By Jerry Davis
The War
Part II
Labor was in short supply too and overnight the prejudice against women working outside the home evaporated.
Mom decided to work in the local tannery but only for half a day. I remember my insecure brother Gordon bursting into tears when she announced that she would not be available 24/7.
Mom’s father owned the tannery, mom only worked from nine until noon, and family life barely suffered. Carpools took new workers down to “The Valley”, the
Mohawk Valley’s Remington Arms factory and Utica’s cotton mills that were producing guns and cloth for uniforms.
People were making money and had no place to spend it except on war bonds.
The tannery was making money too.
During the Depression it was difficult to sell leather and instead of letting workers go, my grandfather continued to make leather, gradually filling a large storeroom.
When the war arrived, demand soared and so did prices, emptying the storeroom. The leather company produced calfskin for ladies’ shoes and purses, not a war priority.
The tannery turned to tanning bacon rinds. Bacon in those days had the skin attached, the housewife would buy a slab, slice down to the skin, and then cut horizontally to remove the bacon slice.
The rind was discarded.
That is until the war.
The skin was removed from the slab of bacon before it was sold, my grandfather tanned it, and another company made it into watchbands for the soldiers.
Farmers were coming out of the farm Depression, an economic slump caused by the recovery of agriculture in Europe after the First World War.
Farmers had taken out loans that they could not repay in the l920’s and suffered until the next war again increased demand.
They were making money but could not find help.
Women became farmworkers and anyone else who was available.
Jack Welsh went AWOL, found work on Walter Harrison’s farm until one sunny summer afternoon when the MP’s showed up, went into the field, pulled Jack off the hay wagon, and returned him to service.
Walt Harrison was a teacher who returned to his mother’s farm when the war started. Was he a draft dodger or a dutiful son?
It was a subject of heated debate in the village.
Conscientious objectors were a special category and we hosted one for one day every month.
He has been assigned the task of milk tester and we were required to feed and house him when he tested our cows.
Milk testing is an aid to dairymen because it tells them which animals are the most productive, information needed for breeding and culling.
His arrival was a break in the monotony of our secluded lives. First, he was a native of “The City”, New York, he was Jewish, the only ...
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