When the first rationing books rolled off the presses in February 1942, my mother hit her stride.

Having lived through the Great Depression, scrimping and saving was nothing new to her. People were encouraged to plant what were called Victory Gardens and the slogan was, “Eat what you can, and can what you can’t eat.”

Some people planted gardens in the shape of aVforvictory,butmother,notwantingto waste any space, planted neat rows of pole beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes and lettuce.

My mother had always maintained a garden and put up food for the winter, and meat was never a big part of our diet. We would have a roast of meat for Sunday dinner, the leftovers of which provided another meal during the week and enough for my father’s lunch sandwiches.

The rest of the week we ate baked beans, macaroni and cheese, meat loaf and fish. My father often went fishing and brought home more than we could eat, but my mother, not wanting to waste a scrap of food, salted down the extra in a big stoneware crock for future use in chowders.

If it could be preserved, my mother knew how to do it, and the shelves in our cellar were always lined with jars of pickles, vegetables, mincemeat, jams, jellies and anything else preservable.

Butter rationing changed things a bit, and vegetable shortening was available. But it was white and not very appetizing; so a little gel cap of yellow coloring was included in each package. It was my job to wash my hands thoroughly, squeeze in the gel cap, and mix it all together with my hands until it was evenly colored. When it was done you could hardly tell the difference, and we didn’t mind the taste.

Building a navy

Meanwhile at Bath Iron Works, launchings became commonplace, with the ships sliding down the ways at the rate of one every two weeks or so. The shipyard was going full bore right around the clock. The work never stopped.

The shipyard hired women to replace the men off fighting in the war. They were put to work welding, burning, painting and riveting, and the popular song “Rosie the Riveter” topped the charts.

Cartoon posters showed Rosie in her work shirt flexing her muscle. My friends and I loved to pretend we had riveting machines in our hands and we would sing that famous line, “ Rosie, brrrrrrrrrrt, the Riveter.”

As the war effort heated up, some friends of my parents went to work at the Bath Iron Works. Because they owned their own homes in Auburn, they commuted.

Quite often they worked double shifts or overtime and needed a place in town to spend the night. Gas was rationed and, due to the influx of workers at the Bath Iron Works, accommodations in Bath were scarce or nonexistent.

People slept in sheds or any place they could find shelter. In some cases three men, each of whom worked a different shift, would rent a room, and each would have it for eight hours a day.

My brother, Bob, was no longer living at home, so my father placed Bob’s twin bed under the stairs in the front hall. In the living room was a couch that opened into a bed to sleep two with sheets, blankets and pillows stored in a compartment below.

Our front door was never locked, and a friend of my father’s, Elwood “Lib” Libby, and Carl Rowe, the husband of my mother’s best friend, would sometimes arrive late at night and be gone before we got up in the morning.

My parents left the kitchen light on all night, and the teakettle was always bubbling away on the back burner from which anyone could make coffee in the dripolater. My mother kept a jar in the pantry filled with homemade doughnuts, and she often left little stashes of food in the refrigerator for anyone in need of a quick, late meal.

Radio

The news flashes kept coming, interrupting all our favorite radio programs, and it seemed like they always broke in during the most exciting parts. My brother, Jimmy, liked “Gang Busters,” and I liked “Inner Sanctum.” We both liked “The Lone Ranger.”

Then there was “The Shadow” with its opening line, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows,” after which he would give a snide little snicker.

Sometimes we would tune in to “ Duffy’s Tavern.” It would open with the sound of a phone ringing, and then a voice would say, “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite meet to eat, Archie the manager speakin’, Duffy ain’t here.”

My parents liked “ The Great Gildersleeve,” “Fibber Magee and Molly,” “ Henry Aldrich” and “ The Life of Riley,” but in the afternoons my mother liked to listen to “Backstage Wife” and “Young Widder Brown.”

It was hard to believe that we were only hearing the voices of people standing at microphones, reading scripts while others provided the sound effects. In our minds, we were providing the scenery and the action. We were riding down the trail with the Lone Ranger whooping out “Hi Ho Silver, Awaaay.”

We stood in front of the Inner Sanctum, waiting for the bloodcurdling sound of those squeaky doors as they opened to reveal the ghoulish mysteries that lurked behind them. Our minds filled with pictures and images, which were different for each and every listener.

In later years when some radio programs converted to television, they failed because people already had the scenery and the characters fixed in their minds and they were disappointed in the producer’s depiction of them.

