WW II Homefront

      More Letters From Paradise
          WWII Home Front
This recent Mother"s Day brought to mind what it was like so many years ago. Although only an elementary school kid, I remember it all so very well.

Much has been written about how women took over jobs once held by men, who were gone off to war. Women building aircraft,ships,and other war material.  But there were others like my mother who worked very hard to keep the home fires burning.

When my father went off to war he left a wife and two small children. What all she managed to do, continues to amaze me. We were living in a four room bungalow with an outhouse and empty one car garage. A gravel road ran past our house up to the corner where mother would catch the bus taking her to the school where she taught.

Not only did she teach school, but she also had to clean house, shop, cook meals, do the laundry, and keep the coal fired furnace well fed. About all I did to help her was to chop up wood crates for the furnace, and carry up pails of dirty wash water up the basement steps, and dump the contents on our victory garden. During the winter I would carry my sister on my sled down the road to the house where she was cared for during the day. One other task I really enjoyed was stamping empty tin cans flat,  contributing to the war effort.

I can see it now, my mother and I down in the basement with our coats on, so cold      you could see your breath, feeding the empty furnace.

Mother had a map of Europe on one wall of the living room with a pin where she thought my father was located. After the war he said that often she was correct, in spite of censored letters from him.

I wish now that I had spent some time talking with my mother about those dark war years. This is but a poor tribute to my mother who worked so very hard.

     Aloha
     Grant