Millie Yost
Interviewee: Millie Yost
Interviewer: Cory Rogowski
Date of Interview: 10 April 2002
Length of Interview: 45 minutes
Millie Yost was born in 1929 and grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. In this interview, she describes what her life was like during the 1930s and 40s. Because her family lived on a farm, they always had enough food, but money was different. She tells of the largest purchase she can remember her father making—a milking machine—and says when he left town with it he only had a nickel left in his pocket. The farm had no electricity, so her father had to rig a tractor engine into a generator for the machine. This ingenuity also allowed her father to turn a sandy, useless piece of land into a thriving potato field. Ms. Yost’s family did not have plumbing or electricity until 1945, after the war. Though they had enough food, they did not waste and Ms. Yost tells of re-baked bread and other ways of making things last as long as they could. She and her cousins would walk a mile and a half to school every day, but when it snowed her father would take them in the sleigh which was pulled by horses. She tells of playing cards and listening to the radio for fun. When attending a birthday party at the age of eleven, the birthday girl’s father notified everyone that the U.S. troops in Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan. During World War II, the rationing affected the family; she talks about her mother trading coffee ration coupons for sugar rations because she liked to bake. Several of Ms. Yost’s family members served in the war, but she says that they rarely talked about their time in the service. One of her aunts was an Army nurse that flew over Hiroshima after the atomic bombing and witnessed the destruction it caused. This aunt later had a nervous breakdown and suffered from flashbacks of burn victims. At the end of the interview, Ms. Yost discusses war in general terms with her grandson, the interviewer. This interview is very interesting and gives a very candid account of life in the North-Midwest during the Depression and World War II.