Hard times make strong people: Posthumous Opinion Letter by Frank Burkett

Oct. 1, 2024- I talk to other people, male and female, in my age range and most of us say and I agree that we were born just at the right time. I was born in 1932 on a bitterly cold December day in 1932. Heat was from wood stoves made of cast iron in most every room in the old non-insulated farm house, known as the White place where I was born. Dr Prior did the delivery at our home. I was the 10th sibling, 5 male 4 female of the Sterling and Mable Morton Burkett family. I was the baby so therefore the last of the litter, you might say. I never knew neither my maternal or paternal grandparents.

Being born in that year and the world wide depression was in its third year. My first recollection of life was Christmas of 1936. It was after dark and the room was lighted by an aladdin lamp. Those were very fragile I remember because you had to be careful lighting them. Their was a mantel made with cloth and salts, which at the first lighting the coating was burned away. The average farm place didn’t have one, so we at the Burkett home was special you might say.

It was near the lowest point of the great depression in the United States. It was worldwide, so as the old saying goes, “misery loves company”. People starved and many were homeless. The depression brought massive unemployment and poverty. Being the baby and on into the late 30s and my brother Hulen and sister Ruth being infants was unaware of hard times. My dad farmed and did anything that made a buck. He told me one of the best jobs he had monetarily, was butchering and cleaning turkeys.

He slaughtered, plucked and sent them onto others for market preparation. He was very adept at that, and the pay was on each turkey he sent up the line. He told me the secret to removing the feathers speedily was in this manner of slaughtering the turkey. He would take an ice pick and insert it into the middle of the eye. When the tip enters the brain, they die instantly, then the feathers are more easily removed. If you chop the head off the feathers set and are hard to remove.

It sounds inhumane, which it was, but you can’t prepare a turkey for the table until it is dead and plucked. FDR helped the unemployment with different projects. FDR brought WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps in which two of my older brothers became a part of. They were paid a minimal amount and then there was several dollars that went to my parents. Two other brothers had jobs. One worked on the river and another was a hotel clerk at the Warwick Village, near the edge of Jefferson City.

Then WWII came along and full employment began in the defense industry and other constructions for defense. Such as highways in particular, the AL-CAN highway where my dad at 52 worked from 1942 into September 1945. Ammunition plants, tank, airplane, guns of all kinds and etc. WWII was a war we won. Unlike these other political wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Mideast were mainly to keep our economy strong.
Also strangely, to protect their borders. Oddly we spent trillions on those countries to protect their borders but couldn’t find 25 billion to build a southern border wall to protect our border. Now the Mideast is on fire and perhaps will spread. Hopefully not, but those in our era will be gone by then.

With my dad’s earnings in the war effort and my brother as a KIA, morbid as it sounds, provided funds for a farm two and half mile S/E of Ashland in 1946.