Killing Sparrows for Shoes? One Family’s Story from the Great Depression

On this episode of Our American Stories, during the Great Depression, millions of Americans faced hunger, unemployment, and poverty. Families across the United States found inventive ways to survive when jobs disappeared and banks failed. In Iowa, one family turned to canning corn, repairing old shoes, and biking from farm to farm to kill sparrows, a job that paid just enough to get by. Our regular contributor Joy Neal Kidney shares a Depression-era story passed down through her family, offering a glimpse into what life was like in the 1930s.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, another story from our regular contributor and friend
of the show, joy Neil Kidney. Joy listens to us
on ten forty who in Des Moines, phenomenal signal in
the middle of the Midwest, and she's the author of

(00:32):
Leora's Dexter Stories. The book chronicles her grandmother's experiences and
her families too, during the Great Depression in rural Iowa. Today,
she shares a story about the kinds of ways her
family made money during those rough years. Let's get into
the story. Take it away.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Joy Noris Wilson and Betty Neil in their high school
senior pictures look like they came from well to do families,
but they both missed the first two weeks at the
beginning of their senior year to work at the local
canning factory in order to earn enough money to pay
for school clothes, books, class rings which cost six dollars

(01:15):
and fifty cents, and senior pictures. Betty's grandfather, Os Neil,
aged sixty seven, contracted with Iowa farmers to grow so
much corn. He also checked the fields and hired the
workers for the canning factory. Os and Nellie Neil were
good neighbors of clevend Leora Wilson. The summer of nineteen

(01:36):
thirty five, the canning factory was getting ready for sweet corn,
if only it would rain. Mister Neil had just told
Leora that if it didn't rain that week, there wouldn't
be any canning. In spite of the one hundred degree heat,
it rained twice in one week. When Doris asked miss

(02:00):
Neil about jobs, he told her that she'd get a
job all right, and her dad too. So Clay and
Leora and also Betty got job's canning sweet corn. When
the town whistled blue early in the morning, while Doris
was still asleep, Clave walked to the factory east of
Dexter along the railroad tracks to set things up. They

(02:21):
worked long hours from eight in the morning until midnight
or after then. Clave and others stayed to wash up
the canning machinery in the floors, scalding them with a
hose and taking up to four hours longer. Doris soon
had blisters on her hands from shucking corn. By the
end of August's school at night, and her feet and

(02:42):
legs became so wet. Leora rigged up a sort of
lap robe for her with an oilcloth bag around a
gunnysack that she put her feet and legs into, then
sit on the top part of it. Other workers made
similar contraptions, which they hung in the warm engine room
to dry away night. Clave's job also included weighing the sugar, salt,

(03:09):
and corn starch, mixing it and pouring it in the cookers.
He kept the sieves clean and the machinery running. Leoras
said the place was a noisy, sloppy place. Doris hated
it when the farmers arrived at the plant with a
load of corn late in the day when it was
getting dark. But corn has to be processed right away

(03:30):
or it will spoil. If not, would heat up and
the cans could bulge and explode. So they worked as
long as it was corn to get ready, and they
stayed until the work was done. Doris's younger siblings took
turns taking meals to her and her dad, and a
late lunch for their dad when he worked extra late

(03:50):
to get ready for the next day. Doris turned seventeen
on August thirtieth, she'd just gotten her first pay envelope
for a week's work, six dollars fifty five cents twenty
cents an hour that paid for her class ring. Doris's
senior year was off to a good start. Money was

(04:15):
hard to come by during the depression. Clay Wilson worked
on part time government WPA jobs, sometimes doing rogue work,
later helping to remodel that extra library. The two oldest
Wilson brothers, Delbert and Donald, had joined the Navy after
high school graduation. Donald had re enlisted, but Delbert thought

(04:36):
he could earn enough in California to send money home.
Things were tough there too, so he ended up hitching
back to Iowa. The Wilson twins Dale and Darlene would
start their senior year the fall of nineteen thirty eight.
Darlene had a regular babysitting job, Dale mode grass for neighbors,
and whatever work he could find to help pay for

(04:59):
extra exp vinces his senior year. A unique opportunity for
some cash was announced that Dallas County would pay bounty
on starlings and crows until July first, a nickelber foot
or ten cents per bird. Starlings were considered pests causing
damage and spreading disease. The Wilsons had seen a flock

(05:19):
of about two thousand of the dark speckled birds, like
a big swarm of bees, their rock a screeching like
rusty hinges. Dale had already bagged thirty six starlings by
June third, He and his brothers pulled their cash and
bought a used bicycle for ten dollars, so he biked
to Adell, sixteen miles away, with bird feet as proof.

(05:44):
He brought home three dollars and sixty cents. Four days later,
Dale headed to Adell with evidence from forty eight starlings
and three crows. His mother was so relieved when he
returned home, this time with five dollars and ten cents.
Halfway through June, verification from another fifty five starlings netted

(06:06):
Dale five dollars and fifty cents. Three days later, he
brought home four dollars and seventy cents cash. Finally, Dale
made his last trek to Adale, twenty five dollars and
forty cents in all for ridding the area of two
hundred and fifty four bird pests. Dale also got in

(06:28):
shape for sports during those five thirty two mile trips
on a second hand one speed bike. Mom, what size
shoes do you wear? Dale parked the big Sears Roebuck
catalog on the kitchen table. Now, Dale, you're not going

(06:49):
to spend your hard earned money on shoes for me? Yes,
I am. Dale had noticed the holes in the soles
of her shoes that she cut cardboard to fish in them.
Leora said that his generosity nearly made her cry sturdy
women's shoes cost about three dollars or thirty starlings, and

(07:12):
there was still enough money for the senior expenses of
a decharmined seventeen year old even during the Great Depression.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Joy Neil Kidney's stories of rural Iowa during the Great Depression.
Here on Our American Stories. Lee Jabib here, and I'm
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(07:44):
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