We're not the first generation asked to make sacrifices
A somewhat goofy report on WWII conservation measures...
The other day I was thinking about what we’re all going through and realized up until now I’d been pretty lucky. Too young for Vietnam; too old for whatever we called the wars that came after.
In fact, if you don’t count the Cuban Missile Crisis – in which we were told to hide under our school desks because apparently they’re impervious to nuclear missiles – I don’t recall having to deal with too many national emergencies. So if you managed to miss making the world safe for Democracy in Southeast Asia, my generation has gotten off comparatively easy.
But now we’re being asked to make sacrifices for the good of our country and while none of us like it, some of us are just flat-out refusing to do it.
What the Greatest Generation put up with
My parents’ generation went through WWII and thinking about them made me wonder what sacrifices they were asked to make back then. Even if you weren’t asked to go storm the beaches of Normandy, civilians still had to put up with a lot of personal inconvenience.
All kinds of goods and products were rationed and let’s start with gasoline.
According to what I read on the internet – as we all know an infallible source of accurate information – most families were allowed three gallons of gas a week and cars back then got about 10-15 miles per gallon.
So let’s say your Hudson Hornet needed a tune up and you were getting 10 miles per gallon which meant you could travel a whopping 30 miles in a week which is about 4.28 miles per day and you probably need to cut that in half because wherever you drove, you might want to be able to drive all the way back home again.
And when you got home the place might be a dump because they quit making appliances like vacuum cleaners so they could concentrate on making stuff that killed people although you’d think a Hoover upright dropped from 30,000 feet would do the trick.
The government also limited sales of nylon because they needed it for ropes and netting and other military-type stuff, so women who didn’t want to appear in public with what appeared to be bare legs – I’m guessing it was a sign of moral depravity – would wear “liquid stockings’ which was leg makeup and then they’d draw a seam up the back of their legs with an eyebrow pencil which proves people are ingenious and also batshit crazy.
And what about our British cousins?
According to History.com (and I say that so you won’t think I made it up) in 1939 the British government put out a pamphlet offering advice on care and first aid for household pets.
The pamphlet also suggested the owners have their pets “painlessly destroyed.”
The government feared food shortages and roving packs of starved dogs, plus they were afraid those German Shepherds were actually enemy agents. (For those of you who believe anything you read on the internet let me confess I made that last part up; it was actually the French Poodles they suspected of being collaborators.)
Anyway…
On the advice of their government, thousands of pet owners took Fido and Mittens out for a long walk on a short pier. According to History.com, in just one week as many as 750,000 pets were asked to sleep with the fishes.
Later, humane societies started taking in animals, but during WWII it’s clear civilians were willing to make some pretty big sacrifices, with a notable exception.
A loaf of bread too far
In 1943 the U.S. government banned pre-sliced bread which was intended to save on wax paper and metal. Pre-sliced bread went stale faster than unsliced bread and required more wrapping paper and the government figured the metal used to slice the bread could be put into Hoover upright vacuums which would then be dropped on Hitler’s bunker.
(Do I really have to keep explaining which parts I’m making up or are you getting the hang of this?)
People freaked out when asked to go back to the bad old days of having to slice their own bread and one housewife wrote this to the New York Times: “I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household” which is remarkably similar to my argument for the continued production of cheap whiskey.
The moral of the story
Just wanted to point out we’re not the first generation asked to inconvenience ourselves for the good of our country and if you want to read more about wartime conservation measures here’s the link to that article:
https://www.history.com/news/8-unusual-wartime-conservation-measures
And here’s the link to King Features:
http://kingfeatures.com/digital/comicskingdom-com/
What we’re going through now sucks, but things could definitely be worse and if you don’t believe me, just ask your dog.
Stay safe, everybody.