Patterns

Donald Nelson warned his optimistic fellow Americans: "As for the inconveniences, discomforts and hardships that you and I will have to endure--why, we haven't even got to the foothills yet."

He cited the rubber shortage as "one little sample" of how Americans were going to have to learn to "take it and keep on taking it. . . ."

Meantime the U.S. went ahead with innumerable adjustments to wartime living:

Woodcut. Canny Connecticut doesn't intend to freeze next winter, no matter how short the supplies of coal and oil. Governor Robert A. Hurley approved last week a drive to list all wood lots where residents can cut kindling and logs in their spare time now, for thorough seasoning before cold weather.

Glimmer for Glamor. Because the clothes of movie actresses are the most widely imitated by U.S. women, the Screen Actors Guild urged more stars to set a thrifty wartime style by dropping glamor for the duration. Actresses were asked to wear cotton, to stick to the standardized WPB silhouettes, to go without hairpins, zippers and metal jewelry.

Harvest. A Kansas City trapshoot proprietor added a new business to his old. From his six-acre tract he is scraping an inch of top soil which is run through a hopper. Recovery to date: 20 tons of lead and brass shot. He hopes to recover 100 more.

Drapes. Housewives were asked by OPA's Consumer Division to give up ruffles on curtains, to cut off floor-length drapes and do without pleated flounces on slip covers to save millions of yards of textiles.

Home Delivery. More babies are being born in California than ever before. Hospitals are so crowded and medical help so scarce that many doctors deliver babies in their offices, send the infants and their mothers home in a few hours.

Ersatz Candy. The candymakers (fourth largest U.S. food industry) met in convention last week to moan and groan. Reasons: lost imports from 29 countries; the rationing of sugar and cocoa (which formerly constituted half of $400,000,000 worth of candy sold each year). But the confectioners pushed their product as an important Army food item; and bravely produced new wartime candies, featuring: powdered milk, dried fruit, domestic nuts, shredded and toasted soybeans, corn syrup, sweet potatoes, cereal, cracker meal, cornstarch, gelatin, peanut butter, and three-day-old bread.

Death Rattle. A be-rationed Sioux City, Iowa citizen put his views in verse to the chairman of his ration board:

And when I die, please bury me

'Neath a ton of sugar, by a rubber tree.

Lay me to rest in an auto machine

And water my grave with gasoline.

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