I wasn't part of a poor family in the 40's, but many small towners were not well off in those days. The girls in identical pattern dresses made me remember my grandmother using the flower and chicken feed sacks they bought for the farm to make clothes for the children. You got your choice of cotton sack patterns when you took the wagon into town for supplies .

Some of the later photos credited to color slides were actually prints made from cut film, not roll film. Amazing how the Kodachrome quality has held up over 70 years. You can't do that with Kodacolor, the negative film that many used for snapshots, as they faded in 10-20 years and lost color fidelity.

I was an amateur photographer in the late 40's and had a Speed Graphic "press camera" which used sheet film like that shown in the photos. The notches along the edges of the film helped you get the "right side up" when your were loading your cut film holders one by one in complete darkness. I didn't shoot color film in those days (too expensive, and very hard to process yourself) but did shoot lots of black and white for school yearbooks and the local daily newspaper. Had my own darkroom in the basement of the house in a "coal bin" converted when we stopped using lump coal, and converted the furnace to "modern gas heat" after the War.