Depression-Era Children's Letters to Santa

Some say that unemployment levels in Michigan, if you count those people who have simply given up on looking for work, approaches or equals depression-era levels.

How does one Depression-era Christmas compare to Christmas 2010? In particular, how did Ypsi children react to the difficulties they could see all around them, to the worried nighttime conversations around the kitchen table overheard from their bedrooms, to their parents' inability to buy them a new warm coat?

How many could afford the trains, skates, and velocipedes on sale at Shaefer's Hardware in December of 1932?

That story will be in tomorrow's Ypsilanti Courier (if they run it); be sure to snag a copy!