Daily Life & Culture
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Daily Life & CultureSimply Out of Luck
In the winter of 1944 the East Hartford Gazette reported that a boom town could not buy cigarettes. There was no ration book for them, so the shortage went by advantage — connections, cash, standing — and the clerk behind the counter decided who counted as a regular. The war workers who had come to build the airplanes were, the paper wrote, simply out of luck.
Source · The East Hartford Gazette, December 15, 1944, p. 1 -
Daily Life & CultureAn Example to Servicemen
In 1945, with the major leagues emptied by the draft, the St. Louis Browns brought up a one-armed outfielder. The sportswriters called Pete Gray an example to wounded servicemen, a gate attraction worth touring, a one-armed star. Across roughly two dozen pages in sixteen papers, over two seasons, Gray himself speaks once — two words, to a child.
Source · Detroit Evening Times, June 16, 1945, p. 18 -
Daily Life & CultureSeventeen Allowed to Purchase Tires
Washington's rationing rules decided who was essential enough to buy a tire — a physician, a food truck, and, after February 1942, a minister. The rules did not make tires. In two counties, unpaid neighbors sat where the widening list of the essential met the shrinking supply, and decided who got them.
Source · The Wilmington Morning Star, May 31, 1942, p. 7 -
Daily Life & CultureA Day for Mourning as Well as for Thanksgiving
In November 1942 a New York Yiddish daily printed a column in English on its front page. It said the extermination of the Jews of Europe was underway, and that it had been checked. Elsewhere the same news ran as a letter to the editor.
Source · Der Tog (The Day), November 25, 1942, p. 1
