VICTORY GARDEN -- DO YOU HAVE ONE? WE DO & OTHERS DO TOO

Are there any of you out there who remember what a Victory Garden is?  You can either tell the truth or fib a little to hide your age.  If you have vivid memories of this phenomenon you are at least 7 - 10 years older than 70 years old.  During the time that I remember well, the population was accustomed to the concept.  It was something that had begun during World War I.  During the second World War the majority of home owners who had any kind of land around the house, had a garden.  It was not a time when ordinary people [now we call them middle class] bragged about a lawn.  They did brag about their garden.  

We had one at 1 Hartford Street.  My grandfather Thibault did most of the work during the week days.  We, EFR Dion and I and my brother would help one another on Saturday.  It was a fairly large garden and it was very bountiful.  It did provide us with goods to trade for ration tickets.  <Ration Tickets?>  I guess I just used a word that not too many of you know about.  Yes, during WW II people had to prove that they had the right to buy food by surrendering stamps or tokens to the vendor.  It was something like 3 stamps for a dozen eggs; 10 stamps for a three pound pullet; 4 stamps for a half-pound of butter, etc.  Yup, this is a real story.  That's why it was better to have a garden than to have a front lawn.  So, when I saw this today, I thought of WW II and all you young people out there.

Doesn't that look beautiful?  You should see it live and in living color.  It's 300 square feet of lush squash plants.  It is the front lawn.  It reminds me of 1975.  May and June of 1975.  Saigon had fallen and many people flooded into continental USA.  When that would happen in the 1940's we called them DP's [displaced persons].  So these Vietnamese came to Southern California and other parts of the country and one of the first things that shocked them was all the "wasted" arable land that stood in front of the residences of even the simplest family.  They were shocked that people would work so hard to grow green grass that they would not eat rather than to plant food that they could eat.  So, in many neighborhoods where they settled, front yard vegetable gardens actually sprung up.  Not only the Vietnamese did it, but others saw the wisdom of it as well.  We have a few families in our San Diego neighborhood who have front yard gardens.  We, as a family also have a garden.  We do rather well with it too.  In many ways, I agree with those who say that a front yard garden is better than a lawn.  We don't have a front lawn, but some who do have land in front of the house prefer to have a vegetable garden rather than a lawn.  You have to admit, it is better to grow people oriented veggies in the front yard than to have grazing sheep and/or goats.  True?  Worse yet, have simple grass and yipping and yelping dogs...or even growling ones.  

That's the thought for today.  Put me down as in favor of home gardens, front or back or both. Just do it.

I REMEMBER WHEN --- WORLD WAR II --

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Many times I wonder where I get the thoughts that I do.  They are so random and they catch me so much by surprise.  Today, for instance.  We were driving back from our Easter Holy Day.  After about 45 minutes or so of exchanging Theological chit-chat, we both fell silent and stayed with our own thoughts.  When we passed by the Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, a grey plane was flying around, perhaps serving as a training flight for someone who needed the hours.  For some odd reason my mind immediately transported me back to the early 1940's and I started remembering all the neat things I used to think about airplanes.  I had favorite ones based on the qualities that I thought they had.  Fighter planes were my favorite.  Among them the P-47 Thunderbolt was the best, in my mind.  My favorite big bomber was the B-29, the biggest of the big, back then.  My favorite among the speedsters was the P-51 Mustang.  My favorite enemy plane was, of course, the J... Zero.  We don't say the word any more, but I can assure you that there was a lot of respect in the minds and hearts of those who admired the machine and the people who flew it.  It is the respect and the admiration that is always granted, in american culture anyway, to a valiant opponent.  After all, there is no glory in overcoming without having to strive to the highest limit.  The Zero  brought that admiration out of us, even the children of us who couldn't really explain the psychology of what we were feeling.  We had balsa wood and paper flying scale models of enemy planes on the market.  I built the Zero twice.  I never built the scale models of the German fighters.  I built P-47's, Grumman Hellcats and Corsairs and Zeros.  Those were my favorites.
On top of all that, I thought about some of the interesting facts of life during the war.  I thought of the strange feeling of unease that I would feel during the mandatory "air raid drills" at night when we had to shut off all the lights and not even light a candle.  I sometimes wonder if it was the mournful wail of the siren that kicked off those feelings that I had.  I remembered the difficulty that my parents had to procure meat for the table.  I often wonder how my father must have felt to have sufficient money to spend, and not have anywhere to spend it because of the rationing.  Some of my most intense thoughts are about the team work of the population during the war.  During those times we did not throw anything away.  Not paper, not tin cans, nothing.  We saved everything and when the trucks came by, we would give them what we had crushed and bundled of clothing, paper and tin cans.  Nobody trashed anything during that time.  If we had the same spirit if unity these days, we could save millions of dollars, we would love one another more and I think our country would be more prosperous.  I just get nervous about those thoughts because I wonder if would take another Pearl Harbor to make it happen.
Now that I am older and I see what is happening in Japan, I relive what it must have been in 1945.  I was only 8 years old, but in my heart and soul I now know something of what it could have been.  I also often think about the fact that I went to school in Italy a mere 16 or 17 years after the end of hostilities in Europe.  Italy was still in the process of recovering.  It was for me a small window through which I could discern the recovery of Japan, made all the more challenging because of the massive nuclear releases that had brought the war to an end.  I terminated my musings by shaking my head and wondering why human beings never learn to control themselves.   That is one answer that I am sure I will never be able to answer.  Even though I don't get the answer, you still are not allowed to cry at my funeral.