“And when gasoline got too expensive, we took out the windshield and the engine and hitched the car to a horse! We called it a ‘Hoover Wagon.'” An Abe Simpson quote?* Nope—that’s what some folks did during the Great Depression. Reading a 1935 issue of VQR today, I noticed the event was then referred to as “The Great Collapse.”
* “Anyway, about my washtub. I just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking bird. We’d always have walking bird on Thanksgiving with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, and yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we’d all watch football, which in those days was called baseball.”
“I leave these: a box of mint-condition 1918 liberty-head silver dollars. You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J. D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run of the house with a big washtub. I just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking bird. We’d always have walking bird on Thanksgiving with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, and yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we’d all watch football, which in those days was called baseball.”