Where have all the ‘Good Ol’ Days’ gone?

By Tom Morrow

As good as life is for our society these days, there are some things from the past I really miss: frying hamburgers on a grill; watching a shoe cobbler cobble; the aroma of real homemade bread; and the taste of good ol’ Midwestern well water.
Yes, I know there are one or two places around where you can get a freshly-grilled hamburger “after” you order it – not a paddy stuck in a heated drawer, but not many. The aroma of a good hamburger frying brings back childhood memories. Add a few onions on the grill alongside and you’ve got true American cuisine.
Remember the town shoe repairman? In my little town I used to go and watch our shoe repairman work for hours, carving leather soles to perfectly fit a pair of shoes. He could make a worn pair of shoes or boots look like new again. In today’s throw-away society, such craftsmen have no place because it’s cheaper to go buy a new pair than fix the old.
Almost every mom in my little Iowa town baked bread for their family. Even when bread was 15 cents a loaf, many couldn’t afford to buy store-bought, so mom made it at home. The smell and taste were among the best from years gone by. But, if you had the 15 cents, you could go and buy a loaf of Colonial “half-and-half” baked two days earlier in Des Moines. It was half white and half brown — a novelty to get folks to buy instead of baked, but it couldn’t beat homemade.
One of my earliest recollections was pumping water from our backyard well. Half of our little southern Iowa town couldn’t afford city water, so folks got all they needed from their backyard well. The taste was indescribable. If we could bottle it up, it’d out-sell anything from a mountain spring.
I used to go with my mother to pump a bucket of fresh water. One cold and snowy day Mom made me stay inside while she went to pump a bucket. When she came back in I was laying on the floor, kicking and screaming because she hadn’t let me go with her.
Yep – she dumped the entire bucket on me. Needless to say, I never did that again, but I still love the taste of well water.
POLITICAL QUANTRY — If you rob a bank in a Sanctuary City, is it illegal or is it just an Undocumented Withdrawal?
GROANER — One Sunday morning a young boy decided to surprise his grandmother with a cup of coffee. He’d never made coffee before, and watched eagerly as his grandma took her first sip. Grandma bravely smiled as she sipped her way through the worst cup of coffee she had ever tasted. She didn’t want to hurt her grandson’s feelings, so as she took the last sip, she thanked him for his effort.
Then glancing into the cup, she noticed three green plastic army guys at the bottom. She stared at them, then asked her grandson, “What are these green plastic army guys doing in my coffee cup?”
“Oh you know, Grandma,” the lad replied. “It’s just like on TV. ‘The best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup.'”
FINAL WORDS — On a London, England tombstone: “Ann Mann — Here lies Ann Mann, who lived an old maid, but died an old Mann. Dec. 8, 1767.”
Humorous or human-interest stories or notes for my osidenews.com column can be forwarded via e-mail to me at: quotetaker@msn.com