On The "Home Front"

On the “Home Front”

by Mary Fahey

I don’t remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into the Second World War. Since it happened in early December 1941, my thoughts, at age six, circled around the upcoming Christmas festivities and Santa’s visit. I didn’t take notice of something that happened so far away from our apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

  

Andrew & Anna Fahey, Mom & Dad 1940’s   

        

 I do remember the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. I picked up on the anxiety of the adults around me as they spoke in hushed tones. Christmas felt subdued that year as young men rushed to war. Nineteen- forty- two proved disastrous for our troops, fighting on two fronts and getting badly beaten. On the “Home Front,” we fought the war in our way. We saved everything. Scarcity and deprivation became the normal way of life. If anyone complained about the lowered standard of living, someone reminded him “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” It became the mantra of daily existence.

            Before the word “recycling” came into our vocabulary, we recycled daily and called it “making do with what we have.” We wound string, saved from wrapped packages, into a big ball. We saved the foil from Daddy’s cigarettes. I remember times when cigarette packs were unavailable and Daddy had to buy “Loosies.” I went to the store for him and bought two or three at a time.

The storekeeper kept the loose cigarettes in a bin much like those in which he kept penny candy. Daddy had to pace himself and not smoke them all in one day . . . there may be none tomorrow.

Mama saved any fat poured from the roasting pan of cooked meat and brought it to the butcher in exchange for ration coupons. Each family received a ration book monthly, used sparingly, toward the purchase of scarce items. Whatever the war effort needed, was rationed at home. They rationed rubber, metal, aluminum, and nylon, as well as food staples like flour, sugar, butter, dairy and meat. Each purchase required ration stamps. Mama used them wisely so they lasted the month.

            Mama saved bacon fat in a washed out Campbell’s’ Soup can to later use frying meat, potatoes, eggs, pancakes and anything else that needed frying. Food tasted better fried in bacon fat. We had oleo margarine to substitute for butter. It didn’t look anything like the margarine in today’s markets. It came in a plastic bag and appeared shiny white like Crisco.  An orange blob lay in the center. To get the desired yellow color of “pretend butter,” we broke the bubble and kneaded it into the white stuff with our fingers. It didn’t look very appetizing.

During this time, my sixteen-year-old sister Dorothy developed a craving for making fudge using lots of butter and sugar. Mama admonished her to stop making fudge because she ran out of ration coupons before the month ended.       One day, Mama took me to the playground and told Dorothy, “Don’t you make fudge while I’m gone.”     

            “I won’t,” Dorothy said but as soon as we were out of sight, she got the butter, sugar, Baker’s chocolate and saucepan out and made her fudge. She wrapped it in wax paper and hid it in the bottom of her dresser drawer. Then she washed, dried and put away everything she used in making her forbidden sweet.

            When we came home, Mama told Dorothy to help me get changed while Mama made dinner. As Dorothy took off my sweater, she said. “Did you have a nice time at the fudge?”

She meant to say “park” but her guilty conscience got the best of her and the slip of her tongue gave her away.

            “Did you make fudge?” Mama said, and went into a rant about the sugar and butter that Dorothy used. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

  

Big Sister Dorothy & me Easter 1942      

....to be continued