The Good Old Days

I am wondering how many times I have heard the phrase: “I just wish we could go back to the good old days.” Someone usually says this when they are thinking of something wonderful that happened in their past. Perhaps it's because things aren't going so well at present. So I decided to compare the good old days with present day and see what I could find.

My dad's family is from northeast Georgia. My mom's family is from the upstate of South Carolina. Both sides were in rural areas and life was very similar for them in many respects. They lived on farms. To put it better, they lived on someone's farm and worked the land for them. The term is “sharecroppers.” Eventually both sides got their own place to work. You wake up early and have to go milk cows to have milk to drink and cook with. You take the milk and churn your own butter. You plant and work a large garden to have vegetables and raise livestock if you want meat. Now all this means you are having to do lots of manual work. Cows have to be milked and beans have to be plowed and picked. Eggs have to be gathered and cooked and animals have to be butchered and preserved. It's not easy work! If you wanted to go to the bathroom...it was about a hundred feet from the back door with a well beaten path leading to it. If you wanted water...you dropped the bucket into the well and pulled it up yourself. If you want it hot...you put it on the stove. You had to chop wood to keep warm and to cook. I did know some who had access to coal for heating. For cooking...it was always wood.

Life got a bit better with houses being wired for electricity. Stoves and refrigerators helped take a lot of the work out of it. Washing machines took over what a wash bucket and washboard once did. Houses were fitted with plumbing for running water and you no longer had to trod that path to the outhouse. It eliminated the need for chamber pots in the bedroom. Most of us would panic if we had to use what they had to use then.

Today we have our TV's and our music players. Cell phones can go anywhere with us and we feel lost without them. We reheat leftovers in the microwave and complain that it takes all minute! We truly live better than royalty did just a couple of hundred years ago. We travel in hours what it used to take days. If you are cold or hot you go to the thermostat on the wall. You turn it up...turn it down...or turn it off. In case you haven't realized it...these are the “good old days!”

The advances in technology have freed us from a lot of time consuming chores and hardships. They make our lives better is someways and worse in others. Too much idle time is not good for anyone. To try and fit everything under the sun in you schedule is just as destructive. Maybe more. It can make us very impatient. Just be thankful for what you have and use it wisely. We all have a lot more than we realize.

Grandpa's Farm

Here in the South it is common to find family farms.  They are quickly becoming a past way of life.  It is difficult for many of them to make enough money from farming and they are simply going away.  Now and then you will meet someone that is good at it and you can tell that farming is in their blood.  I believe some people were just born to do certain things.  My grandpa was born to be a farmer.  When I was young you could find him out in the fields on his tractor or using a hoe to cultivate crops.  I am not talking about a garden, I am talking about 60 acres.  He worked it for the most part by himself without any help.  Sometimes my dad or my uncles would help.  My Granny would always be working too but that is a story for later.  Grandpa usually liked to do things by himself.  He loved the work he did on the farm.   He would raise watermelons, cantaloupes, and cotton.  Cotton was still a money crop in the late 60's and early 70's in South Carolina.  When I was in the first grade I would come home from school and pick cotton for money.  He paid me 3 cents a pound. :)  Do you have any idea how long it takes for a 7 year old to pick a pound of cotton?  It takes quite a while.  I think my friend and myself were able to get $2.75 to split between us one week.  That was a good week for me. :)  Well, in 1968 it was pretty good. 

Like I said, Grandpa would grow watermelons and cantaloupes as well.  There was this 20 acre field below the highway he would plant in watermelons almost every year.  Planting this type of crop near the road baffled me.  People would drive by and see this and of course some would stop and steal a watermelon.  High school kids were the most common culprit.  It was just a temptation that proved to be too hard to resist at times.  Grandpa knew every watermelon and cantaloupe that grew in his field.  He knew when someone had been there even if they had left no sign.  How he did this I do not know but he was never wrong about it.  One year there were these high school boys that would stop in the dead of night and not only steal but vandalize his stuff.  Grandpa would take a couple of boxes of shotgun shells and fill them with rock salt.  Sometimes he would just leave the bird shot in them.  He camped out in the middle of the field that night and waited.  Sure enough the kids came back and began to steal and vandalize his stuff again.  He could hear them talking about him mocking him and cussing him.  They didn't know that he was out there with them. :)  In our community everyone knew everyone else.  So these fellas were local and were calling him by name unaware that he was right behind them.  He jumped up and began firing.  Now in all honesty, from  the range he was shooting at, he couldn't have done much damage.  He didn't want to kill them.  He just wanted to teach them a lesson.  He did just that!  They jumped up screaming and hollering and got in their car and drove away.  The town doctor in Honea Path said that he picked shot out of their backsides all night long.  Even at that range he was a pretty good shot.  The town police were called and he told them that it was a county matter and for them to get off of his property.  They fussed a little but they did leave.  It was understood in those days that a farmer would protect his livelihood with force if necessary.  Grandpa never had those fellas steal his watermelons anymore.  He told me this story laughing so hard that tears filled his eyes.  My Grandpa was an interesting man to say the least.  He passed away in the mid 1990's at the age of 90.  I think about him often and smile.  One reason I smile is because of a question that I have.  Why did my Grandpa plant those watermelons so close to the road? ;)