westexas -

Coincidentally, we had some friends over for dinner last night and learned that their daughter-in-law, who for the last seven years has been with a high-powered law firm specializing in corporate law and finance has decided to go into wedding planning (of all things) because she expects to get the axe in the next round of cutbacks. Talk about a downward career move. (At least it shouldn't be as demanding and stressful.)

You are probably old enough to have noticed how the various 'hot professions' come and go almost like fashions.

In the mid to late 1960s, anything having to do with aerospace was hot. I graduated from a small engineering school in 1967 and was envious of all the better students who landed those coveted jobs with NASA. Five or six years later many of them were out of work and were desperately trying to recast themselves as knowledgeable in the environmental field, which by then had become the next hot area. I myself was fortunate enough to have ridden the crest of the environmental boom, which had a long run but started to peter out in the late 1990s.

Then in the mid 1970s energy became the next hot area. But by the early years of the Reagan administration it was pretty much dead, and during the 1980s law and finance then became hot. Many excellent engineers went out and got MBAs to become mediocre business types.

To pick the hot area at the right time is as much a matter of luck as it is of good planning, for one just never knows. (Who in say 1957 would have thought it possible that a company like General Motors would one day be on the brink of bankruptcy?)

Regarding what life was like during the Great Depression, my late uncle's experience was that it was nothing at all like The Waltons. He was literally a hobo and rode the rails all over the country, taking migrant work jobs wherever he could find them. He was beaten up by railroad detectives on several occasions, beaten up and run out of small towns by the local sheriff, had doors slammed in his face when asking for discarded food, and was generally treated like dirt. The only kindness shown was by fellow hobos (at least the ones who didn't try to rob you in your sleep of the few coins you might have). It was a tough and gritty existence.