Jim Bradshaw: World War II rationing didn't always make good horse sense

People understood the need to ration rubber and gasoline during World War II, and so they understood when grocery stores and laundries and others were told they should use their delivery trucks sparingly.
What upset folks in Crowley was a new rule that the Daily Signal called “another of the ridiculous bureaucratic regulations to deny Crowley people services.” The Office of Defense Transportation ruled that the Crowley Laundry had to limit its pickup and delivery services to only two days each week.
That would have been just fine if the laundry was burning precious gasoline for deliveries. But the Crowley consternation was caused by the fact that the laundry didn’t use gasoline or rubber tires or even a truck to make deliveries six days each week. It used a horse-drawn wagon with iron wheels.
“The only reason given for prohibiting the laundry from using the horse-drawn vehicle was that it provided unfair competition, despite the fact that the Crowley Laundry is the only laundry in the city,” the Signal complained.
Besides that, the Signal suggested, using a horse and buggy wasn’t unfair competition. Lots of people in south Louisiana were still using their buggies when the war began, and those who did have cars or trucks just put them in the barn and pulled out the old wagon that was stored there — and there were still plenty of them across south Louisiana.
The neighboring community of Church Point was already being called the Buggy Capital of the World, an honor that was popularized, or perhaps first used, by the nationally syndicated columnist Robert S. Allen. Father W.J. Labbe said in his weekly Church Point News column in June 1943 that Allen was his guest in 1941 and “was the one that wrote up Church Point in the [syndicated column] Washington Merry-Go-Round as the Buggy Capital of the U.S.”
That would have been about the time that “Hollywood movie officials” came to Church Point to film background scenes for the Bette Davis film called “The Little Foxes.” One of the officials said they came to Church Point because it was the only place they could find the buggy they needed.” When the finished movie was shown in south Louisiana the promotion said that Teresa Wright, who was making her movie debut, “learned to drive a horse and buggy while the movie was being made.”
The movie might also have inspired mail to Church Point mayor Rodney Murrel “in connection with the shortage of tires” such as one reprinted in the Rayne Tribune asking him if he knew of anyone with “a good horse, buggy, and harness for sale at a reasonable price.”
The Lafayette Advertiser also carried letters from people looking for buggy dealers. Typical was a letter from Texarkana, Texas: “If there is a manufacturer that you know of that is making buggies such as were used 25 or 30 years ago, will you please give me his address?”
A reasonable price appears to have been about $125 in those days, which would be $2,500 today. Former Jeff Davis Parish sheriff Gus Broussard paid $137.50 for a new buggy in May 1942, when he told the Jeff Davis News that “all his business trips henceforth will be by horse and buggy.”
Some people were still using them as their main means of transportation into the 1950s, and kept using them on special occasions well after that. I remember driving past rural churches on Sunday mornings in the 1960s and seeing a half-dozen or more buggies “parked” outside.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.