When life was simple: Fitzgerald recalls pony carts and hand-me-downs

(Sentinel photo by Amy Erickson) Mary Jo Fitzgerald, 89, who grew up in the 1920s and 30s remembers the days cream and eggs from the farm bought groceries during the Great Depression. [Click to enlarge]

Was life simpler when $1 bought four gallons of gas or during the Great Depression when it cost less to use corn as fuel than sell it or when children played baseball instead of computer games?

Mary Jo Fitzgerald, who was born in 1920, thinks so.

(Photo contributed) In 1939, Fitzgerald, stepping on the car, took a trip to see her aunt and uncle in Springfield, Mass. with friends. [Click to enlarge]

"We would play lots of hide-and-go-seek," the 89-year-old Le Mars woman said. "We would hide in the Evergreen trees on the edge of our property."

And it didn't cost any money -- unlike the Nintendo Wii, Fitzgerald said.

"I'm sure we had just as much fun as they have today," she said.

Fitzgerald and her older brother and two younger sisters also made up their own games.

Like putting string over stakes to make individual rooms to "play house in."

"There wasn't Little League or any of that," Fitzgerald said. "There was no planned things."

She doesn't see the reason for people's craze over the interactive, battery operated Zhu Zhu Pet Hamsters -- the No. 1 toy this Christmas season.

"It's a hamster on wheels," Fitzgerald said. "I don't understand what fun watching some toy run around would be."

In addition to simple entertainment, Fitzgerald also grew up in a time without many of conveniences that are taken for granted today, like school busses.

Fitzgerald lived on family farms near Manson and Clare, Iowa growing up.

In 1925, she remembers riding on her pony or in a small cart pulled by her pony with her older brother to country school, where eight grades were in the same school house.

"In the winter months dad hitched the horses to the sleigh and we went to school," Fitzgerald said. "When we got to school, we would send the horses back home because it was too cold for them to stand outside."

The horses knew their way back without having anyone to guide them, Fitzgerald said.

In the 1930s she attended a more modern middle and high school -- but she still had to find her own way there, Fitzgerald said.

"I rode with a classmate who had a car and she would pick up probably three other girls," Fitzgerald said.

Even though she grew up during the Great Depression when there wasn't much money to spare, Fitzgerald said she always had enough to eat and clothes to wear.

"I had an aunt who was a wonderful seamstress. She made clothes for her children and then passed them down to me," Fitzgerald said. "I was just pleased to get some hand-me-downs."

She wonders if today's kids would have the same appreciation.

"Infants do, but when they get older they will rebel and want the new stuff," Fitzgerald said.

Although people today might consider what she dealt with throughout the years a hardship -- Fitzgerald doesn't.

"When you compare it to the lives people live today, it was almost better," Fitzgerald said. "It was just easier."

For example, she and her late husband Vince, married in 1942, didn't face the huge financial burdens couples today have.

"When we were newlyweds, we bought what we could afford," Fitzgerald said. "So many people are in trouble financially because they think they have to have everything. They just put it on a credit card."

Fitzgerald, who has 22 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren, said it was also an easier time when she and Vince, who died in 1991, raised their nine children.

"When I sent my children out the door, they might go into a vacant lot and have a softball game," Fitzgerald said. "It just seemed like, in a simple way, we just had a good time and did the best with what we had."