If three words could be lumped together instead of the customary two, I suppose this could be classified as an oxymoron. When is war or politics not involved with greed somewhere along the way?

I was about nine years old when World War 2 started and about 13 when it ended in 1945. I say that because memories of a pre-teen boy could be jaded I am sure. Even though such a serious situation as a war might not have been regarded as it was to adults; although I have vivid memories of some of the side effects of war. I remember those little flags that hung in the windows of families whose husband or other male in the household was in the war and if there was one star or two or three. Then it might be changed to gold -- that was not good news.

I remember getting what was called V-Mail and thanks to my wife’s mother (and my wife’s further saving graces) we have several copies of mail my wife’s family received from two uncles while they was in the European theater of the war. For years I remember a photo of my Dad’s brother standing with a bunch of other G.I.’s in front of a tent somewhere in the South Pacific. I remember paper drives we used to have as Boy Scouts to “help the war effort”. I remember scrap drives, again, held by Boy Scouts. I remember my Mother, as other Moms did, taking a container of Lard or grease to the store to somehow aid in the war effort.

I remember the gas cards where there were three classifications, A, B and C and if you had sufficient reason, you were allowed to buy gasoline proportionate to your status. Farmers were allowed to buy more gasoline than others, if I recall correctly. Sugar was not always available in the stores because it was rationed. Other items, such as coffee were also affected. In 1895, C. W. Post created a kind of roasted grain beverage known as POSTUM and marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee. The Post Cereal company was quick to take advantage of this opportunity to tout their caffeine-free product. Even then, and I wasn’t a coffee drinker at the time, I thought it was a pretty shabby substitute for coffee. Rationing was a government-imposed system that forced people to think twice before they did anything.

Many manufacturers were literally changed from manufacturing certain items and somehow directed or ordered by the government to manufacture a military item in place of their regular or typical manufactured products. Guns, ammunitions, and such were top priority. The average citizen, really any citizen, could not buy a “new car” during the war for at least four years. The newest car we had was a 1938 Chevy and it wasn’t unusual to see a lot of cars in the model of the late 1930’s downtown on the weekends. Patriotism was something everyone became involved in.

Why am I bringing up all these bits of information? Look around you. You can buy sugar any time you want it. Coffee, even decaffeinated coffee is abundantly available. You can even buy several different specialty brands of coffee. You can buy Postum today but have you noticed it is as expensive as coffee and we all know why that is – pure and simple, greed. The manufacturer knows some people cannot drink coffee, even decaffeinated, so they provide the product on the basis of “supply & demand”— they supply the product and demand the price they want.

Automobiles are abundantly available. Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler are no longer the Big Three because “imports” have flooded the American market and you see cars produced by countries barely known (at least as auto manufacturers) 60 years ago. You can buy cars with 3 cylinders, 4 cylinders, 6 cylinders and if you are really gung ho, eight cylinder cars or SUVS are plentiful. The only requirement is how much money you want to spend, or borrow. The thing that surprises me most with automobiles or larger vehicles, even during this war in Iraq, and the other recent war efforts, new cars have never been unavailable. The biggest surprise is the obvious greed that exists in auto manufacturers – what else could it be when one of the most popular units being used in the Iraq war is the Humvee? Want one? All it takes is a deep pocket and you can get one – almost like the ones driven by our soldiers. I guess the main difference is the kind of seats or upholstery, cd deck or drop-down TV. Whether bulletproof windows are available I don’t know, or the steel plated extra protection from land mines. I imagine there are some big city neighborhoods where those options wouldn’t be a bad ideas.

I am quite sure many young teenagers, and a few Dads I knew in the mid forties, that would have been tickled to death to be able to buy a JEEP just like the soldiers used to roam all over battlefields and would-be roads in whatever war theater they were in — drive right through a creek! Something like Jeep’s power takeoffs would have been real handy for a farmer. Forget that though, they were simply not available.

I know I have missed some items but I hope this has allowed you to mentally shift gears a bit and look around you and ruminate, “What is this thing called WAR, or POLITICS?” Why is it that in the mid 1940’s WAR was so important and restrictive that people had to “do without” a lot of products? Even if you could fork out the money to get a JEEP it would never happen! When was the last time you had to “give up coffee” to make sure some soldier in a damp fox hole in some jungle could have real coffee – sorry, not even that soldier had a good perked cup of coffee because the government provided what they called “soluble coffee”. We call it “instant coffee” today. And the automatic transmissions that became possible in the late 1940’s were a result of auto manufacturers developing automatic transmission for tanks! Your grandmother can probably tell you about “nylons” and how scarce they were. Women even painted their legs because they couldn’t get nylons!

You know what? I am rather confident the kind of citizenry we have produced today, in our advanced “throw-a-way and casual society”, would not put up with such things as rationing, using special stamps to be able to buy an extra pound of sugar or being content to buy just a few gallons of gas because you had a “C” sticker on your windshield. Our present culture is a “give me because of a I-have-rights mind-set”. Sacrifice? The only kind of sacrifice we know today is whether we want an order of small fries instead of a BIGGIE fries. Or be satisfied with a hot fudge sundae instead of a strawberry sundae.

We need BIG everything today – big 2-3 story houses, with a mud room, a great room and a 3-car garage or maybe a two-car garage with a third garage, its door big enough to get a motor home in. Or whether we want a “regular” truck or maybe “go for the extended cab” and why not get leather seats while we’re at it. The merchants are more than happy to extend interest free loans (yes, with NOTHING DOWN) – why should they worry about you going bankrupt trying to pay all your bills?

I’m glad I was raised during a time when people thought more of their country than they did themselves. I’m glad my neighbors were equally involved in being proud of their service men enough to save papers for the scrap drive and postpone their long vacations for the duration. Seems I recall reading something in the Bible about being content with what we have and loving others more than ourselves. And yes, President Roosevelt was as human as Bill Clinton or George W. Bush are and FDR’s marriage wasn’t exactly a perfect one either. How many people knew or thought about the fact President Roosevelt was unable to stand on his own two feet and the media was kind enough to not zoom in on his shriveled polio-stricken legs?

Ask your grandfather or grandmother about all this — if they’re still around.

THE WORDWRIGHT