4 April 1957 “Happy Anniversary To Me: Remembering 1943”

Today is my 14th wedding anniversary.  I thought I would share this vintage 50’s card I found in my 1955 year with you again. It is very sweet, I think, and I love the graphics.

One of my cookbooks has this lovely cake for an Anniversary that I think I will try this year. I adore citrus filling with cake and lemon is one of my favorite.

I was considering today that if Hubby and I were married for  14 years and this is 1957, we would have been wed in 1943. What a time that would have been.

Since the U.S. was officially in the war as of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on the 7 December 1941, there is a good chance hubby would be in the military at that point. Perhaps making our wedding something along the lines of this. Though I have a feeling we might have been more along the lines of this couple: 

1943 would have been a very tough year. The war had been raging in Europe since 1939. Now that we were in the thick of it, Rosie the riveter was born. In fact this painting by Norman Rockwell of Rosie the Riveter was painted in 1943, our wedding year.

The world changed vastly in a short period of time. Here is a film I would have seen in the theatre here in the US about the Rationing in UK and know very well we would be here soon ourselves.

This would also be a film I would most likely view when I was at the ‘pictures’.

I am not sure if I would have taken work in a factory to help, or simply rolled bandages and done that sort of at home war work. There would have been a Victory Garden for sure. But, if my hubby were overseas, I have a feeling I would want to help and I could see myself wanting to volunteer to train in nursing or something to be overseas as well. It would be a hard decision to make to stay here and prepare the world for when our boys returned and also to provide for those overseas or to be over there to help in the thick of it. How do you think you would decide? If you had children, that would make a great difference I am sure.

When I consider what my early married life would have been and now the vast luxury and ease of my 1957 home life, I wonder  how I would have ever truly felt all of this was ‘normal’. We would be so happy to have the world back and to have plenty after all that we had to do with out and all the dirt and muck and grim and death of war. The plastic bright world of the 1950’s would seem a dream, almost. And, really, in many ways it was. It was such a unique time that seemed only able to sustain itself for the short period of time. I think, however, in the back of my mind, I would have always recalled the hardships of the war and the vastly changing world, how could I not?

Now, hubby and I are not celebrating today. He has a 10 day vacation coming up next week and we have decided to have our ‘celebration’ be a great ‘staycation’ where in we work on the yard and take little trips here on the Cape. We are also hoping to use that week to really consider and think about our own future. We have begun to wonder what the reality of our true future, here in the USA and the increasing global world of wars in the middle east and rising oil prices, where are we headed? We are beginning to see we need to possibly make a vast change in our lives, even more so than I have done living here in the 1950’s.

I do know that my love of history and how fortunate we are to have such a vast array of past knowledge to draw upon, we certainly can consider and decide on a better future for ourselves.

I’ll close with this lovely rendition of Stormy Weather (from the movie of the same name from 1943) sung by Lena Horn. It is stormy weather up ahead and I hope we can all make it better together.