Kathryn Trotta, April 2, 2015
When I was 7 years old, we moved to a small seven-acre farm that my great uncle had owned. My father was too old for the draft so he continued to work the third shift at Luekens Street Company, producing steel for the war effort. I vaguely remember the radio telling about the Pearl Harbor attack (1941). I knew we had gone to war.
In my father’s family, there were 3 uncles and a first cousin who were in the army and navy. I remember thinking that I was the luckiest girl in the world because we lived in Lancaster County far from the war, safe and with plenty to eat.
After we moved in the farm, my father converted the barn to a chicken house. It became the job for me, my sister, and Mother to collect eggs, then clean them with a sandpaper machine. My Mother candied the eggs and packed them for market.
My parents planted a large garden and Mother canned as many vegetable and fruits as she could. We had rationing; her biggest challenge was getting enough sugar.
At school, we learned to use the cloak rooms as aired shelters and the windows of home and school had to be covered at night. We lived on Route 30 or the Lincoln Highway, so when the troops from Indiantown Gap were headed to Philadelphia, we would sit up on our wall and wave to them going by in open jeeps.
As the war went on, my sister and I were one of many that were collecting gum scrappers and peeling off the aluminum foil to make a ball, as the metal was scarce for making planes. At some point, the silk for parachutes was also getting scarce so they were attempting to use milkweed pot fibers as a substitute for silk. We gathered pods in burlap bags and took them to school for donations.
Somehow, we all made it through the war and when E Day arrived on May 8 1945, we all went into the small town of Gap and celebrated. Recently, my cousin who was in the Navy told me he was waiting with a huge Armada of ships to sail to Japan when the Atom Bombs were dropped and the war ended. My entire relative came home safely.