With few cars to sell, dealers found ways to stay in business …

https://www.autonews.com › article › NADA100 › with-few-cars-to-sell-de…

Jan 22, 2017 – … society mobilized to support the military effort during World War II. … For those four years, U.S. auto dealerships had virtually no new vehicles …

The Auto Industry Goes to War – Teachinghistory.org

…and her father, Wiley O. Jack, had gas pumps and 2  service bays that provided a steady revenue flow as drivers did everything possible to prolong the lives of their automobiles.

Nevertheless, Mom saved jars, made real cranberry sauce from scratch, sewed our clothing, darned socks, bought discount Ray-O-Vac batteries at B & D in Merrick which were kept in the refrigerator until needed in order to prolong their life span, used t-shirts with holes in them as dust rags, emptied out vacuum cleaner bags for re-use, sifted out the poop in the kitty litter, turned Thanksgiving turkey into sandwiches and then Turkey la King and grew vegetables.

Mom often mentioned the rationing of WW II.

“Why, I can remember trading ration coupons for eggs and then trading the eggs for sugar to bake a cake.  We were fortunate enough to have a Dad who owned a business so we were O.K. but there wasn’t anything to waste.”

My Dad fought active duty in World War II serving as a sighter for a mortar company in Trieste, on the cusp of Italy and what became Yugoslavia, in the waning days of World War II. 

Dad was wounded in action, treated with penicillin, fell into a coma and came close to death as the procedures of that time did not include screening for allergies.

It wasn’t until I was 11 that I found this out, the wounded part that is, from Mom, who whispered, “Don’t tell Dad I told you.”

Of course, I went back to Dad who grudgingly conceded the story.

“Does Peter know this,” I asked?

Dad slapped me in the face and warned me that I could get it again if I asked again.

“It’s bad enough that you know.  I am so mad at your mother.”

Nevertheless, Dad polished his shoes on a daily basis so that moisture would not weaken the leather and then carefully inserted wooden shoe trees inside to maintain the shape of the instep, drove a Ford Fairlane, and later several Torino station wagons when he easily could have afforded better, refused to buy a color TV, bought pipe tobacco 3 cans at a time at Floyd’s rather than singly at Port Chemists and a laundry list of  frugality that the General Accountability Office(G.A.O.) would be well advised to emulate.

My paternal grandfather, Edward Gallanter, who passed in 1963 and I have no memory of, emigrated with my “uncle” Lester Dundee, actually my Dad’s 1st. cousin, and Bertha Gallanter in 1895 from Dublin, Ireland and settled in Brooklyn.

Edward Gallanter did relatively well during the Depression and WWII, a fact that Dad often reminded me of when I squawked about my .75 allowance.