I just finished reading "The Nightingale." It is a story--historical factual fiction--about the French women who ran the underground rescue of Jews and hid downed airmen in WWII.  Great book. One of the best I've read. 

I was born the year that war started, and was in the second grade when it ended.  It is very clear in my mind.  All of my young childhood days were war years and my childhood memories were of living through the war.

The shortages.  The difficulty of finding tires, or anything rubber.  The ration stamps that were traded like cash.  All steel going to the war effort.  Everyone saving every thing--nobody threw anything away.  We repurposed everything.

We had no TV back then.  We had radios.  I can still remember my grandfather sitting on a three legged stool with his ear against the mesh cloth covering of a 3 to 4 foot high radio with a semi-circular top, listening to the news from the war.  Everyone gathered by the radio when the news came on--once a day.

We saved pennies so that on Saturday we could go to the movies for a dime and see the newsreels filmed by journalists who risked their lives to get footage to run each week at the movies.  War film.

Those of us who grew up in those years have no problem with the shortages in this pandemic.  We've done this before.  We know what is essential and what isn't.  We've done without.  We ate what we had and were thankful for what we had to eat.  We cut the toes out of our shoes when our feet grew.  We made our clothes.  Everyone knew how to sew.  We used leftover worn out clothes to piece together something else.  Rag rugs.  Crazy quilts. Nobody had anything--but we had everything we needed.  Family.  That's what counts.