Ration books

August 17, 2020

Mom’s Ration book -finding a treasure

I liked dressing up mom’s cement goose.  after all I had one of my own and it was fun to see mom do something that was silly and watch her smile.  She was a practical person and if she didn’t see a purpose for something, she wasn’t doing it.  One summer afternoon I noticed she had several boxes of goose clothes on the bookshelves in the garage. (The bookshelves held many other things besides books.)

Being curious about the many outfits  she had I started sorting and organizing them.

Mom was neither.  As I straightened the rest of the shelves, I noticed there were several old books about women and business.  No doubt, dad must have rescued them from one of the many auctions they attended.  Since I was the only child who was a businesswoman,  I knew he must’ve wanted them because of me. It made me feel like, maybe he had been proud of me.  You never

knew how you felt with our parents.  nobody ever showed feelings.  It was always, “the facts mam, just the facts”   Since he had been gone for several years,  I asked mom if I could have these for my library.  She gave her permission, but said, “look through them, before you take them home, you never know what might be stuck in between the pages”.  Cool!  what would I find – money? a note?  a secret treasure map?

Leafing through the pages I found – scraps of papers used as a bookmark,  then a dog-eared page,  a couple pages had words underlined,  (had dad actually read the books and took notes?)  Having 7 daughters,  he might have been trying to figure us out.  OK, if that was all I found then I was happy.  Just to surmise what he might have been thinking felt good.

It wasn’t until almost the last book that I came across some small booklets.  At first I thought maybe they had been in the book when mom and dad brought them home.  They looked real old,  discolored but still in good shape.  Then I noticed on the front page of the small booklet was dad’s name, their was also ones with mom and Barbara’s name on, too.  Wow! what was this?  It said “Ration book”.  I showed them to mom and with no surprise and no excitement she told me about the books.  These books were from World War II.  The country was rationing certain items to all Americans, to help in the war effort..  The books said- Gas coupons,  sugar,  flour, meat, canned goods,  coffee  etc.  She explained, “You were supposed to tear off one of the perforated “coupons” each time you bought something”.  There were several coupons left in each book.  But mom, I asked, why didn’t you use up all the coupons?  She just said, “ you had to have money to buy the items.”

Being practical as they were,  I asked  “couldn’t you give them to Grama or someone else who could use them?’  Then very seriously she told me,  “you couldn’t give them to anyone else because you had to even show ID to use them.  And if you bought something for someone else you could get into trouble.  I could tell she didn’t want to take any chances back then.    I’m guessing that even thinking about it you probably felt unpatriotic.  After all,  her brother, Uncle Raymond and dad’s brother, Uncle Phil were or had been  in the service about that time.  This was people’s way of feeling they were doing their part in the war effort.

I asked her if I could have one of the books, since there were several.  She said I could take them all,  they weren’t any good.  Maybe it brought back hard memories for her.  It was very important for me, having a little glimpse into my family’s life during the war.