GOOD OLD DAYS:

Barton Beek remembers burning scrap lumber his family found lying around in an oil drum to keep warm and save money during the Great Depression.

Beek, when he was 14, worked occasionally cleaning small boats in Newport Harbor for $25 a piece.

“Having a job meant you were well off … you could live well,” the 84-year-old Newport Beach man said.

Times were hard back then, but Beek’s family was able to get by because they were frugal, he said.

“We didn’t have very much money but we got along … but the Newport Beach area, even back then, was much more opulent than Corona and Ontario,” he said.

With the latest numbers from the U.S. Labor Department showing the highest unemployment rate nationwide in 14 years, many are concerned another Great Depression is looming on the horizon. But local seniors say things aren’t that bad yet.

Costa Mesa resident Spark McCullen, 87, said that although his son has been out of work for a year, which he sees as a sign of the times, today’s economic climate does not compare to life during the Great Depression.

As a boy growing up in Costa Mesa, McCullen said, he was shielded from the worst of the economic turmoil of the 1930s.

McCullen did not know what was going on; he just thought it was a normal way of life. His family always had food on the table, he said.

“We could grow our own food,” McCullen said. “We raised chickens, cows and beans, beets and lemons … the cows gave enough milk that we could feed the neighbors. Of course, when the milk came out it was mostly cream.”

McCullen remembers going to the Grand Central Market in Santa Ana because there were no supermarkets in Costa Mesa at the time. $10 would feed McCullen’s family of six for a week, he said.

While visiting near Seal Beach, McCullen remembers, he saw a family fishing for their food.

“This person was fishing through a hole in the dock, and they’d chew on the bait for nourishment, and then continue using it, I’ll never forget that.”