Those Old Days
We walked to school,
it was a mile and a quarter.
But, you could cut cross lots
to make it a little shorter.
Winter or Summer
we made that trek.
But, we were used to it,
so what the heck.
We often shopped at Brownie’s,
cause he let Dad charge,
but our grocery budget
was never very large.
Though my memory is dim
I know we got welfare for a while.
It’s got starving to death
beat by a mile.
We raised much of our food
by planting a garden.
We all had to help out,
no one got a pardon.
We raised chickens & ducks
and the occasional goose.
Sometimes we penned them,
but mostly they ran loose.
We had a few cows,
maybe a half dozen hogs.
Vern & I would jump ‘em
and ride though the bogs.
We used to cut hay,
bring it in loose.
Store it away in the mow
with some hooks on a noose.
We raised corn for the animals
cut it by hand.
I remember corn shocks standing
all over the land.
In the beginning I can remember
Dewey, our work horse, pulling a plow.
Somehow we managed,
but I don’t really know how.
In the summer sometimes,
we’d go fishin’ or Froggin.’
In the winter we’d slide down the hills
on a homemade toboggan.
We roamed all over the land
and built more than one fort.
Often, we’d just make up
our own kind of sport.
We made our own bow’s
and used Goldenrods for arrows.
We made our own slingshots
and shot lots of sparrows.
I remember a BB gun fight
with big brother Tommy.
Vern & I against him,
I pretended he was a Commie.
We played mudgutter or kick the can,
but mostly hide N seek.
Sometimes, we’d walk for miles
to go fishin’ in a creek.
Once, we dammed up the creek,
to make our own swimming hole,
but if we fished in it,
it was with a homemade pole.
We trapped muskrats in the winter
and caught the occasional mink.
Skinned them out in the cellar,
or sometimes in the sink.
We made bicycles from parts
salvaged from other people’s junk.
We slept all in one bedroom,
sometimes two or more to a bunk.
Once, Vern swung from tree rope
and put a car in the ditch.
We used to do things like that,
just to hear The Old Lady bitch.
We used to swim in the Grand River
and jump from the trestle.
It wasn’t the safest of things,
but the memories are special.
And, it was probably safer
than ole Deuster’s Dump.
You could swim in it,
but you’d better not jump.
Our evening entertainment
was listening to radios.
The Green Hornet, The B-R-B Riders
and Only the Shadow knows.
We were the last in the neighborhood
to even own a TV.
It was an old used black & white,
WJIM the only channel we could see.
The picture was always snowy,
there was never an exception.
Dad ran two wires all around the house
trying to get better reception.
In the early days, we cut wood
with an ax and with a crosscut saw.
It didn’t leave time for getting in trouble,
so we never worried about the law.
We hauled it from the woods
behind Dewey on an old stone bolt.
Later Dad bought an old tractor,
I think he got it in Holt.
We saved change in a jar up in the cupboard.
Ron put in the most, I think.
That old tractor really saved us,
brought us back from the brink.
Then dad rigged up a buzz saw
that hooked up to the front of the tractor.
And, after all those years,
Dewey was no longer much of a factor.
Later, we got a chain saw
and cutting went much faster,
but when you cut wood with Dad,
he was always Lord and Master.
When I was really young,
I picked up apples for 10 cents a crate.
One day I made a whole dollar,
most I’d ever made to that date.
We used to pickup beer and pop bottles
we found in the ditch.
The 2 cent deposit was the same,
it didn’t matter which.
Then spend it to buy Bugler and papers
so we could roll cigarettes.
To a ten year old,
that’s about as good as it gets.
Time’s have changed
and those days are long past.
But, the memories I have,
forever will they last.
© copyright 2010 Richard Lee King
author of: A Pursuit of Life
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Be always safe,
Karen
George