During a recent reminiscing moment with my child bride wife, she recalled as a girl of 13 or 13 years old she wore her first pair of silk stockings and pums.

She said with her two-piece pink suit and her pair of silk stockings, she felt real grown-up.

I wonder how many of my lady readers can remember their first silk stocking.

You know something I don’t remember of getting an allowance when I was a kid in the 1930s.

My dad used to always dump the heating stove ash-pan full of ashes until I was big enough to do it.

I think this might have been one of my first chores.

I also remember my mother used to iron her whole basket of clothes that were always washed on Monday (the wash day). Tuesday was always iron day.

I remember she even ironed the bed sheets. Not too long ago I heard mention of the “milk train.”

In talking to my friend Dick Foreman, he said he once took this train, called the “milk train” from Dowagiac to Chicago to see her aunt.

He said it took this train forever to get there, as it kept stopping to pick up farmer’s big milk cans along the small stations.

I guess they probably dropped off empty milk cans at the same time.

I think he said they had a special car on the train for this procedure.

Dick said she never took the “milk train” again.

He also told me that what was the Michigan Railroad was changed in 1929 and became the New York Central RR after they took a long lease on it.

I remember when we used to get a heavy rain suddenly, my mother called it a “cloud burst.”

Anyone remember the dice game we used to play called “Cootie?” I recall it but forgot how we played it.

As kids we were told to be afraid if the bad “Bogeyman,” please tell me what is one?

What a change, from the early TV is when we had trouble getting our three channels, you can now view channels up in the 200s.

Are there many old washing machines on four legs with rubber rollers on the top ringer?

Do you know some people ran blanched pea-pods through the ringers to shell the peas the easy way.

Gosh, remember when basketball players wore short pants, before the baggy ones now.

Here is something from an old Dowagiac Daily News 1949 paper.

Car operated by Shirley Shaffer, 117 James, and a bus collided on the bridge two miles west on M-62. Damage $50 on each vehicle. Shirley also had a shower for her friend, Marclyn Cligh (two of my classmates).

After ,my article about Claude Parker’s 50th wedding anniversary, his son Thom wrote me and said Claude has a sign outside his room, “We don’t remember days, we remember memories.”

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City. E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.