Depression-Era Texas

The diary begins on September 8, 1928, in San Antonio. John Jackson Ledbetter Jr. is twenty-six years old, newly married, and working for the city’s Flood Prevention Department. He buys a Corona typewriter on installment and starts writing. Within two months, he is unemployed.

”The Position Has Been Abolished”

On October 31, 1928, the Flood Prevention Department eliminated his position. JJL spent the next weeks writing letters to engineering firms in Dallas, Kansas City, Waco, Houston, and Del Rio. Before leaving San Antonio, he had a confrontation with the Mayor of Laredo over taking some old blueprints from City Hall:

Saw Mayor Chambers and asked him about the excitement caused by my carrying off a few blue prints. Told him that if I wanted to steal from the city I would have taken their money while I was in charge of various construction jobs in place of a few blue prints. (October 17, 1928)

He moved to Dallas at the end of October, renting an apartment at 5104½ Miller Court. His bank balance after outstanding checks: $52.28. At the A&M vs. SMU football game on November 10, someone stole his spare tire.

The Bank Fails

By 1931, JJL had found his footing at the International Boundary Commission in San Benito, Texas. On May 4, he took the oath of office as Assistant Engineer for the American Section. The IBC would anchor his career for the next decade — surveying, designing, and supervising projects along the Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico.

But the Depression touched everything. On May 16, 1932, the bank in San Benito failed to open for business. JJL filed affidavits with the State Banking Department to recover $6.87 in his own name and $20 plus interest in his infant son Jack Wallace’s savings account. Twenty-six dollars and change — the savings of a working engineer with a young family.

Every Dollar Tracked

The diaries from these years read like a ledger. New tires: $7.40 each. Glasses: $21.00. The Phillips Hotel in Presidio during fieldwork: $1.00 a day. When Jack needed a Mickey Mouse watch after a tonsillectomy, JJL noted the expense. The 1936 Chevrolet Master Town Sedan cost $863.00. In October 1936, he placed a job advertisement in the Dallas Morning News: “Civil Engineer and Attorney at Law. Age 35.”

His IBC salary rose slowly through the decade: $3,200 a year in 1934, $3,700 in 1937, $3,800 in 1938. Every raise was recorded with the same precision as his sons’ weights and temperatures.

Self-Invention

What distinguished this decade was not the deprivation — millions of Americans shared that — but what JJL did with his evenings. In December 1929, while working as City Engineer in El Paso, he wrote for information about the Texas Bar Examination. He was already a licensed civil engineer with a degree from Texas A&M. Now he began teaching himself law.

For five years he studied at night, after full days at the IBC. On January 10, 1935, the work paid off:

Received in the morning mail my license to practice law in Texas. Appeared before C. W. Harper District Clerk El Paso County Texas, took the oath as an attorney and registered about 10:30 a.m.

Three years later, on March 19, 1938, he received his license as a Registered Professional Engineer in Texas, Serial No. 1485. On the same day, Jack Wallace broke out with chicken pox.

By the end of the Depression decade, JJL held dual professional licenses that few men could claim. He had earned both while working full-time, raising two sons, serving annual military reserve duty, and tracking every dollar in his diary. When the Army called him to active duty in January 1941, it was this combination — engineer, attorney, and officer — that shaped every assignment he would receive.

A Philosophical Turn

The Depression years also drew out a reflective, philosophical side. In August 1929, at twenty-seven, JJL wrote the longest single entry in the entire diary:

I have been thinking considerably of late along the lines of success, failure, the purpose of life, religion, etc. In thinking about subjects of this kind one always has a feeling of humility. The mind is so small in comparison to the subject it would grapple with that the thoughts seem to come to a jumping off place, so as to speak or to round a bend and come to a vertical wall of unlimited height and infinite breadth.

I shall therefore try to become proficient in some line of endeavor that will be a benefit to society and in time depend upon society for those things which I cannot get for myself due to my time being taken up by specialization.

He kept his word.