After listening to some old murder mysteries on the radio and some old comedy movies from WWII I take it there was rationing in the US during WWII
I heard a line in a flick where they were talking about Charles Atlas and the actress’s line is “That man has a “C” card for muscles.”
So I take it a C card was a lot?
Any idea how those cards worked? I have heard them mention so far, A,B,C and D cards. I don’t know if they went any higher
From my understanding, these were indeed gas-rationing designations to determine how much gas you got during W2, from Joe Citizen’s limited A-Card rationing (no special considerations, all citizens not involved in the war effort), B-Cards (essential to the war effort, e.g., servicemen), C-Card (very essential to the war effort, high ranking folks), E-Card (emergency services) and a T (or I?) Card for transportation of goods. There may have been other cards too, and hopefully someone else will come in with a better understanding of the system.
It does sound like a C Card got you more than the average Joe.
Cecil discussed this way back:
The low fuel allowance of the A card was the punchline of the wartime Bugs Bunny cartoon Falling Hare. While hilarious to contemporary audiences, I’m sure, the meaning is obscure to those of us born after the war.
From here: http://www.prewarbuick.com/id389.htm and here: http://www.alumnibhs.com/old%20geezer%20photos/gas_rationing_during_ww2.htm
Rationing was to conserve rubber (tires, mainly). We had plenty of gas.
A - 3-4 gallons/week. Don’t drive unless essesstial.
B - 8 gallons/week, for essential war driving
C - most counterfeited - doctors, mail carriers, railroad workers, ministers
T - Trucks, buses
X - True VIPs
This is another interesting page: http://tvh.bfn.org/autos.html
Some times in movies from the era, or movies set during the period, you can see the sticker on the windshield of the car.
Servicemen and women were not entitled to B stickers simply for being in the service. Government vehicles were available for any travel by service personnel that was necessary.
As AmbushBug’s cite says, you had to have a job that was essential. Farmers got B stickers. Despite today’s “one for all and all for one” portrayal of life in the US in WWII, it resulted in considerable resentment between town and country in farming communities.
Ya’ beat me, I was just going to point this out. As I recall, there were no “cards” but just square stickers that went on the right side of the windshield. But, as we had no car back then, am not sure there was not a card issued also.
Sugar, meat and lots of other foods were rationed too. Everybody got a book of ration stamps. In the stores (no supermarkets back then) every price sign for rationed goods gave the number of stamps in addition to the cost.We fished out the money and tore out the required stamps.
As an aside, everybody had to put up blackout curtains on the windows and there were air raid drills with wardens going form door to door to assure no light leaked out. Back then I was living in a small town in upstate New York, and most of us felt the liklihood of a Luftwaffe raid on our town was rather remote. 
In Canada, gasoline was rationed from 1942 on; we issued quite a wide variety of little booklets for various types of categories; in addition to A, AA, B, etc., I have tickets and/or booklets in my collection for:
“Non-commercial Marine Engine,” “Taxi,” “Wartime Industrial Transport,” “Tourist–Motorcycle.”
I didn’t know they had wi-fi networks back then, much less that it was essential to tap into them.
My grandpa got a B sticker for being editor/publisher of a small-county newspaper.
The ration books contained stamps w/ a numeric value printed on them. If you purchased something, say an amount of meat that required 8 ration points, you might have torn out a #10 stamp and the butcher would give you two small red (for meat) tokens.
The was an old joke that made the rounds during, and shortly after, this era: If several guys saw an attractive, perhaps a bit plump which was more the vogue back then, woman, one might remark, “Just think, all that meat for one red point!”.
I remember seeing one that I think starred Elmer Fudd. He was out hunting, as usual, and every animal he saw in the forest was tagged with a label indicating how many ration points it was worth.
Old cartoons and movies were filled with such jokes, jokes that no longer make much sense.
Numerous Bugs Bunny cartoons would show Bugs sticking out his foot, causing Elmer Fudd (or some equally hapless character) to fall on his face… which would prompt the punch line “Was This Trip Really Necessary?”
In one of Abbott & Costello’s old movies, Costello finds a huge pile of cash wrapped in a rubber band. He’s thrilled to death! He tosses the money away, and exclaims, “Rubber! Good rubber!”
William F. Buckley used to tell this ancient story: A guy was driving through the countryside in Vermont, far from the nearest town. He was almost out of gas, and was getting panicky. At lost, he came upon a rustic gas station. When the attendant walked up, the driver handed him his A card.
“What’s this?” asked the confused attendant.
“It’s my rationing card, of course,” answered the driver.
“What rationing?” replied the attendant?
“Well, the war rationing,.” answered the driver.
“What war?” asked the puzzled attendant.
“Well, the big war, you know, with Adolf Hitler!” shouted the driver.
“Who’s Adolf Hitler?” asked the attendant.
The driver thought for a few seconds, then said, “Tell you what- forget about the gas, and just give me four new tires.”
I distinctly recall Daffy Duck tooling along on a scooter, then turning off into the sunset to reveal a large poster on his back reading “Keep It Under 40” (the wartime speed limit).
Too much regular octane gasoline in fact. What with most of the refineries being fractional distilleries a lot of oil had to be run through them in order to meet the demand for 100-120 octane aviation fuel. Of course the refinery didn’t directly produce such high octane fuel. Aromatic additives did that but they were added to the lightest fractions out of the refinery and in order to get a lot of those light fractions a lot of slightly heavier fractions had to be produced.
Since there was a shortage of transportation and not many long distance pipelines the excess was run out into ponds and burned. I took advanced flight training at Fort Sumner, NM and a lot of our flying was night cross country. We made a lot of flights over toward the MIdland-Odessa, TX area and you could see the fires burning from miles away and over a wide swatch of the horizon.
And you would get credit for returning your grease. The butcher shop on my father’s block had a sign in the window that said, “Ladies: bring your fat cans in on Tuesday!”
Wow. I had never heard his. What was done with it?
It was used in the manufacture of ammunition. My mom has told me stories of the war. Scrap iron collected, food grease collected, Victory Gardens. It was a different time.
Grease was an essential component of some munitions. On a similar note, ladies were encouraged to turn in their silk stockings to make powder bags for naval guns.
Regarding the use of the cards in WB cartoons, one of my favorites is in Gremlins from the Kremlin. It turns out that one of the reasons the Germans have been unable to bomb Moscow is that the gremlins switch the “C” cards on their bombers to “A” cards in midair, causing them to run out of fuel and crash. Der Fuehrer is flying the plane in question, and his reaction is priceless.
“Burn and Allen” on their radio show, every show bascially had some section where Gracie would remind someone to turn in their waste kitchen fat.
Jack Benny use to try to cook and he’d wind up with a bunch of burnt mess and Rochester would say he could turn in the waste kitchen fat to make bombs to get Hitler. As Rochester said “Mr Benny’s can’t have the whole German army over at once, so if he can’t get them one way he’ll get them another.”
Kind of hijacking this? Was there a freeze on anything like wages or were their price controls in addition to rationing.
I know there must’ve been sugar shortages, because I remember reading in old Time Magazines after the atomic bomb was dropped, Jello took out ads saying “Remember to look for us now that sugar shortages soon will be over.”