Claudia’s Story – Part 3

October 25, 2024

Claudia’s story continues….

With the boys secured, Claudia pulled the wagon over the grass and exited the park. She walked to her next destination with a spring in her step…feeling better after meeting Mallory. She chuckled inwardly. Recollecting high school days after moving from Oklahoma when finding girl friends in Oak Hill most challenging. But why did that memory suddenly surface? Was so long ago…well, only twelve years, but still.

Claudia parked the wagon outside H.E. Butt Grocery store’s entrance and helped her boys out. She placed three cotton tote bags along with her purse over her shoulder and took Mark’s hand.

“Don’t touch anything!” she instructed as the three entered the store.

The store was spacious and well-lit. A large sign hung over several stocked shelves at the back of the store. Hard to miss. ‘Get Your Rationed Items Here!’ Claudia glanced to her right. Wheeled shopping carts nested together waited for eager shoppers to use. The cart held a medium sized basket on top with a smaller one at the bottom.

“Can I ride down there?” Michael asked.

“Me too! I want to ride!” Mark exclaimed.

Claudia shook her head as she pulled a cart from the rack. “You’d take up all the room. Help me push. Michael, hold this side. Mark, hold on over here.”

Claudia with the assistance of her two sons propelled the buggy toward the back of the store. The shelves contained cubby-holes stocked with boxed or canned food items. Prices clearly marked…Lord Mott string beans, 19-ounce can / $0.14; Green Giant peas, 20-ounce can / $0.15; a 10-pound bag all-purpose flour / $0.43; Dole pineapple juice, 1pint / $0.15; a 16-ounce glass jar of peanut butter / $0.32.

Claudia chose the items she needed from the canned goods and corralled the buggy with her boys clinging to its sides toward the dairy, meat and bakery aisles. With her shopping done, she proceeded to the front of the store. Each of the two cash registers was manned by a woman. Two ladies with their buggies of purchases waited in one line, three at the other. Claudia pulled her buggy to a stop behind the first line and removed the War Ration Books from her purse.

The boys became antsy as they waited. Michael’s boredom accelerated into aggravating his younger brother. Mark whined wanting to go home and pushed against her legs. Claudia lifted him and placed him on her hip. Michael moved behind the cart. Pushing the buggy back and forth, he made whistling and whirring noises…mimicking a flying airplane. Claudia gripped the side of the buggy banking his imaginary plane into a landing, halting his play.

When her turn to check out finally came, Claudia balanced Mark on the counter and handed her War Ration Books and the three empty totes to the woman behind the counter. The woman read the name and address written at the bottom of the book.

“Claudia Woods?”

“Yes.”

“Still live at 1053 Elmwood in Beaumont?”

“No, we just moved here….my husband works at the Port.”

“Hmmm.”

Color drained from Claudia’s face. Surely this woman wouldn’t refuse to take her ration stamps because of a changed address! She desperately needed these groceries. Her pantry grew sparser with each minute she stood in line. Suddenly she recalled one of the original rules from the OPA…Office of Price Administration.

“I can use my stamps in any store in the United States,” she declared matter-of-factly.

“Oh, yes ma’am. I know. I was going to suggest changing your address on your family’s books as soon as possible.”

“Oh,” Claudia sighed in relief. “And where do I do that?”

The woman smiled, “There’s a Ration Board office located on Shoreline. The main one is inside the courthouse downtown.”

“Thank you,” Claudia smiled. She watched intently as the checker rang up the order and removed the corresponding red or blue stamps for either canned goods, cheese, oils or coffee from two of the five books.

“The total cash owed today, Mrs. Woods, is $2.75,” the clerk announced.

Claudia lifted Mark from the counter and placed him on his feet in front of her. Deterring any sudden ideas of dashing away to retaliate against his brother, she lightly wedged Mark against the counter with her legs. She removed the bills and coins from her purse and slid them toward the checker. The woman placed the groceries in Claudia’s tote bags and handed them over one by one.

“Welcome to Corpus. And thank you for shopping with H.E. Butt today.”

Claudia with filled tote bags balanced on her shoulders hustled the boys out of the store. As she pushed through the door, she glimpsed a sign taped on the outside of a display window.

Urgent! Plane Mechanics Needed ~ Naval Air Station
No Experience Necessary ~ Apply Today

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H-E-B:

H-E-B, a familiar brand of mega-supermarkets in Texas, reported an annual revenue of $38,000,000,000 in 2023. There are 337 store locations with 145,000 employees within 164 Texas cities. San Antonio hosts the most stores with a total of 46. How did this Texas company begin? In 1905 Florence Thornton Butt moved her family to Kerrville, Texas. With a sixty-dollar loan, she established Mrs. C. C. Butt’s Staple and Fancy Grocery, a one-room grocery store on the ground floor of the family home. In 1919 she turned management of the business over to her youngest son, Howard Edward Butt. As a boy, Howard delivered groceries from the store by wagon. When he took over the store’s management after his return from the Great War, Howard introduced major low-cost distribution innovations that eliminated middlemen and maximized profits. In 1930, Howard Butt changed the store’s name to H.E. Butt Grocery Company. In 1942, the year Butt installed air-conditioning in stores and introduced frozen foods, he also opened the first store in San Antonio under the name H-E-B.

Are you a shopper at H-E-B or better yet, an employee?

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/h-e-b

Office of Price Administration WWII:

“Following the beginning of World War II, The Office of Price Administration was established to control rents and the overall cost of items that might be affected by the conflict. Executive Order 8875 was implemented on August 28, 1941. This proclamation was set up within the United States Office of Emergency Management. Its main purpose was price control.

Previously, in mid-1940s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had reinstated a World War I advisory board for national defense. At the time, it was the council’s responsibility to oversee consumer protection and price stabilization. These two functions were then merged into OPAC (Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply).”

https://totallyhistory.com/office-of-price-administration/

Rationing Boards WWII:

“Rationing involved setting limits on purchasing certain high-demand items. The government issued a number of “points” to each person, even babies, which had to be turned in along with money to purchase goods made with restricted items. In 1943 for example, a pound of bacon cost about 30 cents, but a shopper would also have to turn in seven ration points to buy the meat. These points came in the form of stamps that were distributed to citizens in books throughout the war. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) was in charge of this program, but it relied heavily on volunteers to hand out the ration books and explain the system to consumers and merchants. By the end of the war, about 5,600 local rationing boards staffed by over 100,000 citizen volunteers were administering the program.”

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/rationing-during-wwii#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20Price%20Administration%20%28OPA%29%20was%20in,over%20100%2C000%20citizen%20volunteers%20were%20administering%20the%20program.

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Hope you have learned a little bit of history here…

Claudia’s Story – Part 4 will be posted Monday October 28

Have a great weekend! Until next time…

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