A Life to Remember

Celebration

During the war, movies were extremely popular. They were one of the cheapest and best ways to have fun. On August 14th 1945, I went to the movies after work with my friend Nancy. We were both tired from working, but felt like we would both enjoy spending time together to watch a movie. We both walked into the movie theater and sat down in the middle of the room. We were talking when the movie finally started playing. The screen showed clips of the soldiers fighting overseas and how people should help out the war effort. I had seen those clips many times before. It was common for them to play before movies. After those clips, the movie finally started. It had been playing for about 20 minutes when the lights abruptly came on and the movie was turned off. Nancy and I looked at each other with puzzling looks across our faces as everyone in the movie theater all simultaneously groaned, "aww." Someone in the back of the theater ran in and shouted,

"We won the war!" Everyone jumped up. I turned to Nancy as we both screamed with joy and started to cry. "The most general impulse seemed to be to shout, sing and hug passers-by." It was so overwhelming to hear that all of our efforts over the years finally paid off. The boys were coming home! We all filed out into the street. I saw other people doing so from other buildings. The street was crowded with people. "It was like 50 New Year's Eves rolled into one." Everyone was so happy that it was over. I thought to myself. It's over, it's finally over! We did it!

All that day everyone was celebrating. I can't remember much about what I did the rest of that day. I guess I was still in shock that after so many years, we were finally done with all of it. We could go back to living a normal life. But at this point, all the craziness, the rationing, the propaganda and women working in factories, had become our normal lives. So going back to what it was before would not be an easy transition.