September 1944

Shall We Honor This Debt?

BOMBER PILOTS are sometimes faced with jobs that are harder than flying the ship in combat. One of them landed his riddled plane recently on an English field.

LATE TIPS ON Wartime Living

To keep life in your curtains longer, shift them from one side of the house to another if windows are the same size, so that no set of curtains gets all the sun. Sunlight, heat, humidity, and dust are the biggest fabric weakeners.

Milkweeds Will Stuff Mae Wests

MILKWEED is going into war production this fall, to save the lives of fighting men. When the Japs took over Java, they cut off the source of supply of kapok. The best substitute for Java kapok in giving buoyancy to Mae West life jackets was found to be milkweed floss.

The Man Next Door

Probably it isn't safe for wives to assume too readily that husbands returning from the Army will swoon when confronted by home cooking. (Swoon with joy, I mean.) There's some good cooking in the Army, too, and plenty of good food. The little woman had better be on her mettle.

How Will You Live Tomorrow?

TO ANNOUNCE that our postwar homes will be push-button palaces of metal and glass and plastics would be as foolish as an utterance that the Cape Cod cottage is the last word in home design. Either statement would be as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two misstatements: the houses we build tomorrow are bound, by our very human nature, to be a combination of the best of the old and the new.

Tomorrow You Can Live Like This

ONLY the recent perfection of glass sandwiches with insulating dead-air space as the "filler" has made a room like this practical. The entire diagonal wall of glass panels can be kept closed in chilly weather or rolled aside into pockets, thus making the living-room a part of the garden.

This Is Your Gardened Living-Room Tomorrow

Two More Living-Rooms for Tomorrow

Rambling Ranch House

Open Planning in Illinois

Compact Contemporary

THE sun-bathed home of Mrs. Arthur W. Thompson, in Tucson, Arizona, is small. She calls it La Casita, Spanish for "small house." Yet within its brown and beige stucco walls are compacted four rooms so full of color, charm, and built-in convenience that the house seems large in comparison to many an older, larger house.

Meet the Old Dirt Dobber

TO A million or more avid gardeners, radio's big gift each Saturday morning is the Old Dirt Dobber.

Four Men Build Four Storage Rooms

FOR Massachusetts winters that often see 20 degrees below zero, Haydn Pearson believes he needs a protective casing of solid earth for his storage cellar. In building the cellar he's saved a third on man-hours by making use of a steeply sloping site. Excavating time was cut in half.

Are You Up to Date on Iris?

Here's how to choose colors for garden and landscape effect: No matter how beautiful they are for close inspection, dark colors in iris are not effective from a little distance, unless contrasted with light iris or other light-colored flowers blooming at the same time.

Canning Step by Step

1 These spiced fruits are special treats-and easy. We're doing pears here, but use the same method and recipe for crab apples, peaches, and apricots. Pick small pears or peaches, so whole fruit will slip into jar. Pare the pears. Leave whole with stem. Drop into cold, slightly salted water (about 1 table spoon salt to 2 quarts water) to keep fruit from turn ing dark. For peaches, dip into boiling water until skins slip then dunk into cold water and peel.

Press Like a Pro

PROUDLY we set up the ironing board and connect the iron. If we can get better looks and longer wear out of that wartime wardrobe by an occasional go at pressing, we're willing! If, by doing our own emergency pressing, we can ease things for the over-busy dry cleaner, we're for it! So let's see now-- where's a cloth to dampen?

Fresh Ideas for Those Lunch Boxes

"GEE, Mom-- that lunch you packed today was super! What's for tomorrow?"

Christmas Gifts From Your Canning Kettle!

You'll almost hear sleighbells and feel crisp, snowy air as you go Christmas-shopping in your own kitchen. All it takes is a few graceful glasses, some pretty bottles, a dimestore marmalade jar or two, and a dash of your own gay ingenuity.

Perfect Brown Stew

Here's an Idea

"WHAT an unusual door!" I admired. "Looks as if it had come from an old parsonage."

Article

Young Mothers' Exchange

FAITH HUCK of Greenwich, Connecticut, is running a Young Mothers' Letter Exchange of her own. Remember her request, several months back, that some of you write to her? And are you ever writing!

What Good Is Penicillin to You?

Now that this dramatic molddrug has been distributed to key hospitals for use on civilians, you're probably wondering what it'll mean to you.

A Pool Without Plumbing

NEVER let a scarcity of plumbers, or of waterpipe, connections, and pipe wrenches cheat you out of the fun of having a garden pool.

AN ARMLOAD OF Scrap Lumber Made These

I'M GETTING more useful little things built around our home, thanks to the current shortage of lumber. If that sounds contradictory it's because you don't know my husband. He's an amateur woodworker who likes his projects in heroic size.

Showers Forecast--Her Soldier's Coming Home!

THE news is out and the girls are all a-twitter. Your best friend's soldier-boy is coming home and there's a wedding in the air. Showers are forecast, and if you're a really good friend you'll have yours well ahead of the probably vague wedding day, leaving the bride plenty of time for last-minute bustling or changes of dates.

The Yawn Is Gone

ITS former owners evidently saw little more in the old house above than its yawning porch, staring windows, and beetling brow, for the Fred B. Greears of Norton, Virginia, bought it "at a very reasonable price."

Check Now Save Heat Next Winter

SO FAR in this war, only fuel oils have been rationed to home heaters. We've been warned against wasting natural gas. We've been urged to fill our coal bins early. But this year, unless drastic changes occur, coal will be second only to oil in scarcity.

Same Room--But What a Change!

The Greenhouse That Just Happened

THIS is the story of a greenhouse that didn't set out to be a greenhouse. If Jim Emmett's architect hadn't forgotten to provide a door from the laundry to the drying yard....

How to Paper a Wall Without Papering Yourself

ALL five of our rooms were desperately in need of new paper-- and paperhangers were harder to find than bobby-pins.

$12 Puts a Wall to Work

WASTE SPACE? Turn it into 20 bookshelves and four storage cabinets, as Richard and Gladys Edling of Hopewell, New Jersey, did.

A Magazine Storehouse

IN MANY a bungalow with bedrooms in the attic, or in story-and-a- half houses with low knee walls, there's a lot of space going to waste. You can put some of that space to use easily if you're handy with carpenter's tools, or you can call in the local handyman to do the job if it's too much for you to tackle yourself.

Give Your Gift Flowers Personality

A Pickle Takes the Prize!

THE things you good cooks can do with a pickle or a biddy! Our congratulations on some of the best eating that has come from our Tasting-Test Kitchen in months! Top place and $10 in your cooks' battle launched last February on Pickle Pointers and Chicken Masterpieces goes to Mrs. Joseph Farley of Hamden Conn.

for Solo-Crust Pies and Meats With a Spring Touch

We're off on another recipe roundup-- this time on the trail of luscious one-crust pies and spring meat creations. The best-to-eat of them all draws a $10 cash prize next April. Each of the next 20 wins a $3 check and Honor Roll rating.

Short-Cut Your Ironing

Five Paper Saving Carry-Alls

The Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

Sept. 1 Thru the years, I have come to understand by her tones what Maggie means when she calls me from afar, even tho I cannot distinguish her words. She has one especially peculiar tone which she sometimes uses in summoning me from the study or bottom of the garden.

September Outdoor Gardening Guide

IN SEPTEMBER the gardener's efforts really show results. Root crops are ready for storage and armfuls of chrysanthemums, dahlias, and zinnias may be cut without thought of ruining the garden.

It's NEWS to Me!