Jim Bradshaw: WWII rationing gave Louisianians a case of cold feet
It was welcome news when rubber rationing was lifted at the end of World War II, and it may have been welcomed more in south Louisiana than in many other places.
Tires, and the inner tubes that kept them round, were the first things to be rationed after major rubber-producing countries such as Malaya and the Dutch East Indies fell to the Japanese.
That may not have caused as much of a problem here as it did in some other places, because a lot of people were still using (or began to use again) the horse and buggy they’d relied on for years.
But rubber was used in plenty of other things that either disappeared or became strictly rationed ─ gloves, raincoats, hot water bottles, girdles, toys, and, importantly, boots.
That included hip boots worn by hunters and trappers, the smaller ones used by fishermen or by farmers who waded in rice fields, and everyday boots worn by workmen when the rains rained down on south Louisiana.
Many folks here had a tough time deciding between a good pair of boots and a new tire for a car or truck that required gasoline that was also hard to get.
Some boots were still being made, but not nearly enough.
Ladies could still find galoshes, but workmen needed a special certificate to buy their boots, and they were expensive, if they could be found at all.
For more than three years, fishermen and farmers and trappers had to suffer with wet feet caused by leaky ones held together by inner tube patches ─ or by wading without any boots at all.
That’s why the Abbeville Meridional considered it front-page news when L. M. Goldberg, chairman of the Vermilion Parish War Price and Rationing Board announced, at the end of September 1945 that Regulation 6-A, the restriction on rubber boots, had been lifted.
He said the regulation had applied to six types of boots, including “hip boots, Storm King boots (a three-quarter rubber boot), heavy type knee boots, light type rubber boots about knee high, and pacs [sic] and bootees less than 10 inches high.”
“In this section, agricultural workers and professional trappers especially will be benefitted by the removal of the restrictions,” Goldberg said.
“Duck hunters and fishermen also, who have found it difficult to secure certificates since most were reserved for essential workers, will be pleased.”
Those folks and others were indeed pleased by the news, but it took a while for the bootmakers to get waders onto store shelves in south Louisiana, or anyplace else.
Most of the manufacturers had been busy making boots for soldiers or other war material, and it took them some time to get back to making waders good for the marsh, and setting up the distribution lines to get them into the stores.
Besides that, rubber stayed in short supply for months after the war’s end, and car makers grabbed the lion’s share of what was available to meet the nationwide demand for car tires.
Most people in south Louisiana still patched old boots and grumbled over wet feet for months.
For all intents and purposes, Regulation 6-A remained in effect, no matter how pleasing the announcement of its demise.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.