good ol days

Hey, I remember a lot of this stuff....


Remember 'good ol' days' to escape bad new ones

By Jim Monday


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A few years ago when my grandchildren, Christy and Zach Lerman, were in their early teens, I started a childhood story at a family gathering, meaning to make a certain point.

Christy jumped in and said, "Papa's gonna tell another one of those 'I walked three miles to school in deep snow' stories." And, of course Zach -- and some of the other members of the family -- chimed in, giving me a hard time.

I think that was the time I began to feel like an old geezer.

Of course they were teasing me, but I really did walk more than a mile in deep snow when we lived in Michigan, and I once got caught in a blizzard as I walked home. My dad came to my rescue, walking to meet me to guide me home.

I'm wondering what the generations of Christy and Zach, and even Christy's baby girl, Cora Grace Hunter, will say about their "good old days" when they become senior citizens. It would be interesting to know how they will remember their growing-up years.

I suppose each generation feels their younger years are the most special, but the current generation has so much more to face than we did in our youth. They can't escape the multitude of events that are happening in our nation and around the world -- the wars, the famines, the drugs.

Perhaps that's the reason I reminisce quite often, to escape the murder and mayhem that we face every day here at home or around the world.

While youngsters snigger at our stories of the past, we oldsters had some good stuff going on and were fortunate not to have as many problems to face as youngsters do today.

Someone has said that everyone makes fun of us who were kids in the 1950s or earlier. Twenty-somethings shudder and say, "Eeeeew!"

But those days had some good values and ideas to offer to the world. Here's a few things compiled from our less complicated way of life "way back" in our younger days.


In 1953, the U.S. population was less than 150 million. Yet you knew more people then, and knew them better.

The average annual salary was under $3,000. Yet our parents could put some of it away for a rainy day and still live a decent life.

A loaf of bread cost about 15 cents (I personally remember when my dad sold bread for five cents). And it was safe for a 5-year-old to skate to the store and buy one.

We didn't have a television set in the Monday household until I was out of high school. Prime-time television meant "I Love Lucy," "Ozzie and Harriet," "Gunsmoke" and "Lassie," so nobody ever heard of ratings or filters.

We didn't have air-conditioning, so the windows stayed up and at night the breeze was very soothing.

You loved to climb into a fresh bed because sheets were dried on the clothesline. In the wintertime, those fortunate enough to own an old featherbed, snuggled in it for warmth. However, if you slept on one in the summer, you could sweat to death.

People generally lived in the same hometown with their relatives. So "child care" meant grandparents or aunts and uncles.

Parents were respected, their rules were law and children respected that.

My dad's little country store was a kind of rural town hall. Many folks dropped by daily to catch up on community events and gossip, as well as buying a few groceries. The store even offered light lunches, with an old-time "baloney" sandwich being a well-liked feature.

The compiled list of our "good old days," also pointed out that we are the folk who "can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Sky King, Little Lulu comics, Brenda Starr, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing cowboy, playing hide-and-seek and kick-the-can and "Simon Says," baseball games, amateur shows at the local theater before the Saturday matinee, bowling and visits to the pool and wax lips and bubblegum cigars."
Was it really that long ago?