A Three Part Portrait: Teen Age Life During WWII

Pauline Thomas in a lunch line at her High School

in Piqua, Ohio during WWII.

Video of Pauline Thomas's Family Background During WWII

Text of Video

Hello my name is Pauline Thomas, Pauline Carder Thomas. My name was Carder during the war and until 1945 actually. Anyway this is a little short story about things, the way they went during WWII and it wasn’t exactly an exciting time. There were many things we had to do without during that time. However, I lived with my Mother and Dad. My sister, a little older, was married and lived with her husband in Detroit Michigan. So there was just me as the child in the family so to speak and we had coupons. They gave us coupons and we had to have those in order to buy a lot of things and there was a shortage of things like laundry detergent and I remember standing in line for my Mother at the Kroger store so that she could do washing . It was just little things like that come to my mind now . Back then, I really don’t know what I thought. At that age we didn’t really think that much about war like they do today, the way the kids do today. We just went along with what we were supposed to do. During that time, at the beginning, my Dad rode a bicycle, we had no car back then and my Dad rode a bicycle all over the place . We rented a house in Shawnee on First Street(Piqua) and he rode his bike all the way to Hartzell’s Propeller Company on Washington Avenue and he would ride his bike back and forth. Luckily he had a job and he kept food on the table. There was a shortage for sure but we always had enough to eat and a place to stay and a close relationship, too.

Pauline Thomas speaks of homelife during WWII

(Pauline Thomas on High School Steps)





(sound file only)

Q. My first question will be, what did you and your family do for entertainment back when you were in high school during the war years?

A. About the only thing that we could do was listen to what was on the radio or maybe go to a movie once in a while, but we really couldn’t afford to do that all that much so we listened a lot to the radio. It was funny because we would be watching the news and we would all be sitting around looking at the radio. Of course we didn’t see anything except just the radio. You see that on some of the comic shows that remind me of those days.

Q. Did you have group activities?

A. Well, we played cards and that was about it but the whole family could do that and we spent a lot of hours doing that. We played checkers. I never was very good at that. My Dad always beat me playing checkers.

Q. How did you get your information about the outside world and how did you communicate with people outside of your home?

A. Well, we got a newspaper and of course we got the news. My Dad especially kept right up on the news on radio and he listened to a lot of news shows, my aggravation at that age. If we needed to get in touch with somebody, and we could not afford a telephone back then, there was a grocery store across from us, across the street from us and they had a telephone and if we really needed to get out to someone we would go over there and use their phone.

Q. Now where did you get your food? What were your food sources?

A. My Dad was always a big garden person, my Mother too. They put out a pretty good size garden that would include corn, too, and all kinds of vegetables. And then of course we went to the store which was, at that time, the one across the street from us but after it closed we had to walk quite a distance to get to the store and of course that meant carrying grocery bags which were rather heavy at times, up the hill at Shawnee to our house, something we wouldn’t think much of doing these days. Back then you didn’t or you didn’t get the groceries.

Q. Now, where did your clothes come from? Did you buy a lot of them off of the rack?

A. I hardly had any clothes bought off the rack. A few maybe, but my Mother was a very good seamstress and she made a lot of my clothes. I got a lot of compliments on the clothes that she made me. When I was a child, she even made me a winter coat and that coat was trimmed with caracal. I don’t know if you know what caracal is, kind of a little curly type fake fur and she put that around the cuffs and the collar. Ohh..It was a beautiful coat. She made my clothes on up to when I went to high school, a lot of them, but then I bought a few.

Q. Now, how did you get back and forth to school? I know that Shawnee was across a rather large bridge, and that the high school was clear up by where they have a senior home now on High Street (Piqua). How did you get there? Did they have a bus come get you?

A. No, I walked everyplace I went. They had school buses that took the kids in rural areas, but it didn’t take any of us, so we walked to school and that was even when I went to high school I had to walk, I don’t know how far it was from our house to the high school but it was a long distance. It didn’t make any difference if it was raining or snowing or sleeting, it didn’t come across the bottom of the radio that there would be no school today so we went to school and walked home again. It was a pretty good distance even when I went to second or third grade but it was even further than that when I went to high school. After I graduated and was working at the high school I still walked all that distance, as we still didn’t have a car in the family. I got a lot of walking in those days.

Thank you very much. You have given us an excellent view of how it was to live back then in the WWII days.

Thank you very much.

Keepon on YouTube

This is fun! I saw this on Wired Science and the idea of a sophisticated robot that has music and some facial recognition just blows me away. How far we have come!
Use this link to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPdP1jBfxzo

Commercial....60 Second

Sun is rising on a country farm....music plays in the background, the usual flute la-de-da. Rooster crows.

Camera goes into bedroom window to a man in bed waking up, yawing, then throwing back his blanket.
(Music up tempos, muted rock song)
He leaps out of bed and takes a shower in futuristic looking bathroom. Coffee perks on a timer and breakfast pops out of the microwave.
"I am so ready for this day" he says, munching on his food.
He opens the door to go outside and there stands a deer with a flower in its mouth, with lots of different species of animals standing and dancing behind, all singing Celebrate(Rare Earth).
"I just want to celebrate
another day of living
I just want to celebrate
another day of life."

Camera pans out to include the whole house, showing solar panels, recyling bins. water tank for sun warming, hybrid car.
Camera pans further out to space view of Earth clean of pollution.
Music continues to play...Voice in "Saving the planet starts at home."...pan out.

Commercial Spots....30 second

Darkened room……..in a house anywhere. A nondescript teenager picks up a snowglobe and shakes it. She winds the musicbox part and it plays “America the Beautiful”. Closeup of her face through the glass. The globe contains a pastoral scene, animals, green grass and trees. She says "I remember.." in a dreamy voice.
Girls face turns sad. She sighs, walks over to a table and sets the globe down. She then walks over to a window, pulls aside the drapes and looks out. Camera pans to the outside and shows desert sand, dead trees and animal skeletons. There is a single hand pump at a well with hundreds of people lined up with plastic bottles. Armed guards hold guns at ready. A faded broken-down sign says “Welcome to the Great Smokie Mountains”

Man’s voice over “Global Warming is Real. It is up to you to change the future.”

Keywords

Keywords: Shorin, karate, Sensei, dojo, sparring, focus, breaking, Leistner, lessons, fees, WSKF, martial, kata, Nagamine, Okinawa, Grant, Zen.