Dad was always a stickler for absolute adherence to laws, regulations, etc. But there was one short time during the war when even he fudged a little. For maybe six months Sealed Power Corporation sent Dad to work at a plant in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to help with some type of production problem. He lived in a boarding house in Detroit, probably near the Detroit River separating the two countries. He told us that he walked across the International Bridge to work in Windsor and back every day. At that time, there weren’t many people doing that so the immigration officers and military guards became quite familiar with him.
Cigarettes were rationed in the US, but not in Canada. Dad didn’t smoke, so he regularly gave his ration stamps to friends in the plant in Muskegon who smoked. While living in Detroit, he gave his stamps to smokers living in the boarding house. To bring cigarettes into the US from Canada, a permit was required, which allowed something like one carton a week. Dad frequently carried a carton across the bridge for friends. A few times during the winter when he was wearing a heavy coat, Dad said he sneaked an extra carton across for someone under his coat. Even though Dad admitted having broken the law those few instances, he gave no license for us to break any laws or rules.
Life Magazine and Colliers Magazine published many pictures and article by War Correspondents serving overseas with our troops. Our folks couldn’t afford those magazines, but the elderly lady from whom Harvey and I collected papers, etc. did take them. After Harvey and I had brought the collected items to our basement I would set aside copies of those two magazines. Sitting a stool in the basement going through those magazines, I “lived” the war. I saw pictures of troops under fire, Nazi atrocities in Europe, the Japanese atrocities in the Pacific that I didn’t dare let my parents know about. I read first person accounts of battles, which should have been way above my reading level, but I kept a dictionary hidden in an out-of-the-way corner. When I couldn’t find a word I the dictionary, frequently I could come close to the meaning by context.
My paternal grandparents lived in a small village in the “vegetable and fruit belt” along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. During the various growing seasons, they worked in a commercial canning factory. While sugar was rationed, the canning factory still had to use some as a preservative in processing fruits. The sugar was purchased by the factory in 50 pound, heavy paper bags.
Sometimes at the end of a canning season, the factory would have left-over sacks of sugar which had become hardened by humid storage conditions (there was no air conditioning). Sugar was way too scarce to throw away, so workers were allowed to buy the hardened sacks, without using ration stamps. Every year Grandpa would buy a bag for them, and one for us. Dad would store our bag of sugar in a small attic on the second floor of the house, under the slope of the roof. That attic was in the southwest corner of the house, and had no ventilation, so it was dry.
