyone took
more than they should have it was used;food was necessary.
Corpus Christi, as a matter of fact, had one of the first,
and that was a city project, one of the first soup kitchens
long before it became a government proj ect ... they had soup
kitchens . And I don 't really remember who did that; who
was responsible. But I can remember down in the City
Hall there, that there was a soup kitchen.
You see, we had all this influx and the winter tourists
and all these people come down there. With a harbor and
with , I don ' t know if we had oil wellsthen or not ... I
GRIFFITH 16.
IG : don't think so ... but anyway, it was a mecca for people .
And this I found strange ... some of those people lived
under sign boards. We had these great big signs out on
North Beach, the beach and all, and they could make a lean-to
out of that and it was a wind breaker. The climate was in
your favor.
In 1933, which was right in the middle of the Depression,
they had a horrible, or a bad storm. But you got over that,
too. We had to board up everything and all; that gave
people a job for a few days .
EM: A hurricane is what you 're talking about?
IG: Uh huh. Corpus Christi was boarded up; they remember
what happened in 1919.
EM: What happened in 1919?
I G: All of North Beach was washed clear. That was the
residential district and they lost all these people. It
demolished the town to quite an extent. A bad hurricane.
EM: Do you remember what the name of it was?
IG: They didn't name them in those days.
EM: Oh, they didn't? 1919. 19 years after the terrible
Galveston storm.
IG: That's right. And in 1933, and this is a funny thing,
we were managing ... when I say we, my husband and myself, a
lot of the property in Corpus Christi. You see, what
happened in those days: Weimer Richardson here in San
Antonio went broke. They were a mortgage company . So
when they could no longer pay these participating mortgages
to the people, they gave them the property. And a l ot of
GRIFFITH
IG: the property was in Corpus Christi and the Valley.
That's where they had loaned the money .
17.
So when these people got all this property, like the
Ogden estate here in San Antonio, they had these buildings
in Corpus Christi and they had to have a manager. We
thought that was a good deal to be a manager. I got a
listing, I knew all these people in San Antonio, and the
storm came, the hurricane, and it was a real bad hurricane.
I mean it was worse as far as blowing and all than the one
that took out Galveston.
EM: Really?
IG: The reason that Galveston was washed out was because
there was no protection ... just swept right in.
EM: Did Corpus has a sea wall then?
IG: No, but it had a bluff. Much higher off the ... the
harbor and all of North Beach was washed clear of homes
and things. Corpus sits high over the bluff (Galveston
sits low).
Well anyway, we had to board up all of these buildings.
Now that hurricane, if you look at the geodetic map, ...
the hurricanes are listed with red lines ... documented on
this chart ... that is the only hurricane that came within
less than a hundred miles of the coast and made a turn. By
the time a hurricane gets within that , it comes inland.
This made a turn and went into the Valley. I remember we
had two hotels, Las Palmas and I've forgotten the name of
the other, the roof came off of those and a ll. Corpus
was damaged very little. All this boarded-up business.
GRIFFITH 18.
IG: But the same people who owned the stores and the
boarded up properties, like ... well, some of them belonged
to the Lady of the Lake out here. Their property in the
Valley was damaged.
Freak of nature.
It wasn't boarded up; it wasn't prepared.
EM: You weren't living there in 1919? No. Are you a San
Antonio native?
IG: Yes.
EM: And when you got married, you went to Corpus? It that it?
IG: Yes, while I was married but it was many years later.
We didn't go down until '2 6 , I think. '27. L.B. Griffith
was in the Army. He was Corps of Engineers in the Army and
then he resigned.
EM: Your husband?
IG: Yes.
EM: I was trying to pin point the Depression. Did it begin
in the late '20's. Do you remember?
IG: No. The big crash was 1929, that was when the banks
failed and the stock market , Wall Street, ... that was 1929.
And then it took out into the 30's.
EM : Have you any recollection of all these things you were
doing to cope with a major depression ... .. do you remember
how long it lasted? When things began to look a little
better?
I G: No. The government programs ..• yes. In a way. Dates ...
I can't remember. 1492 is the only date I remember. It
depended entirely on where you were. The Depression never
did end for some people. Businesses that went out; towns;
... that is the United States. Actually, I don't remember
GRIFFITH 19.
IG: too much about it because I didn't feel the Depression.
