My Take
DiVoran Lites
By Dora as told to DiVoran
WW2 wives of Canon City
Dora is the second person standing far left. The first woman on the left standing at the back is my sister-in-law Geneva from Kentucky.
During World War Two while our men were overseas, we had to use ration stamps for food. Sugar was scarce and pineapple was totally unavailable. That’s why no matter where my kitchen is I keep a can of pineapple in the cupboard. Whenever I open a new can I serve pineapple and cottage cheese on a lettuce leaf. Delicious…and available!
When we got our army allotment, we stuck $3.00 in the piggy bank for our pleasures for the month. Sunday morning we walked to church and on Sunday afternoon, we walked downtown to the show, which is now called a movie theater
On summer Sundays we went to the park across from the prison for band concerts by the prisoners. When the “Star-Spangled Banner” began, DiVoran trained Dave in patriotism by snatching him up by the seat of his pants and instructing: “Tand up, Tar Pangle!!” Stand up it’s the Star-Spangled Banner.
In the winter we put on heavy coats and went downtown to see a movie. We didn’t watch what DiVoran called myrtle mysteries because I didn’t want my children to grow up scared by crime stories. As we walked home, Dave’s two-year-old legs got tired so he held his arms up and said, “Me carry you.” He was quite the bundle swathed in his homemade winter jacket.
Because everything was rationed, Grandmother Marie and I got out the clothes that had been put away in the garage attic and cut them up to make clothes for the children. DiVoran got tired of standing for us to pin up hems so one day she grabbed the neck of the dress I was pinning and tore it all the way to the waist. That fabric had apparently been in the attic a bit too long. She turned and ran up the stairs because she knew from my shocked expression that she was in trouble.
The children’s feet grew so fast they needed shoes every two months, so Grandmother, Granddad, and Dora limited themselves to one pair of shoes each for the duration of the war in order to have the ration stamps for the children’s’ shoes.
Ivan wrote to me from basic training in Texas and I wrote back almost every day. Letters home were free for the men. Ivan always wrote FREE in the place where the stamps belonged so everyone would know he wasn’t trying to get away with anything. My stamps cost 3 cents each. It added up. We also had the option of buying War Bonds which were an investment that would someday pay off.
Most of my friends were women whose men were in the military. There were many rules about sending letters, the most obvious one was to not mention anything that would give the enemy an advantage such as telling where the letters were posted from. Censors made sure by either blocking or cutting out anything they thought spies might use against us.
Ivan and camera in Germany
I saved Ivan’s letters in the shoebox they sent his clothes home in. By the end of the war, the box was jam-packed full. He, on the other hand, couldn’t save any of my letters because he had no place to put them. He even sent me his small government-issued New Testament with Psalms Bible because he didn’t have any place to carry it. I wore that Bible out. I don’t know what I would have done without it. I knew it was the place to go for comfort. When I was six years old my Grandmother, Florenda Jane Bedell came to visit us in Canon City. She knelt by my bed every night and prayed for me to believe in Jesus and his atonement for my sins. I did that then and He was my savior and hope from then on.
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
Old Things R New 