The Great Depression; Interview with Sally Booth. Part 1; Interview with Chris Alston.

JON ELSE:

And say these words for me [inaudible]

I know, we're going to keep rolling. I just need you to say, \"And I was only six years old.\"

SALLY BOOTH:

Oh, and I was, I was only six years old then.

JON ELSE:

Great. Let's cut for a moment.

JON ELSE:

OK. You can do it fine without any prompting. Oh, try and don't look up quite so much.

SALLY BOOTH:

Oh. That's where my end... I, I'm, I think—

JON ELSE:

OK. Fairy tales.

SALLY BOOTH:

Fairy tales, yes. I think the reason that I, that I felt the marchers were so brave was because I was very involved with fairy tales as a child. And they seemed, from what I, from what I picked up from, from Mother's talking, they seemed to be doing something that, that was brave, because they were so powerless. They had no, they were losing, they were in risk of losing everything, just like the people in the fairy stories. And they were going out and doing it anyhow. And I had this sense that they were wonderful, brave people. And I think I also thought of them in terms of the people who came to the door, who seemed to me very powerless. And I thought they must be the same people. And they were, they were to be, they were to, to be, what... I've lost the word. What do I want? Yeah.

JON ELSE:

You did fine, that's no, no. Let's—that's great, that's extraordinary. Let's, do you want to just cut for a second and give your mag a whack there? Is that—

JON ELSE:

Try again.

JON ELSE:

Try again. OK.

SALLY BOOTH:

Where do you want me to start with it?

JON ELSE:

Why don't you start with just that you had heard about this thing that happened, \"I heard that...

SALLY BOOTH:

Do I call it the Hunger March, because I wouldn't have known that it was.

JON ELSE:

No, don't call it the Hunger March, just...you can start right where you did [inaudible]

SALLY BOOTH:

With the—

JON ELSE:

Wherever you started last time was great, and I can't remember.

SALLY BOOTH:

I can't remember where it was either. It was the people, the—

JON ELSE:

\"I thought of them as...\"

SALLY BOOTH:

No, I don't know what I thought of them.

JON ELSE:

A little kid—

SALLY BOOTH:

What, I was seven or eight [laughs].

JON ELSE:

You're doing fine.

JON ELSE:

OK.

SALLY BOOTH:

They—I thought of them as, as reminding me of the people in fairy tales, who, who had nothing and had, who did something incredibly brave in order to, what, win the kingdom or whatever. They seemed to me very much the same as the people who came to the door asking for food or selling things when I was, and I would give them, as a five or six or eight year old child, I'd give them food or I'd, I'd see them selling shoelaces. They seemed brave and wonderful because they were so powerless, just like the people in fairy tales [laughs]. Any more?

JON ELSE:

Fantastic. Yes! Well let's not stop now. We're doing great!

SALLY BOOTH:

[laughs]

JON ELSE:

I have, I'm going to, that's great. If we've got that—

SALLY BOOTH:

Is that enough?

JON ELSE:

I'm going to jump to a couple of other unrelated questions. I didn't ask you this before. Do you have memory of Franklin Roosevelt's election or inauguration? Did that mean anything to you?

SALLY BOOTH:

Yes. Yes. Because [laughs]

JON ELSE:

Remember the audience will not hear my voice.

SALLY BOOTH:

I remember Franklin Roosevelt as being also larger than life in our family because my mother was very pro-Roosevelt and my father was very much against him. So we had wonderful dinner table conversations, some of which were frightening to me because they were so full of emotion. But this was a man who, because I think I identified more with my mother, who I thought of as a real savior, who was going to take care of all these people, who, who I felt so sorry for, because they were, they were the, they were the, the, the powerless and the people that were left out and the, the, the lost children. I mean, I was fairly, fairly dramatic when I was six and seven and eight and... but Franklin Roosevelt was going to take care of them. He was going to be, he was going to make everything be all right. He was going to comfort them and feed them and give them, give them houses and, and it was going to be all right. Because it was a scary time then, for lots of reasons. Childhood is scary, and when you're growing up in the middle of, of anxiety with... the adults were anxious, and you didn't really know why. And it was a scary time.

JON ELSE:

Very well said. Very well said. It's a great leap of, of thought. In your family, did people listen to... I'm talking about Joe Louis, just briefly, a couple sentences. Did Joe Louis, did people listen to Joe Louis's fights?

