The Way We Were: Jefferson County, West Virginia, in 1941

If you lived in Jefferson County, West Virginia, during World War II, maybe you went to the premier of See Yourself in the Movies at Charles Town's Old Opera House. You paid your 25 cents, slipped into a hard, narrow seat in the darkened theater, and watched the images taken in April 1941 move silently across the screen.
Maybe you glimpsed your grandfather or mother or brother. Or even yourself: a small, thin kid in short pants or bib overalls, shyly glancing into the eye of the camera. Or a pretty young woman in a polka dot dress leaving Ranson's Perfection Garment Company. Pretending the camera wasn't there.
But the joy of recognition was soon replaced by a feeling that something was missing. Now your mother was working the night shift at the factory. Your brother was on an island somewhere in the Pacific.
Jefferson County just wasn't the way it had been in the spring of 1941. And it would never be that way again. America had entered World War II at year's end, and new wartime realities colored the view of moviegoers looking back on the last spring of peacetime.
The Way We Were takes you back to the summer before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Photos from the original 1941 film are included.