1943: We Had Some Meat Last Week

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I picked up the newspaper, saw the Mutual Market ad staring up at me, and threw it back on the kitchen table with a sigh. Why did the big groceries have all the meat, while all I could get was crab legs and fish? I was losing money and customers. Every day they would come to me and ask, “Do you have beef?” And I would reluctantly say, “No, but we expect a shipment next week.” Now I hardly felt like a butcher.

My wife Maria called me in to dinner. Today we had meat on our table; unfortunately this meat was not from my shop, plainly because I had none. I thought back to Poland. I had left in 1939, fleeing the Nazis, who were threatening to invade. Now it was 1943. My beloved Poland was in ruins, and even here in America -- the land of opportunity! -- I was out of meat. Maria called out again, “Max, come on, let’s eat. You know half the time those fools at  Mutual Market don't have any meat either.”

“Yes, yes, Maria,  you're right, I know,” I said.

“Max, tomorrow I want you to plant a Victory Garden.”

-- Tieran Sweeny-Bender

Evidence

1941-1977 Max Jonientz is listed at 4427 S. Dawson. He is a butcher. In 1961 he is working at the meat counter at Safeway. Maria G. Jonientz is listed there until 1986.

Source: Polk’s Directory

During the Second World War, meat was rationed, because so much of it was going to feed U.S. servicemen and refugees overseas. Everybody was issued a ration book with a certain number of coupons for meat each month, and they ahd to give them to the butcher along with their money whenever they bought any meat. Even with this system in place, the butchers sometimes had a hard time meeting the demand for meat. Jim Lough, whose dad owned a butcher shop in nearby Hillman City, remembered "when we got a side of beef in, it would be like a celebration day, and there 'd be a line up out in front." And when there was no meat in stock, "I can remember throwing knives at a big empty toilet paper box, target practice, 'cause there was nothing to do."

Sources: Ration Book and Jim Lough oral history, Rainier Valley Historical Society collection. Photo of 1943 butcher shop line courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry. Mutual Market advertisement, 1943 South District Journal.
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