Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

For our March book club selection we read "Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression" by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. 

Mildred’s memoir of growing up on an Iowa farm during the Depression of the 1930s was endlessly fascinating. She was raised with her 3 siblings by a mother and both sets of grandparents and starts with her as a five-year-old up through young adulthood. Children’s personalities were shaped by hard-working elders who had old-fashioned pioneer values – their Methodist upbringing included the hearty handshake (but no other signs of affection) and being buggy whipped when their transgressions were serious enough.

Parents taught their children to love reading by holding it up as a reward for being obedient and helpful.  Only after their chores were done were they allowed the “privilege” of reading.

Everyone participated in all the tasks necessary to provide for the family and its farm animals, including planting and harvesting, and preparing for the winter.  Even children as young as two helped out by putting cans-full of water on the plants in the garden.  A great deal of their chores dealt with caring for the farm animals – horses, lambs, chickens, pigs, and even bees.  Three meals were prepared each day, with water brought in from the pump and everything cooked on the wood-burning stove.  Even the children helped with the cooking and preparation of the food from the garden – including cleaning the head of the pig to make head cheese.  Mildred includes many delicious-sounding recipes, such as apple cream pie, strawberry shortcake, and Porcupines (ground beef with rice).

Adventures – which during warm weather always involved being barefoot – included floating down the creek in a rainstorm, walking home in a blizzard while worrying their elders to death, and pulling pranks on others.

Several grades were taught together in their one-room schoolhouse, with the older children helping to teach the young ones.  The whole community turned out for school holiday events and performances by the children.  Discipline was swift – and if you got spanked at school, you knew you’d get spanked when you got home.

Home remedies had to be inventive, since going to a doctor was too expensive – children grabbed spiderwebs for wrapping around cuts; blood poisoning in a leg was treated by cutting into the foot to drain puss and keeping it in a pan of hot water; stomping on a potato in the road and waiting for it to dry up and disappear actually cured warts!

One bonus of all these fascinating stories is that they will inspire you to do family history work and find out about your ancestors and the hard but character-building lives they led.

Review by Mary Mintz