@MISSINGROSIE Your sister precedes me by two years. I was born close to the end of the depression. My mother died a week after I was born and because of a joint decision between my mother and father, they decided that I should be raised by two parents. At the time I was born, my father was fortunate enough to have a job and wasn't able to raise me. My mother's older sister and her husband therefore adopted me, who, by the way already had two boys. My older brother was 13 and my younger brother was 7 at the time Mother and Daddy brought me from Florida to North Carolina. While we were growing up, my older brother was my "buddy" and there was always sibling rivalry between my younger brother and me. I can understand my younger brother having been the "baby" for seven years having his nose out of joint where out of no where this squaling little girl suddenly appeared right after Christmas! Definitely not the Christmas present he wanted. Surprisingly in our adult years the two of us became very close and in his later years, I was his caretaker of sorts.
I was 7 years old when World War II broke out. I remember we had "rationing" -- all kinds of food, clothing and a lot of other things, but we always had food on the table, enough clothes, and a comfortable house so rationing didn't affect me too much. My older brother had volunteered in the Army about a month before December 7th and was sent overseas soon after. Each day we received a map in the newspaper of the progress of the troops across North Africa, then up through Sicily and then on up into Italy. Later, my younger brother went into the air force which then was called the Army Air Corps and thankfully because he was trained as a belly gunner in a liberator bomber, he never experienced combat. That was the absolute worst place to be in one of those planes.
During the war, Mother saved grease, we saved tinfoil, there were big paper drives and scrap metal drives. There were no metal toys for the boys, and paper dolls for the girls. We lived in the Sandhills close to Ft. Bragg and most days we could see planes flying overhead during their training missions. We could also watch the paratroopers jump if we knew the place and time. (Wonder if this is why I married a paratrooper years later?)
I am amused sometimes by the fact that we grew up "poor" but didn't know it because everybody else we knew was in the same boat so nobody ever discussed it!
We even had a bit of intrigue in our area when a German spy was captured in a close by town.
...the poor rabbit wasn't very lucky 
for this thread. Although my memories are about 20 years before your time, I enjoyed reading about all those you and all the others here had about growing up which brought up some memories of my own. Sadly I believe the kids growing up now will never have the kind of memories we "oldies" have. We had no TV, cell phones, etc. and we had to use our imagination. I didn't quite grow up in the dark ages and we had radio and believe me, with a vivid imagination some of the shows could conjure up terrifying scenarios that would make you think twice about going into a dark room. I grew up in the era of Shirley Temple dolls and my girlfriend and I spent many hours playing with them, sewing clothes for them, etc.
When I told my 22 year old daughter about that, she gave me one of these: 
wha-at? no flat irons??
