Living Like the Past

I will start with Lil's Diary First. We are following along with Lil's diary from 1943. She and her husband Bob are in their Mid 70s and live a simple but busy life and Bob is doing war duty but being one of the war watchmen on top of the hotel to watch for war planes. Make sure you have read the other entries, just look for the diary posts.Monday, February 8, Showery & light hail storm. Bob at S. home at 2:30. B.M called a few minutes, wrote Helen. Tuesday, February 9, Nice but cold. Hard frost. War time started a year ago today. Bob home at 2:30 Up Town to shop, Hair cut for Bob. Wednesday, February 10, Fine, Frost in a.m.  ......

As Charles and I move through the early months of our study researching the entire year of 1943, day by day, we see that this will be an interesting year, much more than last time we studied this year which we did that study in the real year of 2015.I am starting out with an article from 1943 that shows us that it many get tough this year (1943) but it might get tough in this year of 2022 too, so I though this fitting.Remember, we are in 1943, Article : Uncle Sam's official housekeepers are teaching Americans to return to the frugal ways of their pioneer forefathers. Wartime household hints, embracing everything from drying foods for vict ......

To do this History Study to live like 1943 we need to know our prices for food and clothing, toiletries and most anything. I will post a few clips so you can write down what things cost for this study. I would suggest a small notebook and write down the prices so when you go shopping you can look up the 1943 price for your study. If there is something that you cannot read or is not here and need to know a price you can email me. Please title the email Question so I can get back to you a little faster. You can go to your public library to the research room and look at the microfilms to find the 1943 newspapers if yo ......

I didn't have a goose, but Uncle Mack above, said to use him again. :) For several days we have gone back and forth on our city's electric and water rates for 1943. We have two 1943 electric bills but not from our town and we were just going to use them but we wanted to know more about here where we live. So we had to go back in our research to 1935 to find what rates they set them at that time because that was the last time the city adopted a new rate. The next rate change was in 1944. During these years, the city had a very complicated way to rate electricity. They even stated that in the newspaper that it was complicated.We did not give up thou ......

We are reading the 1943 Diary of Lil and Bob. They are each in their 70's and Bob works jobs and does war duty by going to the top of a hotel to watch for war planes.We continue this diary and pick up on February 1, 1943Monday Feb 1, Sunshine all forenoon but cloudy in P.M. Bob home early. Had car serviced at Murphy.Tuesday Feb 2, He saw his shadow. Bob home late from S. R.& M called in afternoon for a few minutes. (I type this as it is written, the writer abbreviates)Wednesday Feb 3, Fine day, done some pruning over at Emma's a few minutes. Bob home from S -with a chicken at 2:30Thursday Feb 4, Light rain all day - Bob home at 2:48. Up town to shop - ......

Life is getting more simple here in 1943. Today we will take a look at our budget and it sure does look different than that future year of 2022. Remember we are living a year like 1943.The war has gotten very serious (ww2) and the only way to not sit and worry is to do all we can to help. I have been saving our cooking grease like they asked us to do and I am starting to plant seeds in newspaper cups to be ready for our spring victory garden. Charles picked up some seed potatoes down at the Jitney Jungle there sure is a ruckus about these seed potatoes this year, I am glad that we could get them. They were .59c for a peck. There was an article abou ......

We are moving forward with our 1943 History Project. We study what was it like in the home during 1943 while world war 2 was going on.Since this is living a year like 1943, we are learning about our town, our food rations that start in March. We have found a way to figure out how much money we make here in 1943, what our food costs our electric, newspaper, telephone cost and we are wondering how we will make in on such little pay. With much research to find the average cost of household expenses in 1943, here on February 1st we are starting to live using the real 1943 average pay and bills. If you are up for a very interesting part of this history study and w ......

Two blog posts back I said the next post would be about the first picture on that blog post. This above is the picture of a German pancake. People have given them many names ,Dutch Baby, Cloud pancakes, Bismarck and maybe others. It is all about fiddling with the recipes. There are other Cloud pancakes that look like a regular American pancake but very puffy. A few weeks ago, my daughter sent me a link to a recipe to make these cloud pancakes and so I decided to try it. This is easy to make but I know them by the name German pancake and would I have cooked this in 1943?My first thought was it was a Dutch baby pancake since I have made those before. ......

This is not my usual kind of post but I wanted to paint a picture so to speak of our 1943 history project and how we are living one year like 1943. Anyone can do this study and it is exciting to study our ancestors and what it was like for them long ago. We don't have to change our home, but we can if we want. It is the research that we learn so much from. Each of you can do your own research just like me.I am already getting emails from some of you that are very surprised at how much they are learning. It is motivation and makes us want to clean our homes and do like our generations before us did. We can save money all at the same time. I used to go to our public lib ......

For any first time visitors, my husband Charles, and I are doing a history study and we are living like the year 1943. world war two is raging and we are at the early stage of rationing. Charles and I are trying to simulate how it was in the home by many means of researching old newspaper microfilms and real diaries that we have here at our home.I pick up on the end of last weeks news into this week and touch on some headlines. Then I will post Lil's diary posts for the week.Now the newsThis week we learned more about a butter shortage and now Point Rationing Expected to take in Butter and Cheese.Washington January 24, 1943 Butter and cheese probably will be rat ......

