50 Plus: In difficult times, couple learned important lessons

Editor's Note: This story is one of four in our latest 50 Plus series, highlighting people 50 years of age or older. This set's theme is people remembering the Great Depression.

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Just a couple of kids during the time of the Great Depression, Ray and Bea Hudson look back on their respective childhoods and see not just hardships but learning experiences.

“Back in the good old days,” Bea Hudson said, “you had what you had. You did not want anything else.”

Her husband tempered that with a bit of a sobering outlook.

“In the good old days, you didn’t have anything to start with,” he said.

Ray Hudson was born in Lynchburg in 1930 and lived awhile with his grandparents on Fort Avenue, across from what is now City Stadium.

Bea Hudson, born four years later, lived in a house on Federal Street with her parents and grandparents.

Gas prices weren’t a concern for a family with no car.

“We never had a car. We had to walk everywhere,” she said.

But when streetcars turned into buses, the price hike caused some strong reactions, Ray Hudson recalled.

“It was a nickel to ride the street car,” he said.

“When buses came into existence, they went up to seven cents and people just raised Cain. Two cents.”

Neither went to the movies often.

“Back then, if you went to a movie, it was around a dime, I think,” Bea Hudson said. “But you didn’t have a dime then.”

Her husband would take advantage of the milk company’s promotions, substituting three milk caps for a dime at the theater, but he had one problem.

“We couldn’t afford the milk to do it,” he said.

Fortunately for him, a neighbor up the street would often give him the three milk caps he needed.

“Times were tough,” he said. “I mean, they were tough.”

He said reality hit him harder when he moved back to his parents’ house after having lived with his grandparents.

“I can remember my mother working in garment factories for five and seven dollars a week,” he said.

“I can remember (my father) making twelve dollars a week.”

Bea Hudson said she didn’t know much about her family’s financial situation at the time.

“I know mom and daddy must have had it very hard, but you know, I never heard them complain,” she said.

She knew one thing, though — her mother was a hard worker who did her best for her five children.

“She cooked three hot meals a day, homemade biscuits and all that good stuff,” she said.

“We all came to the table and we ate together,” she added. “And that is what so many families today are missing.”

Ray Hudson said he and his brothers would often have to hunt for the next meal.

“We would actually hunt for rabbits and stuff like that,” he said. “That was meat on the table.”

When his family moved to Norfolk, as the United States entered World War II, he quit school at the age of 12 in order to work at a grocery store. He later joined the Navy.

Despite the hard circumstances they endured, the Hudsons said they feel better prepared to deal with a possible economic meltdown in the near future.

“I think we know what hard time are,” Bea Hudson said. “We know the things we can do, and it wouldn’t bother us as bad as it would other people.”

“I have seen the time where you had one pair of shoes, and if a hole wore out in that you would add a piece of cardboard to it and keep on going,” her husband said.

Bea Hudson said she fears that if an economic crisis were to happen, many today, especially children, will be hit harder than those who have lived through hard times.

“I think about that time, and I think about this time,” she said. “I think the young people now are going to have it so hard, because they’re used to their parents just giving it to them — everything they want.”

She said she and her husband are able to see their past in a positive light because of their faith.

“God has blessed us so much,” she said, “and he’s still doing it.”