In the forties, although my cousins and I were aware of food rationing, our parents also worried about the shoes and clothes that went on our feet and backs. Green stamps for non-perishables served in the same way that the red and blue ones did for edibles. Without these federal coupons, mothers and aunts had to rely on homemade clothing for all of us.
Back then, flour sacks became significant sources of cloth for such projects. The large bags, which had held white flour used for baking, were, themselves, seldom white. Usually they had colorful patterns, often floral designs.
The emptied bags were washed, dried and set aside for sewing projects, especially aprons. Perhaps with the limited availability of store-bought housedresses, it was necessary for women to protect what they had by using an apron not only while cooking but also while doing all kinds of work around the house: scrubbing, vacuuming, dusting, and, certainly, “canning.”
The end of summer was the usual time for canning vegetables and fruit so that nothing we grew during the season would spoil and need to be thrown out. Bushels of cooked tomatoes became rows of Mason jars filled with sauce or whole, de-seeded produce. String beans and slices of fried peppers filled many more glass jars, each of which was sealed with a top consisting of a disposable brass ring and an inserted flat lid. During this pasteurization process, the family could only hope that none of the jars would explode while they were in the huge pots filled with boiling water, or during the cooling down period prior to their final storage in the cellar.
Although cucumbers could be pickled, I do not recall much done with softer produce such as corn or peas. On the other hand, we welcomed canned peaches or pears for consumption in midwinter, especially in pies. Even better were the jellies made from cherries, grapes or crab-apples. However, real apples seldom appeared in our home-canned jars; perhaps they became too brown and unappetizing in the heating process needed to render bacteria harmless.
As for those flower-patterned flour sacks, they were made into more than aprons for my mother and dresses for her nieces. They also became braided rugs. The strips cut from the sacks were twisted and sewed into cord-like forms which were joined together on a family loom. As a boy seeing only the results, I had no idea of the direct magic used to transform rags into rugs. This was a secret taught only to girls.
The other cloth transformation was from string into fancy dresses for little girls, along with doilies for tabletops or for armchair covers to protect our stuffed furniture. My mother was an expert in crocheting and her nieces became well outfitted with fancy dresses she made while listening to the radio in the evening. Her larger creations included comforters. One composed of multicolored granny squares has become a prized collection to be left as a family heirloom.
There were other fashion needs during the war years that could not be met with creations from rags and strings. My mother did not knit sweaters or socks, but she did darn many of the latter. However, there was no way she or my aunts could produce silk or nylon hose when they were totally unavailable in the stores. But, women were able to fake them.
My aunts bought various shades of a brown, liquid makeup that they applied to their legs. Then, with great dexterity, or with another helpful relative, they used an eyebrow pencil to draw a thin line down the back of each leg, from just above the knee to a point near the ankle. In the right light, the results did look a little like real hosiery, and they did not need to worry about a run or snag in them. Although my mother never wore slacks, my aunt Mary, who worked in a factory, welcomed them and ankle socks in place of long hose.
For the war effort at home, my mother and aunts became the ones who sewed, crocheted, and knitted all year long, and canned food during summer and fall. Teenaged boys were assigned the year ‘round task of collecting scrap metal and paper, bundling together each collection, and lugging them to pickup locations. Rubber tires and old car batteries, as well as grease left over from cooking, were also “recycled.” It is only, recently, with the green-movement, that recycling has, again, becomes a public action. Now, it is plastic, an unheard of material during the forties, that it is collected for re-use. Nevertheless, it is very unlikely there will be a modern version of the wartime motto, “make do, do without or redo what you have.”