Recipes for Living Phil Patrick

The following, entitled An American Portrait of the Everyday Man in the 1940's, was written by Phil's grandson, Joshua Patrick, for his Honor's History class. It is used with permission.

My grandfather, Phillip Edward Patrick, was born on January 3, 1926, in Tabor, Iowa. By 1940 he was 14 years old and lived in Osceola, Iowa with his mother, Jessie, father Benjamin, and his brother Alfred. They lived in a nicely furnished, six-room house. Inside, the house had indoor plumbing and electricity so they didn't have to deal with the cumbersome outhouse. Along with their furnishings they had two radios; one was very large and ornate that stayed in the living room, and the other which was small and could be moved from room to room. And on any given night one could hear the radio playing The Green Hornet, Grand Central Station, Jack Armstrong (The All-American boy), or various baseball games listened to by Phil and his father. While living in Iowa, Phil and his family never seemed to be hurting for food; they enjoyed most of the foods that we do today. They didn't have fast food or frozen food, but they did have a garden from which they could pick fresh garden foods, a luxury that some during the Depression would have died for. The whole time before W.W. II, Phil stayed pretty stationary in his home town of Osceola.

Of course, when Phil got a little older, he found the need for transportation and his family happened to have a 1940 Chevrolet. It was a black business coupe with a small seating area in the back. However, there wasn't a steady supply of gas and transportation for Phil as there is for us today. Along with the war came a shortage of gas and automobiles because of orders by the government. People had a harder time buying cars during W.W. II because the government was so busy ordering the manufacturers to produce jeeps and tanks and other such war materials that they had no time to produce enough cars for the entire population. Also, along with the shortage of cars, the government started to ration gasoline. People involved in work considered non-essential only received four gallons of gas a week. However, people such as doctors, who had to make house-calls, and war factory workers, who obviously had an essential job, received more. But, gas was not the only thing rationed. Things such as tires, sugar, and shoes were rationed as well in order to support the troops.

While living in Osceola, Phil attended Osceola High School. In comparison to today's students, he believes they were about the same during the war as they are now-you know, a lot of pretty good kids, with a few bad apples here and there. But going to school was not the only thing that he did. Phil also had to entertain himself somehow; one can only take so much radio. Aside from working a whole lot, Phil and his family enjoyed playing golf, fishing, swimming, and going on picnics. But, a lot of free time that he had seemed to be spent with his friends. They enjoyed listening to the Big Bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and going to Des Moines to get down in the Tromar Ballroom in the winter and the Val Air in the summer. He would go see movies like Tarzan and the Apes, The Hardy Boys starring Mickey Rooney, and Laurel and Hardy down at the local theater. Because they had no TV, they could go see the newsreels of what was happening during the war. Phil's favorites were the Pathe news. He liked these very much because there were things happening all over the world and he got to see the actual pictures of these incidents. He got to see such things as soldiers getting ready to go to battle, the interesting places he might go if he entered the service, or some of the dangers he could possibly encounter. Another form of entertainment that Phil got to enjoy as a teen was the dances that were promoted, primarily for military personnel, by the United Service Organizations (USO). There he could meet girls, eat food and get soft drinks; what more could a teenage boy ask for?

After high school and all of the fun and games were over, Phil went to work. He held two jobs and worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. One of his jobs paid $.25 an hour and the other paid $.75 an hour. One of these jobs was to ice fruit trains in Laramie, Wyoming. Doing such jobs as these which entailed all of your day, harsh conditions, and menial pay, it is easy to see how the employers could care less about your safety or not. Even though neither of these jobs are very prestigious by today's standards, this was a massive jump from the conditions of the Depression. This was all during the first part of W.W. II. Later on, after the war ended, Phil came back to many more jobs and then became a college student.

Perhaps the biggest part of Phil's life during the 40's, or of anyone's for that matter, was the occurrence of W.W. II. This would be the event that marked the decade and would therefore be something that everyone would remember. One of the most vivid experiences for those living during the war was the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. When Phil heard this news, he was in high school and he was shocked. He could not believe that the Japanese would do such a thing. His beliefs were shared with many others around. Why would Japan want to bomb us, we hadn't done anything yet? The war was all around Phil, even in the small town of Osceola, Iowa. His father, a veteran of WW I, was the organizer for the county drive to sell war bonds. Many of his relatives were going to the war, as well as himself There was a great sadness within the families, but also a great pride was within them because they were going to serve their country. There was always news of the war that everyone listened to and everyone talked about it, for what else was there to talk about?

Today Franklin Roosevelt is somewhat criticized for his handling of the war, because now we can look at it from a safer perspective. However, in Phil's perspective, back then nobody really questioned how FDR handled the war, because everybody thought he was doing the right thing. He was thought to be the savior of the U.S., so why should anything he do be wrong? Another thing that many of the people talked about was the dropping of the atomic bomb. Phil believed as many did, in that, dropping the bomb was the only real option that we had. If the war trudged on, then many more Americans would have died. Japan had the opportunity to surrender before the bomb dropped and they should have done so, and they wouldn't of had to suffer the wrath of the atomic bomb. Phil just hopes that we never have to experience anything like that ever again, because we (America) were the only ones to ever drop a bomb of that magnitude on a country. Also another incident involving the Japanese or Japanese-Americans (Nisei) were the detention camps they were placed in by America during the war. The government decided that all people that looked like Japanese must be spies and that just to be safe, they should be detained until the war was over. At the time Phil thought it was all right, however, his views have changed now and he's not too sure that it was the right thing to do, because it made us look no better than Hitler himself. He also noticed during his time in the service, a certain amount of racial discrimination within the armed services, especially in the southern states where he was stationed. People were still insistent upon using the words "nigger" and "kike", and this disturbed Phil immensely. Overall, the war was not only big news, but it was the topic of almost every dinner conversation around. For some people it consumed their lives during the 40's.

