You know, the necessity for Victory Gardens really hit home today. Unless you grew your own vegetables and/or fruit. It's difficult to buy enough to "put up" at an affordable price. (Peaches and Apples seem to be the exception here, but then obviously if you grew them yourself, the cost would be much, much lower.)
It gives me an appreciation for how my Grandmother "got by" and fed her little family healthy food. During wartime my Grandparents and my mother lived in St. Louis proper, not too far from Forest Park. They didn't have a great deal of space to grow things. If I remember correctly it was a couple of tomato plants, I can't remember her mentioning much else. I wonder if some of the family with more available ground or the members more in the "country" gave them their extra produce?
Unlike me now, Grandma and Grandpa Nopper had siblings and a decent size extended family. Grandma and Grandpa Nopper had family that lived in rural areas. It would be feasible that they would all share with each other.
However, I just thought of something that pretty much bursts that little bubble. How would they have gotten together to get the items in the first place? Gas rationing was in place, and the little gas they did have was used to get Grandpa to work because he worked long hours at Fisher Body. Grandma usually walked to the store and to Church, or she took the bus or streetcar to visit family or run other errands. Buses and streetcars didn't really reach out to the rural areas.
Think about it. A can of peaches was 20 blue points! 20! A can of green beans was 14 points! That's almost the entire ration amount of processed foods for one person for ONE MONTH! Think about how far you could stretch a can of peaches and a can of green beans. Not for a month I'd wager. How many of us could use that up in a DAY? I know I could! I then think of how meats and fats were rationed, too, and the stretching that had to occur for those items. I know they used a good amount of pasta and potatoes, and probably rice, too to get through.
I find myself obsessing about how nutritious their diets were with the scarcity of points for canned/processed items. I wonder if carrots and other root vegetables were readily available at the grocery store? It would be a blessing, but can you imagine how tire you'd get of the same things all the time?
We really are spoiled aren't we? We are used to getting most things we want to eat regardless of whether it is "in season" where we live. Rarely is their a shortage of things in the supermarket. If you can pay for it, you can find it somewhere. Back during the war, if you had the money but didn't have the stamps, you were out of luck. Just because you had the stamps didn't mean it would be available either. Think of the amount of time and planning that went into feeding your family. The trips to the store to see what was available and what you had the points for. I would imagine that keeping track of all this was a job in and of itself, plus the cooking, cleaning, and other work that was normally done each day. Then think about the women who went out of the home to work either out of necessity or in support of the war effort. The "Rosie the Riveters" if you will. If they didn't have any extended family living with them, like mothers or mothers-in-law, aunts, grandmother's, etc. who didn't work outside the home, they would have all that work to do, plus shop and provide meals and keep track of ration points, on top of working a full day outside the home. I honestly don't know how they did it. They kept high standard for themselves too from what I can ascertain.
I know that my Grandfather was an enlightened man for his time in many ways. When my grandparents were first married before they thought of having my mother and they both worked, Grandpa voluntarily split the home chores 50/50 with grandma. (Except for cooking...he wasn't a cook beyond toast and a can of campbells soup I'm afraid...they told me that when my mother was born he tried to cook breakfast for my Grandma after she went through labor...he salted the bacon...but that's another story!) When Grandma decided to stay home full time, he said "OK, the house is yours now." Grandma thought that was fair, after all he was the one going out to work.
People don't look at it that way now for sure. Women who chose to be housewives and stay-at-home mothers are often ridiculed and their contribution to their home life and to society in general is belittled. I had a few "careers" that interested me during my life, but I have to be honest and say that the only one I REALLY wanted was to be a housewife. A lot of people view that as unambitious. I beg to differ. I have never worked as hard in my life, even with all of our "conveniences" than when I was a totally stay at home housewife and mother.
I hope those of you reading this that disagree with me and my opinion - and I'm sure there will a lot of you - will realize it is just that. My opinion. Everyone is different in their views and the way they look at things. I'm not criticizing anyone for what they chose to do or not do. It's not my place to judge anyone other than myself. If you are happy with whatever you are doing, then I applaud you. None of us should live our lives to just to please others and what they think. I've done too much of that in my 56 years and I regret it a great deal. I'm not saying you don't take your loved ones into account in things. Just because someone else thinks you should or shouldn't have such-and-such a job or interest and it impacts only you and doesn't clash with your belief system, then they should take a flying leap.
That is just my opinion, my friends, and that and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee at McDonalds...
Hugs
