THE SUMMER OF '42

I don't know why but all of a sudden I have been remembering the "Old Days".  Maybe that is what happens when you have been a round nearly eight decades.  And some of it may be the fact that my daughter Shannon said she didn't know much about the time when I was a kid.  So here are some more memories--thos of the Summer of '42.

Many moons ago I was listening to National Public Radio as essayist Tim Brookes discussed the things his 9-year-old daughter Mattie has learned on her own—things that he had no clue of when he was the same age.  These things include smells, colors, textures, directions, dates, time, responsibility, etc.

And a few days later I heard country singer Tim McGraw singing his new release, “Back When”.  The lyrics rang many bells for me.  Here are some of them:

"Back When"

Don't you remember
The fizz in a Pepper?
Peanuts in a bottle
At ten, two and four
A fried bologna sandwich
With mayo and tomato
Sittin' round the table
Don't happen much anymore

We got too complicated
It's all way over-rated
I like the old and out-dated
Way of life

Back when a hoe was a hoe
Coke was a coke
And crack's what you were doing
When you were cracking jokes
Back when a screw was a screw
The wind was all that blew
And when you said I'm down with that
Well it meant you had the flu
I miss back when

I love my records
Black, shiny vinyl
Clicks and pops
And white noise
Man they sounded fine
I had my favorite stations
The ones that played them all
Country, soul and rock-and-roll
What happened to those times?

It started me to think about what things I knew “Back When” I was the tender age of 9.  Now 70 years later, it may not be easy to cull out what I know now from what I knew then, but let’s go back to the summer of 1942. 

The summer of ’42—I had just finished the third grade at Wilson School and my brother Tom just finished the first grade at the same school.  I had gotten into my first fight with a kid named Ted Woods.  He punched me, I punched him back in the stomach and the fight was over! 

The United States was six months into World War II and rationing was underway.  There were ration stamps for food to include special red meat stamps, stamps for shoes, tires, and gasoline.  You could save up meat drippings such as bacon drippings and trade them in for extra red meat stamps.  I never did know why, but suspect it was simply to make citizens feel like they were participating by doing this “patriotic” thing. 

The summer of ’42 was the first summer for Victory Gardens.  Posters flourished all over the place encouraging people to plant a garden for victory.  Americans responded with over 40 million home gardens. 

We think that recycling is something that just started in the past few years, but not so.  My brother and I and our friends were into “recycling” in the summer of ’42.  We would collect scrap metal of any kind for the “war effort” and sell it at a small scrap yard near the railroad tracks.  Old tires were good profit center when you could find them.  Because there was a rubber “shortage” most people saved their tires and recapped them. 

People were being encouraged to help finance the war by purchasing War Bonds.  You could get books that would hold war bond stamps and when the book was filled, it was traded in for a war bond.  Even us kids would save our pennies to buy the stamps until we could buy an $18.75 bond that could be traded in at maturity for $25.00—a king’s ransom to us in the summer of ’42.  

We began to play “War” in the summer of ’42.  The only problem we encountered was nobody wanted to be the enemy.  We carved out wooden guns that fired rubber bands cut from old real rubber inner tubes.  When synthetic rubber came along it killed our rubber band guns.  And speaking of inner tubes—everybody had a patching kit to patch punctures in inner tubes.  There were “hot patch” and “cold patch” kits.  The “hot patch” kits had a patch fastened to a holder that contained some slow burning inflammable material that heated the patch and the cement helping it stick to the inner tube.  They were considered better than the “cold patch” kits, which simply used an early contact cement to hold the patch on. 

In the summer of ’42 we lived on a small two-acre farm at the edge of town, but our Dad did a lot with that two acres.  We had a cow, a large garden, a couple of apple trees, some black berry and raspberry canes, grapes, an asparagus patch, some strawberries and a peach tree.  We grew potatoes, sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes, peas, rhubarb, beets, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, strawberries, black berries, raspberries, watermelons, peppers and popcorn.  We had a huge elm tree near the garden and we would sit under that tree and shell sweet peas and shuck sweet corn.  Mom canned many things and we had a root cellar for potatoes.

