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Some news reports even speak in terms of that era, which started with the market's crash in 1929 and consumed the 1930s.

Whether or not those comparisons are fair, it is interesting to hear recollections from those days.

Lauderdale County resident Granville Faires recalls long hours of working on his family's farm on days that sometimes were rewarded with meals of opossum.

"A lot of people would say, 'I wouldn't do what you did,' but yes, you would, too," the 73-year-old Faires said. "We'd eat opossum, and didn't waste anything. Back then, you did what you had to do."

Florence resident Milton Horton, 74, recalls hard times growing up in a rural area between Town Creek and Leighton.

"Nine of us were in a house that had one room and a kitchen," Horton said.

During cold nights, Horton piled up with family members in one of the two beds at the home. They weren't exactly comfortable beds, either. They were stuffed with corn shucks.

So, when it was warm enough, Horton slept on the floor, which had its own consequences. "Rats would come along at night and eat at the tip ends of your fingers."

Sheffield resident and local historian Richard Sheridan was born in 1929 and recalls his father accepting any work he could find.

"My family was poor, and my father picked up as many odd jobs as he could," Sheridan said. "He would be lucky to get 50 cents a day sometimes when he could find anything to do.

"He was a pretty handy fellow with tools, and could repair things and do any kind of work like that."

Old films of the Depression era often include scenes of people standing in long lines for soup. Sheridan's research has never found references to soup kitchens locally.

"But the government did have some surplus commodities so the poorest could get some food," he said. He said those days taught him to appreciate what he did have.

"You had to save and use everything as long as possible," Sheridan said. "My mother would mend clothes and nothing was wasted.

"Father hunted a good bit for small game like squirrels and rabbits. It was pretty good when you don't have much else to choose from."

Faires said you learned to live off the land.

"You grew corn, cotton, and hay and had a garden," he said. "Cotton was our chief cash crop, and we saved the seed to feed our cows."

The cows produced valuable milk for Faires and his 11 siblings. When hogs on the farm were old enough, they were slaughtered and preserved so their meat would last months. It was important to keep the family's mules well fed, so they could help with the back-breaking job of plowing.

With no electricity, there was no refrigeration available. "You'd drink night milk from the cow the next morning, and that morning's milk that night," Faires said. "We kept a bottle in the cold springs."

His father would go to town and sell hog meat for 4 cents a pound. Seeing any money was a rarity.

"You didn't operate with money back then," Faires said. "If someone helped you slaughter a hog, he got some of the meat. If someone helped you make molasses, you didn't give him money, because you didn't have it. Plus, that person needed the molasses for food."

Despite those times, he says, "We never did know we were poor."

"Our daddy and mother were good managers of our farm, and we had to stay on our toes to have good food," Faires said. "You can't run a farm like that without a bunch of kids who are disciplined. Mom and Dad would tell us one time how to do something, and we would not ask why. We'd go out and do it."

He spent countless hours chopping wood. Fires from the wood were needed for warmth, cooking and making molasses.

"We cut all of it with a crosscut saw and ax, and we'd drag it to the house."

Faires would like to see a Depression-era farm run as an educational or tourist attraction in the Shoals so youth could learn how Americans coped in those days.

"It's something that doesn't need to be lost. We all had ways of helping each other."

Horton recalls lugging water a half-mile to his house from the nearest creek.

"When we got ready to pick cotton, we couldn't go to school because we had to be out there, picking," he said. "If we had no wood for a fire, we'd have to cut some and pull it a half mile to our house."

When Horton could go to school, his mother would wash his one pair of pants every day. He also owned one pair of shoes.

But much of his time was spent in the cotton fields, where he'd earn $1.50 a day from the owners of the land. Horton, who is black, said he worked side by side with some whites who earned $2 per day during the era where segregation and racial inequality were the norm.

"I tell you, it was rough during that time," he said. "I hope and pray that nobody will have to go through the things I went through."