Small Town North Carolina in the 1930s

Having grown up in small town North Carolina, I found it moving to see what that was like 2 decades before I was born.  This was during the Great Depression when my parents were coming of age.  There is much to notice besides the cigarette smoking. For one thing, there was little or no obesity.  For another, look at all the smiles.  These people did not have a lot of possessions, but they had plenty of friends, plenty of joy in their lives, including the fun of enjoying simple things like ice cream cones, or going swimming.  The motto of the state is ‘esse quam videre’ to be rather than to seem, and these folks were just being themselves before the camera. This was filmed in Monroe and Concord and Albemarle, small towns near Charlotte which my family moved to in 1970 as I went off to college.