Second World War as a Child

 

 

Second World War as a Child

 I’m watching “World War II in Color” on Netflix, and it takes me back to childhood memories during that war, and young adult memories just after.

 The little hill town in Western Massachusetts where I was raised was not on the electrical grid.  We did not have conventional electricity.  What happened is that that the electrical infrastructure was being built, to connect from two directions, when the U.S.  entered the Second World War.  Materials were diverted to the war effort, and our little town was left without electricity.

 I remember doing my homework by kerosene lamp-light in the early 1940’s.  My father, who never saw anything he couldn’t fix or improve upon, installed a 32-volt generator (that we called “the Delco”), and liquid battery, lighting system.  This was for lights and radio only.  It was not suitable to run a compressor for refrigeration, which was by icebox, and ice was bought every week.  Heating was by coal, wood and kerosene.  AC was unheard of.

 I later married Gisela, who was raised in Germany during the war.  They had many more modern conveniences than my little town in New England had.

 I remember reading the one local paper we had (The North Adams Transcript), and listening to the radio about the progress of the war.  We had no TV until the early 1950’s, and then there was one TV station we could receive with an appropriate antenna, WRGB, Schenectady, NY, which was a General Electric test station, and one of the first TV stations in the country.  So, we had the newspaper and the radio for contact with the outside world.  Of course. As a kid, I was more interested in listening to “The Shadow”, “The Lone Ranger”, “The Green Hornet”, “Boston Blackie” and other serialized adventures, than in adult news.

 We also got news in weekly movie news reels, just after the cartoons and before the main feature.  Saturday matinee in Adams. 7 miles away, was a dime, if I could get there.  I normally hitched a ride with our mail delivery, still named “The Plainfield Stage” at that time.

 Our school was “Cherry Hill School”, a one room school house with eight grades and 20-25 students, located about a quarter mile from my house.  I learned a lot by cross-fertilizing with higher grades, and from the “World Book Encyclopedia” kept at the back of the room.  When I was seven, in the second grade, my father taught me how the get the pot-bellied stove going at the school on cold mornings, so I would walk to the school early and have the place warmed up by the time the teacher and rest of the kids arrived.

 One of the things that I remember doing to help the war effort was to pick milkweed pods.  The light silky material inside was used as stuffing for life vests for sailors at sea.  My mother would also send care packages of clothing and other items to relatives in Poland.

 I also remember rationing of meats, various foodstuffs and commodities.  Ration stamps were necessary to buy these things.  Since we were in a rural area, people produced some of their own food like my family did, with a garden and raising chickens for eggs and meat.  Other larger farmer had cows, pigs, and other agricultural products, so there was some trading and black market activity outside of the rationing rules.

Ray Gruszecki

November 14, 2020