My Dad's folks ran a mercantile in a small town with a gravel main street and did just enough business to pay the bills. Grandma passed away when I was 12 so Dad sent me out in the summers to help Grandpa. The store had old oiled hardwood floors from the early 1900's and he was best known for selling penny candy to the kid's in town. One summer when I was probably 14 he wanted to take a month and go to California so left me to "take care of things" The day he left I got up and found out he'd locked all the change in the safe and I didn't have the combination so I went up to the Post office and borrowed $20 in change then over to the bar and borrowed another $20 just to keep going. I was able to pay them back the next day and took it back and told them thanks and they said, "You're welcome, anytime". Grandpa never knew the difference and I never told him about it but I think that was the start of a lifelong career in sales. Just good honest folk looking out for one another. Like mentioned before, a time of innocence.... and trust. A couple of remote commodities in todays day and age. Thanks to the OP for bringing back old memories.
The way life used to be...
- Thread starter bettis1
- Start date
feralmerril
Absent Comrade
I was raised in that general store durring the war. My moms dad, (He and I smokeing a pipe together here), built that store. It is at auroaville wisconsin. After the war the folks sold it. Dad didnt like the long hours but mom being raised in it loved it. Its been empty since about 1960. Many storys there.
Ray
Member
That Paca seemed a little out numbered to me
It sure was.Just to elaborate a bit:
Tipically, at least in my childhood days, the main arm enployed by brazilian hunters was the shotgun, including on this ocasion.Probably Father got it with his Sauer 24 gauge.
Incidentally a Paca is a most outstanding fare.
Regards. Ray
Alpo
Member
I did an image search on "paca", and among the spotty pictures I found this.
http://freephotooftheday.clientk.com/wp02/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/la-vaca-paca-meal-barcelona.JPG
I thought, "Oh, wow. That's how you cook it?"
But nope, that's a meal served at La Vaca Paca, a restaurant in Barcelona.
Don't know what kinda meat that is, but it sure looks good.
http://freephotooftheday.clientk.com/wp02/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/la-vaca-paca-meal-barcelona.JPG
I thought, "Oh, wow. That's how you cook it?"
But nope, that's a meal served at La Vaca Paca, a restaurant in Barcelona.
Don't know what kinda meat that is, but it sure looks good.
Pap had a 1933 or 1935 that had a rumble seat and I remember riding in that. I would still ride in a rumble seat if I had the chance. Larry
feralmerril
Absent Comrade
As I recall dad did "something" to the trunk when we got there so we could ride back there. Maybe he had done something to haul more luggage. Actualy I dont know why we took that car as my uncle (moms brother) owned it. Maybe dads was broke down at the time. A funny thing happened to that car. Right at the end of the war it seems most of my uncles got home almost all at the same time. Dad, mom and a brother of dad`s and his wife went to a country bar. Moms brother and a friend were in there in a heck of a bar fight. The guy that owned the bar was part of it and also was a distant cousin of dads. Soon dads brother was in it too and the way I heard it about 4 or 5 guys were in it. Somehow dad broke it up. They put my uncle on the road in that ford. He was lit up and soon ran out of road. He smashed into a power pole and wires were hanging over the car. He sat there not wanting to get out thinking he might get electrocuted! Who should come along but one of the guys he had been fighting. The guy started to reach for the door handle but uncle eldon told him he might get fried! Guess he didnt hate him enough to see him killed. I still remember the folks and uncle herb, (dads brother) coming home all bloody. Those were wild days.
DWFAN
US Veteran
.22 rifle on the handle bars of my bicycle in the early 60's and nobody ever paid any mind. Best I ever got was the neighbor hood cop asking what you hunting with that son. His response was just be careful where you point it. Times are so different.
DW
DW
After WWII 60% of everything the war torn countries got was stamped "Made in the USA". Now, well you know the rest of the story. Big business, handouts, helping every other country in the world. America was proud to do it back then and apologized to no one.
Now, because of many reasons some of the very countries that took aid willingly curse America. I think the time has come to take care of American's first. The Russian's still owe the U.S. 12 billion $$$ from WWII. Time to pay up.
Vulcan Bob
Member
Good post! You know I'm glad that we are mortal, the world we grew up in and know is gone. I am not quite sixty yet and already I feel out of place and ill at ease the way things are now.
shouldazagged
Absent Comrade
First let me say that I'm going on 76, and feel out of place in today's world in many, but not all, ways. I wonder if my younger grandkids will have a world to live in with any degree of opportunity.
But as every generation ages it reflects that "the world we grew up in and know is gone."
It has always happened and always will. It may be happening faster now that we have seven billion people on earth, with technology exploding but many millions still starving or dying of disease. It has accelerated to some degree for every generation.
In some ways the world I grew up in wasn't all that good, when I reflect on it. Polio was a constant terror, especially in summer. Tuberculosis still confined people for years in sanatoriums (okay, sanatoria) where a frightening percentage died. The KKK was still lynching and terrorizing people. The governor of Georgia bragged to reporters that he had "horse-whipped more than one ******".) Little banners with gold stars on them--some with more than one--hung in the windows of hundreds of thousands of homes. And so on, and on.
To be sure, family life for most people was very different and closer. Kids could be kids and enjoy unstructured play, including with toy guns. I miss seeing those things today.
