Edmund Bringer Memoir - Brookens Library

Edmmd A. Bringer 22
as I told you before I was the--at one t k
here I was the youngest mm
wrking for the telephone company here and they *re, the older rzlen wre
hollering cbeause they Ere keeping rrr; on instead of thm. 'Ihe only
reason they kept IIE on ms ckause these older mn didn't know how to
take care of sane of the equiprent that I was taking care of. There
eren't any of 'em here that could do it and do it right. And so I was
the youngest man here until the depression ms wer. It got d m to the
place where KP were mrking four days a wek and off the other three and
they'd laid off an awful lot of people younger than I was. . . . awful
lot, everybody younger than I ms. So and they kind of resented m.
These fellows had been here for so long and they =re, they ere the
older group of employees and they just wren't capable of keeping up with
the changes that Ere caning on. Lot of them hadn't even had a high
school or a grade school education. Sorne of than had quit in the sixth
or eighth grade and went to work for the telephone canpany. And they--
they just couldn't handle the new equipnent that was coming out. Tney
didn't how how to use it. . . . know how to hook it up or anything or
repair it.
And so =--kt during the war your granhther and I wz got to the place
where mauey was tipter then the devil and gee vhiz she'd--to save nmey
why--well, we didn t have any mney to save, that was it--kt just to
make good use of what VE had why she used to sew patches on all my clothes
and then sew patches on top of those patches and my shoes ms. . . . I
nwer had a good suit or anything during those days and it got dom to a
couple of places--1 remmbex one Fourth of July m didn't have nothing to
eat because my paycheck hadn't cone in yet. So all the things E had to
eat was out of a little old stinking garden we had out in the backyard of
the house we lived in and all that was in it ms carrots and beets and
radishes and I think we had. . . . something else in it but that's &at
w ate over the Fourth of July ws stuff like that and a loaf of bread.
It MS. . . . and thewe was a lot of people . . .
bhen e wed over to the other house wen-on North College--things
wren't too good aver there. People used to come around and sell us
doughnuts at the front door--people that had good jobs. And another-I
can r m k x one of our &st friends that we had he cane around and
sold--he made hot tamales and sold them to us for, I think they =re a
nickel a piece and we'd buy half a dozen of them. And another person
mld carne by that had dou&-~~ts and they =re selling them for tmty
cents a dozen. Boy it was. . . . it ws really bad. But when it started
to picking up why things got better and. . . . my wrk I wmt back to
five days a mek and as things got better why the--you never forget a
depression though like that. . . . nobody did. Beause they had what they
called a. . . . there was so mch. . . . there was so much graft. They
m out--oh Roosevelt carae out with that big thbg of his that he had,
the civil--CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] c q s all aver and that was
all right, that helped scm~ lxlt then they started up doing a--oh there
was other things that they started up that . . .
Q: WPA [krks Progress Administration
A: WPA and. . . . PWA and. . . . some
and gee whiz those were all--everybody
of those things that they started
that was the head of them ws
Edmund Bringer Memoir - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS