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Just found the damnedest thing

Sephiroth

Vice Admiral
Admiral
so i'm going through some of my grandmother's "files" and I find some ww2 ration books mixed in with some reciepts and letters...i wonder if i can still use them to buy food at WW2 era prices
 
so i'm going through some of my grandmother's "files" and I find some ww2 ration books mixed in with some reciepts and letters...i wonder if i can still use them to buy food at WW2 era prices

You probably can, though I'd be less enthusiastic about it; even dried eggs don't hold forever... :p
 
images of the ration books, or images of the KOed wal-mart cashier who will refuse to accept them?
 
It would be interesting to see a scan of the book!

*But if you find some WW2 rations to buy, do show us :p *
 
yeah, there was such a high need for copper during the war that the treasury authorized the mint to make pennies out of steel in 1945
 
I don't the specific legalities, but depending on how it is worded you should have legal claim. I've heard of this with working with really old coupons.

I didn't know you went through rationing in the States, I thought it was just in Europe.

Pretty sure there was quite severe rationing, though I doubt as severe as in Europe.
 
I didn't know you went through rationing in the States, I thought it was just in Europe.

Yup, the US and Canada both underwent rationing during WWII. Primarily for things like gas and metals, as I recall, but also food as a significant amount of it was shipped overseas to supply troops (and the UK, for that matter). That's why—in Canada, at least, I don't know about the US—men who owned farms were exempt from the draft as they were considered integral to the war effort.
 
Oh, yeah - lots of things were rationed although, as Michael Chris notes, not as severely as in Europe: gasoline, of course, but also meat and various meat byproducts, sugar, fats, various metals, rubber...lots of things, really. I have this really cool cookbook that was produced just a couple of years ago called Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, by Joanne Lamb Hayes, which includes lots of rationing-friendly recipes, particularly those using produce from Victory Gardens. It's a fascinating read, although I must say I haven't tried many of the recipes. I tasted the "mock sausage patties" - not bad, but they didn't taste a thing like sausage.

And yes, you could get a deferment from the service to stay and farm.
 
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Actually you might get more by selling the ration books as a collectible item.
 
^Precisely.

Somewhere, my grandmother also has a few of these books. Kind of fun to look through and note the prices on some things. As well as the amounts they made do with.

Could you imagine a doctor doing house calls on 3 gallons of gas a week?
 
Could you imagine a doctor doing house calls on 3 gallons of gas a week?
Well, communities weren't near as spread out then as they are now. The average commute was probably much shorter.

According to this, it looks like doctors had a "C" sticker. Not sure how much gas that allows you.

If you watch some of the wartime produced Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny) cartoons, they certainly allude to rationing in some of their cartoons. For example, the "A" sticker on the window of the plane with the gremlin, and at least once someone saying "Was this trip really necessary?" For myself, it wasn't until relatively recently that I understood the true meaning of the latter.
 
so i'm going through some of my grandmother's "files" and I find some ww2 ration books mixed in with some reciepts and letters...i wonder if i can still use them to buy food at WW2 era prices

You probably can, though I'd be less enthusiastic about it; even dried eggs don't hold forever... :p
Truth!

I remember when I was a kid, a teacher brought a wartime can of dried egg into school as part of a history lesson about the war - he opened it and mixed some with water - one of the kids volunteered to eat it. He did so. He spat it out and exclaimed "EURRGHH!!"

:guffaw:
 
My poor husband had to eat reconstituted eggs during his 12 weeks of USMC basic training...hasn't been able to bear the smell of an egg (even a real one) ever since!
 
I didn't know you went through rationing in the States, I thought it was just in Europe.

My Dad, who grew up in rural Minnesota in the 40's, has a story about how they won a lottery that gave them permission to buy a refrigerator. They didn't win a fridge itself, just the ability to buy one. I always get a kick out of that...
 
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