Born in 1942

If you were born in 1942, you entered a country already transformed by war. The factory whistle sounded different now—urgent, purposeful—as plants that had been making cars switched overnight to tanks and bombers. Women were filing in through the gates in their coveralls and kerchiefs, and Rosie the Riveter hadn't quite become an icon yet, but she was everywhere you looked.

Ration books appeared that spring, covering sugar first, then coffee, then meat and shoes and gasoline. You learned to make do: stretching a pound of hamburger, saving grease in a tin can for the collection drive, growing tomatoes and beans in the victory garden out back. The radio was constant company—*The Jack Benny Program*, *Suspense*, and every evening the grave voice of the news coming in from the Pacific and North Africa.

A movie ticket was a quarter and the double feature always opened with a war newsreel. *Yankee Doodle Dandy* had James Cagney tapping and singing and everyone left the theater feeling swelled up with patriotism. Blackout drills sent families scrambling to hang dark curtains at their windows on the coasts.

The candy counter at the drugstore was a little thinner than before, but kids still found ways to scrounge a Tootsie Roll or a pack of Juicy Fruit. There was fear, no question, but there was also a remarkable sense of shared purpose holding everything together.