October 1942

What "Home Front" Means to Us

JUST WHAT do we mean when we talk so often about winning the war on the "home front"? What is the exact meaning of a phrase that has become so familiar in our conversation?

IT'S HERE!

WE'RE a nation of string-savers. Don't fool yourself about that. It's a national characteristic that first shows up in the fascinating contents of a little boy's pockets. And out of that initial experience in hoarding tadpoles, penny whistles, and wads of chewing gum comes the grown-up's serene confidence that someday a fine assortment of old flatirons, golf clubs, garden hose, and wash boilers will come in mighty handy.

It's Cooler With a Pool

ORDINARY summer temperatures at Redlands, California, on the edge of the desert, range around 95 degrees. On really hot days the thermometer screams 110.

Get Soil Ready Now!

WITH food gardens promising to be even more important next year than this, now's the time to put your soil into condition and get your 1943 garden off to a flying start.

Refrigerator-Roll Puzzlers Solved Here

IT'S the business of this author-home-economist to know everything you can ask her about the ups and downs of yeast products. Refrigerator rolls, she tells us, raise the most hands at her baking demonstrations all over the country. So here, per our request. she's jotted down the questions most asked about them, and her trouble-shooting answers.--

Making Sure of Tomorrow

Dear Editor: We've been married just two years, and we need so many things we can't get now!

My Wisteria's No Clinging Vine

NO MERE clinging vine is the wisteria. It grips like a python. One got a strangle hold on an elm at our place and choked the tree to death. We didn't mind especially, for wisteria covering a dead tree makes a very fine sight.

Does Your Lawn Need a Wig?

I PROPOSE to tell you how to make something delightful out of those thin or unkempt lawn spots under your trees. Such spots ruin otherwise irreproachably groomed yards. And it won't do any good not to notice them, because they won't get tired and go away.

PUT PATTERN INTO YOUR GARDEN

A GOOD way to study the design of a garden is to look at it from the roof of a house or from a second-story window. If, from that angle, the garden has definite form, if it follows a simple, orderly pattern, the groundwork has, in all probability, been pretty well laid. But there must be pattern!

Your New Car--the Brakes Are Off!

OUR boss said to us, you go down to Detroit to find out what the postwar cars will be like. And so we went down to Detroit to see what those cars would be like.

INDOOR Gardening Guide

OUTDOOR Gardening Guide

OCTOBER is chrysanthemum and rose month. Chrysanthemums with their rich warm colors are now at their best. This is the time to get acquainted with them and decide which you want in your garden next year. The thoroly hardy varieties you can move now with a ball of earth. The tender varieties are better moved late next spring.

Scrapbook of Shutters

You Bet You Can Braid a Rug

And Here's How You Do It

MEN, I've discovered, really go for braided rugs, because they hug the floor and don't curl and twist underfoot. Certainly they're the toughest and most generally usable of all home-craft rugs, and if you pick your colors cleverly, you'll have something to be mighty proud of for years.

Watch Out--It's Catching!

This Home Takes to Cottons

JULIE AND DICK HUNT didn't have any illusions about the lovely antiques and reproductions they'd gathered to complete their new home in Brentwood, California.

Sisters Under the Clapboards

CASUAL passers-by would be astonished if they knew that the three little Bildcost Gardened Homes on Akron, Ohio's, Cordova Avenue were identical triplets under the clapboards. They'd be surprised because each home has its own brand of charm and not one is an outside carbon copy of another. If they looked inside, tho, they'd see the same inspired floor plan and find that it suits the three different families as if it had been custom-designed for each!

Article

How to Wash Your Slip-Covers

A New American COMES HOME

WAVE of immigration floods U. S.! Number of new citizens breaking records! Facilities for handling taxed to utmost!

Jiffy Cake Finishes Without Frosting

YOU AND YOUR Vitamin A

Why green and yellow foods? Because they're rich in Vitamin A. It's absolutely necessary for normal growth, health, and reproduction; for keeping the skin and the mucous membranes that line all body cavities so healthy that bacterial infections can't gain a foothold; for preventing night blindness --special danger to night fliers, motorists, and night-shift factory workers; for helping to form good tooth enamel-- hence the extra-generous amounts of A given babies and children and pregnant and nursing mothers.

How to Grow Meat on Trees

"MEAT AND BUTTER" trees are by far the best bets commonly overlooked in home planting. The principal reasons are three:

Space-Savers Little Homes Need

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Appalled by the hundreds of dishes it takes to entertain eight for dinner, I bought some "blue plate" dishes (you know-- the divided kind) for the b.w. the year we were married. After 12 years I've just found 'em in the top cupboard of the pantry. No sale.

Meet Our Cash-winning Cooks!

THE battle of the Cookies and Casseroles is over! As the smoke clears away, you see Mrs. W. C. Lundgren of Oakland, California, waving a $5 check while she takes a bow for her winning entry-- Semi-Sweets, the dandiest little chocolate crispies you ever munched with ice cream or a sauce of fruit.

Big Breakfasts for Busy Days

Beware! Outlaw Rust at Large!

THERE'S one enemy of American homes that has so many hide-outs not even the F.B.I. could track him down. He's ruthless and powerful and bent on the destruction of your home. His name is rust, but he's more formally known as corrosion.

We Turned Our Black Sheep Basement Into an Adventure in Color

TODAY our "black sheep basement" is the gayest, most engaging, and comfortable spot in our whole house, yet we still shudder when we remember it in its previous incarnation. Nightmare was the word for it!

It's COTTON ...

How Good a Parent Are You?

IT'S so easy to make "Life With Father and Mother" a thrilling, continuing story of happy memories-- or a dull serial in a squabbling household where individuals merely camp from month to month.

The Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

Oct. 1 Sad to relate, after I took a hasty walk about the plantation, I had to hie me down to the jolly old think-factory [Ohio State University, where the P. D. G. is journalism professor] to begin another year of orating to students on what is news and how it is gathered and written and the fact that there is news in All-America flowers and vitamins and ventilation as well as in battles, taxes, and football.

Baby-Care Pictures Next Month

Make Your Baby's First Bed, Mother!

OF COURSE you want an adorable, ruffly bassinet for your baby's first bed-- what mother doesn't? It's half the fun of having a baby!

Exotic but Easy Orchid Cactus

CACTUS is usually associated with desert heat, intense sun, and no moisture most of the year. Such environment would soon kill an epi-phyllum, the Orchid Cactus.

Keep 'em Leakproof

BE HONEST now-- how good is the putty in your windows? Is it firmly set and solid, or are there some foreboding cracks, or worse still, chunks of putty missing?

Scrapbook of Shutters

How Many of These in Your Attic?

HELLO! Remember me? I'm one of those Victorian discards sentenced to years of dust-collecting in your attic. Truth is, my Victorian pals and I reaped so much ridicule that we finally retired in confusion. But now that some of the Victorian furnishings of your friends are out on parole, why not invite us back to meet these moderns?

Send Us Your Tricks for Thrifty Meats and Sandwiches

WE'RE betting you've just what we want-- smart ways to cut corners on a meat budget, and sandwiches that really are special. Right? Then toss your cook's cap in this contest-- best recipe of the lot to win $5, 20 closest contenders capturing $1 apiece.