Barbra Pitman
John Pittman
Mr. Thomas
American History X, Period 2
26 April 2006
Personal Interview of Barbra Pittman
Barbra Pitman was a child who grew up during World War II. Although she doesn’t remember much of the actual war, there were a few things that stuck with her forever. Her story is that of a common and poor girl growing up in southern Indiana.
Q: How old were you during the war?
A: I was about ten years old when it ended.
Q: I know you were very young when the war started, but do you remember anything specific about the war and how it affected your family?
A: I remember, I don’t remember when it started, I do not remember that. But I remember how the war affected our living, and we had to, uh, food had to be rationed, tires had to be rationed.
Q: When you say rationed?
A: They issued ration stamps and each family got so many ration stamps. And you couldn’t buy sugar without the ration stamps, you couldn’t buy a pair of shoes without the ration stamps. Cause you were only allowed to buy so much.
Q: And were you issued these ration stamps depending on how many people you had in your family, or what were the deciding factors into how many stamps you would get?
A: I imagine that was the way it was done but I don’t remember.
Q: You don’t remember?
A: No, I was too young, I never really thought about things like that.
Q: What else?
A: And then gasoline was rationed so you didn’t drive needlessly anywhere and if a tire blew out you would just fix it yourself. There was a patch or something you would use, everybody did things for themselves.
Q: So, I guess, it was a time where you didn’t have much and money was very tight. So you had to stretch everything as far as it would go?
A: Right
Q: Do you remember if any of your family members went off to fight in the war?
A: No, but there were a lot of young men in my town who did, well, I did have some cousins who fought.
Q: Some cousins?
A: Some cousins in World War II, they were older than me and I didn’t see them very much.
Q: Do you know where exactly they went?
A: No, I’m sorry, I don’t.
Q: That’s okay, anything else?
A: I remember on the home front how we used to have air raid warning drills, and all the lights would have to go out in your house, I suppose that was so they couldn’t see you. I just remember being scared by them, but the more we had, the more used to it I got.
Q: What city did you grow up in?
A: Brownsburg, Indiana.
Q: What line of work was your father in?
A: My dad worked for P.R. Maury which was a factory that was downtown.
Q: Do you know what he did at the factory or what kind of goods they produced there?
A: It was a battery company, I know that.
Q: And did they convert the factory to war time construction?
A: I think so, I think they made radio batteries or something like that, my dad never liked to talk about work.
Q: Can you tell me anymore about your dad?
A: Well, he was a democrat, we were all democrats. We had a picture of Roosevelt hanging in the living room and I remember looking at that picture and thinking he was God. My dad used to take the bus to work every morning and come back at night. He never drove very much, just took the bus to work. At night he would make us all sit around the radio and listen to the news, there was one news man that was really popular but I can’t remember his name. Sorry. It was always really exciting to listen to the news, of course now with the television it’s all different but back then it was a big deal.
Q: Was the radio the only way to receive news about the war and such?
A: Well, you could go to the movies, which cost something like ten cents, and at the start of the movie they would play newsreels about the war and we could actually see what was going on, it was really neat, mostly it was all so exciting.
Q: I know you said money was tight, did you get to go to movies often?
A: No, not very often, we did everything ourselves and we never had extra money.
Q: What do you mean you did everything yourselves?
A: Well, we lived on a small farm and we raised our own beef and pork. We had a big garden with everything in it and we did all our own canning, you know I still like to can, you’ve seen me can and bottle, but back then we just had to. We had a cow and we always had fresh milk too.
Q: What is the biggest thing you took out of the war?
A: Well the U.S. is the greatest country in the world, and it was really frightening. Not as frightening as it is now, but really frightening. And I grew up poor but I never knew it because everyone else was poor too. My mom made dinner every single night, and we never went out to eat, I learned to cook and I think that was pretty important.