I figure I would post something a little different, I post Saginaw history articles that I research, but instead I thought I would post one of my grandfather’s stories,

My wife had an assignment for her college history class to go out and talk to someone who lived thru the great depression, so we went to see my grandparents. My grandfather was born in 1910 at St Luke’s in Saginaw, and lived in Saginaw his whole life. As he puts it during the depression “ nobody had anything” and back in those day they used coal to heat their family’s house. He told me that grandmother’s brothers( my grandmother’s family lived nearby and my grandfather grew up with my great uncles) and himself would walk along the railroad tracks and pick up coal that had fallen off the train for heat during the dead of winter. A that point my grandmother told my grandpa “ Henry, you need to tell them the whole story “ my grandfather laughed, and he said, he or one of my great uncles would climb up into one of the coal cars and throw the coal out of the railroad car as the trains went thru Saginaw. As he said “nobody had anything” and most everyone was doing it just to stay warm, and then he laughed and said, “ by the time that train got to Flint it had to be half empty.”

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