Some Homelife in Pennsylvania During WWII

I sat down to process this when I learned of the Trump assassination attempt. So delayed a bit as I sought to discover what happened. He's fine but a bystander was killed along with the shooter.

Today I hit a yard sale at a gun club where I got some mess kits at last year. Nothing military this year. Next stop was a huge community sale we have had good luck getting normal things at over the years as the entire town is basically Mennonites. Not much military at their sales and this isn't military but historically significant IMHO.

Pennsylvania back in those days produced a metal license plate each year. They alternated the colors each year, blue on yellow and yellow on blue, probably as a quick check to see if they were current.

In 1942, they were blue on yellow and for 1943, due to a steel shortage because of the war, in 1943 they introduced a small metal plate to continue the existing plate through to 1944. This was the only year they did this. In 1944 plates were printed yellow on blue.

So, there are no 1943 license plates. These are two examples, one for a passenger car, the other for a truck.

The red keystone is said to be representative of the 28th Infantry Division which is the Pennsylvania National Guard.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../YOzivYp-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../gacwNO0-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../rABxUr4-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../ANVib8e-1.jpg

Way cool.

I don't have any US licence plates but I do have 2 or 3 Canadian ones dating to the 1970's hanging up in my shed/workshop. The first one was given to my father in the late 1970's as something to hang up in the garage, as an ornament. Around 1980 I visited Canada and during the visit we visited a "friend of a friend" who lived in a caravan in a wood near a sulphur mine where he worked. I remember asking him if he had any "licence plates going spare" and the reply that I got was "There's one on the back of the caravan/trailer and, if you can get it off, you can have it.". I remember it not being the easiest of things to get off but with a bit of fiddling about it came off. The licence plate now hangs up in my shed and it does prove that if you don't ask you don't get. How the chap could live 24 hours a day with that very strong pungent smell of sulphur is beyond me.

Later edit - Photos added.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

How the chap could live 24 hours a day with that very strong pungent smell of sulphur is beyond me.

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When you live by it, your nose and brain adjust to tune it out.

The other thing that I remember, beside the strong sulphur smell was that all the tracks and paths in the woods were yellow where the sulphur had spread and transferred from the mine. 45 years ago there wasn't so much concern about the environment.

We have papermills in the region I live in. Had one on the other side of the mountain and 30 miles away as the crow flies. They smell to high heaven or at least used to. I think they have figured out a way to minimize the smell these days. With all that distance and a mountain between us, every once in a while we could smell the mill on a hot summer day, very rare but I do remember it. I remember it more traveling through and past that mill to get to the large city that we were closest too. (it is a city officially but still relatively small. They had a mall and multiple theaters). As a kid I'd try to hold my breath as we drove past but never could for that long.

If you stopped and stayed there, your nose would tune out the smell pretty fast. It's the only sense I think we have as humans that does this. You can't tune out light or noise, touch or even taste but smell, yes.

Tacoma Washington was the worst smelling place until they closed the pulp and paper mill a while back. It was a combination of the mill, the tide flats and a rendering plant. My Dad grew up there and couldn't even smell it. Aw -"the aroma of Tacoma"

I worked in the papermill located at Woodfibre, British Columbia operated by Rayonier Canada for a few years. You can actually get used to the stench, believe it or not but when I moved from the wood plant to being a dozer boat operator I was horrified to see that they dumped the spent liquor into Howe Sound which must had a horrendous effect on the environment. This was 50 years ago and I don't know if the plant is still operating but it was old even back then.