hank Wrote:

>
> A lot of people just parked their cars for the
> duration of the war. Tires, gas, oil etc, all
> rationed or just plain impossible to get so why
> bother to try to use the dang thing? Just hitch up
> ol' Dobbin and feel patriotic!
>
> Also, back in the 1930's my grandpa used to put
> his car up on blocks every year about November and
> leave it in the barn until May or June when the
> roads dried out. The road past his farm was not
> the part of the Iowa the Powers That Were cared
> about getting "out of the mud."

Reminds me of a couple of family stories.

My father was a Lutheran minister before, during, and after WW2 (he left the active ministry in 1954 when I was five). I was told that during the war he received extra ration coupons for gas, tires, etc. because he would need to make calls on his church members who might be sick or experienced a death in the family. The war brought about employment disruptions and people who might otherwise not worked took jobs. My father told of working part-time at a local garden nursery; my mom took a clerical or secretarial job with the nearby Firestone tire plant in East Los Angeles. But come after the War when she got a job with Fluer Construction, their congregation raised a fuss about the minister's wife working outside the home.

My mother was born in rural Iowa near Sioux City and her parents lived there until they relocated to Nebraska early in the depression. A family story was about first federal election after women got the right to vote. It was a rainy day with muddy roads; so instead of taking the car into town to vote her parents alternated riding the horse into town while the other one stayed at home with the two young daughters.

Brian Norden