Historian Henry F. May

From the early thirties on, the good times became fewer, the grimness and sadness more pervasive. Part of this, I well knew, was worry about money. Once my father, who usually dressed well, bought a badly made cheap suit that made him look foolish. For a while the house was for sale, and I was deeply troubled to see a For Sale sign on the lawn near the pepper tree. It didn't sell, and eventually the sign was taken down. We resigned from the country club and the tennis club. We got rid of the car, which had never been very important in our lives. In the thirties our standard of living was an odd one a house full of elaborate furniture in a good neighborhood, an old maid who could not be fired, and no car. Only the level of the family meals was never cut I don't think my mother really knew that there were any alternatives to the round of steaks and roasts. And behind everything, damping every family occasion, lurked the question, What would happen when all the money was gone? We were living, I later learned, on what remained of my father's investments. Even before the crash of '29, some of them were turning out badly.

Source: Henry F. May, Coming to Terms, 225