Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 5 0
A: That was at Long Beach, California. We were on the train and left
the day before. We didn't get in the earthquake. We weren't there when
it happened but it was bad.
Q: Did you hear from your friends that were still there?
A: Oh, yes, and they were all right. They weren't hurt or anything.
This was around about five or six miles around there. Long Beach was
where the damage was done. That's where they brought this steamship,
they got her there now and people pay to go out and see it. We got home,
and my father-in-law and my brother-in-law, they met us at the Wabash
Railroad Depot and we got home and we were glad to get home.
Q: No place like home.
A: A friend of mine, Jack Pierce, came down, heard I was in town, and he
came down and said, "~ave you got any money, Howard?" I said, "I got
$300." He said, "Let me have half of it." I said, "Okay," and he said,
"I don't have enough money to make change." I dedided to sell my car, I
had a Buick car, and sold it in California to a doctor to get home on.
And I had a $1,000 Government bond originally in the Farmers Bank
Building lock box in Springfield. They wouldn't let my brother-in-law
have a key to get in and get it out so I had to do it myself. If I
hadn't had that $1,000 bond I would have had to stand in the soup line
with the rest of the people. But I got it out just as soon as I got
home. Jack Pierce didn't keep that money not over two weeks and he gave
it back and wanted to pay me interest. I said, "No, forget it," cause we
were good friends.
Q: Well, things were bad here in Auburn?
A: Oh, yes, they had soup lines. People don't know what hard times was.
Oh, I want to tell you. I've got a piece of script that we used, script
for money and I got some in there. Just a two dollar and a half one, I
think. They had a clearing house in Springfield and if you were worth
it, you could sign a note for it and they would give you $100 worth 05
script. Now, you used that script. It was just like money. I'll show
it to you after while. They took that and used that for money and each
fellow would endorse it. If I owed you two dollars and a half, why, I
would endorse it and give it to you and you're paid. Then you could go
on and pay somebody else you owed and finally it would get back to the
clearing house and that's the way we did business for a while.
Q: Would that be sort of like the beginning of writing checks as we know
it today?
A: Oh, no. Well, I guess maybe it was. I don't know but 1'11 get one
of them and show you right now.
Q: Okay.
A: The depression was the mines closed down, a lot of them, they had no
coal to sell, no place to sell the coal, they didn't work steady and they
had soup lines. The Miner's Union, for instance, they went in and they'd
have a soup kitchen over here.