DIRT ROAD WONDER: Empty Shelves and Shortages

The basic needs of a human being are food, clothing and shelter.

Lately I have begun to see some of these in short supply like they were during World War II, when everything was rationed.

I don’t remember seeing empty shelves or shortages like this since that dark time.

Last November, I went to a large Walmart in Tallahassee to get some sugar.

In all that store there was not one grain of white sugar.

Are we going back to the time when you had to borrow a cup of sugar to have enough for the cake you were baking?

I have been through that once and I hope I don’t have to go through it again.

Gadsden County was hit hard by the Depression, and then World War II came along with it’s shortages, it made it all the worse.

Most people had vegetable gardens and a chicken yard, so they didn’t feel the pinch as much; peas were part of most meals because they were easy to grow and could be grown on poor soil with a very little fertilizer.

Corn was another basic food.

There are a lot of ways to cook it, but most people like fresh, creamed corn. Cornbread was served at most meals, either baked or made into hoe cakes.

A little thin hoe cake of cornbread with a crispy crust is hard to beat - always use hot water when you are mixing hoe cake. That is the way you get that crispy crust.

There are only three ingredients in hoe cake cornbread: corn meal, hot water, and salt.

I know that most of you know what hand-me-downs are - they are clothes that are passed from the oldest child to the younger children.

I didn’t have any younger sisters, but I had three cousins and we were all two years apart. My clothes were passed on to them.

Then there was the remaking of clothes.

I had a friend whose mother liked to sew. She would take her daughters' dresses apart when she had been wearing them a while and remake the material into something else.

Sometimes the end result was a little weird.

Most of the children in school didn’t have a lot of clothes, so this made it easy to recognize them from a distance.

Men that had to wear dress shirts to work had their shirt sleeve cuffs turned when they became frayed.

This added new life to an old shirt so that it lasted longer.

Women wore aprons over their dresses to catch the stains and spills. This made the dress last longer because it didn’t have to be washed as much.

Socks were not thrown away when they developed holes.

The women had a thing called a darning egg, which looked like a wooden egg on a stick.

They would put the darning egg into the socks to hold them and then darn (stitch) the holes in the socks.

I haven’t heard of anyone darning socks in years.

The best pair of socks I ever had were given to me by one of my husband’s students from Poland. They were woven linen.

Many children’s clothes were made from feed sacks that had flowers on them.

I remember women in the store, shopping around and trying to find enough sacks of the same pattern to make a dress.

I wonder if feed sacks are still made of cotton material with beautiful patterns.

I hope our world leaders can all get together and work out the present problem.

I don’t have a hankering to wear feed sack dresses again.

‘Till next time keep on the sunny side. Gwynn0720@Comcast.net

DIRT ROAD WONDER: Empty Shelves and Shortages

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DIRT ROAD WONDER: Empty Shelves and Shortages

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Guest Column: Coming in for a landing – update on the legislative session

Funding available for Hurricane Michael recovery in Gadsden County

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