thastings1
The book, "A Nickle's Worth of Skim Milk: A Boy's View of The Great Depression," is based on a diary my father, Robert Hastings, kept. It has been in print for nearly 30 years. My father relates humorous family anecdotes and his parents' survival skills during the Great Depression in Marion, Illinois. Available from Southern Illinois University Press. It takes its name from a a philanthropic effort to fill any size bucket with skim milk at a local dairy each week for just five cents. The dairyman who donated the milk is the same man who donated the hog nicknamed King Neptune who was bought and sold repeatedly generating perhaps a million dollars or more for the U.S. Navy during World War II. King Neptune is buried in Johnson County, just south of Marion, Illinois.
