Ah, for the ‘Good Ol’ Days!’

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 restaurant 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 that was fried in Kansas City three months ago. But, not many places. 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? I know of only one in Oceanside – and, he’s actually in Carlsbad. In my little town I used to go and watch ol’ Johnny Susitch 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 bake, but it couldn’t beat homemade.
One of my earliest recollections was pumping water from our backyard well. Half of our 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, 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.
THINK ABOUT IT — If President Trump deleted all of his e-mails, wiped his server and destroyed all of his phones with a hammer, would the mainstream media suddenly lose all interest in the story and declare him innocent?
DON’T DO IT — If you don’t want the FBI involved in elections, don’t nominate someone who’s being investigated by the FBI.
FINAL WORDS — In Ruidoso, N.M., you’ll find this on a tombstone: “Here lies Johnny Yeast, ‘Pardon me for not rising.'”
SEZ I – For a bit of history, check out my “Historically Speaking” column elsewhere on osidenews.com. Also, you’ll find my historical novels under my name at Amazon.com
Humorous or human-interest stories or notes for my osidenews.com column can be forwarded via e-mail to me at: quotetaker@msn.com