I was too busy. I was having fun; fun to go out and pick
up a whole field of carrots and corne in and stay up all
night canning them and that kind of thing. You weren't
conscious of the fact that you were doing something which
could be considered noble. We didn't think of that.
EM: You didn't.
IG: No. You were down to elements, I think you used the
word basic. You were doing the basic thing that people
had been doing for centuries. You were down to elementals.
And you were not ... you were living in a house, you couldn't
meet the mortgage but the mortgage companies finally went
to re-financing.
EM: Now you started to say and didn't finish something
about government programs. When did they corne in?
IG: In the 30's sometime.
EM: There was the WPA that your husband was with ... and--
IG: The National Youth Administration, a Depression project.
EM: The CCC ... remember that?
IG: Yes.
EM: Those carne in as a result of the Depression.
IG: I think at the very beginning.
EM: Was this Roosevelt? The period of Roosevelt?
IG: Yes. He carne in after Hoover. And it was during
his administration that things went down. Remember he
started with two chickens in every pot?
EM: He got a lot more blame than he had corning, I think.
IG: It's just like today, we blame individuals like
Reagan or anybody else. Look how many years it took ...
GRIFFITH 20.
IG: you don't just suddenly do this. Look how long the
foundation has been pulled out from business in this
country. It's an evolution. And you shouldn't blame any-one.
You can't have a man take office, I don't care who
it is, whether Democrats or Republicans or what ... you've
got a set pattern that you can't break.
itself out.
It's got to work
EM: Certainly. You've got to be patient. Well, you were
patient, weren't you, during the Depression. You didn't
keep saying, "Oh, this is going to end tomorrow." You
weren't tense about it.
IG: I wasn't because I was doing things. It was a challenge.
EM: Do you think you were unique? Think of some of the
friends you worked with ... were you different from most of
them?
IG: I don't think so. Like Mr. and Mrs. Munds, who were
the rector and his wife; just different ones like that; no.
EM: Was you husband cooperative?
IG: Yes. But he was too involved in drawing pictures
of schools and the engineering. He really wasn't too
interested in ... he had other interests. He had ... he was
busy.
EM: He was providing for you, though.
IG: Oh yes. To a certain extent but I ran the real estate
office and paid the bills.
EM: You did?
IG: Yeah.
EM: What do you mean, the real estate office?
GRIFFITH
IG: We had a real estate office. That started in ... let
me see when did that ... we went to Corpus and started in
21.
the real estate business and then he got the WPA job, that's
right.
EM: It was your real estate business?
That must have been a lousy business to be in during a
depression.
IG: It was a challenge. No. You ran out of buyers but
you certainly didn't run out of sellers.
Let me tell you about some of the things that happened.
The Provident Mortgage Company out of Detroit had financed
a string of little cottages. They were all alike because
Corpus needed workers' cottages. They were working people
who worked at the harbor and in the oil fields. Little
houses; the kind of things they built right after the war
around here. They had 125 of them strung along two streets.
People couldn't pay their payments so they re-possessed.
I don't know where I got the idea, some way, somebody ...
I've got awfully good ideas but they're always some I found
that somebody gave me. Here these people were losing ...
they had to live somewhere ... in order to get possession and
title when you foreclose, you've got to move the people
out. So Mr. Joe Blow over here lost his house and at the
same time Mr. Smith lost his over here. So I would take
these people and put them in that house and these people
and put them in this house.
EM: You could do that legally?
IG: The company could because they had foreclosed. Those
GRIFFITH 22.
IG: people no l onger had title. But they could rent them.
I didn't wait for a month's rent. I had the printer
make me a triplicate receipt book and I went out every
Saturday down the line and collected a week's rent.
EM: Because it didn 't seem so much .
IG: They could manage that. They were on a weekly schedule.
If they didn't work that week, they'd pay me a few dollars
and I would take a few dollars.
EM: You did it personally? You went from door to door .
IG: Oh yes.
EM: That must have been a hard thing to do .
I G: No, it wasn't. Those people were so nice. People
were nice during the Depression. They were courteous.
EM: They weren ' t angry and hostile?
IG: If they were, it did not rub off on me.
EM: Were you working for yourself or for the insurance
company?
IG: No, I had a listing on it. I worked on a commission.
You got so much of it; I don't remember.
EM: You did this when ... were your kids little or were
they in school by then?
IG: They were in school. They were about six, seven, that
age group .
