What year is the writer might have been born and how did you determine the year?

Question

here is the poem-
I was eighteen before I ate my fill.
We lived off cotton and the cow’s good will.
Somebody told us that Wall Street fell:
We were so poor, we couldn’t even tell.
Summer was wet and winter was dry,
and Momma was old at thirty-five.
The cotton was short and the weeds were tall,
and Mr. Roosevelt was gonna save us all.
Momma got sick, Daddy got down,
The county got the farm, and we moved to town.
Daddy got a job with the TVA,
bought a washing machine and a new Chevrolet.
Gone, gone, gone with the wind,
There ain’t nobody looking back again.

Answer 1

The writer was most likely born between 1915 and 1922. My reasoning is:

The writer wasn't well fed until age 18. The first mention of prosperity in the poem is when Daddy got a job with the TVA, which couldn't have been before 1933. (The TVA still operates today, so we can't use that to determine the latest he/she was born.) So the writer couldn't have been born before 1915.

The writer says somebody told them Wall Street fell, so he/she had to have been born before October 1929.

The closest I can PROVE from the above is that the writer was born between 1915 and 1929. I can make an EDUCATED GUESS. I can guess that he/she was at least old enough to have an understanding of at least a little of what was happening, or he/she would have said "they" instead of "we." Say a minimum of age 7 in 1929, so that narrows it to 1915 to 1922.(1)





Quotes from Wikipedia.com:

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created in 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly hard hit by the Great Depression. The TVA was envisioned not only as an electricity provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society. The TVA's jurisdiction covers most of Tennessee, parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky, and small slices of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.(2)


The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Crash of ’29, and Black Tuesday, was one of the most devastating stock-market crashes in American history. . . .The euphoria and financial gains of that great bull market were shattered on 29 October 1929, Black Tuesday, when share prices on the NYSE collapsed.(3)

Answer 2

I take it that the parents are worried about whether she would find work and move out? It sounds like she needs to see a job councilor or even a therapist if you can talk her into it. I don't think she is mentally ill or anything, but I do see some problems with self-esteem and negative thinking. Does she like going outdoors? Maybe she could get over her problem with driving if she planned outings where she would drive to a state park or museum. That might help with getting over the timidity of driving in other areas. Like someone else said, maybe the psychology degree is not enough to get the type of job she wants, and maybe she feels she needs to add interpreting skills to it. I agree that at 23 she should be considering some plans for living on her own. She will be 24 in December, and it may finally hit her then that she is not a kid. Her chart denotes that she would work best with partnerships. I do think it's important for her to see a job or personal councilor. In cases such as hers, if she keeps living at home, she will likely start blaming those around her for restricting her development. I've seen that happen many times. Good luck to you and her. You sound like a very caring uncle.

Answer 3

1911 because the stock market crashed in 1929, when they were 18.

Answer 4

Well let's see I would say around 1912 or 1913

1929 - The stock market crash ushered in the Great Depression.
http://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/estockmktcrash.htm
To bad I could not find the author. Will you let me know who and his date of birth.