Mary Jo Tilly
Mary Kathryn Tilly
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History H, Period 5
25 April 2006
April 22, 2006
Interviewer: Mary Kathryn Tilly
Interviewee: Mary Jo Tilly
MK: How old were you during the war?
MJ: Fourteen-Eighteen
MK: Can you tell about any campaigns you participated in at school to help the war effort, like salvage campaigns?
MJ: We saved all tin cans. Collected them from relatives and friends. There was big barrel where we brought them to school. What else did we do? The one thing I remember more than anything, probably was that we saved paper. Of course, if you had a pair of nylon hose, you almost kept them in a lockbox, you know. Chocolate was a high commodity that everybody wanted.
MK: Can you talk about rationing?
MJ: Coffee was rationed. Now we didn’t have butter or meat rationed. Mother saved the cream from the cows and we made butter. We didn’t have to go through meat rationing because we had cows and pigs to butcher. Coffee was rationed and we would take our stamp to the grocery store.
MK: You didn’t have a Victory Garden because you’d always had a garden, right?
MJ: Right we had always had a garden.
MK: Can you talk about the rationing of clothing in the United States and the shortage of clothes?
MJ: Nylons were very scarce and when they were available, everybody rushed to the store to get them. But they weren’t rationed. They just weren’t available. Otherwise you had to wear those rayon. They were kind of thick.
MK: What did you do for fun in high school?
MJ: What did we do? I know we had one thing we liked to do, to go to the movies. We had clubs. We met after school. And oh just talked and had popcorn. They were social clubs, but we would knit and crochet these squares and they could be attached. I don’t recall knitting any socks for soldiers. But it was very popular then to knit socks, argyles. I do not remember beyond that.
MK: What magazines did you read?
MJ: It seems to me that Seventeen magazine was available. And of course there was National Geographic. My parents had Good Housekeeping.
MK: What about music? What kind of music did you listen to?
MJ: Well, whatever the popular music was. The only symphony music we would have had was orchestra at school.
MJ: Most boys were in ROTC and did military training. ROTC was a competitive thing in high school. ROTC drills and our band would be part of that too.
MK: Did your family have one or two cars?
MJ: One
MK: Can you tell me about the stamp books you would trade in for bonds?
MJ: Well I don’t recall getting bonds, but...
MK: You told me had books that you’d fill with twenty-five cent stamps and then turn in for an eighteen-dollar bond.
MJ: Mary Kathryn I can’t swear to that fact.
MK: Can you talk about the USO during the war?
MJ: Now in high school there were a bunch of kids who knitted, but at that time I didn’t knit. They did some other volunteer work.
MK: Were you into the comics or had you outgrown those by high school?
MJ: I read the comics. Buck Rogers was in big time.
MK: Who were the popular Hollywood stars of the time?
MJ: Carole Lombard and I think Gary Cooper was popular then too. Those are the only two that come to my mind right now. Didn’t go a lot of movies.
MJ: There were A rations, B, and C. C was the highest you could have and people who had C were involved with the war in some way. Like Auntie Ruth’s dad who sold heavy equipment, Catepillars and...
MK: What kind of card did your dad have?
MJ: He had a C card because he didn’t go very far, but he did drive to the country for work.