IG: And remember, I had Gregoria for $2.50 a week.
EM: Mercy!
IG: There you are. Gregoria lived on the ... and that's
another interesting thing about how people can get along .
Gregoria lived around one of the tanks for the city water
GRIFFITH 23.
IG: supply. She and her family . She had a teenage
daughter who, of course, wanted lipstick and you would
give them things like that. And her little boy fell and
cut his lip until his whole face swelled up. Dr. Watson
knew that he was going to take care of Mrs. Griffith ' s
family. And Dr. Watson never charged any of them. If
anybody got sick, he went out there to the reservoir and
fixed them. So Dr . Watson took care of them and they
weren't out any medical bills.
EM: Of course, she got a lot more than $2.50.
IG: In kind, yes. But not in money. She would not take
more money.
EM: Funny .
IG: Yes. I never did know and I didn't investigate. We
were friends. You could afford to be friends with people
in those days. And they didn 't take advantage of it.
You initiated the lipstick; you initiated taking the
little boy to Dr. Watson .
EM: They didn't whine and say "poor me?"
IG: I don't remember any of that. People were too
desperate; they were too . .. I don't remember any of that,
complaining and all. I just wouldn't listen.
EM: Do you suppose that Corpus Christi was harder hit
than some other towns?
IG: No . It wasn't.
EM: You don't think so. I spent the Depression in
Minneapolis. Since I've been in Texas I have heard from
life-long San Antonians that San Antonio didn 't suffer
GIRFFITH 24.
EM: nearly as much as we did up north.
IG: Oh no. Not at all. Corpus didn't because first of
all, there was one necessity that Corpus did not have ...
climate. You didn't have to have winter heat. You didn't
have to have heavy clothing. You didn't have all of that.
That made a difference. You had food, too ... I mean
dairies and things of that kind.
I've often wondered about one thing in my own mind ...
I wonder if our 'hasta manan~ inheritance, our Spanish
and Mexican attitudes towards life and things in general
didn't have a great deal to do with our attitude.
EM: Ah!
IG: I have always maintained, I tell our tourists here,
that San Antonio is a fun town. We celebrate not only our
own Fourth of July, we celebrate the Mexican's. We have
a Diez Y Seis parade ... we all go.
EM: Cinco de Mayo.
IG: Sure. And Fiesta.
EM: This is interesting because as you've been talking,
I've been thinking back to my experience of the Depression.
I didn't have any trouble; I was working; my salary was
cut because I was over a certain l evel but it didn't kill
me. But there was so much bitterness; there was so much
hostility; people freezing to death in the parks; people
sleeping on park benches. There was not the feeling, the
attitude, that you had at all. And that's one r eason I
asked you how big Corpus was because Minneapolis was probably
GRIFFITH 25.
EM: a bigger city.
IG: Oh yes , it was. No doubt about that. But you see,
this is the difference in nationality, too. The farmers,
the people in little towns and all ... where were the suicides?
EM: The cities.
IG: The German population in Texas.
EM: Oh, were they the suicidal ones?
IG: Yes.
EM: That's odd .
IG: A Mexican isn't going to commit suicide and a Negro
because he has holes in his shoes or he's proud or he's
going to lose his farm. He loses it.
EM: He's got the Indian ...
IG: The Indian phi l osophy. I think that is a tremendous
thing that helped us in this area.
EM: You really do? A very interesting idea. We had
Scandinavians . ..
I G: Scandinavians ...
EM: They're very independent and not wanting to accept help.
IG: That pride. I really do think that has a great deal
to do with it. That 's one of the charms of our country
today; it's one of the big things that Texas has. If you
check me, I'm sure you're going to find--you know what they
used to call these suicides? Hermann Sons funerals .
EM: Really? Was this during the Depression?
IG: Urn hum. Haven't you ever heard that was a Hermann
Sons funeral?
EM : No .
GRIFFITH 26.
IG: Check it out. They 're the German insura nce company.
TAPE I, Side 2
END OF TAPE I
Side 1
IG: That's a good way to put it. It's good to know and
that's why I'm thinking, hoping that the depression,
rece ssion will do something for other people the same as
it did. The whole problem is ... well, I can think about one
thing that I l earned when I was a little bitty girl at
St. Mark's, preacher once said, "Do you know what Bishop
Phillips Brooks once said when someone once asked him what
he would do if he went to a little church that was all
delapidated, windows cracked, congregation had gone away,
the roof leaked ... what would be the first thing you'd do?"