It has been cold here with below freezing temperatures. We woke up a few days ago to this heavy frost that looked like snow.There is so much beauty in winter and since we are doing the 1943 history study of the homefront we have learned how much electrical energy that we have wasted by trying to make our entire home a comfortable temperature in this real time that we live.A few years ago we purchased a kerosene heater so we would have back up heat if the power went out and we are total electric here at our house. For this history study, we are using this kerosene heater for our main heat and so we have learned to dress warmer inside our home.A basket of Thyme ......

Anyone new that has just popped in on this post, this year of 2022 we are doing a history study of living like the year 1943. There is a Part one of this post called Finding Calm Researching the Past Part One.This post will cover news and rations covering new information from last week after last weeks post and what we know already from this week. As I write this today it is January 17th, 1943.Starting with the news.There has been a curfew law for children asked. An ordinance requiring all children, under seventeen years of age to be off the streets of Dothan by 9 p.m. unless accompanied by their parents or guardian, is now before the City Commission for its approval. ......

Here we are, our third week in 1943. I am so excited about the comments and emails and the interest in this study. Now in week three reading the local 1943 paper daily we are starting to get a good feel of this era and the happenings around town and it is starting to feel more like 1943. I wish so much we could go to these places in the paper but many are no longer there or have been changed.This year Charles and I are listening to radio only. We have recordings of the old radio shows that we have purchased online over the years. Last night we listened to Bing Crosby Armed Forces Broadcasts. It was so nice... The only elec ......

I had a bag of loose ration stamps and I decided to paste them to paper so we could study them better.It was quite interesting how they came up with a rationing system that worked. It had a bumpy start but then it all started making sense.The round tokens were used to make change. They were worth one point.These are all real stamps in all photos shown above that we have collected over the years. March was when food rationing got more serious and when rationing really kicked in to more serious rationing.When we did the ww2 history in 2015 I typed up the release and expire dates. So right now with our study (January) we are rationing gasoline, sugar, fuel oil and such as that.I will ......

We have been reading from Lil's Diary, I posted her first week under the blog post Four Days in with our 1943 History Project. I will try and get this on tract to where it is in a post that is titled the diary so you can read along better. This comes from a five year diary including the years 1942, 43, 44, 45 and 46. Our history project this year is 1943. (I will give some information as we go along to help you figure out what Lil is talking about)January 8, 1943. (Friday) Fine again today. Cleaned House & Venetian blinds. B (Bob) over at S. Cut Frahm's lawns in P.M. Marjory and J called. (visited)Jan 9th 1943. Saturday. Fine Day.& ......

Our 1943 Ration Office has been a bit scattered this week but we are pulling it together. If you happened upon this blog for the first time, my husband and I enjoy challenging ourselves to history studies and projects. This year we are living like 1943 for our second time to learn even more. You can join in at any time, we will be going a full year so you can jump in and get back to where you started. Each Blog post starting from January has ration updates and then I talk about our week. There is a lot to learn about the homeland during world war 2. For those of you that are also doing this study with us, I am posting weekly ration information and have ......

The first two days of January we continued to go through clothing to reduce our clothing down to more like what people had during 1943. We pulled everything from our drawers, closets and shelves and started going through our clothing and only keeping out what we felt would be a sensible amount and for what we have read about for this time of 1943 and which is much less than we have.We made a donations box because this needed to be done anyway and a throw away bag for worn out clothing and a rag bag.Yesterday ( Tuesday ) was wash day including changing out the bed sheets and pillowcases. We had a storm to push through Sunday night and our temperatures dropped from a high of 78 - ......

Hello everyone, Charles and I want to wish you all a Happy New Year!Here we are about to jump out of 2021 and jump into 1943. This is New Years Eve evening at our house and we will hold each others hands and jump together to make sure we don't fall.If you don't know we are starting a History project living like 1943. Yes we have been here before but now we know much more about it and are excited to begin and share what we have learned and we hope many of you will join us.If you do not want to do the study, there is much to learn just reading along and I hope you will enjoy the way we are going to do this.We have been making changes, we are changing back to enamelware, metal ......

If you have happened upon my blog, we are about to start an new History project living like 1943 for a year and I am posting each day information about this project for those that are doing this study with us. This post is information that explains the history study of what would have been going on the latter part of 1942 and then entering 1943. I will get back to normal posting after we get started but I am sharing this information for all of those interested in doing this study with us this year or enjoy following along. There is still much to learn even if you are not actually doing the study. Charles and I had so much to learn about 1943 that we ......

We will need Ration book two when we start our year of 1943. We signed up for this book two in December 1942 but we have not been issued the book at this time. You can make it now or you have time because we will not be using it in January but we will be studying it.The stamps will look different in book two. In the book there are 8 pages of stamps that have letters and numbers and colors blue and red. It looks complicated but only because we haven't started using it.On the other post we made Book One to look like the real ration book. I am making a simple version for book two after doing a study on this once before.So I took some card stock, (thick paper ......