For some, the Great Depression seems like yesterday

— -- Willie Lee Harris was just a little girl when the Depression hit her town of Yazoo City, Miss., in the 1930s.

If not for their farm, her family would have had little to eat.

In the midst of one of the worst economic crises since the Depression, Harris finds herself in a similar predicament. The retired nurse's aide has turned to public assistance to buy food and heat her house.

"It's all about survival," says Harris, 78, now living in Detroit.

Joe Clark, of Asheville, N.C., a first-grader in 1932, remembers many a meal of just beans and potatoes back then. He says he doesn't think today's turmoil is "anything comparable at this point to what happened in 1929."

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lingered until about 1939. For Americans who lived through those times, the current economic crisis recalls memories of consumer panic, bread lines, banks going belly up and record unemployment.

Gertrude Leck, 91, of Chadds Ford, Pa., remembers hearing radio reports of men jumping from buildings because they had lost everything in the stock market crash. Her experience then taught her to "make the best of what you have," she says. The Depression was a watershed moment that shaped how people earned and saved money, always aware that it could happen again.

'I was a drifter'

Ernest Popyk of Detroit learned the lessons of the Depression well.

A Ukrainian immigrant, Popyk lost his steel plant job after the market crashed in October 1929. He lived frugally, a practice he continues today.

"If I have a 20 in my pocket, I can live like a millionaire," says Popyk, 98.

Tears fill his eyes when he talks about what he did to survive the Depression. His parents and siblings returned to Ukraine as things worsened; he stayed in Michigan.

He worked for Western Union, delivering telegrams to people receiving news of the downturn. He made 10 cents for the first telegram and a half-penny for each one after that.

He found a slightly better job delivering milk. It was during that time, he met his future wife, Ann Brychitko, who is now deceased. She supported them with a $10-a-week job at a dime store, until he landed a job with the fledgling Dodge auto company. He gets about $2,000 a month in Social Security and pension payments and says he's tightfisted.