现实情况令人想起"大萧条"

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Welcome to the storycorps podcast. We’ve been hearing a lot about the financial crisis this week. And it’s brought back some memories for 86-year-old James Bost. He came to storycorps with his son Doug and told us a story about his own father, who is a salesman during the Depression.

When I was 9 years old, that was about 1932, my dad was working 24/7, to make it. There were seven salesmen within my father’s area or domain. And six of them were fired. It was only one left and that was my father. And he busted himself to keep that job and that brought on a heart attack. He recovered, and did something that still sticks with me.

He went into the bank and said “I wanna withdraw my money.” And the teller gave him a hard time. They had windows with a big iron bars. He got so agitated and took hold of the bars. He scared the teller, no question about it. And the teller brought his money to him. He put it into a suitcase and he went into the backyard of the house where we lived. He dug a large hole about four feet deep and buried that suitcase. No one knew anything about it except the family. He didn’t trust the banks for a long time. And this made an impression on me to the point that in the last year I went to the local bank where I’ve been doing business and withdrew several thousand dollars.

“Did you dig a hole and put them in the garden?”

“No, I didn’t do that. I have it in an undisclosed location. I don’t have a lot of money, but if there was a crush right now, I’d have extra amount of dollars to deal with for the next month or two, and I will not have to worry. I think it’s kind of silly in some ways ,  it’s kind of stupid, but at the same time the Great Depression made a big impact on me, and I can’t forget it.”

That’s James Bost with his son Doug in New York City.

Major support for Storycorps is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Our podcasts are supported by the Fetzer Institute as part of its campaign for Love and Forgiveness. You can learn more at loveandforgive.org. All Storycorps interviews are housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And you can catch Storycorps on the radio, Fridays on NPR’s morning edition. This is Michael Garofalo for the Storycorps Podcast. Thanks for listening.