By Staff
Old Charlie always tries to go to the first home football game if the weather is nice.
I went to the Three Rivers game this year and, would you believe, as the game was over and I was leaving the bleachers, I lost my balance and fell over backwards.
I didn't break any bones, but it was quite an embarrassment when a nice man and lady helped pick me up.
This little fall brought to mind the time years ago when Phil Stelmasiak fell over backwards from those old wooden bleachers.
I think it may have been in the late 1930s or early '40s.
I can't remember how bad he was hurt, but think he fell from the top row to the ground.
I remember the Stelmasiak brothers, Chet and Phil.
Chet was a mailman and Phil worked in the old Gamble store.
I think the last time the Dowagiac Daily News put out an "Extra" paper was when the Mill Pond dam burst on July 13, 1968.
A friend, Bob Short, brought me that paper and it was full of pictures.
I told him I had a picture somewhere of the dam going out many years ago.
Going back to my penny candy buying days, the Bazooka bubble gum was shaped like a big pink Tootsie Roll.
Also, those sticky little artificial ice cream cones, made from some kind of a wafer, and the ice cream was made from some kind of marshmallow to make it look like a real little ice cream cone.
Then there were those little wax pop bottles filled with a colored sweet mixture. You bit off the top to get to the sweet stuff.
Also, you could get false red wax lips and white false teeth.
When you were done playing with them, you could chew the wax like gum.
I remember chewing the white wax my mother used for sealing jam and jelly jars years ago.
Something else I recall at the 5- and 10-cent store candy bins were those chocolate drops, which had a vanilla center covered with a thin coating of chocolate.
These were substitutes for the expensive box chocolates.
I can remember in the old days of my growing up it was mostly men who went to work every day, while their wives were home with the kids.
Most of the men in town who worked at Round Oak, Rudy's, Premier, Heddon's and Steel Furnace didn't drive to work, but walked and carried old black dinner pails.
Some who lived close could walk home for dinner.
To me it used to be breakfast, dinner and supper.
We never called it lunch.
About the only workers who drove a car to work was if they lived in the country.
My first car, a 1934 Chevy coupe, had a rumble seat. It had what was called a gasoline heater.
This heater was fed from fuel from a source somewhere near the carburetor, so the faster you drove, the more heat you got.
The gear shift lever on this old car was a long rod from the floor that had a black knob on top of it. Somewhere in my pack rat collection I still have this old knob.