Ok, it’s gonna get personal:
Remember growing up, and your mom made toast, buttered it, sprinkled it with sugar, and cinnamon? Then she cut up the toast, and poured milk over it in a cereal bowl? Well I do! What is the origin of this strange concoction? Canton, Ohio, in the 1930’s during the great depression. These were staples they used to “make due.” My grandpa made pans, and pans of “mush,” corn meal boiled, and browned “crupples,” a type of meat, was added to the corn meal, and fried in a pan, and served with syrup. If they had syrup. These dishes, along with washing out bags, and using them over, and countless other “tricks” from the great depression are still in a few of us…My grandparents, all four of them, walked the Canton streets that Sam Stone walked. Perhaps ate in the same restaurants , and went to the same movie houses. Many of us have “left overs” from the great depression, and may not even know it…One of our volunteers, Dick Conde shared with me about how he keeps a ledger for the bills that he pays. He explained that his mother, in order to keep tract of the expenses kept a little ledger. She would pay her bills with cash, and place the cash in little envelopes, with the bills. Dick told me he is about to begin his fifth ledger. He can go back to his first ledger, and view what he entered in his ledger to show the first bill he paid as a newly married, young man. He also shared that he doesn’t have to do this, but that it gives him comfort somehow, to keep tract of his expenses. He grew up in the South West end of Canton, and so his mother and father also walked the same streets Sam and Minna Stone, and their three daughters walked…
Come see the original letters sent to B. Virdot in 1933, Sam Stone’s desk he used to write his gift checks and local artifacts from the Depression.
Join us at the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum on Friday November 15, from 6:00 to 7:30 for the opening of the Keller Gallery exhibit: A Secret Gift.
Archivist's Attic... 