One day in the summer of 1943, my father arrived home with two English sailors who had posted themselves by the Bath Iron Works gate at closing time, looking to hitch a ride to Brunswick Naval Air Station, where they were training to be Corsair pilots.

My father offered to give them a ride, but they would have to walk home with him because that is where our car was. It was their day off and they had been fishing off the rocks at Small Point.

They offered their catch to my mother, and she, in turn, asked them to have dinner with us. Their names were Mick and Digby, and they were to become a part of our family for the duration of their stay in the United States.

They addressed my parents as “Mother” and Father” and they became like big brothers to Jimmy and me. They would help out with the chores, maybe weed the garden or mow the lawn, and from time to time they would sleep over so they could get an early start to the fishing grounds. Bringing their catch home for my mother to cook, they would stay and have dinner, and listen to the news with us.

Huddled around the big old wooden radio, we would wait for Walter Winchell’s dramatic intro, “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea, let’s go to press.“

With rare exceptions, the reports were chilling, but thankfully, in those days we were spared the visual impact of it all. The only place we got to see the action was at the movie theaters, where they would come on with “ The Eyes and Ears of the World.” There, we would actually get to see what was going on, ships being torpedoed, and planes flying low strafing people on the ground. But somehow it seemed more like a movie than the real thing.

While our parents were listening to the news, Jimmy and I would play games. His favorite was Kentucky Derby, but we both liked checkers, Chinese checkers and Parchesi.

The only card games we had were Flinch and Old Maid. We were not allowed to have a regular deck of cards, which my mother called “the devil’s picture book.” Sometimes Mick would play a game of Old Maid with me. I think he just liked to witness my obvious glee when he got stuck with the Old Maid.

Tragedy

The war suddenly took on new meaning the day our kitchen door burst open and my Aunt Kitty stumbled into the room and fell sobbing into my mother’s arms.

“Richard is dead, Richard is dead,” she repeated over and over.

Richard, her only son, had been killed, a casualty of the war. It was hard to believe that this was actually happening to us. We knew there were other families in Bath who had lost loved ones, but I never thought it would happen to our family.

My once fun- loving aunt was inconsolable, and all our hearts were broken. It was agonizing to think we would never see him again and I thought we would never be able to stop crying.

Would we ever be able to laugh again or have fun as we did before? What would life be like without him?

I did not choose to go to the funeral. It was my first experience with death, and I could not bear to see the suffering of my favorite aunt, so I spent the day with a friend. To this day I can remember exactly what he looked like, his reddish blond hair and ruddy complexion, the set of his jaw, are all firmly fixed in my memory.

Richard had been in the Marine Corps stationed aboard a ship that was docked at a port in Virginia. The ship had blown up. They called it sabotage.

There had been reports of spies coming ashore from the German U- boats that were patrolling along the shores of the eastern seaboard. In fact six German spies, who were carrying explosives, had been previously arrested.

The war was closer to home than we realized. In fact, we learned later that the U-boats had been sinking tankers off the coast even before war was declared. The enemy was among us, and there were signs around that read “Loose lips sink ships.” I never was quite sure what that meant, but I knew it was important.

Gradually, life returned to normal, although it would never be the same again. Certain things took on new meaning. The names on the Gold Star board in front to the Bath Post Office were no longer just a list of names; they represented someone’s son, husband, father or brother, whose families were grieving for them as we were for Richard.

Reports of the casualties of battles fought on both fronts made us aware of the bloodiness of the war that was being fought. If we had been told the true number of deaths we would not have been able to bear it. We learned later that the newscasters had held back that information. Perhaps they could not bear to know the truth themselves.

In the summer of 1943, my sister Doris, who had recently graduated from nursing school, married a man who was serving in the Seabees. She then moved to California, where he was stationed.

In the winter of 1944, he shipped out to the Pacific Theater of Operation, and Doris, who by then was pregnant, moved in with us. Because she needed a room for her and the soon-to-be-born baby, my brother got bumped out of his bedroom into the bed under the front stairs.

This put a further squeeze on the accommodations, and either Lib or Carl would arrive late at night only to find the sailors bivouacked on the couch in the living room and Jimmy encamped in the bed under the stairs. So there was no other choice but to retreat to their automobiles to sleep.

However, soon after her baby girl was born, my sister moved to Litchfield to be with her husband’s family, and Jimmy moved back into his bedroom upstairs. Things eased up a bit with the accommodations, but the war in the outside world continued.

THE THIRD INSTALLMENT of Lois Young Hart’s three-part reflection about life in Bath during World War II will appear in Friday’s edition.

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