The Great Depression

In 1929 the stock market crashed.  Financial managers were jumping out of tall building windows in what was the beginning of what came to be known as The Great Depression.

Times were hard, but neighbors helped neighbors.  Vegetable gardens grew in urban back yards and small rural farms provided other needed food.  Young people picked weeds and gathered crops.  I would often wait for the farmers' pickup trucks to drive down our street.  I was born in 1925 and was a young boy.  I remember hobos knocking on our door and politely asking for work or a handout of some food, perhaps a sandwich.  I lived with my grandma and two of her sisters.  My grandpa had been a 49er in California and had left my grandma a bit of money.  She would take her jewelry and sell to the grocer in exchange for her food bill.  She would often help the hobos with a slice of bread and butter.  They would mark our walkway in chalk, telling others it was a friendly home.
http://www.jedword.com/2010/05/28/bindlestiffs-hobos/

Later, Minneapolis would provide brick homes as shelters and projects.

Once I remember tugging my coaster wagon past a store window and a man inside waved me in.  He asked me if I would go to the coal yard and bring him a bag of coal which cost twenty cents.  I did.  He rolled cigars for a living and offered me a job.  I didn't take the job and returned to picking up discarded beer bottles which were worth 2 cents a piece.  I'd collect the money at the nearest tavern.  My Irish grandma taught me Irish songs and I also had learned some Scottish songs from Harry Lauder which I'd heard on old Edison records.  In the tavern I would sing songs to patrons who would pay me a dime a song.  I would take the money home and hoard it in my rumbutter toffee tin.  Over time I had quite an accumulation of coins which I would lay out on the table and organize according to value and date.  I had lines of Indian head pennies and buffalo nickels.