Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
as played and sung by Patricia Cummings
Butterfly quilts and coverlets were popular during the Great Depression, lifting spirits in bad economic times. This is a coverlet collected in Vermont, and set up in our garden for this photo by James Cummings
The first time I ever visited the Wright Museum in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, a homefront museum for World War II artifacts, I heard this familiar song playing. The song speaks to being poor, very poor, perhaps homeless. Remembrances of tales about the 1929 stock market crash on Wall Street flood from memory's recesses, and thoughts of the ensuing Great Depression of the 1930s rise to the forefront of awareness.
A dime at that time could probably have purchased a cup of coffee, and certainly a phone call. This is a folk song that I have heard since I was a teenager in the 1960s, yet it still strikes me as a poignant one, right along with another folk song about hard times: "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out."
Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, NH. pat@quiltersmuse.com