Garden Food and Carefully Mended Stockings

When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah! Hurrah!) And we used to sing the songs of the day all the time. We walked everywhere we went, of course, because of the gas rationing, and we sang all the way. Someone would start and we’d all follow-in. Good oldies like: Deep Purple (When the deep purple falls over shady garden walls…) I Dream of You (more than you dream I do…) I’m Gonna Buy a Paper Doll (that I can call my own…) Somewhere Over the Rainbow (way up high, there’s a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby…) (I love you for) Sentimental Reasons Marzy Doats (and dozy doats and little lamzy divey a kidely divy too, wouldn’t you?) I wonder how many of you know what this nonsense really means? I’ll tell you now. Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid will eat ivy too, wouldn’t you? The White Cliffs of Dover (There’ll be blue birds over the cliffs of Dover...) A favorite of mine. Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with anyone else but me, anyone else but me…) The Air Force Song (Up we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sky…) These were some of the songs that came out during the Second World War. I was eleven when the war broke out. Too young to truly understand it all. But I tried to help the “war effort” because President Roosevelt came on the radio and asked every American to do his or her part. So we did. I went to the YWCA on Saturday mornings to make squares for quilts going over to the GIs. We’d stack them in neat piles for the Red Cross ladies to sew into quilts. When I was about thirteen years old, I walked up to the grocery store—a long way, I remember—to sell war savings stamps. We wore red, white, and blue hats—like butcher’s hats—and little matching aprons. We set up a card table outside the store. We handed out the savings stamps books and sold the savings stamps. Each one cost a dime. A hundred stamps filled each book. I’m pretty sure of that, but not positive. I do know that twenty- five dollars bought a war bond, and at the end of the war I had two bonds. Dad didn’t get drafted because he had such a large family, and Grandpa was too old. Also, Dad was involved in making military machinery for the war effort while working at John Deere; that would have kept him out, too. I did have a boyfriend who joined the Marine Corps, but that was after the war was over. We had a big garden because we always did. But part of the war effort was to plant a garden and preserve your own food. Most people did that if the land was available. Certain foods were scarce and you had to use your Ration Stamps to get them, if they were available at all. I remember coffee as well as sugar, was scarce because it came by ship and the ships were mostly converted for the war. And meat got scarce because it had to go to feed the troops and many farmhands had gone to the war. I stood in line at the New York Store for nylon hose. We held our nylons up with garter belts. No panty hose in those days. If we got a run in a stocking, we mended it carefully with tiny, tiny stitches and kept right on wearing the mended socks. Everyone had to. So, we were all in the same boat, so to speak. We also drew stocking seams on the back of our makeup- covered legs. Mom taught me that trick.