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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Prepare Now for 'Rocks' Ahead tub, on a board, marveling in the new powders that are one more miracle in this land of miracles. She takes a basket to market, and not a smart market but the hungry hun-gry family finds no fault with the thick soups, the shining salad, the home-made bread and cheap desserts des-serts desserts of cornstarch, apples, ap-ples, runty prunes soaked to softness. soft-ness. Nothing is wasted. Jan wears his nine-year-old coat. If her school companions laugh at her clumsy European clothes, Kat-zi Kat-zi has the good philosophic talk at table to give her balance. She found several pals as shabby as herself, and Mom takes their breath away now and then by saying say-ing that her good girl can have a dollar, yes, go to the movie. Illnesses are taken straight to' the city clinic, where the whole, cost is 5 cents for. the bottle of. medicine. Sports are "free, in the1 school yard. Swimming on broiling J summer nights is free. The Rickars pay taxes, but they carry no insurance, for Jan isn't1 afraid of his family's courage. They are going to be Americans and neither Katzi or Karl will listen, presently, to the half-baked talk in the school yard. They know. They grew up under the cruel au-' spices of the nation that is trying to i teach Americans another code. -URS IS A FAMILY that is never quite easy on the money question," writes Alison Hoyt from Kansas City. "Lynn and I are intelligent, I think, not college col-lege folk, but just two more of the great mass of people who, have a boy and a girl and a car and are paying on a washer, and manage to spend every cent of our $400 a month. "My grandmother," the letter goes on, "thinks that is big money, but when my grandmother kept house for $160 a month, taxes were not what they are, steak was 18 cents a pound and bacon 11 cents. Children's dentistry consisted of a visit a year, and there were no motor cars, movies, telephones, electric kitchen equipment. " "Our real trouble," continues Alison, "is that Frank and Barbara are 14 and 12 now, and their clothes, amusements, and expectations expec-tations in the way of presents have just simply gotten out of reach. We did pile up a nice nest-egg of bonds during the war, when I worked, but we are down to bedrock bed-rock now." What's the answer? Where are we wrong? We only have what so many others have; seven-room house, no servant, public schools. Barbara's dresses and mine cost under $10 each, but she has to have a coat each winter. Other children get their half-dollars for movies and skating rink and chocolate malts; we can't be the ones to stop. Considers Working "Should I get a job, and if I do, who keeps an eye on my boy and girl in the dangerous teens?" Alison, if my answer seems harsh to you, you may comfort yourself that it applies to about four million equally worried American Amer-ican families, too. Science has never put so many tempting household house-hold devices in woman's way, so- Jit -ft " , , , half-dollars for movies . . ." cial deployment has never put before children's eyes so many desirable things to wear, eat, watch. We have all, as a nation, gone slightly crazy on what we must have, wear and see, even though every voice , that speaks prophecies now says " rocks ahead!" You and Lynn are following the trend, and it is a trend that leads to a dependent old age, to Frank and Barbara being burdened with tomorrow's heavier costs, insurances insur-ances and taxes, and being burdened bur-dened with you, too. It is an everyday every-day tragedy, but nonetheless terrible ter-rible in its effects. Now I am going to tell you a little story. Olga and Jan Rickar came from the depth of occupied; Poland two years ago. They are as well educated as Lynn and you, but they had known nothing but starvation, star-vation, fear, cold, pain for years. Now miraculously, they are here. Small Apartment Olga hunted through the very quiet, utterly unfashionable parts of town, and found three rooms near the river for $26 a month. Katzi 13, helped her clean and paint the uninviting apartment. Karl, 15, and his sister go to school, but Katzi got an after-school job with burdened little Mrs. Smith and her three babies, and makes $10 a week. Karl has had a bakery delivery job since the day they arrived. Olga does her own washing in a |