My grandfather, Woody Rehm, 88, grew up the sixth of seven children during the Great Depression. Like most families during that time, they were poor. The Rehms moved often, all over town and sometimes just down the street, looking for cheaper rent.

Work was scarce. Woody’s father, William, was a painter and his mother, Agnes, stayed at home.

Since there was little money, everyone had to pitch in to make ends meet. Oldest sister Gladys worked at a purse factory. At one point during Woody’s childhood, his brother Bill joined the army and brother Joe the Civilian Conservation Corps, where part of his pay was sent home to mom and dad.

Woody’s parents, needing money, would have the children go out and pick violets or wildflowers, make bouquets and sell them door-to-door. Woody’s older siblings were doing this even before he was born.

As the story goes, his older sister, Betty, once found some beautiful flowers poking through a fence behind a house on Delaware Avenue. She picked them, made a bouquet, and then proceeded to the front door where she sold them to the owner.

Woody remembers collecting flowers from a scrap heap behind Sawyer and Johnson, the florists on West Laurel Street. What they threw out could be taken and sold to help the family.

“You didn’t have to have a peddler’s license or anything like that in Bethlehem at that time,” Woody says. “If you did, we were illegal, but I don’t think so.”

In the summer, Woody would get up early in the morning and walk with his father from their house on Goepp Street all the way out behind St. Luke’s Hospital. There were a number of fields along the Lehigh River where wild strawberries and raspberries grew. There were even crabapple trees, all of which they could pick for free.

Sometimes the owner of an A&P store on Main Street would see the Rehms heading out with their empty baskets and wagon, and would ask what they were picking that day.

“He would buy them from us. And we’d go and make sure we had them full.”

Woody and his father also picked dandelion greens together for salad in the fields where Martin Tower would one day be built.

Not far away was their family’s Depression Garden, a large plot behind Kurtz Brothers Furniture Factory. Under Mayor Pfeifle, empty lots all throughout the city were partitioned off for families and seed was provided. During the evenings these spots were a hub of activity, as people tended to their gardens.

As the summer came to an end in August and September, it was time for the Rehm family to harvest what they had planted. They now found themselves with an abundance of fresh vegetables: tomatoes, potatoes, string beans…the list goes on. Much of the produce was enjoyed at meals, some of it was canned by Woody’s mother, and the rest was sold door-to-door to bring in extra money.

“My brother Bob and I would put stuff on a wagon and go up and down the street and sell it like a vendor,” Woody explains. “And we never thought anything about that, being embarrassed by anybody, because other people did it, too.”

With autumn approaching, black walnuts began falling from trees all along the Monocacy Creek. Members of the family would go down and gather them, bringing them home to de-hull and clean. Gloves had to be worn unless you wanted your hands stained like iodine. The nuts would then be placed in the attic to dry.

“So come around Christmas time, my mom would make stuff with the walnuts,” recalls Woody. “Cookies, cakes, stuff like that. Those we did not sell. Those were for us.”

Despite the joyous moments of the holidays, the Depression was still a harsh reality. The family needed money.

Each December, Woody’s dad and older brothers would travel up to the Poconos and bring home bags filled with evergreen branches. For the next few weeks, his parents would sit and shape the evergreen into Christmas wreaths – two different sizes. It was Woody and his older brother Bob’s job to take a couple wreaths as examples and go door-to-door taking orders.

When Christmas was just around the corner, it was time to deliver the wreaths and collect the money. The brothers loaded up two bamboo poles with wreaths, placed the poles on their shoulders and walked up and down the streets in the cold. It was hard work, especially for children.

“I guess we were told we had to do it because we needed the money. A lot of people were doing stuff like that, it was not just us.”

If the family was short of cash during the winter, Woody and his siblings would be sent out with the wagon, selling canned vegetables and fruit. A regular occupation in Bethlehem during those years was to gather coal along the railroad tracks that rattled off the cars as they made their way to the King Coal Company down by the Hill-To-Hill Bridge.

Woody’s mom would send him and his sister, Mae, down to the tracks with a small peach basket to fill up for the furnace. Railroad employees usually allowed this, but occasionally there would be a gruff worker who scared the gleaners away. One time Woody and Mae were approached when they were looking for coal.

“We thought, ‘Uh oh, we’re in trouble,’” Woody recalls. “‘What are you doing, kids?’ ‘We’re picking up coal so we can take some home and have heat in our house.’ ‘Oh, come along with me.’ He had a pile of stuff. I guess they were picking it up. He filled up our basket and said, ‘If you come back in another half an hour, I’ll give you another basket full.’”

That moment of empathy sticks out in Woody’s memory. Everyone was going through the same thing during the Great Depression, even if they had a job. It took a lot of hard work and effort just to survive.

“It was pretty rough growing up,” Woody says, “but I made it.”

Please share your comments and memories by writing to me at bethlehemhistory@gmail.com.