This picture of my grandparents, Mabel Phillips Cook and Sheridan Cook was taken in Colorado Springs about 1927. The kids are Warren, Madenia, and Thelma. My grandparents spent a lot of time in the late 1920s in Colorado before settling in Huntington Beach, CA around 1930.
When I look at the 1930 census the depression is in full swing; 14 of the Phillips/Cooks in one house! It does show that 3 of the Cook/Phillips children were born in Colorado; Jean Phillips and Dorothy Cook about 1925, and then my dad – later in 1929.
My dad said his father, Sheridan Cook, was a bootlegger; he had a talent for driving a loaded truck fast. I think the Cook family in Oklahoma would have been considered “dirt poor” because they were country folk; the 1920s census lists Sheridan Cook as a farmer. My dad talks about his Uncle Hallard Cook who was “city folk” and had a nice job with the utility company and lived in the city. After the tremendous demand for food during the Great War in 1919, the rural communities suffered an early depression in the 1920’s when that demand quickly declined. For country folks, the 1920s were hardly a golden age. On the contrary, there was an agricultural depression that lasted the entire decade and kept a noticeable divide in place between “city” class and the rural classes. My dad said he was born in Colorado because his dad worked on the Royal Gorge Bridge near Canon City, Colorado. The bridge was built in six months between June and November 1929 at a cost of $350,000 (equivalent to $4.2 million in 2019 dollars.) Going full circle, now their great, great granddaughter, Chandra Jerome lives in Colorado. Visit my website for info on my books - https://www.sandijerome.com/
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