Wisteria in the Window

By BARBARA ELVY STRATE

The third week in May 1943, our family of three was settled in a white cottage named The Acorn, located on Water Lane in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire. Way back in the past the white house had been a stage coach station. It is not unusual for British people to give their home a name. We once again were paying guests. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and their two children, a boy and a girl, had moved to the country home for relief from the London Blitz.

Not only was the outside white, most of the inside rooms were, too. A narrow, rough wood staircase led to our white-walled bedroom. Flush with the wall at the head of twin beds, a huge, curved, flat log with one branch, evidence of being hewn by hand, was painted black. Wisteria blossoms covered the front and roof of The Acorn and hung over our bedroom window, filling the cool morning air with their fragrance. The staircase led to and from our bedroom to the lounge of the original structure, also white, with black ceiling beams. One wall contained a large fireplace where inside an alcove were two short benches along two sides of the alcove. A fire grate graced the center of the alcove. We didn't use this ancient warming device as wood, coal or coke were scarce, and therefore we had no reason to sit on the stone benches. This was a light, enjoyable room with a door to the outside gardens set between two windows. We had the use of a kitchen and one bathroom located off the dinning room. The original thick, red-tile flooring was uneven in places.

Tranquil, warm May mornings made my walks to the High Street for our weekly rations and whatever fresh vegetables were in the greengrocers' store pleasurable. With David in his chocolate-brown pram with cream-colored leather lining, I walked down the country road where wild hawthorn bushes bloomed, scenting the air. I went by a pub named the Acorns, and past a string of semi-detached homes around a half-circle green, where children played and men had friendly games of cricket and rugby, while wives stood in groups to watch. At the crossroads of Water Lane, High Street and two other streets stood the original water well the villagers used long ago. That well was their only source of daily water.

With my meager purchase of groceries, I wheeled David back to our present domain to feed him then set his pram in the shade of a large oak tree for his afternoon nap. The county of Hertfordshire is located north of London, and was not in the flight pattern for German bombers. This made for easier living, though the siren wailed once when I sat with the Stevenses one night in their small lounge while Sherman was away for a few days. He ate his meals at the airbase, where the food was far better than that at the British RAF bases. Somehow, food supplies to the American bases seemed to reach their destinations more often than supplies to RAF bases. He rode a bicycle about a mile to and from the 8th Air Force Base.

"Blackie," Sherman's Canadian buddy since training school in Canada, was also a pilot and still stationed at a Royal Air Force Base. He came to The Acorn for a weekend with his girlfriend, Sylvia. Sherman somehow talked a farmer into selling him one chicken from his flock. He fried the chicken, much to Syl's disgust, which I understood as frying a chicken was unheard of until the Yanks arrived on our shores. He made original French fries with potato slices, rather than strips. He used the fat I rendered from bacon that was available through America's lend-lease program. Compared with the lean rashers of pre-war Danish bacon, the American bacon wasn't geared to our taste buds. Most housewives rendered the fat bacon for the grease, which worked well for fried foods and other baked products that called for butter or lard. Our four-ounce allowance per person of those products didn't stretch far. Our dinner was a memorable one and very much enjoyed.

I wonder how the farmer explained to the local Government Inspector about his chicken count. Personal livestock was declared and stiffly monitored. The farmer probably got by with saying the chicken died, which in reality it did.

We were very content living in the white cottage with Wisteria at our bedroom window but we had the opportunity to move to a house within walking distance of the 8th Air Force Base, if Sherman chose to do that. Late in the year of 1943 we moved to what we referred to as the Reike House in Bovingdon.

Note: Coke is a residue left from the distillation of coal.