By Robin A. Edgar

Most children who grew up on farms during the Great Depression had to pitch in and help with chores after school and during the planting and harvesting season. Born and raised on a farm in Inman, S.C. in 1926, Andrew “Jack” Stone helped his family grow wheat, corn, cotton, watermelon and cantaloupe. His father was a machinist in the textile mill and left for work in the mornings, so Jack and his younger sisters, Rachel and Peggy, worked the farm when they got home after walking a mile from Inman Elementary School. Once in a while, if it was raining, two spinster teachers from Campobello, Miss Shands and Miss Fagan, would pick them up in an A model Ford.

“The way of life was farming and you had to have a little bit of everything to survive.  We hoed corn and cotton, milked the cows, and tilled the vegetable gardens. We fished and hunted. We would cage possum after we caught them and feed them sweet milk and corn bread and table scraps to clean them out since possum would eat most anything out in the wild. They would get real fat that way. We also had to cut the wood in our own woods and bring it to the house where we cut it up for the fireplaces and the cook stove.

“Mom worked at the mill from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then cooked our meals and canned the vegetables when she got home. For breakfast, we had bacon, eggs, sausage, and grits. We paid 35 cents a week for school lunches and dinner was leftovers from my parents’ lunches.

 

“During the Depression, we did not see many hobos come to our back door for food.  We did, however, meet up with two brothers, the Daltons, who rode the freight trains down south from North Dakota each summer. They came back every year to work on our farm for a month or so and then went back home to their families.

 

“We did everything we could do to have a good time at Christmas. Although we cut trees for firewood, we did not cut down any to decorate. I always got something like a cowboy outfit with a hat, a cap pistol, and holster. We also got clothes. In our stockings, we got one apple, one orange, some other fruit, and a bit of candy.

 

In 1944, Jack decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps. He sold his maroon 1936 Ford Convertible Roadster that he had purchased with $600 from the money he had saved from working for other people. Since he was still 17, he took tests to graduate early from high school and was sent to Communications School to learn Teletype, radio, and Morse code at Fort Dix, N.J., before shipping out to Germany. When the war in Germany ended in May 1945, he was transferred to a little town called Erlangen in Germany. He was transferred back home in December 1946.

About four days after he returned, he went to the Mutual Bank where his military paychecks had been sent while overseas. John G. Landrum, the Mutual Bank president, offered him a job. After training in banking school at UNC Chapel Hill on the GI Bill, he started working as a file clerk and married Mary Jo Littlefield in June 1947. The couple had one son, David. Jack worked his way up to vice president at the bank before he retired 41 years later.

Giving back to the community, Jack served as chairman of the Spartanburg County School Board, where he was a member for 20 years. He also helped found and has been a charter member of the Landrum Lion’s Club since 1959, and served for 14 years as treasurer of First Baptist Church in Landrum, where he has been a member since 1947. Jack also served as the Master of Landrum Masonic Lodge, where he has been a lifetime member for 61 years, and as a member of the Hejaz Shrine, which supports Shriner’s Hospital.

Keys to Survival: The way of life was farming and you had to have a little bit of everything to survive.

 

Advice for future generations: Learn how to survive in the wilderness by hunting, fishing, and also learn how to grow your own food.