Friday, May 28, 2010

Teen age Bedroom




When I was in my teens, the Second Wold War as taking place. I had a collection of aircraft pictures pasted on the walls of my bedroom.
I had my own room on the second floor of our house. As I recall, it had a double bed, a bookcase and a bureau. Because it was an old house, it had only a small closet. I don't recall where I got the pcitures  but all the boys at that time had such collections. Of course we also made model planes out of balsa wood. In high school we also made model planes supposedly to be used for training aircraft spotters. Many towns had aircraft spotters on duty 24 hours a day. They were watching for enemy aircraft - though in those days enemy aircraft did not have the capability of flying to the US from Europe. We also had blackouts from time to time.As far as I know, they were mostly tests rather than the real thing. The nearest we came to enemy actions  was at the Jersy seashore resorts. In 1942 there were numerous cases of oil tankers being torpedoed off the Jersey coast. My diary in July 1942 mentions going to Barnegat Light and seeing the remains of a torpedoed ship sticking up out in the ocean. There were also big gobs of oil or tar on the beach from the sunken ships.The war had lots of impact on our lives. Many things were rationed, meat, cigarettes, gasoline,tires, sugar. We had ration books for each item. Gas was limited to 3 gallons per week for ordinary citizens and cars in those days were not very fuel efficient. During the war no new cars were produced for civilian use so all cars were 1941 or earlier vintage. Right after the school day ended many high school students went to work in local shops and store. The parents who normaly would have worked in shops and stores were either in the military or working in war plants. It was a rare high school student who had a car  and if he did it was likely to be an ancient jalopy.. We went everywhere by bus or by walking. We even took our dates on the bus or we walked. In retrospect, I think we were happier then than teenagers are now.