On the other hand, I've been privileged to observe the most complex and fascinating three quarters of a century in all of recorded history. Even when it's discouraging or awful it's damned interesting. I keep observing it, and thinking I don't want to check out just yet--I might miss something.
Last edited:
medxam
US Veteran
Back in the mid fifties when I was in high school in the little town of Simpsonville, SC, just south of Greenville, we went hunting before and after school every day and left our shotguns and rifles in our unlocked vehicles (Model A Fords didn't have door locks, or at least ours did not). One day our coach, who coached all sports, brought a hand skeet thrower to school and we went out on the football field and shot hand thrown skeet clay pigeons for our physical education class.
medxam
medxam
During the period of my picture in my opening post we lived on a ranch in west Texas and I rode a school bus approx. 20 miles each way to a small rural school (Zephyr, TX.) Since the ranches were so far apart children didn't have close playmates away from school so it was common that students might ride another bus route home with a friend to spend the night.
In those instances the students often carried their .22 rifles or shotguns on the school bus with them. Once at school, the guns were stood in the corner behind the teacher until after school. Since all grades were housed in two buildings on the same campus and the lower grades finished classes before the high school students, the younger students had time to kill waiting for the buses to depart. During those times the guns might be taken into the woods behind the school. That was particularly the case if there was a good tracking snow on the ground.
I don't recall that the presence of the guns on the buses or in the classroom created any more concern than the student's textbooks did. Both the guns and the books were acknowledged as tools to be cared for and used properly.
Bob
In those instances the students often carried their .22 rifles or shotguns on the school bus with them. Once at school, the guns were stood in the corner behind the teacher until after school. Since all grades were housed in two buildings on the same campus and the lower grades finished classes before the high school students, the younger students had time to kill waiting for the buses to depart. During those times the guns might be taken into the woods behind the school. That was particularly the case if there was a good tracking snow on the ground.
I don't recall that the presence of the guns on the buses or in the classroom created any more concern than the student's textbooks did. Both the guns and the books were acknowledged as tools to be cared for and used properly.
Bob
feralmerril
Absent Comrade
This was a one room first through eighth grade school I went to. The teacher on the right brought his dads civil war musket to school and demonstrated it to us shooting it at something behind the school house. At the time I heard he was the oldest teacher in the state of wisconsin. I am the boy in the first row to the left mislabeled D.F.?? I also remember two probley high school guys comeing to our school and giving us a demostration on gun safety. One of them also had been to reform school and also gave us his "testimony" on how him being a "bad kid" got him there. The bruntage boys in the back row drove about a 1927 chev coupe to school every day! They were in 7th or 8th grade.
Last edited:
feral,
That picture could be one taken of any of us in that era. Made me smile.
All of these stories have reminded me of another that I have posted elsewhere here previously, but it still emphasizes the different times.
My dad kept a case of dynamite in our barn. We used it to remove tree stumps in land that we were putting into cultivation and breaking up rocky soil to build new fences. There was no lock on the sagging old door; only a wooden peg in the hasp to keep the animals from getting in and creating havoc.
We didn't worry about anyone stealing it because all of the other ranchers had their own dynamite. And if we ever ran low we simply stopped by the hardware store on the next trip to town and bought some more...no forms to fill out, no pre-authorization, no guilt. Just sign the ticket that would be paid off when the next herd was sold or the next crop harvested and go home and blow something up
.
Bob
That picture could be one taken of any of us in that era. Made me smile.
All of these stories have reminded me of another that I have posted elsewhere here previously, but it still emphasizes the different times.
My dad kept a case of dynamite in our barn. We used it to remove tree stumps in land that we were putting into cultivation and breaking up rocky soil to build new fences. There was no lock on the sagging old door; only a wooden peg in the hasp to keep the animals from getting in and creating havoc.
We didn't worry about anyone stealing it because all of the other ranchers had their own dynamite. And if we ever ran low we simply stopped by the hardware store on the next trip to town and bought some more...no forms to fill out, no pre-authorization, no guilt. Just sign the ticket that would be paid off when the next herd was sold or the next crop harvested and go home and blow something up
.Bob
GF
Member
Good thread.
Here I am playin' Cowboys and Indians in 1965 ...
... I was totin' a 1911 and a big revolver, still am.
GF
Here I am playin' Cowboys and Indians in 1965 ...
... I was totin' a 1911 and a big revolver, still am.
GF
amazingflapjack
US Veteran
"Here I am playin' Cowboys and Indians in 1965 ..."
Obviously a hoodlum in the making...say, I think I had the same holster!
Obviously a hoodlum in the making...say, I think I had the same holster!
Last edited:
Biginge
SWCA Member, Absent Comrade
How many of you birds remember the Duncan yo-yo man when he came to town?
I can remember being in the 5th or 6th grade in the mid '60's and Bob Munden was in town and came to the school and gave a demonstration. They had all the kids come into the assembly hall to watch him up on stage shoot balloons and keeping an eye on the time to see how fast he was. It was pretty impressive to a kid just over 10 years old.
Bettis1 I looked at those pics for a long time. Those images triggered memories of my childhood and the way life was for me when and where I grew up. Born in 1944 and raised up in the Houston Texas area I'm thinking that there were some similarities in our upbringing. Those were some of the best days of my life. Thank you for sending me back there for a little while. It was nice.
Similar threads
- Locked
