FORTUNE Magazine (part 3)

The Main Street Front
A Report on an American Community After One Year of War

Mattoon has no alien problem and there have been no hints of sabotage, no spy hunts, no hurry calls for the FBI. Crime and juvenile delinquency have not increased, though Chief Shirley picks up a few more drunks than usual on Saturday night. There is a shortage of doctors--four out of twenty-two have gone to the Army--and not enough nurses at the Memorial Hospital. Half the dentists in town have left for the services and an appointment to have a tooth filled must be made three weeks in advance. There are all sorts of minor inconveniences to put up with, annoying adjustments to make, but for the most part the citizens of Mattoon have not faced sacrifice and hardship yet. They do what is demanded of them, but they don't believe in giving up comforts and pleasures until they have to. So long as there is gas in the tank and rubber on the tires they are going to drive their cars. So long as there is liquor in the taverns they are going to drink it.
The new women bartenders in the Tap Room of the U.S. Grant Hotel have new red-white-and-blue uniforms, and being a bartender is a lot more fun than working in the kitchen because you get to meet a lot of people. Only the nicest class of people come in here, and nobody ever gets ugly or sassy ("though the nicest people can sometimes act the ugliest"). The Tap Room at the U.S. Grant is the only bar in town where there is much call for cocktails or bonded whiskey. At the Town Pump and the 115 Club and the Brown Jug the favorite drinks are beer and bourbon-and-coke or Calvert with a beer chaser.
All the bars and taverns have plenty of customers now but Lou's Rendezvous still packs them in the tightest on Saturday night. There are rows of cars parked beside Lou's big neon V-for-victory sign, high-school girls jitterbug to Lou's jukebox music, family parties eat their steaks and french frieds, and soldiers lean up against the long bar watching the girls in the mirror. Lou herself is slapping her friends on the back and shouting with laughter, keeping one eye on the kitchen and one on the crowd in the new knotty-pine paneled dining room. She's doing a good business and she's making money. But the war and one thing and another are beginning to get her down. "It's my nerves, I guess," she says, relaxing over a scotch. "Maybe I'll quit the whole thing and join the WAACs."
There is a lot of drinking in Mattoon, there are a lot of neon signs and jukeboxes, and everybody is having fun. "Having fun" has come to be an important part of life--where a few years ago the W.C.T.U. and the ladies-aid societies dictated the morals and mores. There are still "good" people in Mattoon, but for many having fun means playing poker or bridge, drinking, dancing and playing the slot machines at the Country Club, "pitching a party out to the lake," gambling either at home or in one of the illegal gambling joints. There is no recognizable house of prostitution in Mattoon but a soldier, or a civilian for that matter, can usually find a local girl or a "visitor down for the weekend."
Until gas rationing went into effect, having fun also meant driving up to Chicago or St. Louis or any one of a dozen nearer towns, driving just for the hell of it at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour ("they'd pass you if you kept it down to sixty-five") along the straight and level concrete highways. Gas rationing is going to affect business in Mattoon--the majority of the thirty-nine filling stations will shut down, stores and hotels will lose some of their trade--but most of all gas rationing is going to put a crimp in having fun. "I'd rather put my car up than drive thirty-five. My nerves won't stand it."
Nobody paid any attention to the voluntary forty-mile-an-hour limit last summer, but the law is going to keep them down to thirty-five now. About the only people who won't be affected are the Amish farmers up north of town who never believed in cars anyhow and have always driven along the tractor-scarred dirt roads in their closed buggies. Women have bought slacks and are learning to ride their daughters' bikes. Paunchy businessmen are trying to pretend that they'd always intended to walk to work anyway. People are accepting gas rationing. But they don't like it.
There is plenty of griping, mostly from the many who have been confused by conflicting statements from Washington. The Baruch Committee report and Mr. Jeffers's announcements are just more of the same to most of the people of Mattoon. There's plenty of gas, they say, and just because Easterners can't get it they don't want us to have it. If it weren't for the politicians, they say, if it weren't for Wall Street, plenty of synthetic rubber could be made. It's a lot of politics, international politics, to keep the market for the British.
There is all that kind of griping, and there are complaints that the other fellow is chiseling, that the other dealer has a priority drag, that the big shots can get what they want. But under it all and around it all is the feeling that it's all right if it will help win the war. The griping isn't unpatriotic, it's being from Missouri. The same worker who says it's a lot of politics to ration gas has tried to volunteer in the tank corps. The businessman who says plenty of rubber could be made tomorrow if Roosevelt hadn't sold out to Churchill gives all his spare time to selling war bonds. The woman who grumbles that meat rationing is ridiculous because she's seen plenty of fat hogs and steers right here in Coles County works every day for the Red Cross. They don't want anybody to get away with anything, but if they are convinced that something they can do will help win the war, they'll do it. "If one meatless day helps," says Pete Sutter, the Greek restaurant owner, "I'd just as soon have all meatless days."

FORTUNE Magazine, December 1943