SO DIFFERENT

The 1940's: World War II was in progress. In Albany, New York, air raid wardens patrolled the streets at night to make sure that the people in the neighborhood had their lights out, or used blackout curtains that allowed lights to be on inside the house without any external seepage. New York City was in a brown-out. Everyone was serious about reacting to the various requirements during the war.

My Uncle Lou had a grocery store where I would work after school and Saturdays. Customers would bring in ration stamps and tokens to obtain their needs. They were limited by the number of stamps/tokens the had, so they really could not overly stock up on various items -- canned goods and the such. Cheese and butter were extremely scarce. People were happy to get a quarter-pound stick of butter. This was the beginning of the popularity of oleo margarine. (Oleo was available with coloring packets used to mix with the oleo to obtain the butter color.) "Store cheese," a tasty cheddar-like cheese, came in large round slabs. Various-size pieces were cut -- 1/4 pound, 1/2 pound, or whatever was able to be purchased with the ration stamps. (However, I often found myself cutting off a sliver or two because it was so good.)

Coffee was scarce, as were cigarettes. Aside from the top sellers like Camels, Chesterfields, Old Gold, and Lucky Strike, unknown brands came on the market -- names people never heard of, some from Canada, but people didn't care as long as they could get their cigarette. Lucky Strike changed the color of their package from green to white, using the slogan, "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war."

Gasoline had different alphabet designations for the rations of gas. People whose business depended on gas more so than the usual going to work and then back home, were given a higher priority. For instance, my uncle, who delivered groceries from call-in orders, got a higher priority for gas. More people used the bus transportation system. The buses were standing-room-only. The term "black market" came into usage as some people could obtain more gas with less than the required rationing limits.

In Rochester, New York, young people were urged to save newspapers and bundle them for collection. The term was coined, "Paper Commandos," and some sort of a reward was offered for those kids who bundled the most newspapers (probably an increase in a pretend rank). Tin cans and toothpaste tubes (which were metal) were also part of the conservation effort.

As children, and into the war effort, we obtained a set of enemy plane recognition cards and tried to learn the silhouettes of these planes as well as the Allied airships. That's why it's strange, today, to talk about the Mitsubishi car when, years ago, we learned to recognize Mitsubishi planes as enemy aircraft.

"Loose lips sink ships" was the motto to keep us from any sort of distribution of war-sensitive material. Censorship was prevalent. In order to cut down the bulk of letters being sent back and forth, "V-Mail" was introduced. This is where specific formatted paper was supplied, upon which the letters were written, then sent, read by the censor, and photocopied to a smaller size, eventually arriving either to the service person or the person back home. Can you imagine that every letter was read by the censors? At times, some of the lines that were written were blocked out to prevent actual soldier locations from being disclosed to the people back home.

Today, I presume (I haven't really looked for any) baseball cards, in a pack with a flat piece of bubble gum, are still being sold. A totally different kind of cards were being sold and collected during WWII. These were called "war cards" and were being sold even prior to WWII, when the Chinese-Japanese war was being waged. Also, some WWI cards made their way into this market. Then, with the advent of WWII, all theaters of conflict were represented by these cards. A game was played with these cards. They were spun toward a wall and the one closest to the wall would collect the other cards in the game. We would crumple the cards for a softer landing, so they wouldn't bounce, or we'd wax the cards so they had better sliding power to the wall.

The war cards were very graphic and in color. To this day, I remember one card in particular that showed a hand with a part of a bloody arm hanging on to some barbed wire designed to prevent the enemy from gaining access to trenches. Today, these would probably be deemed too sensitive to present any of the current battles. And in today's world, from which point of view would the wars be presented? In WWII, there was only one point of view, for the most part, and that was that the Allies must beat the Axis powers.

Songs such as "Johnny Zero," "There'll Be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover," "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer," "Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland," "I'll Be Seeing You," "American Patrol," "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor," and so many more were written to capture the mood of the country at that time.

War movies, of course, were very popular. Some were combat films and some were love stories about the servicemen going overseas and returning. Some didn't make it back and there wasn't a dry eye in the audience for those situations.

The people were just about 100% behind the war effort. The national energy was focused. It is rare that this national energy has been directed toward anything since then, where sacrifices were made by everyone to further a cause or, to put it another way, where positive energy was used, by most, to further a cause. We did come together after 9/11, but since then we've been splintered. Let's hope something, besides a war, moves us in a positive way towards creating something beneficial for all -- like eliminating cancer.