I Didn't Know That

I Didn’t Know That

There’s an old joke cred­ited to econ­o­mists about reces­sions vs. depressions.

You’ve prob­a­bly heard it: a reces­sion is when your neigh­bor loses his job. A depres­sion is when you lose yours. (OK. So they’re econ­o­mists. Nobody expects them to be too funny.)

But all kid­ding aside, we’re hard pressed to watch a sin­gle news­cast these days with­out the depress­ing reports of ris­ing unem­ploy­ment and all things “eco­nomic downturn.”

It doesn’t take the media to tell you this; (though some might argue the media isn’t help­ing mat­ters.) You can just look around. Seems every­one knows some­one who is scram­bling for work, scram­bling to sal­vage a mort­gage, or scram­bling to avoid the dreaded pink slip, (that is, pro­vided it’s not you, your­self, that’s doing the scrambling).

This week I’ve heard from friends for­ward­ing resumes. I’ve heard from col­leagues look­ing to change careers entirely. Some of us are start­ing brand new busi­nesses. Oth­ers are just try­ing to stay afloat. Bot­tom line: when times get tough, any­thing up for grabs is fair game.

Curi­ously, the phrase up for grabs was born under sim­i­lar eco­nomic con­di­tions. The expres­sion is a prod­uct of the Great Depression

For those whose grandmother’s saved twine back in the 1930s, you too, have prob­a­bly heard tales of how peo­ple pulled together. Indi­vid­u­als, as well as busi­nesses did all they could to sur­vive. Small town din­ers and cafe­te­rias learned to sal­vage every scrap of food, as any and all excess could be someone’s only meal. Soon, restau­rant own­ers began bag­ging their left­overs for beg­gars and those hard­est hit. It became cus­tom­ary for these bags to be set at the end of the lunch counter, avail­able to any­one who might be in need. From this char­i­ta­ble cus­tom, up for grabs was born, from a hand­out, set up on the counter for the needy to grab.

Karlen Evins is the author of South­ern to the Core: An Evins Fam­ily Cook­book and the “I Didn’t Know That” series of books and columns. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.karlenevins.com

Posted by Staff Reports on Nov 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.