By Staff
Gone are the days when people were so trusting that they would leave their house unlocked as a convenience for the gas man to come in and read the gas meter, which used to be in the basement.
The unlocked door also was for the iceman and the grocery delivery person.
Back in those days, people parked their cars downtown and left the keys in the ignition in an unlocked car. Better not try it these days, huh?
Gosh, those old five-cent Holloway all-day suckers would last for days if you let it rest at night on a piece of your mother's waxed paper.
With the price I see in today's ad for a pack or a carton of cigarettes, the price is astronomical compared to what I used to pay back in 1954.
That was the year I gave up the bad habit.
I wonder these days how many are rolling their own with one of those little machines you put in paper and tobacco and cranked it and out came a nicely rolled cigarette.
Something else I remember were those little white bags of tobacco with the drawstring that had a little white disc that pulled to close the bag.
I think Bull-Durham was the one I remember.
Those little drawstring bags were ideal for us kids to carry a few marbles to school to use at recess.
Our grade school report cards (I still have mine) were from the old Oak Street School.
The last one for the year listed all the subjects you were graded on for January to June.
You were marked as satisfactory-unsatisfactory (but improving) or just plain unsatisfactory.
My card for the sixth grade gave me all satisfactory but one which was unsatisfactory but improving, and guess what it was for? Writing!
After being called as a juror three times at the Cass County courthouse, I served two of the three times, but the third trial case was settled out of court.
Just recently I received a form to be filled out to become a juror at the federal district court in Grand Rapids.
I filled it out because it said if you didn't, you would be made to come to Grand Rapids to their office at your own expense to fill it out.
Also, if you didn't volunteer your Social Security number and your pay for mileage and days at the trial were over $400, there would be a delay in getting reimbursed.
I remember years ago Devee Hunsberger told me he spent several days at a federal trial in Grand Rapids and wasn't too happy about it.
When we first moved into our old house in 1944 there was no fuse box in the basement with circuit breakers.
What we had were two electrical wires coming into the upstairs bedroom.
They were connected to an outlet in the wall called a fuse plate.
There were two sockets for two screw-in fuses.
When a fuse blew, you had to replace it.
It seemed like the fuses were always blowing out.
Some people used to put a copper penny in the socket, maybe to make the blown-out one work or maybe just to keep the fuse from blowing.
We never did it so I don't know why it was done.
Our old, outmoded system was taken care of when old Charlie Dodd rewired our house in 1964 and put a 100-amp circuit breaker box in the basement.
Another thing I remember, back in the '30s we used to always turn off the lights when leaving a room.
We don't give it a thought anymore.
More times than I can remember I've gone to sleep watching TV in my bedroom and when I awoke in the morning the TV and the lights were still on.