Married During The Depression

Married During The Depression

I married Burton Kimball on June 30, 1939 while the Great Depression still gripped the land. Burton worked at the Standard Machine Co. in Mystic, making $22 a week. We were lucky. My friend Frances became engaged when her fiancé made only $18 and they had to wait to get married until his salary was $20.

It was a simple wedding, all I could afford. I wore my Grandmother Cornet's wedding gown and borrowed Frances' veil. Garden flowers decorated the church and the reception was at my Aunt May's home in Best View.

My mother and my aunts made the refreshments except for the wedding cake, which came from the Mohican. My going-away outfit cost $9.95 at the Style Shop, a simple black dress with striped taffeta coat. I thought it was stunning. With it I wore a huge white straw hat that cost $1 at Genung's and carried a white handbag from Kaplan's, also $1.

We rented the first floor apartment of a house on Pequot Avenue in Mystic for $28 a month, a tight squeeze on Burton's pay. But it had four rooms and bath and a garage, and also provided garden space in the backyard. We redecorated the whole apartment with new paint and wallpaper for a total of $30, doing all the work ourselves. Burton was a champion wallpaper hanger.

We had an old oil range in the kitchen. I was terrified of it and did most of my cooking on a small electric plate. I did my baking in a small electric roaster. We couldn't afford a different stove for years. We shopped for groceries very carefully, counting every penny and comparing prices at the various stores. I cut out economical recipes from The Day and tried in every way to save money. One favorite was carrot timbales.

I had taught for three years in Scotland, Conn., but I intended to live in Mystic
where Burton worked. When I applied for a teaching job in Groton I learned to my dismay that local towns weren't hiring married teachers if their husbands had jobs. Superintendent S.B. Butler explained to me that the Board of Education thought one job per family was enough. So I was reduced to occasional days of substitute teaching, which I hated.

I finally got some work tutoring, but to fill the time I volunteered at the relatively new Mystic Seaport Museum. We knew the director, Carl Cutler. Each free day I walked from Pequot Avenue down the hill to Main Street and across the bridge, following Greenmanville Avenue to the Seaport, carrying my cherished portable typewriter, which I used to make accession cards or to inventory photographs.

But in spite of the Depression we had fun, because everyone was in the same boat. No one had discretionary cash. We coped and we survived proudly, and we were probably none the worse for it.

By: Carol W. Kimball (The day.com)
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