He thought a minute and he said, "I'd take up a collection
for foreign missions."
EM: For heaven's sake!
IG: I think the people did the same thing during the
Depression ... it's not that big a deal. But individually,
we can certainly get the shoe on the other foot.
EM: When I say "can do", the American way which you were
following in those days, people have gotten dependent on
government hand-outs, I wonder if they 've lost that?
IG: They've lost that self-reliance, they've lost that
GRIFFITH 27.
1G: individual feeling. They're used to lines and that
sort of thing, hand-outs.
EM: The idea "I don't want to take a job washing dishes.
That's beneath me." People weren't like that at the time
you're talking about. They would have taken any kind of
job wouldn't they? No matter how menial, how low their
social station, they would have done it.
IG: We were too close to the pioneers in those days.
EM: And it's too bad we've lost it.
IG: We were not spoiled. We were still builders. We
were still individual owners and not franchises ... our
boss wasn't in New York and owned a chain allover. We
weren't working for them; we were working for Mr. So and
So, who belonged to our church, or this, or whose children
were ... why they went to college. You were sort of pleased
that there was someone who went to college. Even if it
wasn't your own family. In other words, I doubt very
seriously if what we did at that time could exist today.
EM: I do, too. I keep thinking that as you talk. Unless
In a very small, close-knit town.
IG: A very small place. It could be done in neighborhoods.
EM: That's a good point.
hood.
If it was a tight-knit neighbor-
IG: A good little neighborhood.
EM: Can you see it being done in a neighborhood in New York?
IG: Yes.
EM: If it's an ethnic neighborhood ... a certain cohesion.
IG: Yes. That's what I was going to say. Now you could
GRIFFITH 28.
IG: do it here in San Antonio . You've got your King
William area; the people in Alamo Heights could because
they still have enough ... it's a distinctive type neighbor­hood.
EM: King Wil liam, where you live ... isn't that ... wouldn't
they all turn out and help each other?
IG: Yes, they would.
EM: I'm an eternal optimist and I have the feeling that
quality in most Americans still is there; it's buried in
many cases; but I think it 's still there. I think that
wonderful quality of making do, of the ingenuity, the
creativity of our early Americans is still there somewhere .
IG: I think it is and I tell you where I notice it once
in a while and i t makes you feel sort of good. In some
schools the children themselves are policing their peers .
Here in San Antonio I think one of the biggest steps
that's been taken and I like the idea CAM ... do you know
what CAM is? Christian Assistance Ministry. Downtown
churches are the targets for panhandlers.
EM: Like the Little Church o f La Villita.
IG: That's an example . CAM is ..• all the downtown churches
have gotten together and they maintain this littl e service
center or whatever you want to call it ... we all contribute.
You know some of the people who work there ... Caroline
Elmendorf works there e very Monday and s ome of the others.
EM: Where is it?
IG: It's over there on 4th or 5th street where the
Salvation Army used to be. Right at the expressway in a
GRIFFITH
IG: big building. I think at one time it was Turner
Hall. But, anyway, it is a big community center. I
29.
mean a big building and they interview people, they service.
You see a lot of our programs, people can't get on, they
are temporarily out. They are people who are coming around.
Just like now, downtown, what are they doing? The Presby­terians
are taking their educational building and it's an
overnight hotelry. All the different churches are furnish­ing
or groups are furnishing, couples to go down and work
all night; for poor people; they're giving them places to
spend the night.
CAM puts out ... we have two closets at St. Mark's, one
of them is CAM and the other is ... do they call it battered
wives? We contribute to that. We try to contribute things
like cosmetics, pretty clothes, something to lift their
spirits.
And the first Sunday of every month there is a big
barrel and we all bring canned food.
EM: To church. Isn't that wonderful.
IG: Now there's a place where I'm having a good time.
I'll tell you why. Going back to Corpus, these ladies
out there at this community center had a Bible class
and they gave each other birthday presents. Of course,
they were destitute, they didn't have anything. There
was one pretty plate and that plate always was given ...
you get it for this birthday, and then it was so pretty,
you gave it to your friend with all the dignity; there
was nothing funny about it. It was sincere.
GRIFFITH 30.
