Did they tell you some rural people during the depression era lived in caves and ate possum, because they had no jobs to earn that money your parents and grandparents so frugally saved?
My grandparents were small-time ranchers who were only marginally middle class and did not have electricity until I was 5. During the depression Texas was still mostly rural-I wish it would have stayed that way. And in the rural areas here deer, squirrel and possum have always been eaten-some of the people who live in this rural community still consider squirrel and possum something good to eat (no, I'm not one of them). No one in my family is wealthy, nor have they ever been.
When we didn't have no crawdad we ate dirt.