The Charlotte News

Thursday, September 11, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: As to "Fable of Finny", because it has been a little while since the stories were in the daily press, we feel obliged to help out a bit. Finny represents Finland. You can figure out the rest.

And why were there no nails available at the hardware store? Maybe too much scrap iron had been shipped already to Japan, and the rest was needed to build ships to lend to Britain to fight Hitler? Or, maybe they had been requisitioned by the military to build barracks for housing all the new draftees of the previous year? The Navy would soon begin production of those small wooden craft known as PT boats for patrol duty, but they were not to be nailed together.

Who knows. But no nails there were. Thus, no doubt, came back the joiner's trade into fashion for awhile. How about a nice chicken coop with mortised and tenoned corner joints, replete with wire pressed tightly into narrowly dadoed grooves? Or just use shiplaps and tar to fill the spaces, all tightly fastened by tenons to a corner spar, a ready ark for your chickens in threat of being stolen--chickens protected by Congress and the FBI, as told by that piece of yesterday.

Well, we feel sure they made do somehow. Undoubtedly, within 90 days, no one was too much concerned any longer by the absence of nails. Rivets, a fire to get them red hot, and a sledge hammer on the other side of the sling to bang the molten steel tight, became the choice means of fastening, for men and women alike heading for the shipyards of Norfolk, Richmond, CA., and Long Beach.