Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, March 22, 1944. Rationing.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, March 22, 1944. German defeat in the B...: 

Sarah Sundin's excellent blog on daily events in World War Two, whose feed updates are no longer working, notes this item:

In US, “A” gas rationing cards (basic passenger car ration) are cut from three gallons per week to two gallons. 

Two gallons per week.

Could you get by on two gallons per week?  Most days I drive a 1/4 ton Utility Truck, which is better known as a Jeep, and while it's small, it gets terrible mileage.  I know that I use more than two gallons per week, but I would if I was driving my fuel efficient diesel truck as well.  If I was limited to two gallons per week, I'd have to make major life changes.

Should I be pondering this as Congress, through the neglect of Ukraine, pushes us ever closer to a war with Russia, should she invade the Balkans?

During World War Two I know that my grandfather had a different class of ration ticket as his vehicle was used for business.  His car was a "business coupe", which is about all I know about it.

I know it had a gasoline personnel heater, which probably provides a clue, but I still don't know who made it.

I had a 1954 Chevrolet at one time, and it got really good mileage.  Interestingly, a 1973 Mercury Comet, with a really powerful V8 engine we had, also did.  According to one site about older cars, the business couple should be something like this:

My '38 gets around 17-18 MPG @ 50 MPH. It drops to around 12-14 @ 60. She just doesn't like being pushed that hard.

My 54, and the 73, got much better mileage than that.

Whatever mileage the business coupé got, my father sort of brushed gasoline rationing off when I asked him about it, due to the other category of ticket.  I don't know what that really meant, however.

Of course, for most long travel of any kind, people took the train.  Something that we might want to consider as potentially being something that may very well return.  High speed rail, for that matter, may be coming to Wyoming.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 21, 1944. Dear John.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Churches, Continuation War, Kamikaze, Miles City Montana, New Guinea, Operation Margarethe, Operation U-Go, The relationship between men and women, The written word, World War Two

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, December 27, 1943. Seizing the railroads, ...

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, December 27, 1943. Seizing the railroads, ...: 

Monday, December 27, 1943. Seizing the railroads, again.

People like to imagine that World War Two was a period in which the whole country simply pulled together for the war effort, and we put our differences behind us.

Well, to some extent, but not as much as imagined.

On this day in 1943 President Roosevelt seized the nation's railroads by executive order in advance of a strike scheduled for December 30.  The Army took control of the rail lines.

This had last happened on December 26, 1917, for the same reason.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, October 17, 1943. The Burma Railway completed.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, October 17, 1943. The Burma Railway comple...: 

Sunday, October 17, 1943. The Burma Railway completed.

The German surface raider Michel was torpedoed and sunk off of Japan by the USS Tarpon.  On the same day the German's lost the U-540, U-631 and U-841 in the Atlantic.

The Burma Railway, constructed with Asian slave labor and Allied POWs, was completed.

Tamils working on the bridge.

The railway may be best remembered today due to the fairly inaccurate movie, The Bridge On the River Kwai, which is nonetheless a great movie.

POW illustration of the construction of Bridge 227 across the Kwai.

A second concrete bridge replaced the original wooden bridge shortly after its construction. It was destroyed by the RAF in February 1945.  Shortly after the war, most of the original railway was dismantled and only the original 81 miles remains in use.

Chicago began running its subway for the first time.

Lex Anteinternet: A Memorial Day Reflection on the Second World War....

Lex Anteinternet: A Memorial Day Reflection on the Second World War....:

Rio Grande terminal in a less than nifty part of Salt Lake City.

 A  need for an Interstate Highway System, by which is meant a good one, was also noted.

This is one of those things where I'd disagree.  It's often stated that Eisenhower was really impressed with the German Autobahn, which was really a massive German public works project during the pre war Nazi years there, and he may have really been. But I think it was the ongoing evolution of the automobile that made the Interstate Highway System come in.  It was billed a defense program but that was, quite frankly, a funding charade.

What that does bring up, however, is the massive expansion of government that started with the Great Depression and which kept on keeping on during World War Two and which never went away thereafter.  It wasn't until the Reagan administration of the 1980s that contraction of any kind started, and its never contracted to its pre 1932 level.  Prior to the Great Depression the nation would never have undertaken a highway construction project on a national level, and not until World War Two would the country thought of trying to pass it off as a defense measure.

That act, of course, lead to the demise of passenger rail in US, so its another thing that had a mixed result.