Thoughts and Memories Are A Pleasant Reminder of Good Ol' Days...

My...how times have changed…When you’ve lived 62 years and have seen things change over the years, it’s not hard to understand why all the older folks talk about the “Good ol’ days”. The good ol’ days were long ago and far away from the everyday comforts like cell phones, iPads, video games and web pages. If you wanted to go shopping, you had to climb into your car and drive to a different store for everything you wanted. There were no WalMart or K-Mart shopping centers beyond a 5 & 10¢ store back in those days and they had only a small sampling of different items due to the store size. Most 5 & 10¢ stores were right in the middle of town, in a normal sized store…unlike the super stores of today.

 Mom & Pop Stores were great...

 

 Mom & Pop with kids, shopping in a Mom & Pop store...

 

The town where I was born looked like this in 1951

 

Yes, those were the good ol’ days when you could talk to a clerk and order something special from their catalog and they called you when it came in. If you went shopping back then, you could conceivably enter a store for clothing, another for shoes, another for tools, another for seeds or feed and another for groceries…Then there was a hardware store, a blacksmith, a wood store and a pharmacy…all separated and run by individuals. If you were lucky enough to eat dinner out while shopping, you had a choice of a burger joint or a sit down diner. That was it…

 Pre McDonalds....

 

  One of the first McDonalds fast food restaurants...

 

Another Pre McDonalds burger joint... 

 

If it wasn't fast food burger joints, it was one of these diners...

 

At home, you had an outhouse and sometimes no running water within the house except for a hand pump at the kitchen sink. Heat was a luxury in those days…because oil and gas were expensive and fancy propane and electric heaters were either non-existent, few and far between or not even invented yet. To bath, you warmed water on the stove in a bucket and bathed in a metal tub. Yep, those were the good ol’ days alright! I remember waking up on a winter morning, pulling my clothes (which were chosen the night before) under the covers with me to warm them up a little before jumping up and dressing quickly in the 30° bedroom. Water in a little tin cup had frozen on my night stand and as the sun shone through the rattling windows, I remember wisps of fine swirling snow inside the window, slowly drifting down to settle on the linoleum floor. Downstairs, in the kitchen, there was heat (at least a little) and breakfast waiting in front of the kerosene heater with its round wick burning brightly and little wafts of smoke occasionally rising above the heater. I remember wading snow up to my waist (not much for a eight year old kid…maybe 24” deep) as I made my way to the outhouse nature call. Yeah, they were definitely the good ol’ days!

You may think I’m being sarcastic and funny, but just ask someone in your family over 60 about the good ol’ days and they will tell you of the hard times…few comforts…lack of money, heat…and sometimes table food, but I will guarantee you that even though they would not return to such times, they would never trade the memories of those days for memories of today either!!

Oh to go back for awhile…to once again be with my departed Mother, Grandparents and other family members…enjoying large family holiday meals again…and ban together to get past those hard times and inconveniences.
But you know…I do go back occasionally! Thank God for memories and dreams…for it is then that I am again reunited with them all…all over again.

Yesterday Allie was joined by an old friend from NJ…a former herd mate from Papetti's Eggstraordinary Mini Donkeys in New Jersey.

 Allie was elated with the arrival of Rosie, her old friend...

 

Rosie is a beautiful mini donkey, our newest farm member...

 

We laughed at her reaction when Rosie was dropped off yesterday morning. We closed them off in the front pasture until Rosie has a chance to get used to the boys…and the boys have a chance to get used to her. I’m sure Allie will be a negotiator in their relationship…because she did a great job of taming the herd when she arrived.

We will also install a few boards around the windows of the adult turkey house and foam a large crack we missed on the juvenile turkey house today and install the remaining few batten boards on the walls. We will then count all other places we have cracks and will order them from the saw mill. There is always something… along with doing odd jobs for friends and running the farm & fiber store. Life is GOOD!  
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