As for consuming some people's lives, it did Phil's, for he volunteered for the service after he got out of high school. The majority of the draftees were all ending up in the Infantry and becoming "foot soldiers". And since Phil's dream was to become a fighter pilot, he decided to volunteer. However, the pilot program was being cut back when he entered the service because the war was almost over, so his dreams of becoming a war hero were shattered to an extent. His training started off in the Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, Missouri. During the winter the trainees all lived in tents that had wooden floors, and a small pot bellied coal-fired stove. For Phil, life in those barracks was pretty miserable. Luckily, after basic training was over, he was sent to Bartow Air Base in Bartow, Florida, and was free from the pit of despair in St. Louis. This particular base was for fighter pilots that just got out of flight school. And since Phil was not out of flight school, he ended up doing repairs on the radios inside the planes and other things with the radio shop. He didn't get to fly them, but at least he got to be a part of helping out with such planes as P-401 s and P-381 s, which are very fast and maneuverable fighter planes. This ended up being a memorable experience for him and even today he holds a strong interest in old W.W. II planes. After a quick stay in Florida Phil, ended up moving yet again, this time to Greensboro, North Carolina. He was there for only a short amount of time and was immediately shipped to the Greensboro O.R.D. (overseas replacement depot). Then he was sent to New Orleans, Louisiana, for a brief layover and some last minute partying before he finally shipped out, and then he was sent to Panama via D.S.T., a small ship that is used to land tanks and men when they invade an island. This particular ship contained a crew of 125 plus 100 passengers, including Phil. This ship was also part of a convoy of about 20 other ships in order to be protected from the German submarines. At his final destination in Panama, Phil was quickly assigned to the 32nd fighter squadron of the U.S. Air Corps. At first he started out as a cook and then he became a baker. After a while he became a mess sergeant (the person in charge of the mess activities). All together he was in Panama for about 32 months and made some really close friends in the process. However, the close friends that he made were only temporary friendships, for after they left the service, there wasn't much contact between them. In the end, this was just a story of a man who was not a war hero, but someone who did his job in the service and was a link in a very long chain that somehow needed him to hold it together. (Instructor's notation: Without lots of people like him, we would not have been successful in W.W. II.)

Returning from the war in the spring of 1946, Phil met a young high school senior named Guyla Harsh. After they met they fell in love and got married within the next year. And it was Guyla's first date with a soldier!! And to this day they still live together with the happy memories they had in that fateful decade of 1940.

After doing this interview with my grandfather, Phil Patrick, I have learned a great deal about life in the 1940’s. I understand that it was not an easy time at all for the citizens of the United States. Every person living here was affected either directly or indirectly by the war. Those that were in the services were obviously affected, but those that were living at home had to deal with very complicated conditions (including those hard-working females who had to take over a good amount of the jobs while the men were away). (Instructors note: You'd better appreciate all their hard work.) The people had to deal with the government rationing their clothes, their food, and their gas. Everything that people either wanted or needed was not available to them because the government took control of them in order to prepare for the war. The war was the single-most influential aspect of the 40’s. People's lives were based around the war, from the man selling war bonds to the factory worker producing war materials. It was the talk of the town, whose kid is where, what they're doing, and how many letters they've written. But not only local news was important, but what was happening to the world as a whole became household conversations: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the dropping of the atom bomb, or storming the beach at Normandy. These were all things people talked about. At the beginning of almost every movie, a newsreel would come on about incidents in the war and how it was going on. The government even sponsored dances to keep the youth occupied. The war basically consumed the entire American populous. But, it wasn’t just a time of dancing and jabbering, there were also serious problems occurring at that time. The United States was a confusing place to be in the 401s. Even though African-Americans had gained their independence almost 70 years earlier, there was still discrimination even in the service. Also, we had Japanese people who had become legal American citizens, or children, with Japanese parents, who were born in America thrown into detention camps solely because they looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. And it was that incident that made us no better than the master of genocide himself, the man we were trying to defeat. Overall, life in the 19401 s was filled with rejoicing, aside from the obvious national incidents of embarrassment, as mentioned above. Everything that had happened in the 401 s was pretty much based around the war. The Depression ended because of the start of war and people going back to work. Women were further liberated from their social bonds by being able to get actual jobs while the men were away at war. They even had a women's baseball league, how's that for liberation? Along with the war also came rejuvenation in the American spirit. After winning the war and having the soldiers returning, ticker-tape parades were thrown and heroes were recognized in their hometowns. I would have to say that the forties, even though filled with chaos, was a breath of fresh air for the United States. It swept us out of the Depression and started us down the right track again.