Chapter 21

"OK, Mike, let's start with you today. What's a Depression?"

"Bad time for almost everybody, lots of unemployment, economic trouble, low prices and wages."

"OK, good, those are some of the symptoms of both a recession and a depression. But what is it, George, what makes the difference?"

He shook his head.

"OK, what's your book say? Look it up."

"It's long-term," a girl said. "It's a recession if it only lasts a couple of months but depressions go on for years."

'That's good, you're right." He wrote 'long term' on the board. "What else? You find it, George?"

He nodded. "It says downturn and it says something about a business cycle. What's that?"

"It was in your reading, wasn't it? Back to you Mike."

"Uh huh, the book says things, economic things, prices and wages, go up and down, like, I don't know, roller coasters, lots of hills and valleys."

He drew an up and down line on the board ending with a big hill and a very deep decline to the railing of the board. "OK, this is not very accurate or detailed. But I remember there was a break in 1893, a bad one, and several before that caused mostly by railroad speculation and, wait a minute. Ann, what's speculation?" He wrote that word on the board.

"Uh, to speculate means to guess, to think about something. That word was on the SAT test."

"You think right, that's good. Speculation is guessing. What's economic speculation?"

"Guessing that the price of something or the value of something will go up," she paused and blinked, "or, I guess, go down."

"Very good. Suppose you think General Motors makes good cars and that their business is sure to grow, that they'll make and sell more cars and make more profits, lots of Chevrolets and Pontiacs. Do you buy a bunch of cars and hope the price of cars will go up? Ralph, how about that?"

"No, you buy stock in the company, GM stock."

"Right, you speculate, OK?"

The student nodded.

A boy raised his hand. "There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Nope, absolutely nothing, if it's done fairly. There are ways to cheat. There's something called insider trading. That's how we work, our economic system. It's called capitalism. But suppose a lot of people think like Ralph, think the value and price of GM stock will go up. And a whole bunch of people try to buy the stock, pretty much at the same time. There's only so much stock, you know. What happens to the price?"

Several people pointed at the ceiling.

"Right, up it goes. And now more people see that, and they want in, so they try to buy stock. Then what?" He planned to get into watered stock the next day, so held that back.

That evening, as they ate their supper, he was still thinking about his history classes. "We had fun today, got into business cycles and the depression, supply and demand, the great depression of 1929. I'm hoping to avoid our recent gasoline debacle."

"No fun there. When I was young, we had our grandparents living with us, my mother's folks. They had lost their farm in the depression, went in a sheriff's sale. Gram'ma still cried about it."

"Yeah, hard to explain to kids what things used to cost. I went to the movies for a quarter regularly when I was a kid. They don't believe it, ten cent Cokes, nickel Clark bars."

"Changing the subject, you had any dealings with the new vice principal?"

"Nope, hardly met him. I mean I know who he is, tall guy with a small mustache, well dressed, narrow lapels."

"He's a, wait a minute, the word's coming, he's a martinet. How's that?" She grinned. "Sat in my class the other day, silent, unhappy about something. Didn't say a word to me."

"Yep, Charlie said he's a real stickler, nags the bus drivers I heard."

"Uh huh one of my kids told me he threatened to throw misbehaving students off the bus, make 'em walk. Oh, and he's been after some girls about their clothes."

"What's wrong with their clothes. It's spring. Most of them dress better than I do."

"And I think you're the only teacher that wears a necktie every day."

He laughed. "He's about the fifth or sixth guy, no person, been a couple of women, we've had in that job since I've been here. They come and go. It's a training ground I think."

"Well, he's looking for trouble and with the seniors' days being numbered, he'll probably find it."

"Remember last year, they poured about ten million ladybugs into the halls over the weekend and hid all the clocks. Little red bugs were everywhere. I have no idea where they got them. Didn't know you could buy ladybugs."

"You can get almost anything, legal or not, if you know where to look. They have ads in the back of magazines and those druggy newspapers. Kids do crazy things."

He nodded, thinking of the Porter boy who was still hospitalized.