IG: There was an old Irish doctor out there who came up
from Mexico, a female doctor, and she lived in one of
those little shacks with a cactus fence. She stayed out
there because she was the doctor for everybody. She was
free. She had the cutest sense of humor you ever saw.
She had j ust enough money to live on. She didn't want
to practice but she did want to help out there. She got
such a kick out of ... there was a meat cleaver ... one of
those things you tenderize meat with, that was one of
the objects that was a favorite birthday gift. As she
said, nobody had meat to eat but you were happy with that
meat cleaver. You see how utterly human people were?
Another thing, if they had any false pride, you just
didn't see it. I told you about making the quilts for
the poor people.
EM: They didn't sell them to make money?
IG: Oh no .
EM: These were gifts.
IG: They were helping each other. They were also in this
Bible class, read the Bible. I think it was one of the
churches that gave us a lot of Bibles. They would read
the Bible; a lady would get there and when they read
Leviticus, this one begat that one ... and, of course,
mispronounced all the names. And some of them actually
couldn't read. They'd say, "Oh, I left my glasses at
home; my eye hurts." They never admitted ...
EM: But they couldn't read.
IG: But they were so dignified. Mrs. Munds and I thought
GRIFFITH 31.
IG: of it strictly ... we saw them ... others might not have
seen them in the same light we did.
EM: Is this the Episcopal Church you're talking about now?
IG: But don't leave out the other churches because they all
helped.
EM: They just sort of headquartered at the Episcopal Church?
IG: No. It was a group of us from the Episcopal Church
and the rector's wife and Mrs. Sealey and all of us. It
wasn't what you would call an organized project.
just being done.
EM: Ecum~nical in the best sense.
I love that birthday present story.
It was
IG: It was wonderful. They would wrap it up. We got so
we'd let them take the magazines home. There weren't
as many colored pictures then but they would take those
home and decorate their homes with them.
EM: These were not just the Mexicans?
IG: Oh no. A lot of those people who lived in those
little houses I told you about.
EM: Did it affect the children in any way? Did they realize?
IG: I don't think so. It didn't mine. You could buy a
quart of ice cream for a dime, I think, at least the drug­gist
down at the corner sold it to the kids for that. I
remember the little Sanford, the little Gibson boys ... a
bunch of boys and a few girls ... more boys than girls, and
I've always thought about that because they were the ones
who went to war, the second World War. They would gather
all their money and they'd go down and buy a quart of ice
cream and divide it. I kept a purse with money, little
GRIFFITH 32.
IG: change, in the table on the porch where we ate.
They would ask me if they could do so and so. One of
the boys wanted to go on a Cub Scout ... and it's going
to cost a quarter. So they'd get this purse and they'd
sit there with the pennies and the nickels, the dimes
and they'd ask Gregoria what we needed and she'd tell
them, she told them in Spanish but they understood ...
well, they were going to have to buy bread ... that's
going to cost so much and they'd put the bread money
there and then to see if they had enough money to go
on the ...
EM: Left over.
IG: Yes, sort of a budget idea. And they did it.
EM: Little kids at that age had figured that out.
Had you been busy teaching them how to spend money?
IG: Before we moved to Corpus Christi, we lived in
San Antonio ... the boys, kindergarten age, went to the
River Road Country Day School.
EM: Ethel Harris. That was supposed to be a marvelous
school.
IG: And you know how they learned arithmetic? My boys ...
practical. I got them a Sears Roebuck catalogue. And
this went on until they were in high school. If they
wanted to buy a flashlight or something like that, they
could read the figures; they couldn't read the write-up
but they could take that catalogue and say this flashlight
cost so much, this flashlight cost so much, what's the
difference? Then they'd bring the book and ask me to read
GRIFFITH 33.
IG: the descript ion.
EM: For goodness sake, how clever.
IG: And Ethel Harris had them build a little house. They
figured lumber; they figured everything. But my children
learned their mathematics out of the Sears Roebuck catalogue.
See what people can do? I think there are people
nowadays, I think there are a lot of mothers doing that sort
of thing. I'm not at all discouraged.
END OF TAPE I, Side 2, about 15 minutes
! THE GREAT DEPRESSION ... THE 30's . .. . CORPUS CHRISTI
AA up- beat account of coping/ in many innovative and
creative ways, with the lacks and deprivations of a
serious depression.
It was a positive, sharing experience and quite
inspirationa l . THe old American "make- do " of an earlier
time .