Killing Sparrows for Shoes? One Family’s Story from the Great Depression
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, during the Great Depression, millions of Americans faced hunger, unemployment, and poverty. Families across the United States found inventive ways to survive when jobs disappeared and banks failed. In Iowa, one family turned to canning corn, repairing old shoes, and biking from farm to farm to kill sparrows, a job that paid just enough to get by. Our regular contributor Joy Neal Kidney shares a Depression-era story passed down through her family, offering a glimpse into what life was like in the 1930s.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:13.6 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, |
| 0:17.7 | the show where America is the star and the American people. |
| 0:22.1 | Up next, another story from our regular contributor and friend of the show, Joy Neal Kidney. |
| 0:28.2 | Joy listens to us on 1040 W.H.O. in Des Moines. |
| 0:32.4 | A phenomenal signal in the middle of the Midwest. And she's the author of Liora's Dexter stories. |
| 0:39.3 | The book chronicles her grandmother's experiences and her families, too, during the Great Depression |
| 0:44.8 | in rural Iowa. Today, she shares a story about the kinds of ways her family made money |
| 0:51.4 | during those rough years. Let's get into the story. |
| 0:55.6 | Take it away, Joy. |
| 0:57.3 | Doris Wilson and Betty Neal, in their high school senior pictures, |
| 1:01.7 | looked like they came from well-to-do families. |
| 1:07.1 | But they both missed the first two weeks at the beginning of their senior year to work at the local canning factory in order to earn enough money to pay for school clothes, books, class rings, which cost $6.50 and senior pictures. |
| 1:23.5 | Betty's grandfather, O.S. Neal, age 67, contracted with Iowa farmers to grow so much corn. |
| 1:30.4 | He also checked the fields and hired the workers for the canning factory. |
| 1:35.1 | OS and Nellie Neal were good neighbors of Claven Leora Wilson. |
| 1:40.0 | The summer of 1935, the canning factory was getting ready for sweet corn. |
| 1:45.0 | If only it would rain. |
| 1:47.0 | Mr. Neal had just told Leora that if it didn't rain that week, there wouldn't be any canning. |
| 1:58.0 | In spite of the 100 degree heat, it rained twice in one week. |
| 2:03.4 | When Doris asked Mr. Neal about jobs, he told her that she'd get a job all right and her dad, too. |
| 2:10.5 | So Claib and Leora and also Betty got jobs canning sweet corn. |
... |
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