Charles Ernst
Alex Ernst
Personal Interview of Charles Ernst
On Wednesday April 26th, 2006, I interviewed my grandfather Charles Ernst. He was born in Cincinnati, OH in July 31st, 1933. Charles was one of three children. In the summer he helped his family on the home front here in the Midwest. As a child growing up during WWII, he worked on farms and went to school.
Q: So what do you remember about the war and your work on the farm during the war?
A: Well, I worked on a farm when I was about 10 years old. Other kids and I took the jobs of the 18 year olds and other teenagers who went to fight in the war. So we were left to do their jobs. I remember riding the train up to Chicago in the summer to visit my aunt and uncle. They lived in an apartment and had a victory garden in a vacant lot. And that’s how they supplemented their food supply for themselves during the war… I would plow the land, drive the tractors, milk the cows, and hoe the fields for local farmers. I was paid $1 per 10-12 hour days. We would wake up each morning at maybe 6 or 6:30 and milk the cows. And then to keep the milk cold we put the milk in 20 gallon cans which we then placed in a big cement trough full of water. Each day we would fill the trough up with well water and then put the bottles in it to keep them cool. Everyday the milk truck would then drive by and pick up the milk we had. It would take the milk to the creamery where it would be made into yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese, and of course ice cream. It might also be bottled into 1 quart bottles of milk. And then I’d be in charge of the fields for the rest of the day. I remember driving the tractors probably when I was around 10 because we were the only workers on the farms because the teenagers had gone overseas to fight. And I know your other grandpa was sent to war during WWII too. Yes, he was in the South Pacific in the Marines. A lot of my cousins joined the Marines, Army, and Navy during the war and they went overseas. I had one cousin injured on Guadalcanal… And actually my older cousin was sent away from the farm to go fight. And so I took his spot on the farm when he left. In 1945 when the war ended, he came home. When he came back he got a 40 acre piece of land and then I worked for him. So I would ride my little motorbike up on Mondays and work his fields all week long. Then on Friday, I would ride home again. So I worked all week on his farm once he got back after the war was over. Also on the farm we had to plow the fields, and because we didn’t have any chemicals to kill the weeds like we do now, we had to go out and chop them up with a hoe each day. So it was hard work everyday. We also used a mowing device which bundled up the wheat and grains. We would put like 10 or 12 bundles around in a circle and then cover them up to protect it. Then we would stack up and collect these. We then put them through a machine to separate the grain from the straw. Then we sold the wheat or fed it to the cattle. After the wheat had been processed the straw would be used as bedding for the animals.
Q: What about rationing? How did that affect the farm?
A: O, yes, there was rationing during the war. There were rations on eggs, cheese, milk, rubber, gasoline, and things like that. We would have a little booklet that had numbers on it that stood for points which were used to obtain rationed food. We also had these little coins, kind of like today’s bingo chips, only brown and with like “5” or “10” written on them. Also the government had a set of standard prices where they regulated how much it cost to buy certain products. So people couldn’t charge whatever they wanted. So basically during the war, the government controlled what and how much food and supplies we got. It’s not like today where you can go to the store and get what you need. There was also what we called the Black Market. I remember my uncle was a butcher who had to buy some scarce items from the slaughter houses that obtained meat at above the regulated prices. The buyer for the slaughter house would get chickens and meat from chicken farms and other places and then sell it to the meat market that had to pay extra under the counter... Well sometimes the slaughter house would pay the farmers double or triple the regulated price so that he could get more meat to sell to the butcher. So he would ask the farmers how much they had to sell and he would tell them he would pa extra if they only sold those chickens to him. So they would write up a receipt with the legal price of the chickens and then he’d give them some more money for the chickens too. The butcher in turn would charge the consumers more for the extra meat that was not allowed through rations… And sometimes people would do this with lots of things. Like I remember because of rationing we couldn’t buy new tires, we just had to repair the old ones. If it got a hole we would patch it up with rubber and glue. Well if people were really desperate they would pay double or triple just to get a new tire during the war. So yes, times were very different then. It was between the people who were left on the farms and the people who went away to war. People had to make do with what they had or use rations to get what they needed, and if they were desperate enough, they would turn to the Black Market.