Throw Back Thursday

The high temperature today was: 46 degrees
Cold and rainy all the dang day!!

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This poor little guy was sitting right outside my computer room window

In the rain.  He looked directly at me and said,

"It's so cold the worms are still sleeping underground!

I AM STARVING!!!"

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I remember, when I was very small, during the war.  My Grandmother had a metal can that sat at the top of the upstairs.  I think it was a milk can to hold cream after the milk had been run through the separator.  It was filled with white sugar.  I never realized the importance of this until years later--when I heard family talk about it.

When the first hint came out that "we" might be involved in WWII, my Grandmother, along with all other women in the area, started buying sugar and storing it.  Hoarding it, I suppose would be a better name for it.  You see when food became rationed, sugar was one of the hard to get products.  Only a certain amount was allowed to buy.  One never knew how many birthday or wedding cakes would have to be made during the rationing of food.  One never knew how many quarts of fruit would be canned or jams and jellies made.  One would not want to run out of sugar!

My Mother also had a "sugar can" in our pantry.  It was yellow--a New Era potato chip can.  Hers only had about 10 pounds of sugar in it.  Grandma's had about 20#.

Read that paragraph under the NOTE.

Do you honestly think ANYONE  admitted they had sugar hoarded at home?

Gasoline was rationed.  Cigarettes were rationed.  My parents didn't smoke very much, but they each got their allotted carton and gave the extra packs to our neighbor--my now step-mother's husband.  He'd pay them for the packs they didn't use.  I suppose that was government fraud, wasn't it?

Every person had a ration book.  Even children.  Every family member.  This is mine--I was 3--1942.  When we went to the store, whatever product was purchased took a certain number of stamps that were
inside this book.  It seemed everything was rationed.

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Hardly anything new was purchased.  If something broke, Daddy fixed it.  We took the paper label off every tin can, took off both ends, put them inside the can, and squash it with our feet--then stored the cans in a very large bin in one of the sheds.  During the year, a truck came to take away the cans and any other scrap metal we had.  

During the summer, a team of kids came out from the Big City (Flint) to gather Milk Weed pods--the silk was used in making parachutes.

Of course, living on a farm we had all the milk and eggs we needed, and we had quite a bit of fresh produce from the gardens and lots and lots of canned produce to last the winter and of course--rabbit, squirrel, chicken, venison and beef to eat.  

Now I realize how my Grandmother became a rich woman.  She had a poultry farm and hatchery.  Lots of fertile eggs from the hundred hens to incubate for baby chickens.  People flocked to her farm to buy a box (100 baby chicks) so they too could have layer hens, eggs, chicken to eat and can.  Even town people were allowed to keep a flock of chickens in their back yard.

I do remember clearly hearing a statement my Grandma made the day after Truman was elected.  I was in the 4th grade.  I heard her tell my mother, "Start saving sugar.  We will soon be in another war."  She was right--Korea, but...nothing was rationed during that "conflict'".

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Does anyone remember this?  If I was lucky enough, when I was at Grandma's, I got to squish the yellow coloring encased in that "button", through the white stuff until it was colored evenly.

I was told it was a very important job and I did it perfectly.  We had cows, but for some reason, we didn't churn butter in those days.  I don't know why.

Can you imagine eating that stuff?  Grandma's treat for me was a slice of bread, with oleo on it, and a nice coating of white sugar.

Chewing the lead paint off my crib rails.  Living in a house that was insulated by asbestos.  Sleeping in a bedroom, where the fine dust from the rough plaster on the ceiling drifted down all the time.  Having every childhood disease known to man.  Always drinking raw milk.  Drinking water out of the garden hose on a hot summer day.  Spraying our garden with pesticides and air planes spraying pesticides over the fields.  It's a wonder I have lived this long!!!

Nowadays, people are all in a tither over gluten, organic veggies and drinking water that has been filtered by osmosis!!

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Question--on the subject of food--do things taste different to you in the last few years?  Potato chips seem to have no flavor anymore (got rid of the trans-fat).  I made meat loaf yesterday--the same recipe I have made for 50+ years--my Mother's recipe and it doesn't taste right.  Maybe my taste buds are failing?  Maybe the quality of ground beef isn't as good anymore?  The last steak I had--3 years ago--was tasteless!!

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BTW--the slipper/shoe is not difficult to make at all.  It could be written on one instruction sheet.  The inventor/writer of the pattern just likes to add a lot of extraneous stuff.  I have the first one done already.