SALLY BOOTH:

People listened to Joe Louis's fights on the radio. Of course, we never saw him, but we listened to him on the radio, and were aware of course because he was black. This was one of the first people who were black, who, who did something that exciting. And I think that the, but the main reason that we thought he was, that we listened to him was that he was wonderful. It wasn't because he was black, and it wasn't even because he was a fighter. But he was another, he was, he was a hero larger than life just like Roosevelt and just like, just like, you know, the president, and just like movie stars. We didn't have all that many people like that and Joe Louis was wonderful, and he was ours, and he was Detroit's [laughs].

JON ELSE:

That's great, great [laughs]. [inaudible] owes me a beer.

SALLY BOOTH:

What's this?

JON ELSE:

This is for another film in the series, that another director is doing.

SALLY BOOTH:

Oh. [laughs]

JON ELSE:

And he asked me to ask all of our people about seeing Joe Louis. Oh, that's great.

JON ELSE:

I think this is my last question. You said that your mom brought home songs in the Great Depression. Was she a singer? Do you remember songs?

SALLY BOOTH:

I'm not a singer, but I remember, I remember the songs that she brought home and we played on the record player, on the Victrola. They were, they were union songs. They were songs from...help me with his name.

JON ELSE:

Woody Guthrie.

SALLY BOOTH:

Woody Guthrie, and, and, oh, and they were Woody Guthrie and they were the ones about the, \"The union maid who never was afraid/of goons and ginks and company finks/and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.\" And, we just played... they were wonderful songs to sing, and they were... they, I think, also reinforced my feeling that these, that these men that were doing whatever the scary things like the marching, and the being on the bridge, and all the things that, that I vaguely heard about...I thought of them as, as brave, exciting men who were doing something good for all of us. I don't know why, but they were, you know, they were out there challenging the king! Maybe, [laughs], just like in the fairy tales.

JON ELSE:

Great. You can cut [laughs]. Did somebody give you a script?

SALLY BOOTH:

[laughs]

JON ELSE:

You can simply tell us that.

SALLY BOOTH:

I know that the, that was a terribly desperate, worrying time for everybody, and I think the only thing I remember ever worrying about was my parents worrying about money. They talked about it when I was in bed and they would, they would be, you know, loud, upsetting discussions. And that scared me. But I never was worried that anything would happen to us as a family. That, that I knew we'd be all right because it didn't occur to me that we wouldn't. They were strong people and they, whatever they were concerned about, they, I never felt that anything would hurt me.

JON ELSE:

OK. Great. And cut.

[End of Booth interview; beginning of Alston interview]

JON ELSE:

Tell me about the neighborhood where you grew up in Detroit.

CHRIS ALSTON:

I grew up in what was called the Little Balkans. The Little Balkans was composed of Poles, blacks

JON ELSE:

Do you remember the neighbors that you had there?

CHRIS ALSTON:

Sure. They were Polish, they were blacks, they were Romanians, they were Czechoslovakians. They were a melting pot, so to speak. That's because the people who were coming in from Europe and the people who were coming in from the south all settled there. And there was a settlement of languages, a settlement of cultures, a settlement of languages, and none of them were cemented.

JON ELSE:

I understand what you mean.

CHRIS ALSTON:

So we sort of all were new, as it were, and we and we...everybody contributed to each other's...each other's...each other's getting along. There was no animosity because everybody was new to everybody else. For example, Polish people brought their kielbasa--

[Video cuts out. No visuals for the rest of the interview. Audio only.]

JON ELSE:

We can pick up where we left off. You were starting to talk about the food that people had. Tell me about that.

CHRIS ALSTON:

The Polish people brought their kielbasa and pierogi, and the Hungarian people brought their goulash, and the

JON ELSE:

Were there Russian people there?

CHRIS ALSTON:

Yeah, and they brought their...As a matter of fact, there was a Russian restaurant, and they brought their food there.

JON ELSE:

Were...in those early days, they, we're talking about the late 1920s. Do you want to tell me about when you went to work at Ford? Do you want to talk about that?

CHRIS ALSTON:

Yeah.

JON ELSE:

OK.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

I'm going to roll here. Go.

JON ELSE:

OK, so tell me about when you first went to work at Ford.

CHRIS ALSTON:

Those were the early days, and we...everybody, everybody took his own--