This Week's Story
click here to play audioPapa's unique discipline built love and order into a family soon to face the Great Depression!
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
Mom's Love, Papa's Discipline & Black Tuesday, part one
Mom told me a story about her father’s discipline. One day he saw her quietly disappear from the dinner table. He found her outside.
“Mary Jane, your mother told you to clear the dining room table. Come to the table and sit in your seat.”
She returned to the table and Papa reached for a dish towel.
“Papa, what are you going to do?”
“As you are seated, I am going to hit the back of your chair twice with this towel. Then, please clear the table immediately”
Mary Jane heard the towel strike the back of her chair twice. It was her punishment. Papa never spanked or hit her. She looked at his face and was ashamed. There was no anger on his face, but there was complete seriousness.
“Papa, I am sorry.”
“I know, sweetheart. You are to obey your mother’s directions. Remember your sisters, grandma, mother, you, and I all share work in and outside our home.”
As an adult Mom followed her father’s model of thoughtful action and fair explanation. His discipline was not yelling and hard swats on her body. It was not impatience or angry outbursts.
As I became a teenager, I realized Mom’s presence in our family was based on love and practical order. I knew she asked God to show her how to think and act with family challenges.
When I thought of her story about her father, I felt her safety. I knew she respected her father’s judgment even when the Great Depression struck the United States. She shared with me how her papa maintained integrity with his family and employees, even as the family lost their family home, printing company, and other financial assets. His health broke and he lay dying for several days on a living room couch.
October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday, the United States stock market crashed. National disaster ripped through the United States. People who had invested money in companies found their stocks worth little or nothing. Banks that supposedly had people’s savings, did not.
Banks had invested people’s savings in buying stocks. That was how banks made money. Banks loaned money so people could buy homes and start businesses. They charged interest for the loans and invested the money in companies. In the 1920’s a huge problem had developed. Speculation!
Investors and banks in the 1920’s speculated that there was so much demand for products and services that large supply was needed. That changed! Supplies grew faster than the demand. Not enough money was being earned to make profit. Speculation became disastrous gambling.
Supply and demand crashed on a huge national scale. Millions of people did not know why their banks did not have their savings. Others knew, but the speculation had become too huge to stop quickly. Millions of people lost their savings and eventually their jobs, homes, businesses, and farms.
Soon we learn how Mary Jane’s mother and sisters survived the Great Depression with ingenuity and certainty that God had not abandoned them.
Today our team is Todd Warren, Nathan Thomas, and Barbara Steiner.
Find many more stories from American history at: thisweeksstory.com.
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