“Of all the pieces I’ve written, the most popular have been the ones having to do with the Great Depression and my time in the Army Air Corp. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s an advantage or a disadvantage to be my age. I was born on July 22, 1924, in Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC. That was long before air conditioning, and my poor mother said that day was the hottest day of the summer. As for my birth, she said it was one of the most torturous days of her life.
By the time I was a teenager the Great Depression was in high (or should I call it low) gear. My teenage years were filled with the sights of long lines of unemployed men waiting in the street outside employment agencies, and of “Hoovervilles” in Central Park, huts made of cardboard boxes and tin cans that sheltered whole families. Men on the corners of Central Park West were selling apples, and men and women were sleeping under cardboard in the streets of New York.
Yet, I loved New York in those days. Everything was a nickel, from a pack of gum to a ride on the subway to Coney Island to a ride to the Worlds Fair (1939) out in Queens. You could buy a hamburger for a nickel at the White Tower or see a double feature movie at the Alden at 66th Street and Broadway for three nickels. The only trouble was that nickels were hard to come by in the ‘30s, they really were.
I enlisted in the Army in 1942 from Rutgers, where I was a freshman. The War was on, we were losing, and I wanted to get into it. The Army told us that we could pick our service. I picked the Signal Corp. A few months later I was called up, and the Army apologized — they said that I was going into the infantry instead of the Signal Corp. Why? More men were needed in the infantry. That was their “excuse,” not that they needed one.
After 13 weeks of grueling basic training in Georgia we were told that the Air Force was losing a load of flyers, and that more flyers were urgently needed in the Army Air Corp. If we could pass the test we could transfer to the Air Force. I volunteered, much to the anguish of my parents, because in the early days of the war the Army Air Corp was taking a huge number of casualties. I decided to try for the Air Force anyway, and two of us in the company made it out of the Infantry and into the Army Air Corp.
The rest is a long story, which I talk about from time to time, but the point was that as I look back, I realize that I lost my youth. Instead of spending happy days in college, I ended up overseas, fighting in the skies over Europe — which was a long way from drinking beer at fraternity parties.
When I returned to the States after the European war was over, I was to be “redeployed” to the Pacific on a new plane, the A-26 Havoc. It was a much better bomber than my old B-25, faster, and carrying just a pilot and a bombardier (me). I was given a 30-day leave, and then it was on to fight the coming great battle against Japan. I whooped it up on my 30-day leave, on the theory that I had made it through Europe, but my chances of making it through the Pacific as well were, well, they weren’t that great. So why not raise a bit of hell?
On the 27th day of my 30-day leave, the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and Japan surrendered. Being on leave, I was one of the first to be let out of the armed services. A day after being discharged, I signed up at NYU on the GI bill. I was back in college, and eager to make up for lost time. In two-and-a-half years I got my degree. I was an ex-officer and a college graduate. A month later I got my first post-War job at thirty-five dollars a week, working five days a week and a half day on Saturday.
I look back at those days with mixed feelings. I really never had what kids today call a “fun youth.” I know what a great time in college is because son Ryan loved Berkeley and daughter Lauren loved University of Arizona. I’ve visited both places, and I can see what I missed out on (NYU on those days was a down-to-earth “subway college”), and all I wanted to do was get through it and get my degree. So I never really had that fabled “college experience.”
I look back at the ‘30s and the ‘40s, and I think, “Well, it was a hell of an experience, I lived through it, but I hope it didn’t color my attitude toward life and the world.” Of my early years, frankly, they seem more like “survival” than anything else.
But on the other hand, I know that everything in life is a trade-off. Those early years allowed me to see that good things can happen and bad things can happen. Nations can rise and nations can fall. If anybody in 1943, for instance, had told me that in the year 2003 we would be friends with Germany and Japan, I would have told them that they were out of their minds. Things change. Nations change. Economies change. Life changes.
Below I show a weekly chart of the US dollar. This has been a worry of mine for quite some time. If the dollar breaks down it will be of great concern to all creditors of the US. After looking like the dollar might breach the blue trendline, it has turned up. Let’s hope this continues.
To subscribe to Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters CLICK HERE.
About Richard Russell
Russell began publishing Dow Theory Letters in 1958, and he has been writing the Letters ever since (never once having skipped a Letter). Dow Theory Letters is the oldest service continuously written by one person in the business.
Russell gained wide recognition via a series of over 30 Dow Theory and technical articles that he wrote for Barron’s during the late-’50s through the ’90s. Through Barron’s and via word of mouth, he gained a wide following. Russell was the first (in 1960) to recommend gold stocks. He called the top of the 1949-’66 bull market. And almost to the day he called the bottom of the great 1972-’74 bear market, and the beginning of the great bull market which started in December 1974.
Letters are published and mailed every three weeks. We offer a TRIAL (two consecutive up-to-date issues) for $1.00 (same price that was originally charged in 1958). Trials, please one time only. Mail your $1.00 check to: Dow Theory Letters, PO Box 1759, La Jolla, CA 92038 (annual cost of a subscription is $300, tax deductible if ordered through your business).
