Re: Rationing during WW2
HCgraves@AOL.COM
Fri, 31 May 1996 10:05:22 -0400
My memories of rationing in the US during WWII are from the standpoint of a
child a bit older than William Anderson, Jr. In our family we were conscious
of rationing -- living in Idaho and Montana, where distances are great,
gasoline was important. When my father began teaching in a nearby town, we
were impressed by our B sticker for gasoline, but the ranchers and farmers
who surrounded us had much more impressive allotments. And daddy refused to
use gasoline for any but "essential" driving.
However, mostly we felt that we had little to complain about, we were aware
of the severe rationing in England, andlife threatening hardships facing
people in other parts of the world. This may have been because my parents
were exceptionally concerned about world affairs -- some of my earliest
memories are of hearing the radio late at night reporting on events in
Manchuria, and my father's serious sounding voice commenting on the news. Of
course, it might also have been partly because we'd survived depression years
when the rationing at our house was done by a shortage of money. My mother
was accustomed to making everything stretch.
Shoe rationing was the real problem -- four children in our family ran
through a lot of shoe coupons. We put a lot of rubber half-soles on shoes,
and there was a gummy substance we could spread over holes in crepe soled
shoes.
I still have some of the ration books with coupons for canned goods and
meats, and a few of the little tokens which were valued as point tokens. We
always had a cow, and often a pig, and mom's big garden turned into an
abundance of home canned vegetables. She didn't have any idea of canning
fruit in water, so the sugar allotment went mostly to preserving fruits.
Mom made soap from time to time, I think mostly because she enjoyed the
challenge, but also because we had fat rendered from the hogs. I remember
moving into a house owned by a man who had once had a candy business, and
discovering a treasure trove of sugar he turned over to mom in exchange for
home made soap.
When we were living in the mountains north of Yellowstone, some of the high
school students got dad to buy an elk tag and then took him "hunting" for an
elk they'd stashed in a snowbank. It was cold enough so we could hang the elk
in an outbuilding, our freezer, and had meat for the winter. That skirting
of hunting law was common in a region where people hunted for food, not for
sport. We had a lot of grub line riders stopping by the house about dinner
time that winter.
My parents would not have trifled with the rationing regulations. They were
strongly patriotic, as well as feeling that they needed to model life as law
abiding and caring citizens for their children.
This is rambling, and perhaps not tightly on the topic or rationing, but hope
it answers some questions for some of you.
HelenSeagraves Hood River, OR