With financial woes forefront, people are beginning to worry if another Great Depression is in the future.

For those who saw the stock market crash in 1929, job shortages and going without is nothing new.

“I got out of high school and couldn’t get a job even though I was good lookin,’” said John Kent, 92, a resident of Garden Estates in Temple, an assisted living community.

Kent applied at a gas station, and was told they had just turned down a boy with a college degree, why would they want a high school graduate?

Thankfully, the local sheriff of his small town in Illinois offered Kent a job working on his farm for $30 a month.

“He was smart. He helped me repair my car and showed me how to do it and then I became a mechanic,” Kent said.

Kent had several occupations - mechanic, painter, hotel employee - before he was offered the chance to go to college.

He ended up flipping a half-dollar coin to decide whether to join the Air Force or go to college. Heads won and Kent enlisted.

Ray Carlisle found a job working at a service station on 6th Street in Belton.

“We had a hard time makin’ a livin’. Jobs were scarce,” said Carlisle, 86.

Carlisle laughed at the idea of having entertainment as a child.

“Everybody was lookin’ for a job, lookin’ for work … we didn’t have entertainment,” he said.

The Beltonian Theater did offer some respite from the hard times. Carlisle remembers the days when you could see a show for 10 cents and buy a hamburger for a nickel.

“T-bone steaks, you could get two of those for 50 cents, but most people didn’t have the 50 cents,” he said.

Meat was one thing Alta Belle Kemp, 89, didn’t go without. Ms. Kemp grew up on a 3,600-acre farm outside Rock Springs.

“Never did I get any type of food stamps - if we didn’t have it, we just didn’t have it,” she said.

Ms. Kemp can empathize about the current gas prices causing Americans to budget. She had to sell her car during the Depression because she couldn’t afford gasoline or tires for it. This meant taking the train, riding a bicycle or walking, she said.

“But everybody was in the same position. You know, money was hard and they couldn’t buy anything or get anything extra so we just made and sold and did our own things in our homes,” she said.

The barter system became more popular as people found it harder to make money.

Carlisle recalls trading work for groceries and Ms. Kemp did laundry at Howard Payne University to pay for her tuition.

“I did one lady’s laundry to get piano lessons,” she said. “Everything was on the barter system.”

The effects of the Depression lingered even after the economy regained its strength.

The Kemp family did their own laundry, housework and made their own clothes because of what they learned during the Depression. They also “didn’t go out to eat like people do today,” she said.

“Because of the Depression we guarded our dollar probably more than usual, when we did get a dollar,” Ms. Kemp said.

Carlisle remembers after getting married, he still worried about finances even though Wall Street hadn’t had problems for years.

“I was scared to death that we’d get in the depression again. That was in the back of your mind all the time,” he said.

@temple-telegram.com