On the way home from the airport on Monday morning at 5:00 a.m. there was a segment on NPR about how much food Americans waste. Who among us, four days after the usual bountiful Thanksgiving festivities, could hear such a discussion without some discomfort? Later that day, working again on the never-ending basement archaeology project, I came upon a World War II ration booklet with my name on it. It was 1943 and I was recorded as five weeks old and 9 ½ pounds. Several of the sheets of ration stamps are intact but some had been used. I asked my mother about the experience of using ration stamps. Her words: "I remember that red stamps were for meat, but there was also rationing or scarcity of sugar, butter (soon gone altogether), coffee, gasoline, shoes, and rubber for baby pants. The point was to have things for the military, but then the items just became scarce or totally unavailable. There would be long lines and a hassle to apply your points; you never had enough meat, so that’s when I learned to make dishes like dried lima beans and sausage. Beef was the highest price and points of all and hot dogs were lower. I made enchiladas out of green peppers, rice, tomato sauce, and hot dogs. Sometimes we had points but the butcher had no meat; other times we had points but not enough money. One time we scraped together the money for badly-needed shoes and the very day I was going to buy them the radio announced that [leather] shoes would be rationed so I didn’t even go shopping. It seems to me that canned fruits and vegetables were rationed but fresh ones were not. A truck would come around to collect used cans and other things we would now call recyclables. I don’t know why there would be so many unused stamps in that particular booklet." Perhaps it was because the instructions printed on the back include this admonition: If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT. Good advice, actually.