Cultural Changes

Since I was born in 1927, there have been a few changes in our culture. Let me share a few of them. I walked to school, half a mile to Elementary and a mile and a half to High School except when I rode my bike. Why? No parking lots or school buses. In the first grade, I missed six weeks of schooling due to an ear infection. My teacher kept me after school until I caught up. Amazing?

We first lived in a two story-house with an attic and basement and when the milkman had put the bottles of milk at the back door the cold pushed the frozen cream up 2-3 inches. We could hear the huckster a block away with fruit and vegetables. We picked small hunks of ice off the truck while the iceman put the ice in our ice box following a sign in our window telling how many pounds. We loved the Colonial truck with its goodies. When dad was away, I went down into the basement and dug clinkers out of the furnace and dumped the glowing nuisance into an iron bin.

My dad let me drive our '37 car when I was 13 and drove two blocks forgetting to shift gears. That summer I went again to the homestead farm 700 miles away, drove the tractor, milked cows, mowed hay, cultivated corn, fed chickens and pigs and drove my uncle's vehicle five miles one time. When I asked my father if I could try driving again and his jaw dropped as I shifted gears with ease and drove all the way home into the driveway but he thought it best if he drove into the garage.

Twins were born when I was twelve joining their two year old sister. I could tell which twin was crying and why which I never could do with my own children. I changed lots of cloth diapers, baby sat all three little ones Sunday evenings so my mother could go to church and watched them grow with delight. Evenings the kids in the neighborhood gathered in our front yard and we played tag and threw balls over the house. When I was 10 years old I delivered magazines hither and yon, bought triple dip ice cream cones for a nickel, inherited a paper route at 12 for $2.20 a week and lost my dime allowance in the process.

Now if you think my youth was unusual, it wasn't. Nor was it boring. It was a wonderful adventure and these are only a tiny part of my earlier days. More to come.