Film examines Cason family, Depression-era Charlottesville

The story may warm the heart, but the reality strained their backs.

Viewers of “Growing Up Cason,” a film slated to show at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Virginia Film Festival, will meet the quintessential American family of hardworking parents and their seven sons and daughter who toil along with them to make a living in Depression-era Charlottesville, with no phone, no lights and few luxuries.

It may be as heartwarming as “The Waltons” on the outside, but it was a tough row to hoe.

“We worked hard,” recalled George Cason, the family’s seventh son. “We lived through some hard times.”

Growing up near Stony Point in the Great Depression meant working in the fields, walking into town and earning money when and how they could.

They farmed. They worked odd jobs. They sold Christmas trees on Main Street corners and made decorative holiday wreaths from boughs and flora.

“Back in those days people didn’t deliver food to people like they do now, you just had to find your own,” Cason recalled. “We grew a lot of our own and Mom canned everything in the world. You had to buy 100 pounds of pinto beans at a time and cornmeal came in 50-pound bags and flour in 25-pound bags. We had a lot of biscuits and we had cows for milk. It was hard.”

The 24th annual festival begins tonight with a spate of screenings including Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” starring George Clooney. It’s followed by the Opening Night Gala, which will be at 9 p.m. at the University of Virginia’s Alumni Hall. Screenings, discussions and a host of other events will continue through Sunday.

The festival includes more 100 films and features guests Sissy Spacek, Larry Flynt, Oliver Stone and Mia Wasikowska.

Many of the festival’s films are already sold out, said director Jody Kielbasa.

“We’re well ahead of last year when we sold out seven film showings and we’ve already had six sell out,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be tickets available, though. Sometimes people can’t make it at the last minute and tickets become available, so it’s always a good idea to check if there’s something you want to see.”

Kielbasa said the festival’s change a few years ago from classic films to contemporary films and focus on the community has been met with a positive response.

“It’s been a great response and I think it makes a difference because when you feature a classic movie, you can really focus on it,” he said.

“Growing Up Cason,” from director Doug Bari, fits in with the festival’s focus, Kielbasa said.

“For me this was absolutely the kind of film that we should be showing,” he said. “It’s about community building. It happens right here, at the community level. This is a family story of a family struggling during the Depression and going off to war and coming back to find jobs where they could in the city. It’s about the Greatest Generation. The family was instrumental in founding the City Market. It’s a part of Charlottesville that needs to be preserved. It’s history and it’s people we know.”

For the Casons, their story is a source of pride, humor and lessons learned. George Cason, a storyteller of great skill, recalled a time when his father brought home a bag of shoes for the family from the county welfare agency. The bag contained all high-heel women’s shoes.

“Momma said the boys were not going to wear no women’s shoes,” he laughed.

Other lessons well-learned included the notion that people who seem to have so much more, often don’t.

“I used to take lunch to school with me and it wasn’t much, you know, often something like a collard green sandwich or what have you,” Cason recalled. “There was this other guy who always had a big sack that looked full and I was always after him to trade his lunch for mine. So, one day, I finally talked him into trading his lunch for my collard sandwich and, when I opened that big bag I found a claw-hammer and a couple of hickory nuts.”

When his brothers went off to World War II, George and Jack Cason took over much of their responsibilities from milking cows to heating water to farm jobs.

“The load fell to me and Jack and it about killed us,” George Cason said. “We did the best we could and was about all we could stand. Trying to keep the farm going, I didn’t have time to go to school.”

Not all of the memories were hard.

“I remember walking into town with my mother and meeting up with the boys and then coming back,” said Nancy Cason Roberts, the family’s lone daughter. “It was a great time.”