Meditations
from Florida
The Thirties
Going, going... almost gone (IV)
The Twentieth Century:
wmm
There was a world
wide economic crisis
that turned into a
fullblown depression.
Malaise it was called
in the Netherlands
East-Indies, where
the export of coffee,
sugar, tobacco, rubber and
other products slowed down
to a trickle. The good times
were over. Many people from
different walks of life lost
their jobs, and no longer did
anybody light up a cigar with
a banknote.
The Great Depression, as it came to be
called, also resulted in a very high
unemployment rate in the U.S.
It meant less pay for those who still
had a job and no pay at all for the rest
that didn't have one,
People tried to make ends meet by sel
ling apples and pencils. Many stood in
long lines just to get a meal distributed
at soup kitchens. President Roosevelt
tried to fight the hard times with a
program he called
The New Deal,
consisting of gover
nment-sponsored
projects that created
jobs.
Monopoly
In 1933, Charles
Darrow of German-
town, Pennsylvania, an engineer who
was out of a job, invented a board
game that was destined to become the
most popular board game in
the world. Years before, a
game very much like it had
been popular, but it was
Darrow who refined it and
received a patent for it.
Darrow, the 'inventor' of
Monopoly became a rnulti- JS
millionaire.
Perhaps people loved to
play Monopoly because it
made them feel rich and prospe
rous to own houses, hotels, railroad-
stations and utilities and they enthu
siastically bought, sold, and went
bankrupt wherever Monopoly was
played. Everyone tried to get the most
expensive neighborhood on the board
which, for the American game, was the
Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In England it was Mayfair, in Holland
the Kalverstraat, in France the Rue de
la Paix, in Germany the Schlossallee,
in Spain the Paseo del Prado.
You could be a tycoon if you had a
hotel there and whoever had the mis
fortune to have to stay in these expen
sive neighborhoods often would not
have the 2000 or its equivalent to
pay for it. For a few hours reality was
forgotten.
We used to play Monopoly for hours in
the evening during the Japanese occu
pation. And behind locked doors and
darkened windows we, too, becaume
owners of real estate, buying, selling,
getting rich, or going broke. Darrow
had no idea how we enjoyed playing
his game. Today many computers
come packaged with the game of
Monopoly!
Gone with the wind
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Georgia, Mar
garet Mitchell had finished a book
about the Civil War. That had been
fought barely seventy years before and
Margaret knew a few people who had
been through it. She was fascinated by
it and its aftermath, the so-called
- Reconstruction, life
in the cotton-gro
wing South without
slaves.
It was 1936, and it
was the only novel
she would ever write.
It became a world
wide bestseller. Just
about everybody is
familair with Gone
with the Wind, which, in 1939, was
made into one of the most successful
movies ever. I don't think that anyone
can ever take the place of Vivien Leigh
as Scarlet or Clark Gable as Rhett.
The book is still being sold and the
movie is still being shown, they have
become classics.
Margaret Mitchell was killed a few
years after her huge success. She was
hit by a car while trying to cross the
street. And to this day we are left in
suspence and wonder how Scarlet, and
if Scarlet, will ever get Rhett back who
Tekst: Juul Lentze
