Color photos of post-Depression America

They hate the military!

 

Of course you do!

 

Yes. I have a brain.

 

Lots of Republican children in that second photo.

 

Through the middle of fifth grade, I went to school in the same building my mom had, Homestead Elementary. It, like the surrounding houses and the tower next door where we had Cub Scout meetings, was built out of Crab Orchard sandstone quarried by dispossessed coal miners and dirt farmers who drug their families to an obscure part of Tennessee hoping to rebuild their shattered lives. Maybe a mile or two down the road was a state park built by the sweat and blood of the CCC boys, which practically served as summer headquarters for us and all of mom's side of the family.

It was like growing up in a time capsule, and I appreciated exactly none of it until years later and hundreds of miles away.