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28
Perk and I drove to North East for lunch at the diner that day and it was refreshing to go out into the country just awakening to spring -- spring that was always just as lovely and fresh as ever in spite of the mess that men could make of their lives.
On April 10th, a Sunday, Ben and Toni Luther came in for some bridge and later Ted and Madeleine Elliot also dropped in. Ted was trying to sell insurance without much luck. Ben was contemplating going into the bank at Fairhaven with his father if he should be laid off, something I thought unlikely because Ben was one of the best men Lew Webb had -- and I proved to be right about this. I reflected that if I were to be laid off I simply wouldn't know what to try to do. I wondered if I might be able to get a job teaching at Southern Seminary. I would have liked to study art or writing but how to do either without any money posed a problem. The market was wallowing to new lows every day. I estimated that practically the entire $5,500 we had in 1929 was now a paper loss but I clung to the hope we could hang onto it and someday realize something on it. The bears had been running so wild the past week that the Senate had to order and investigation to stop them. To me, the bear raider was one of the most despicable of all professionals and ought to be exterminated as any other "selfish traitor to his country."
The last of August, I got a rude shock when I balanced up my accounts and discovered on what very thin ice we were walking. Our expenses were exceeding our income and I failed to see how we could continue at the current rate without borrowing money soon -- but we had little to offer as collateral. I decided I'd better try again to do something with my writing in an effort to pick up a little extra money. Also, we all continued to hope that a beak would come soon although it was said that Mr. Swope was not optimistic.
My December 27th diary notes that I'm making $40 a week but we're well off compared to most. The year ended with the great question at the office being: "Will we be working four or five days a week in 1933?" And what a way to end the year! But in spite of it, we managed to have a good time New Year's Eve as I've recounted. Meanwhile Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president, swamping Herbert Hoover who had had to take the blame for the depression. However, FDR would not take over the helm until March 1933. There was much lying ahead, and just around the corner, so to speak, but we didn't know what it was. We didn't know that our whole way of life in the U.S.A. was soon to go through an upheaval the like of which had never before been seen or even dreamed of.
In August 1932, things were getting so tight that we prepared to set up our budget again but got no farther with it than to establish some figures to shoot at. Nevertheless these are interesting and as a final exhibit in these rather unhappy remarks about finances and outlook, I'm giving them: