If your kids have been bad, make them read this post. They'll think twice about giving brussels sprouts  to the dog, I'll tell ya.

So I'm in the Wells Fargo Archives the other day, and what do I find? That's right—the very nuts and bolts of history. Have a seat, and learn away!

When the U.S. got involved in World War II , the Federal government started rationing food, rubber, petroleum, and other supplies . It allowed most of these items to go to soldiers and European victims of war. It was the centerpiece of "the war at home." 

Rationing was a very complex program. People were issued coupons that limited the amount of rationed stuff—three gallons of gas per week, limited weights of meat and eggs per person, etc. Consumers paid with cash and coupons, which then bought wholesale amounts for the merchants. The coupons went through a sort of clearing house that you don't have to care about.

Anyway, the program got too unwieldy for the Feds by 1943. They needed to either develop a huge new bureaucracy to handle the wholesale level or find a system that already existed on which they could piggyback the coupons. Voila!—banks had a great system for moving cash up the chain, so it stood to reason that the same machinery and processes could be used to let the rationing program expand.

In 1943, the Office of Price Administration  developed a new program to route ration coupons through banks. They had checks against coupon accounts and everything.

Ah, History. It's not all kings and battles, you know. Somebody has to teach you about the wholesale clearing of coupons so we'll be ready the next time. More important, somebody has to clear those coupons so that butter flows uninterrupted, from sea to shining sea.