WW II caused many people to move around in the U.S., but it was generally from small towns to larger cities. In the socialogical study "Plainview USA" (and others), a constant theme is rural folk moving from farm villages to the big city. Servicemen and women war workers got to see the country and wanted more than the small villages had to offer. Today "Mayberry" is beloved nostaglia, but back then people were glad to get out. Of course, cities back then were a lot nicer and safer than today.
The experience of your family was repated all across the country.
In the cities, such as where I took these pictures, the situation was different. People tended to return home. Children married and tended to stay in the general area. Indeed, after the war they moved in with their inlaws bcause there was no housing available.
"Plainview" had two studies, one in 1939, one in 1954. (I'll get the exact book titles if anyone is interested, very good histories and i recommend them.) Anyway, the 1939 study found a rather backward town, still loaded with superstition about farm problems. In 1954 the young had left the town leaving only the elders collecting social security. They spent their time watching the new TV.
With our talk of the "good old days", 1939 Plainview had its share of problems. It was common for the 17 y/o girls to get in trouble and have to get married, most couples seemed to start out that way; people just sort of ignored the 5 months for the first baby to come. There was vandalism. People went to church because they felt forced to do so, not because they really wanted to.
After the war the town got a new paved highway connecting it other places (it was quite isolated before), and townspeople took advtg and overcharged tourists passing through.
A lot of the people from such small towns had problems when the went into bigger cities. Some girls were married but very young (16-18) and not ready to assume serious wife responsibilities, esp away from their mother. Long Distance calls were very expensive back then and out of the question. People lived in squalid temporary war labor camps (some later became squalid public housing projects). Children were left unattended. Henry Kaiser, an industrialist known for rapid shipbuilding, provided his workers with support services knowing it would reduce turnover and absentism. Henry Ford, owner of the big Willow Run aircraft plant, offered nothing. Willow Run has also been well doucmented by social studies.
I lastly strong recommend the book "Back Home" by war cartoonist Bill Mauldin. His other works is well known, but his book about the trials of returning servicemen is very good too, and many issues he discusses are the same as today.
(I have a wartime "telephone guide" for a war town produced by the phone company, I'll have to dig it up and summarize its contents. I really need to visit the AT&T Archives, presuming there still is such a place, to look at their wartime records. AT&T ran display (large) newspaper ads asking retired tele operators to return to work to help with war traffic.)
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You refer to the book as 'Plainview' but I do not think that was the correct name. There were two studies, about fifteen years apart, and the place they referenced was Muncie, IN, a small town in Indiana and also the home of Ball State University. (But they did not mention Ball State by name [it would have given away too many clues] and only wrote in general, statistical terms for the most part.) The two-part study was intended as a sociological effort discussing the 'typical' American small town. The town was intended to remain anonymous, and did so for about twenty years following the second part of the study in 1954. PAT]