They ate pretzel soup and wore hand-me-down shoes from the neighborhood church.

They remember stuff like Butterine (looked like butter, but it wasn't), just two outfits (one for everyday, one for church), brothers who went off to work (in the umbrella factory) and hobos who came to the back door for dinner (a cup of coffee and whatever was left over from dinner that night).

But it seemed like everyone was in the same boat, neighbor helped neighbor and hard times didn't kill them.

There are scores of eightysomethings and others in Lancaster County who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As the economy continues to sour, families today who are going through a lean spell can learn a few lessons from those who have weathered hard times, they say.

"We didn't think it was bad, life in those days," says Tess Proczko, 88, one of several residents of Oak Leaf Manor, a personal care home near Millersville, who got together to talk about growing up in the Depression.

Edith Bauer, 89, says, "We got through it, just being together, working with each other and helping each other."

Not that it was easy all the time.

Eight decades later, these folks still vividly remember fathers losing jobs, families losing homes and the sting of poverty.

Bauer lived with her family, including her eight brothers and sisters, on Madison Street in Lancaster until her family could not afford that home any more. Her father had lost his job at the Hubley toy company.

"They would come around and get the money," she remembers of the landlord, until one day there wasn't enough money. "I remember thinking, 'You're taking my mom's house from her!' "

Her family found a woman who let them live upstairs, over a store on Manor Street.

St. Anne's Catholic Church helped when times were tough, she recalled, sending over food and clothing when her family came down with scarlet fever and was quarantined.

"I got shoes with buttons up the side," she says, remembering that they were outdated but the only shoes she had. "I was so embarrassed. I took them off when I got to school."

Her paternal grandmother shunned Bauer and her siblings because they were poor, she says, and she never even knew her grandmother's name.

But somehow, her family made do. Her father got a job at Hammond's Pretzels. Her mother made soup from broken pretzels her dad brought home, cooking them in milk with a little bit of vanilla and some butter (or Butterine, a margarine-type substitute).

Her resourceful mother also made her own root beer, which the children sold for extra money.

Bauer worked as a baby sitter from the time she was a young girl. She and her siblings all gave their wages to their parents. When they could go out to work, their parents charged them $7 a week for room and board.

Her husband, Anton, remembers his parents raising their own food: vegetables from a big garden, chickens from a little coop.

"My mom canned everything," he says. "She made our own jelly."

Proczko's mother was self-sufficient, too. She sewed clothing for her five children, including shirts for her sons, and repaired their shoes when they wore out.

Proczko never thought of her family as having any hardships, though sometimes her father made only $11 for two weeks of work.

Treats were rare, these former Depression kids remember. A birthday cake for your birthday, and maybe an orange and a few pieces of chocolate candy. There was one present for Christmas. A tricycle was the gift for Mrs. Bauer one magical holiday.

Families helped each other out, people recall.

"If one had a little more for their meal, it came across the street for the neighbor," Mrs. Bauer says.

An African-American minister on her block always seemed to know who was in need, quietly sending over a covered dish for families with hungry children, she remembers.

And when hobos knocked on their back door, her parents shared what they had.

"Dad would say, 'Give it to them, Mom. They have it worse than we do,' " she says.

Jerome Hergenrother, 84, remembers the men coming up the alley behind his house.

"My father would invite them in and quiz them on where they came from," he says.

Though they later moved on from the hard times, the memories never left many of these people. Once a Depression kid, always a Depression kid.

"We have two boys," Mrs. Bauer says. "Both are married and have good jobs. We keep telling them, 'Don't throw your money away. Save your money for when you might need it, later on. Hang onto it.' "

Proczko nods her head.

"I think that stays with you," she says. "I'm very cautious. Even today, when I go shopping, I don't want to pay an arm and a leg for a coat or a dress. I'm a bargain shopper."

People can make do with less, if they have to, they advise.

Today, kids are used to video games and people get accustomed to gadgets and other luxuries. But they certainly aren't necessities. Just ask someone who never had them.

"What you didn't have," Proczko says, "you didn't miss."


Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.