Both my mom and dad were born when my grandparents were older. My wife's grandmother lived to 100 and voted in the last election. So both sets of my grandparents and a couple on the wife's side grew up through the last depression.
They passed that on to my parents and to me growing up. I do know a lot of tricks they used to get by, but the biggest was not having much and still being happy with what you have.
Garden if you like eating. Use heirloom seeds and save some for the next year. Wear clothes forever and learn to sew. Reuse everything you can. Fix everything you can yourself. Nuts and bolts jars. Button boxes. Wash your aluminum foil, reuse breadbags and plastic butter dishes. It's crazy how little they lived on.
I bought $600 in car parts last month and have been fixing up the family fleet of vehicles with brakes, oil changes, sensors, sparkplugs, .... the rest stored on shelves for when I need them. The cars should be good to get us through any price spikes or shortages of wear items now. In good depression era logic, I saved all the parts with any life left in case I may need them in the future.
The US is overflowing with food, oil, gas, etc. So that shouldn't be as big of an issue.
Banks were one of the biggest problems people had in the depression era. There was a reason people kept money in their matress instead.
Gold was eventually confiscated by the government.
