NINE YEARS AFTER THE CRASH George Mehales, South Carolina
WPA Life Histories interview, December 1938 22
Born in Greece in 1892, George Mehales and his brother were sent by their mother in 1895 to live with an uncle in the U. S. After World War I, the brothers opened a Greek restaurant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mehales was interviewed in 1938 as part of the South Carolina Writers’ Project, a New Deal program in the Works Progress Administration.

One day [in the 1920s], one of my customers showed me how much money he was making in the market. I had never even thought about the stock market before. For a few days, I looked at the market page in the newspaper. It looked good to me, and I bit with what you folks call “hook, line and sinker.” All the money I took in, I put into stocks. The first day of October in 1929 made me feel like I was rich. The stocks I bought had gone up and up. I sold some of them and bought others. I often thought about what my mother had said and that was “You'll get rich in America someday!” I should have paid for my [restaurant] fixtures, but I figured I could pay them any time. You might think I would have known better, but I didn’t. I figured I could pay my debts any time, and I just let them ride.

Trouble hit me hard during the last day of October of that year. I had become so interested with the market that I let my own business go down. I wasn’t there half the time. I need my own place of business as a place to hang around in. Business dropped off, but I didn’t care ’cause I was making plenty money in the market.

During the last days of October, my stocks began to drop. I was gambling on the margin. My brother called me and told me I would have to put up more cash. I went to the bank and put up all the cash I had in the bank with my brother. It seemed to me that things would soon get better. I sent a telegram to my brother and he sent me one thousand dollars. I had about five thousand dollars invested. On that day of

October 29, they told me I needed more cash to cover up. I couldn’t get it. I was wiped out that day. I guess disappointment comes mighty hard to some people, but that almost killed me. My brother lost in the market like me, and he couldn’t help me out. I considered killing myself, ’cause I had nothing left. I found out what a fool I had been. I did manage to pay my debts by selling my cafe at rock bottom prices. I learned a lesson then. It almost killed me to see my cafe go at such a cheap price. It taught me that you’ve got to pay your debts to get along.

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