I started wondering...what was going on in this house at the time this newspaper was printed? I googled the terms "Great Depression Seattle" and I found this image:
Hooper family camped on W. Marginal Way (ca. 1940)
A decade earlier the stock market had crashed. The U.S. and world economies were a disaster. Our house was built in 1925. A few years before the crash. I wonder whether the people living here by 1939 were even the original owners of the home? Did the family that built this house lose their home?
Some sources quote an unemployment rate of 26.2 percent in Seattle at the height of the Great Depression. In the years following the crash the local economy sufferred along with the rest of the country. The coal mining industry was destroyed. The Port of Seattle saw a huge drop in exports. An 80% reduction nationwide in homebuilding had a major impact on the lumber industry. Seattle had its very own "hooverville", a shantytown built in Pioneer Square in the early 1930's that existed until the early 1940's.
I imagine the folks living in this house on January 1, 1939 faced the new year with weary hearts.
I know that many of our friends and family may be facing January 1, 2010 with the same weariness. I wish you all the best in the coming year. May you find the strength to face whatever lies ahead and the joy to smile (and maybe laugh a little) in the midst of it all.
