To the editor:

Believe it or not, I’m old enough to remember the glory days of the “Roaring Twenties.” The sun shown brightly and money was plentiful.

Women were cutting their hair, shortening their skirts, rolling their stockings and putting rouge . There were “gigolas” and “flappers.” I never found out what the flappers were flapping. Jazz was the music of the day and the young were dancing the Charleston. Bootleggers were filling their wallets by concocting “moonshine” in secluded streams shielded by second growth timber. The shine also helped along with some of the joy.

When the crash of ’29 occurred, things began to unravel, and by the early thirties arrived with the closing of banks, were into a depression — a deep one.

When FDR was elected, he immediately began the process to recover from the depths of the problem. Remember the WPA and the Eastern CCC boys who kept looking for the “cowboys and Indians” when they were sent to the West for jobs. (sorry boys, there was just mountains and trees.)

On top of the depression was the drought of the Midwest. We became accustomed to seeing little beat up jalopies rallying into town, topped with a couple of mattresses and a back seat filled with children. We didn’t have any money either, but we had rain.

I vividly remember newly arrived Midwestern classmate standing in the center of the school yard in soaking rain. We, of course, thought she was crazy. However, I have never forgotten her answer, “if you hadn’t seen rain for as long as I, you’d be standing out here too.

When the early forties arrived we were well on our way to recovery. Jobs became plentiful and the economy grew. I look back and marvel at the wages of those days. High pay for man was $6 a day and $5 for women. Those came particularly if you were working at a well unionized company. I’m probably one of the few people in Balaton having belonged to a union (international Brotherhood of Paper, Pulp and Sulphite Workers.

The war began in 1941 and better times too. You all know the rest of the story.

L.E. Johnson

Balaton