Memorial Day Words: Tell us more about home

Tell us more about home...

By an unnamed copy-
writer employed by Nash-
Kelvinator Corporation
for a full page adver-
tisement in the
October 3, 1944 issue of 
Look Magazine; additional
Memorial Day commentary
by Walter Haan,
www.war-books.com,
www.southfarmpress.com


Nash-Kelvinator Corporation. That's a
name from the American past. It made
cars under the Nash brand and home
appliances under the Kelvinator name.

During World War II, American automobile manufacturers
stopped making automobiles in order to manufacture
tanks, bombers and military trucks for the war effort. A
lot of those trucks lasted a long time. I remember
riding around in Studebaker 2 1/2 ton trucks in the
60s while in the Army.

But the American automobile manufacturers wanted to remind the
public that someday, when the war was won, they would be back
manufacturing automobiles again. Cars that were bigger, better
and safer.

The edited copy appearing below is from one such institutional ad
by an auto maker, in this case Nash, and is very appropriate to
reread today, 65 years after the Allies won World War II. Did you
know that in 1944, we had nine manufacturers of automobiles in
this country, with another started one year later. Now we have
three companies that manufacture cars. When GM and Chrysler
went bankrupt last year, I wondered if they went under where
America would get needed military vehicles. I immediately
thought of foreign manufacturers such as KIA which I decided
stood for Killed In Action when they broke down and we were
waiting for parts from Korea.

Here is the copy from the Nash ad in 1944's Look Magazine.

"Tell us more about home...

"It's a long trip we're on...

A long time...a long way...

"And home is long ago.

"Tell us more about home...

"Tell us how bright the dresses swirl when girls go into Putnam's
in the afternoon for cokes. Tell us they still laugh and joke and make
a game with drops of water and wrinkled jackets off their soda
straws.

"Tell us they're still beautiful, still true as they were two years...
one hundred and four weeks...seven hundred and thirty days...
seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty hours ago. Tell us
more about home...

"Tell us the church still stands and [about] the rusted gate.
Tell us the trees are gold as they ever were and bells sound clear
on the autumn air and the reverend's voice still leads a prayer...

"Tell us more about home...

"Because out here, the roar of motors in the dawn and the take-
off of hundreds of planes and jets of flames from a thousand guns
set a wild pulse beating and wild blood leaping...and the will to
kill fires our brains.

"Tell us more about home...

"Tell us the power that built squadrons and hundreds of squadrons
of planes and fleets and scores of fleets of ships and submarines will
be the power not only to destroy but to create, and build, a dream...

"Our dream of us...

"Our dream of home...

"Our dream of you we're longing for...

"Our dream of America we're hoping for...

"Our dream of the world we're fighting for!"

Great words for every Memorial Day. I hope many get to read this
instead of the Memorial Day sales flyer from Wal-Mart.
--Copyright © 2010 by Walter Haan, www.war-books.com,
www.southfarmpress.com