During the Great Depression, brothers Del and Don Wilson were the best boys about writing home from the Navy. “We just couldn’t stand it very good if you didn’t. That’s the brightest ‘spot’ to us–you boys’ good letters,” their mother wrote toward the end of the second year of their enlistment, 1935.
Leora had mailed them a package of homemade divinity fudge, just like she had the Christmas before. The nuts in the candy were from “down on Jim Creek, south of the big spring where you boys got water when you were hunting squirrels,” their dad wrote. Black walnuts.
Men with sons in the Navy or CCC were cut off relief (welfare) jobs first, including their father Clabe, so he stayed busy trapping. He’d start out early by moonlight to check his traps, but was often disappointed. Only six skunks and five opossum so far that fall. He shipped eight skunk and five ‘possum pelts to Sears, writing to his sons that at least it’s a good healthy job. Clabe had sold their “roadster” a year earlier and they had no vehicle.
You may remember that earlier in the year, Clabe was desperate enough that he’d hiked into Dallas County asking farmers for work.
Clarence Goff was one of Leora’s younger brothers, one who was allowed to complete high school. His heating business in Omaha had doubled, and he expected the same for 1936. Clarence, or C.Z. as he was known, sent his sister’s family $10 for Christmas. Another brother, Wayne Goff, shipped a box of very welcome fruit from California, since Iowa in December is pretty colorless, the homeliest month of the year.
Willis Goff, another of Leora’s seven brothers, lived in Southern California, where the USS Chicago was based that winter. Willis and Ann invited Delbert and Donald to spend Christmas with them and their daughters, Connie and Shirley, who’d asked for a Shirley Temple doll for Christmas.
Leora took a photo for their “Navy boys” of the five kids at home on Christmas Day. Doris and Darlene look like the daughters in a well-to-do family, don’t they? Doris said she altered hand-me-down so no one would recognize who used to wear them.
You may find more Depression Era stories of the Wilson family in Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.