This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, a story from our regular contributor out of Iowa, a listener, Joy Neal Kidney,

and she listens on W.HO. in Des Moines, a great Iheart station.

Joy is the author of Liora's Dexter Letters, The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.

And today she shares the story of a unique meal,

her family ate during those tough financial times.

Take it away, Joy.

When I heard about someone having to eat raccoon or possum, I thought of poor folks in the

deep south. Dad wasn't a hunter. And having grown up on an Iowa hog and cattle farm,

I couldn't imagine having any kind of wild meat instead of good old pork and beef. But from old family letters, I learned that both raccoon and possum

showed up on the table of my mother's family during the Great Depression.

Some family members reported enjoying them.

Claib and Leora Wilson had seven children, five sons and two daughters.

Claib taught his sons to trap and hunt.

Peltz could be sent to Sears Roebuck and company in exchange for food and clothing.

Claib insisted that his boys wait until they were 12 and could demonstrate

safe handling of a gun before he was allowed to carry one to go hunting, and no animal

was to be killed just for sport. Squirrel and rabbit were their main sources of protein during

those days.

The saying was that Leora would cook anything the hunters brought her.

As long as they were already skinned, cleaned, and ready for the skillet or the roasting pan.

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