The Next Order Of Businesss

Once I was sure we would have enough food to survive the winter, I had to deal with the next order of business...finances.  Although Leonard and I discuss the business regularly, we rarely talk about specifics.  Jill, our secretary, and I handle the business finances, and I handle the personal finances.  Leonard hates to talk about money.  He is purely emotional regarding money, and his decisions are rarely based on mathematics.  This was going to be a challenge.

Food

"Rice and beans, a milk cow, a couple laying hens, and a few vegetables in the garden is all you need to feed a family", claimed my grandmother.  So when the stock market plummeted in 2008  I stocked up on rice and beans.  I wasn't worried about our investments because we have none.  But, most of our clients depended on their investments.  At the time I wasn't sure if we would have inflation or deflation.  My friends and neighbors were panicking about future inflation.   The news was declaring deflation.  Either way it was late in the year.  Clients usually delay starting projects until after the holidays.  Things were already slow.  We had to assume that as potential clients realized their financial situation had changed they would likely bail on their project, or at least delay the project.  Things were going to get rough.  I decided to take a portion of my saving and stock up on food.  We were going to struggle during the winter, how much we didn't know.  I didn't want to feel stress every time I went to the grocery store.  I thought about my grandmothers words.

Living Through The Depression

I grew up listening to my grandmother tell stories about living through the great depression.   She lived in the Texas Panhandle.  She survived the dust bowl, but soon after was left by her husband to care for six children on her own.  She was a survivor by all measure.  At one point she ran a cafe.  One of her favorite stories to tell was about making a coconut creme pie out of bread crumbs flavored with coconut extract because coconut could not be found.  She was always very proud of her pies.  She also told me how she and her kids would lay wet towels around the doors and windows to keep out the dirt during a dust storm.  And, One summer while my family and I visited she taught my boys how to make soap from rendered pig fat (she had to use bacon grease since she no longer raised pigs).  When I asked my grandmother to tell me her fondest memory, she recalled when her oldest child, my Aunt Dorothy, was still an infant.  My aunt was born in August 1928.  This would have been right on the precipice of the dust bowl and the great depression.  Her husband and my grandfather, Lee Ault, heard they could find work running tractors on a farm in New Mexico.  The three of them went together.  My grandfather ran the tractor during the day, while my grandmother took care of Dorothy.  Then, in the evening my grandmother ran the tractor while my grandfather and the baby slept.  They had no bed.  For a month while working the New Mexico farm they slept out in the open on a haystack.  How simple and beautiful.

Here we are in August 2010.  Is it a depression, or is it a recession?  Whatever the exact definition of our current economic situation, I find myself recalling my grandmothers stories.  There is no work, prices are dropping, and people are concerned.  My husband has been a successful builder for nearly 30 years.  Primarily he built  custom homes.  But times are different, and I doubt they will ever be the same.  The custom home business is gone and not likely to return.  Even when and if the economy rebounds the next generation is not interested in large, fancy homes.  They are frugal and eco-conscious.  They grew up in the big, fancy homes and are jaded to their parents' excesses.  So what do my husband and I do?  We are too late in life to reinvent ourselves, and yet, we have no choice.  I have decided to document our story as we navigate through this experience.  Who knows, maybe my granddaughter will use the information one day.