Roomin' House Blues

Years ago, at the top of the 1960's and the bottom of the 1970's, when I was living in Santa Cruz, California, there was there an organization called a food conspiracy.  There wasn't really much to this food conspiracy.  It was the shadow side of small neighborhood food co-ops that ran out of people's garages,  churches, etc.  Under this style food co-op, buying clubs, someone would get a order list from each member in the neighborhood, based on what was available to buy in bulk, and money from each member.  Then they would meet together to fill the orders.  On the shadow side, some of the Peace and Freedom Party types would let people know about places they could get free food. The big suppliers of free food for the food conspiracy were the huge piles of brusell sprouts piled up between the beaches and the growers fields along the north Santa Cruz County coasts.  Really I don't think anything illegal was really going on; the growers d...

I wrote about Betty in the early post Green Bullets, which I will link to below.  In light of the unemployment today I wanted to add a little more about Betty's experiences in the depression.  Right now we have over 9% unemployment in this state but notices are being given to people on extended unemployment benefits that those are being phased out.  My own experience is that I am getting no work even from applying for one day jobs on top of my applications for permanent work. Betty told me about being a child in Santa Clara during the depression.  Her Father was a union carpenter who worked steadily out of the union hall until the depression hit. Suddenly there was no work, and no money in the house.  Everyday he would go out to the union hall, or elsewhere to look for work, and everyday he came back with no work and no money.  this situation lasted until Roosevelt's New Deal reforms started creating more construction opportunities in ...