Junk Metal and All Scrap Go For the War Effort—No New Appliances
The Story of the Wetta Family Gas Range The heart of most homes is the kitchen, and in our farmhouse, the heart of the kitchen was the gas range. As a child, I didn’t realize how great our cook stove was, but the more I cooked, especially when helping at other women's houses, I realized Mom had a nice range. The appliance never acted up, broke down or disappointed in any way. Whether it was the best homemade soups or sloppy joes, or wonderful pies, cakes and breads, the stove produced the most mouth-watering, nutritious food. Of course this had a little to do with Mom's culinary ability. Besides cooking thousands of meals for our huge family and our always welcome friends, that range heated hundreds of large pressure cookers of canned fruits and vegetables to feed us for the winter. Thinking of the stove, feelings of security but also exhaustion wrap around my memories. From the time I first began to cook, I realized that Mom’s stove was special because we just turned a knob, and the burners lit. My grandmother and aunts and friends' moms always had to light the burner with a match. When I began babysitting, Mom often warned me to remember to light the stove with a match. One time I must have asked Mom how she happened to have such a modern, fancy stove when we never had money for anything special. She would laugh and admit that her friends wondered the same thing. No one could figure out where or how she was able to get a new gas range in 1945 when even repair parts for appliances, farm equipment and other essentials were almost impossible to obtain. No one even dreamed of a new appliance. All metal was going to support the war effort. "First America must win the war. The task is great. It demands total effort. Today and as long as needed, our man-power, resources and facilities must be devoted to building these implements that will help bring victory--- Afterwards . . .When complete victory has been won, General Electric will again create and build those appliances that add so much to our American way of life." (Source) A creative suggestion of how Mom got the gas range is a small section of my soon-to-be release novel, OUR DUTY. “Hey, here’s Mr. Farley’s hardware store; let’s go in and see how he’s doing.” She opened the door and was halfway through before Nonie could protest “Hi, Mr. Farley, how ya doin?” Polly called as soon as she saw him shelving buckets. “Polly Garrity, how are you?” he exclaimed, climbing down from the ladder. “I hear you’re a real nurse now. You must be the best the hospital has seen.” He wanted to hug her but did not want to become emotional. He politely skipped to a new topic. “Hi, Miss Nonie, how are you?” “I’m fine. Gosh you have so many different types of things in here than you used…
