Dear Diary,
I spent over four hours at the rationing board this afternoon, making a total of twenty – one hours, or an average of three and a half hours a day since I started last Friday.
Bing didn’t come back on the Kraft Music Hall as scheduled tonight, so Bob Crosby carried on again. As usual, he was thoroughly enjoyable, and, as last week, I rather hate to see him go. But I’ll also be glad to hear Papa Crosby again. He’ll probably offer condolences to Bob (Hope, not Crosby). After all, Bob lost one of his chief sources of material when Don Bingo won a race.
According to Garry Moore tonight, his new job is this: “I’m the bloke who pokes cokes and smokes at folks for the guy who buys pies and dies ties in a fancy farmers’ pharmacy on a high hill in back of a haystack in Hackensac, New Jersey.”
Dear Diary,
I worked at the rationing board more than eight hours today, and put out twice as many books as anyone else at our table. Not that it matter who does the most, as long as the job is done well in as short a time as possible. Volunteers are badly needed now to get the job finished by July 15, when the third ration books will be needed. It’s a tiresome day’s work, and it’s not exactly glamorous, but it has to be done. It helps me feel that Bob Hope and the armed forces aren’t the only ones doing something to win this damned war. I just realized that my entire contribution to the war effort has been: (1) a couple of days a week at the USO last summer; (2) three war bonds; (3) a first aid course; and not much else.
Dear Diary,
I spent the day today doing practically nothing. I read an Ellery Queen mystery and fooled around with shortwave to see where, when, and if the program Bob was on last night was being rebroadcast. I had absolutely no luck, although I tried about every fifteen of thirty minutes. This was quite a different day from yesterday, when I spent eight hours at Adamson High School, sending ration book no. 3 to several thousand hungry people.
Dear Diary,
Today was the last day of school for three wonderful, hot, sweltering months. I got my report cards today too. I made A’s in all five subjects on the six-weeks’ report, and I made A’s on all the final examinations except Latin. I made my only B for the past two terms on that final. Oh well, from 91 to 96 isn’t so terrible, even though one of those A’s (96–100) would have looked much better. But to get back to the main subject, I now have the whole summer in which to read, cut out and paste in pictures of Bob, and see Bob in movies. When I’m not doing those things or helping my teacher mail out Ration Book Number Three, them I’m just going to loaf until it hurts. (I can just see myself loafing, with a war to be won.)
Muriel Windham's Diary 