I mentioned we had a cow—a Jersey cow by the name of Bossie.  She was a beautiful brown thing and a gentle as the day is long.  She gave oodles of rich, creamy milk.   I think I learned to milk a cow in the summer of ’42.  But our Dad usually did the milking, twice a day so we had fresh whole milk; we churned butter and had buttermilk.  Dad use a one legged stool to milk and I was always amazed that he could keep his balance with milking.  My brother and I helped keep the barn clean and we would carry the milk to the house for Mom to strain and bottle.  I loved a glass of warm fresh milk—nothing so sweet.  No pasteurization or homogenization unless you count shaking the bottle to sort of blend in the cream, which would separate out again given the opportunity.

Bossie was fond of watermelon rinds.  We would feed her chunks of watermelon rind during the summer; she would close her eyes in ecstasy and the juice would dribble out of the side of her mouth.  She could have been a Carnation cow during those moments because she certainly was the picture of contentment.  I think my brother Tom and I may have tried our first bareback riding adventures seated on the back of Bossie.  She would never go very far and never attempted to buck us off because we generally fell off along the way.  She was very patient and seemed to tolerate our childish efforts at being cowboys.

Movies were still a dime in the summer of ’42 and a quarter was a good week’s allowance.  For a quarter a kid could have a great Saturday—take in a movie, get a bag of popcorn, a double dip ice cream cone and still have a nickel left for a soda—and you could get a 12 ounce Pepsi Cola—“Twice and much for a nickel, too; Pepsi Cola is the drink for you!” was the theme song.  The best part about the movies was that you could stay all afternoon for that one dime.  Often we saw the whole thing twice. 

Cowboy movies were regular fare at the “Glory B Theater”.   The “Glory B” showed “B” movies and on Saturdays, the place would be crowded with kids.  For one thin dime, we got to see the news, a serial such as “Jungle Jim” or “Flash Gordon”, a cartoon and the feature—a shoot’em up cowboy movie.  Not the extravagant westerns we have today; I’m talking about Hopalong Cassidy                                                  

(played by my favorite ,William Boyd), Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and his famous horse Trigger.  Later, Dale Evans (Roy’s wife) joined him.  In some of the movies the Sons of the Pioneers sang along with Roy.  Smiley Burnett and Gabby Hayes teamed up with Roy Rogers.  Sometimes it was cowboys and Indians or cowboys and other bad guys.  Not a lot special effects like today, but, of course, there were stand-ins for the stars and it seemed like rifles and pistols never ran out of ammunition.  Stagecoaches went over cliffs, wagons overturned and men were shot off their horses—cowboys and Indians alike.

It was not all westerns.  Johnny Weissmuller, winner of five gold medals for swimming in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics was Tarzan the Ape-man.  There were other Tarzans before and after Weissmuller, but for our generation he probably is remembered as the prototypical Man of the Jungle.  Kids around the world imitated his Tarzan’s yell.  Maureen O’Sullivan was his mate Jane and Johnny Sheffield played Boy—no other name, just Boy. And then there was Cheetah the chimpanzee.  Cheetah was Tarzan’s constant companion, swinging through the trees with him on their adventures.  It was never quite clear if Tarzan and Jane were married, but do you think a 9-year-old kid worried about that?

And, of course there were the “horror” movies.  “Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff playing the Monster.  Then there was “Wolfman” with Lon Chaney, Jr. changing into the wolf when there was full moon.  We all worried about discovering a pentagram  (a star within a circle in the movies) in the palm of our hand—a sure sign you would turn into a wolf with each full moon when the wolf bane was in bloom.

  “Count Dracula”, with Bela Lugosi, would leave you worried about bats when you walked home from the movie.  You were tempted to carry a cross around your neck just in case you had to ward off this vampire. 

Not all of these came in the Summer of ’42, but they just popped into my memory as I was putting this on paper.  Most of them had been made in the 1930s, but a new generation was in place in the Summer of ’42 and these movies were recycled!