Today is the 70th anniversary of D Day. I was twelve. There was no TV. We had radio. Somehow, in my pre-adolescent fog, I got it. I glued myself to the radio, one of those classic designs with a dome top. When my father got home from his barbershop, I told him what was going on. He hadn’t heard. It was an incredible time.

My grammar school had drives to collect newspapers and metals – pots and pans that were being discarded. My friend, Wilda (who had a wagon) and I, would walk the alleys of Chicago and knock on back doors. I really do miss alleys. Alleys are magic.

There was rationing but it never reached the level of true hardship. We had ration books with stamps that became valid on certain dates and allowed us to buy meat, sugar, shoes, nylons, and other commodities that were vital to the war effort. We usually did not run out before the next stamp was due.

Lucky Strike Green went to war, the ads said. The green dye for the cigarette pack had lead in it. So they switched to a white package and patted themselves on the back. Ice cream was dumbed down. They filled it with agar to compensate for removing most of the cream. That was my biggest hardship: lousy ice cream. Oh, yes, because my band uniform required that I wear nylons, I also endured the long lines to buy them in those stores that got a shipment. Lines around the block.

Because of the shortage of nylons, young women started to go bare legged and, in deference to decorum, drew a seam up the backs of their legs. I remember walking with my mom and her friends and they would stare at a barelegged girl and try to figure out if she was one of those hussies who wasn’t wearing stockings. Was that a real seam or not? A scandal. Naked in public.

My father bought work clothes and went to work in a factory. I don’t know what they made. But the assembly line was hard on him and he couldn’t do it. He quit and went back to barbering.

Pocket parks were built on city corners and they had memorial stands, with the names of our soldiers who had been killed, and a flag. They weren’t well kept and, as the war went on, they began to look dingy. I was sad about that.

Union Park, our local park, set aside plots for victory gardens. We were to help by growing our own food. I signed up for a small plot but the only thing I planted that would grow, was beets. I brought beets home to my mother and she laughed and laughed because she knew beets would grow anywhere. Nothing else I planted came up. Neighboring plots did well with tomatoes and pumpkins, lettuce, cabbage, squash. As I think I have said before, I have a black thumb and, apparently, always did have. I am wondering why some of my fellow gardeners did not ever volunteer any tips. They could see I was struggling. Maybe it’s that religious thing – If God wanted her to grow stuff, he would have given her a green thumb.

Hollywood made war movies and the newsreels were full of clips from the battlegrounds, but nothing as graphic as what is filmed now.

My late husband, Jay, was in the nationalized Merchant Marine, and was a radio officer on the S. S. Dorothy Luchenbach which carried materiel and supplies to Murmansk. His ship was torpedoed and he spent 15 days in a lifeboat. Long before I knew him.

Wiki says: VE day (victory in Europe) == On 30 April, 1945, Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin. Germany's surrender, therefore, was authorized by his successor, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of military surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France and on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.

VJ Day (victory in Japan) was celebrated on September 2, but I remember massive celebrations in August of 1945. I was 14. I went to the Chicago Loop to be part of the shoulder to shoulder crowds in the streets. Because of improved relations with Japan, this has been dropped as a federal holiday. Rhode Island still observes it because that state lost so many men in the Pacific.

Though I was barely more than a child, the years of World War II are the most intense of my early life and helped shape my later years, and, along with other influences, led me to marry one of the men who served in that war. I married one of the best and the brightest, as Tom Brokaw described them in his book, “The Greatest Generation.” He got that right.

xx, Teal