Grandpa’s Bean Soup (The Depression Legacy)

— Texas — 1950s family history

Master Registry #33 | Generational Poverty, Boaz Principle, Difficult Not Impossible

Setting: Family history, Texas 1950s

“My Father is famous in our family for eating jelly out of the jar with a spoon. As kids, we four made much of it, but as he will tell you, it’s because he is the 6th of 13 children who were born to parents who lived through the ‘Great’ Depression, and never got much better off from there, so one spoonful was all they ever got.

Grampa was a welder who had worked as a Foreman on the Texas Oil pipelines in the 1950s, and when a loaded truck rolled downhill and broke his back, he had no income and on bedrest for over 9 months. They had bean soup made on the fire in the back yard, with more or less beans, every afternoon as the daily meal, and the charity of church members and neighbors who weren’t better off but had a little, helped them eke by.

Grandma was a school teacher. The first woman to attend, and graduate, college at William and Mary college in North Carolina. She helped me with my pre-Calculus homework during a visit to us in Montana, but only after I did all of it first. That’s the only week I ever did all my homework in all my classes. I told her I tested well, so I didn’t have to do the home ‘busy-work’ as I called it. She pointed out that to whom much is given, much shall be required, and it was a shame that I wasn’t giving all of the effort I could, especially since other people had to work harder to get the same results. Clearly, it made an impression.

Grandpa died of cancer in 1993 from smoking the first 30 years of his life, or the welding rods that were stuck to his skin after 12 and 16 hour workdays. I was at the hospital with him in Tennessee my Junior Year of college, but he had dementia by then. Grandma died 3 months shy of her 100th birthday five years ago.”

Grandpa Story #1 — The Silent Burn:

Grandma told us that Grandpa was in the kitchen and slipped on a rag that had fallen to the floor as he was making breakfast. Since he was old and didn’t want to break a hip, he grabbed the stove to save himself from falling — with his forearm across the hot eye.

Grandma was sitting 12 feet away in the open dining room part of the same room, reading, and didn’t hear anything (and she had good hearing until she died a couple months away from a century old). She only knew about it because when they were getting home from church he had a little blood on his white shirt after he took off his jacket, which had escaped from the bandage he didn’t tell her he put on it.

Grandpa Story #2 — Quitting Smoking:

He would always say that quitting smoking was the easiest thing he ever did. He’d done it thousands of times. Then he would tell about how he hated it so bad that he threw his pack away in the grass and two hours later would be on all fours searching for it. Until he finally quit.

Which is why that poster about quitting smoking that just shows a broken-in-half cigarette with the words “Difficult. Not Impossible” hit so hard. I think of that a lot when I come up against a brick wall.

Key Lesson: Generational poverty. Community support. “To whom much is given, much shall be required.” Stoic endurance. Difficult. Not Impossible.

Key Details:

  • Father is 6th of 13 children
  • Grandpa: welder, foreman, back broken by truck, 9 months bedrest
  • Bean soup in backyard every day
  • Grandma: first woman to graduate William & Mary (NC)
  • Grandpa died 1993; Grandma died 3 months shy of 100

Best Used For: Origin story, why platform exists, generational wealth/poverty, Boaz Principle, persistence, “Difficult. Not Impossible” mantra