They learned economics the good old-fashioned way — not in the classrooms of prestigious colleges, but instead in the factories, the fields and the soup kitchens of the Great Depression.

Now these people are in their 80s and 90s, survivors of hard times.

Yes, hard times are returning. No, not the grinding poverty of 1933 when 25 percent of the country was unemployed and stockbrokers were diving out of Wall Street towers. Yet, today's younger generations — the boomers and their kids — haven't experienced such widespread economic despair in their lifetimes. Unless they have lived in the ghettos of Detroit, Newark, N.J., Los Angeles or El Paso, Texas, which have suffered through their own brand of depression for years.

We thought we would head out to the heartland, to a Midwest industrial town that has never quite recovered from the Depression, to find out how the men, women and children lived through that time. They still talk about the Studebaker plant closing down, stranding men who had worked a lifetime at the sprawling plant without any pensions at all.

At first glance, South Bend, Ind., does not seem to be a hard-pressed town. After all, most Americans know the city for being the home of Notre Dame University and those inspirational Fighting Irish football teams. But the grassy, Gothic Notre Dame campus is its own shining city, with its own post office, on the outskirts of town. The city of 100,000 used to survive on its factories like Studebaker; everyone made cars for the Studebaker brothers.

To men like Stanley Sparazy, 85, and Casimir Rzepnicki, 89, Notre Dame might as well have been on another planet. I caught up with them at St. Joe's Social Club, what was once the heavily Polish-American west side, at their weekly card game.

Rzepnicki was a teenager when he had to drop out of high school to take a job in a bakery at $4 a day — those were the times of 12-hour days. His father had been working at Studebaker, but the company often curtailed work to two days a week or sometimes closed for a week.

“One thing about my bakery job was that I got to take home three free loaves of bread at the end of the day,” Rzepnicki recalls.

Sparazy, a retired South Bend fireman, lost his father as a young man. The family wasn't eligible for the city welfare roles. Although Mom was in the country legally from Poland, she had not been naturalized. Sparazy found a job, and he and his four siblings “pooled our money” to keep the family going.

“My advice,” Sparazy says, is to “get an honest job, never cheat and never try to outdo the other person.”

Bob Peczkowski, 83, was able to finish high school before heading off to Studebaker. He and some of his neighborhood buddies — the same senior citizens he now plays cards with — remember working on a farm for 50 cents a day.

Eventually, Peczkowski decided there was a better way out. As a 32-year-old father of two, he went to college at Purdue University to pursue a career as a math teacher.

About today's kids, he says, “They want everything yesterday.”

Across town, Bob Wright, 87, meets friends every morning at Martin's, the local supermarket, for a cup of coffee. Col. Wright, who flew a number of bombing missions over Germany, grew up on a couple of acres.

“It wasn't a farm, but we had cows and chickens and my mother made butter.” Col. Wright built his own house in between wars; he was recalled for Korea.

In fact, most of the men suffered through the Great Depression of the 1930s and went off to war in the 1940s. But their memories are not really bitter. Instead, they have a certain pride from surviving poverty and war.

Wayne Hankins remembers his mom making $1 a day cleaning houses, but she had a fringe benefit: free lunch. So she brought the kids along to be fed, too.

What advice do these survivors have for their children and grandchildren? Some, like Alice Strzelecki, 77, have no guidance at all.

“I don't give them any advice,” she says. “They won't listen anyhow. Now they are suffering a rude awakening.”

E-mail Joe Volz at volzjoe2003@yahoo.com or write to 2528 Five Shillings Rd, Frederick, MD 21701. To find out more about Joe Volz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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